Introduction to My Fellow Illumination Writers

Late, but fashionably so

Dear Reader, with the utmost respect to all, most particularly my fellow writers at Illumination, I left Medium quite some time back. LOTS of reasons why, from financial to my deep disappointment at the quality of the platform. I have my own website (www.walkaboutsaga dot com) and now am newly over at Substack at Too Old for This Sh*t. I dearly loved Medium for the five years I gave it. I no longer write here. If you’re on Illumination, you are with the best on Medium. Cheers.

I may have missed the invitation to do this. I’m a bit preoccupied.

For those I’ve not yet had the pleasure of reading and following, my world is epic adventure travel.

Was, for now.

I am a 67-year old (clumsy but determined) athlete. I’ve climbed very large mountains, ridden horses in some of the world’s wildest places, kayaked and hiked and skydived and bungee jumped all over Creation. A lot. Perhaps close to forty major adventures, most after sixty. Forty-seven countries. No resorts. Mostly tents, lots of bugs, extreme discomfort and stunning views. Unless I’m a featured speaker at a conference I will not stay in a big hotel.

Up to now. The adventure travel, not the hotels. The hotels suck. Tents rock.

Two prize-winning books out, another in process. Well, up til I got back from five weeks in Africa. Horse riding, massaging rhino butt (I massage VERY large animals) the usual.

Don’t believe me? Okay. Here:

Decades in sales, leadership training, change management consulting, all kinds of training skills. Professional speaker for about three decades. Just ask, everyone knows Old What’s Her Name. No. Really. I’m just that famous. It’s remarkable how many people know Old What’s Her Name. Who?

Won some national prizes for diversity work. Fairness matters to me as a moral imperative. It’s not negotiable.

Ex-military. Army journalist and TV producer-director. As anti-gun as a human can possibly be, because I know, as an expert shot with an M-16, what a weapon can do. Another moral imperative. Being in the belly of the beast is hugely informative if you have a couple of brain cells to rub together.

The Dutch love to ask you what your opinion is. You are how you think. Here we like labels: writer, traveler, older athlete, whatever. They are meaningless if we don’t act in alignment with what we say we are or believe. We love labels and trappings in the same way we buy Pelotons and hope they do the work for us while we dry our tighty-whiteys on the handlebars of a $2300 stationary bike. You can’t make this stuff up.

What I write, how I support people, where I fall down spectacularly on line- and I do, just watch, it’s akin to how I stumble up hills- speak far more to who I am than claiming labels. That’s like Match.com- folks love to claim “Athletic and Toned,” which are the two most broadly-interpreted words in online dating. After 46 years of gym work I am, in fact, athletic and toned. As long as you’re comparing me to a retired Budweiser Clydesdale. However maintaining that after buying a year’s supply of Sprouts chocolate almonds while stuck in this house and I can’t get to the gym, well…..

I will say, and this is true, that I have a wickedly black sense of humor, that I have a highly-developed skill for seeing the absurdly funny in most things. Given an unfortunate history of rapes and sexual assaults in the military, about which I have written on Medium extensively, it would be fair to say that I’m pretty good at surviving. That and a number of near-death experiences from my various adventures have taught me a little about appreciating the hell out of being alive and kicking. I deeply dislike victim mentality. That said, I’m not without empathy or compassion. I have intentionally leapt out of airplanes. A lot. Couple of times, my chute didn’t open. I guess I didn’t panic.

Oh. I forgot. I had a four-decade-long battle with eating disorders. From the rapes. Beat it alone. But…those lovely chompers? They sit in a cup at night. That was the cost. Oh, the money I have saved on Halloween, taking them out and scaring the holy crap out of the neighborhood kids. I put my teeth back in and get to keep the Snickers bars. No. I’m not making this up. You just can’t. The stupid shit we do to ourselves. What doesn’t outright kill me is my best comedy material.

Along those lines, don’t EVEN get me started about online dating. Please.

I have post-concussion syndrome (no, not from landing on my head from a skydive). Twenty-one concussions. You read that right. I have one hell of a lot of gratitude. I work hard at this. But I suffer periodic emotional outbursts like any other person whose banged their coconut too many times. I am beyond fortunate to be upright, functioning at a very high level and (mostly) compos mentis. More like compost mentis, given that a fair amount of my writing has a ripe stink, but it’s great for fertilizer.

Just don’t expect anything out of me past 4 pm. I wake up daily at 3 am. While I am happy to point out that so does Mark Wahlberg, it only means that my neighbors-if they plan things carefully- get cheap shots of my bare chest because I forget to close the drapes. Concussions will do that.

I keep waiting for those shots to show up on social media, but I guess 67-year old ta-tas aren’t worth posting these days. It’s good to realize what you have and don’t have. I’d vastly prefer to have a hell of a good sense of humor than perfect breasts.

Um. Wait. Let me think about that.

There you have it. I’m a damned good writer as long as you’re comparing me to a Peanuts cartoon strip.

I’m a damned good athlete, if you compare me to a dyslexic camel. I make a lot of money from that. I do my kickboxing early in the morning. My neighbors drag out their lawn chairs, bring popcorn and toss nickels on my deck. That’s helped a lot since my stats dropped by almost 66% since I got home. I wish they would upgrade to quarters but if I took my top off they’d all die laughing.

Lest you think I am too lighthearted: today I sat in on a conference with travel writers. We’re all hurting. Laughing. Until Marco came on, a young Italian man stuck in Colca Canyon in a hostel. They have food. He just lost two immediate family members to the virus.

I cried.

Because. That man matters. You matter. I matter. But we matter most when we remind others how much they matter.

Let’s put the lights out there.