Why read what I have to say? 

 

Ah, the crucial question for every author.  The simple answer is because I hope you come away with a sense of enjoyment.  I write for fun.  I hope some of the things I say are educational, to be sure, but interesting is more important and a lot of it is just for the fun of writing it and hoping someone else is reading it with enjoyment, maybe even interested enough to come back to me and say “you know, Gregg, you are a nice guy…but, frankly (holding hand above eyebrows), right now I’m right up to here with nice guys!”  The guy who told me that about 40 years ago knows who he is.  His middle initial is “R” but I cannot reveal the name in mixed company.  He’s still a great friend, though, in my mind, one of the individuals who made a great impression upon me.

 

I like to think I have some interesting things to say.  (Thousands don’t, but let’s not quibble.)  I like to think I have a different point of view (some say odd) based upon all the places my feet have been over the years.  I hope to get off a good line now and then, a good joke now and then, occasionally a zinger, maybe, but in the end I hope that I engage you in conscious thought, preferably about something you perhaps did not know before.  Hard to do for most of my friends, who already know it all, that’s why I’m branching out.  I have a bunch of friends, good ones, too, who know just about everything there is to know as well as everything I do because I’ve already told them twice.  Or so they have assured me.  They’re a tough audience.

 

Authors write because they get pleasure from being read.  If readers don’t get pleasure then they don’t read.  By the way, pleasure does not come only from agreement.  A number of my friends take great pleasure out of disagreeing with what I say and think.  And I with them.  Unfortunately for me, at the present moment a depressing number of these mental misfits seem to have the upper hand.  Grin and bear it, grin and bear it…the mouth shall rise again!