The past few months have been a very busy time for me, more so than usual anyway. Life always has its peaks and valleys of time commitments, but the summer of 2010 has been a bluster of activity that has made the hot months whiz by in record speed. That all came to a screeching halt on Friday when I received a phone call that I hope will change my life for it’s remainder.
The phone rang and it was a call from home that my wife’s uncle had just passed away due to a sudden heart attack. For several hours time that was usually occupied with writing, worrying, anxiety and other stresses had been replaced with a sudden sense of finality.
My wife and I stopped what we were doing and trekked to Tampa, Florida to visit with friends and family in a time of memorial for the loss of a loved one. As I met with the family and friends of Craig Van Tilbury, something began to grow apparent about my own life. Everyone that spoke of him had nothing but genuine love for his time on this earth.
The details of Craig’s life aren’t as important as what those details meant to me, and many, many others. He lived his life without fear for tomorrow and a passion to be available at all times to those closest to him, sometimes even to those he had never met. I began to reflect on my own life and realized I had let my writing become so much an obsession that it was actually hampering my relationships with my own friends and family.
Such a lesson should never be taken lightly and I must admit I have spent the last days reconsidering the amount of time and worry I put into my writing life. An adjustment of priorities is definitely in order. It is my hope that I could encourage anyone who reads my blogs to take a few minutes of their own time to reflect on what truly is important.
We all have a need to promote and derive profits from our life’s endeavors, but let us not allow such aims and methods to subtract from our personal relationships. Writing for whatever motivation we have can indeed be fun and rewarding, but if it costs you the chance at a winning relationship with a real live human being, then there is something wrong with the priorities of life. Make an effort every day to step away from your writing and engage in meaningful conversation with those who are closest to you.
