The journey of a thousand miles

First steps on the journey of a thousand miles

Since my retirement in 2015, after 32 years of full-time teaching, I had been taking small incremental steps towards living a more fulfilling life, doing something that I like, that I could not find time to do as a hard-pressed busy teacher. That something was to write and to sing.

Both of these, writing and singing, help me fulfill a passion: "To make people happy in entertainment and recreation".

By early 2016 I had the opportunity, with the help of kind and generous friends, to sing and play the guitar with a small group of experienced veteran singers and musicians. Over the two years since, I have garnered sufficient experience and skill, with lots of practice,  to arrange my own guitar chords for more than 200 songs and to play the rhythm guitar in any key upon request during public performance.

That was, but only a first step in a long journey of a thousand miles, perhaps even more. There's a lot more to improve on in singing and playing the guitar in the years ahead.

Last week I managed to put my best foot forward for a second step in this quest to fulfill my dreams: I applied to and became accepted by the Malaysian Writers' Society as a candidate member i.e. a member who has not published any works before. I availed myself the opportunity to participate in my first "Write-in" workshop with several experienced but friendly writers, some of whom have dozens of novels and short stories published in their name. I was a green-horn among them but, happily for me, I was readily welcome into their midst.

All my own writing so far has been in the form of short personal articles posted in my blogs. A religious blog, "Wisdom of the Ancients" in which I write my observations from my daily Bible readings, has about 180 articles of varying lengths accumulated over nine years. A hobby blog, "My Bicycle Rides", on my long distance cycling events with friends, was started four years ago and have slowly gathered about forty posts.

Last week, I started a new blog called, "Moments of my Thoughts" to post short articles and poems of my encounters with things and people around me. So far I have written four little poems there.

This is my second step forward. I look forward to the day when I can published my first book, perhaps a collection of devotional studies of the Bible, or an anthology of short poems, or perhaps a short story in a magazine.

There's a thousand miles  ahead and many more steps to go in this journey into a new lifestyle.

There's only one step to avoid taking, that is to abandon the journey and give up.