About incentive

Thanks to Mark Kolke and his blog "frameyourmessage.com, I am going to get back into action.I apologize to regular readers for allowing my posted items to become obsolete and irrelvant.

But, after all, that is what happens to people of my age - and also - to many who are much younger and should know better.

I have warned myself, to no avail, that unless I maintain a structure, I will lapse into indifference and sloth - both of which are supposed to be the prerogatives of those who have "paid their dues." I do not want to lie fallow, waiting for The Muse to strike me.

What Mark has reprinted in his blog is my comment about incentives. I realize that without a deadline to meet or an editor waiting for me to produce, or a boss who has me chained to a desk, I have no tangible incentive to keep at it. The only incentive has to be the one I generate myself, out of the imperative that says I must. I must remain relevant. I must remain motivated I must nourish my own incentives.

So, my dear friends, if you find yourselves watching just a little too much TV, or (as I did last week on two occasions) not getting out of my bathrobe all day, and of delaying the things you should do but keep putting off - then gather round.

I commented to Mark that two articles I had written, one of home exchange for the Toronto Star, and another on my love of my home city in spite of all the negative cassandras who think that we are boring compared to Chicago - two pieces that remain unpublished. The Star because I am waiting. The Toronto piece, because I have been too lazy to edit, rewrite and tweak.

This will be the first of many pieces as I hope this sudden burst of energy does not leave me flattened.

I trust you will share and/or cheer for - my resolution.