I woke up Sunday morning feeling restless and angry, I had trouble shaking it off. I feel so much better now. It was my walk in the woods.

I love my life and give thanks for it, but sometimes I am weary of explaining to people that having been told what to write my whole life, I revel in writing what I want, not what I am told to want or expected to want.

For reasons I can’t quite grasp, people often assume I am seeking their approval and affirmation, and when I explain that I am not, they often get angry, as if I am wrenching from them a privilege our faceless communications have awarded them.

It’s a part of any writer’s life, but sometimes I just get sick of it, and then, sick of me. The corporatization of writing in recent years has turned every author into a marketer, hustling for customers just like every other hungry businessperson.

The new author is expected to please his or her audience, to try to meet their expectations and needs rather than his own. The Internet has turned every reader into a consumer, they expect the same thing of a writer that they do from Amazon.

That is the modern convention of writing. That is why marketing departments now decide the fate of books. That’s why I love my blog. It is a monologue, not a dialogue.

Of course, I want people to like what I write and find it meaningful.

But mine is the face in the mirror I have to like and respect. The marketing can’t run me, I have to run it.  That is not a marketing position, but a throwback to a different time, the Thoreau idea of independence and self-realization.

The marketers only ask one question: Will people buy the books?

I hate telling other people what to do, but in this, I am a freak. Many people love telling other people what to do, it seems to be a part of human nature, a reflex, an instinct built into the massive architecture of the Internet.

I admit that I am a freak, and also foolish for persisting in this epic and losing struggle.

I’m sorry to say I can’t quit yet.

When they get angry, I get angry, and off we go.

This is a dance I don’t want to join, but too often do. One of the remaining broken parts of me, the work is never really done

When that happens, I need to break away, as I did today, and invite Zinnia to walk with me in the woods. She has yet to refuse.

This, of course, is one of the reasons why people love dogs so much. We get to tell them what to do, they can’t tell us what to do, or what they might rather do.

We walked deep into the woods,  rabbits, and deer flashing through the trees above us, the sun, peeking through the treetops, Zinnia pacing back and forth, tracking one smell, then another, always keeping me close and in sight.

We are winning our conflict with tricks, various natural sprays and lotions and pills are keeping the hungry ticks at bay, there wasn’t a single one on either of us today.

There, the anger and frustration melt away, I am calm and at peace again. I learn again and again that the nature of life is such that we rarely remain in a peaceful state for too long.

We have to keep working at it. That is the spiritual path.

As we left the woods, I felt healed, at peace, and I asked myself in the quiet where this walking and thinking  gets me. The answer was uplifting.

You are in a good place, my spirit sang to me, I heard her loud and clear.

Stay there.