January 13, 2008 — If humans loved one another the way Lenore loves good (she is looking for a treat towards my pocket here), the world would be a loving place, for sure.

  So writing openly and honestly on a blog can be a mixed blessing. Earlier this week, I reported that my friend the poet Mary Kellogg called me up to say I was too frantic, doing too many things and that I didn’t seem calm and at peace to her. I have learned the hard way to listen to Mary, who is tough and wise,  and so, apparently, have many of you since I got quite a few e-mails agreeing with her, and urging me to slow down, suggesting that I was doing too many things.
  I had reported some time earlier that I was surprised to get e-mail earlier this year advising me that I seemed depressed, before I knew I was. I have been battling successfully back and have been writing poems, taking pictures, working on my books at a pretty fevered rate. I’m starting a photo blog next week and also a publishing imprint, Bedlam Farm Books. All this talk of being frenzied startled me, as I was feeling pretty good. I know there are always a thousand things going off in my head but I just assumed that was because I was a little crazy, like most people who hear voices in their head.
   But I’ve learned to listen to my inner blog, which, I have to say honestly, often tells me things about myself I don’t know and don’t quite realize.
  Wrote Claudia from West Virginia: “Mary is right, Jon. You seem a bit frantic to me. I think you should take a deep breath.”
    Christine wrote from Honolulu: “You are lucky to have a friend like Mary, Jon, so do what she says.”
    Good advice, that.
   I asked Paula if I seemed frantic to her, and she said, in her inimitable way, that I had been frantic for decades, but she thought Mary was perhaps right, and that I could slow things down a bit. Just about 20 per cent, she said. She also acknowledged that this was a creative period for me, and that was a good thing. Anyway, thanks for the messages, and I do hear them. I love creative outpourings, like the one I feel I’m – better pictures, gloomy poems, part-time teaching and lots of writing. I feel there was a battle for my mind, and I wrote and clicked my way through it. This all helped me to get through some painful things, but I also want to be able to listen. Not always my strength.
  But I don’t want to be too frantic, or wear myself out, and I have learned to listen to my inner blog as well as people like Mary. So I will slow down a bit. If my creative surge dips, I’ll be ticked.
  My general philosophy about these things is to crank as much out as I can until I am called, as the farmers around her say, and then I will be quiet and calm enough.