Good Tidings for a Long Road

This is a time for sharing, and connecting (and cathecting).
It's a time for celebration, and we have much to celebrate. Our era (at this time of writing) is one of abundance and plenty, especially if you have the means to afford an internet connection.

For me, 2005 has been an interesting year. Groundbreaking, heartbreaking, difficult but also rewarding.
The challenges in 2006 seem even greater, but that means meeting them with even greater fortitude, with a larger heart, and a greater sense of purpose and determination.

What will you do?
I hope you will all continue on your adventures, and share them with me, as I will for you.
I have friends who will be, over the coming period, in Italy, Amsterdam, and the Philippines. My brother is skiing on the Knysna lagoon.
I wish you all well with your adventures. Come home safe.

My adventure...will almost certainly mean taking up the pen, as a sort of sword. Kunstler warns:

How do you go about breaking in as a writer? It's tiresome and difficult. You write short pitch letters saying what you have to offer (if you are proposing a particular article or review). If you do not get a response, you send another. And another. Magazine editors are notoriously impolite in respect to answering letters and queries. (They say they are too busy, and some are, but it's mostly an established habit in the business to be sloppy and rude in their relations with freelance writers.)

As in the field of Rhetoric, repetition is a very useful tool.
In short, you have to politely make a pest of yourself.
The process is self-evidently discouraging, and a lot of people are defeated by it. That's why i have long believed that perseverance counts for more than talent.
Writing books that nobody has asked for poses obvious problems in addition. It requires a capacity for punishment and discouragement.

The question I ask myself (and you), is this:
How much courage do you have? Because life rewards those who dare to dream, and to boldly go beyond the dance of light that is our dream. To go and do.
There, in the darkness, lies our road. Here, in our hands, and hearts, and heads, is the light. Shine brightly, and I'll see you on top.