Is that it? Just 68 more times...

I saw a good friend of mine recently and he asked me if I had still been writing my stories. He hadn’t seen any on FaceBook lately and wanted to know what was going on.

Unfortunately, my answer was, “not really?".

Then a couple days later I got a text from my friend Cliff…

“Hey, brother! Happy New Year! I haven’t seen you post in a while. Just making sure everything is ok”.

I text him back right away, assuring that everything was ok.

It felt great, to 1, have people notice I hadn’t been sharing my stories, and 2, reach out to make sure I was ok.

I am grateful for both of these things.

Really there were a couple of reasons I have been lacking in the story-telling department lately.

The first is a little superficial I’ll admit.

I had a streak of 168 straight days of completing daily stories, and on day 169 I submitted the story too late...

Streak broken.

It took a little wind out of my sails, causing me to become a little more relaxed about my daily writing. I still wrote but not as often and nothing that made it further than my notebook.

The second reason has deeper meaning.

Just before the stories stopped my dad and I were on a road trip. Eventually, our conversation ended up discussing the lifespan of the males in our family.

After a quick discussion, it was decided that 85 was a good number.

I thought about that conversation over the next few days and started doing the math.

-Well, dad is 68, males in our family live until 85, that is 17 years-

Great! 17 years seems like a long time.

But then I broke it down.

Since we don’t live near each other, we only end up seeing each other about 4 times per year.

That's when it hit me…

17x4=68… 68 more times that I will see my dad.

That’s not enough!

Obviously this isn’t an exact figure, there are a number of variables to consider

But when it is presented this way, presented as a 2 digit number, reality hits hard.

So for the remainder of his visit, I focused more on him, paying more attention to his mannerisms, listening more closely to the stories he’d shared with me a dozen times before. I dedicated more of my time to him and less time to tell stories.

So if you have been wondering what happened to my stories, that is the gist of it. Well, that along with some other things I’m working on, but those I will save for another day.

For now, I need to figure out a way to double, triple or even quadruple that number.

Like I said, it's not enough. I have to have more, more than…

“Sixty-Eight"