If you're not in the obit, eat breakfast.

My friend Gretchen just sent this, a list of things you can do to deal with writer's block. Good ideas, though most of them dealing with fiction, the sense that writing is coming up with ideas, whereas memoir writing is coming up with memory, scenes from the past, and figuring out how and where they fit. And that's the block - I have hit a memory brick wall, for now.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/05/heres-how-you-can-deal-with-writers-block-from-the-expertsutm_content=bufferf226e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

But I'm re-energized, from a most unlikely place - watching a program last night with the marvellous title, "If you're not in the obit, eat breakfast." It's produced by Carl Reiner and features a bunch of his comedian friends and others, all in their nineties and some in their hundreds, who are still active, busy, working, and most of them, this being Carl Reiner, extremely funny - Mel Brooks, Betty White, Norman Lear, Dick Van Dyke. He shows the amazing black woman - I've seen her on FB - who started running at 67 and still runs races at the age of 100. Life is a gift, they all say, over and over. Don't waste it.

As I watched these marvellously calm, wise, humorous old people, I felt so young! I've been feeling old, as I complained yesterday - I'm not used to pain, but these days when I get out of bed, my back hurts, my knees hurt. That's something new and not fun. But that's not necessarily age, I think it's partly because I'm not moving enough. Dick Van Dyke says he was asked to write a book about aging well and replied, It would be a short book with one line: Keep moving. (He did in fact write the book and that's its title.) And he's right. KEEP MOVING.

I will move more and I will get my memoir mojo back. How, when there aren't enough hours in the day? Something has to go, and perhaps it's the time I spend falling down the rabbit hole of Facebook.

It must have rained hard in the night, because there are puddles on the deck and the air is heaven - green and fresh. It smells of spring. In my heart, too.

PS I shouldn't include this, it's vain and boastful, but what else are blogs for?! My old friend Terry sent me this, from someone who came with her to the last So True. Good to hear - golden! - on a day when I am already feeling rejuvenated:
Sorry I'm unable to accompany you to Beth's event at the Black Swan this time...  You'll have to tell me all about the readings. And when Beth holds the event again, please let me know in advance. Did I ever tell you I read her book, True To Life, which I bought last July when you and I attended? Her advice was very helpful, and the tone was pure kindness. But you'd know that. I've learned when out and about that Beth's reputation is golden in this city. But you'd know that too.