My father was a big man in just about every sense of the word. He was a big, redheaded Irishman who weighed well over 200 pounds and had played professional football for the Pittsburgh Steelers back in the leather-helmet days. Then he had me. I topped out at about five-foo-nine…

There comes a time in life when you have to stop walking down a one-way street. It took me a long time to understand that. I’m in my 80s now, and I’ve outlived every close friend I ever had. I’m not talking about acquaintances or people I knew casually. I’m talking about the friends you could call at two in the morning. The people you laughed with, worked with…

When I was a younger man, I thought I had the rest of my life planned. I wanted to write songs, travel, buy a motorhome, and eventually settle somewhere on the beach in Todos Santos, Baja California. After decades of working, I believed I had earned the chance to slow down and enjoy life at my own pace. Life had other plans…

I heard a simple line in a movie the other night: “What doesn’t bend, breaks.” It wasn’t meant to be profound. It was just a passing remark before the story moved on. But it stayed with me. As I was getting ready for bed that night, another image appeared in my mind. I could see an entire riverbank covered with smooth river rocks…

I have a question for you. How many poems have you written that no one has ever read? How many stories, letters, journal entries, or treasured memories are tucked away in a drawer or saved on your computer? Perhaps you’ve written about your childhood, your parents, your husband or wife, your children…

The other morning, I found myself listening to a song I hadn’t heard in quite a while. It was “Monsters” by James Blunt. The first time I heard that song years ago, it hit me like a freight train. Something about the sadness in the lyrics, the emotion in his voice…

Recently, I took a trip to Idaho to visit my son. He’ll be 56 this July. I adopted him when he was six weeks old, and from the moment he came into my life, he brought me more joy than I could ever explain in a sentence or two. We’ve had a good life together. Not perfect. No life is. But real. As parents, I think we sometimes freeze our children in time without realizing it…

Lately, I’ve been looking at getting older a little differently. I don’t see it as something slipping away anymore. I’ve started to think of it more like a 1943 Ford – still standing, still running, but with a few parts that have needed attention along the way. If I take inventory, I’ve had my share of work done. There’s a screw in my knee from a skiing accident back in…

There’s something I’ve come to notice as I’ve gotten older, and once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. It is this basic truth: We don’t give ourselves much credit. When I look back on my life, the facts are there. I built and ran businesses. I bought, remodeled, and sold twenty-six homes. I earned a pilot’s license. I played in bands…

There’s a line in a song I wrote recently that stayed with me longer than the music: “I know it’s my own doing… bein’ where I be… but that don’t make it easier… livin’ inside of me.” I didn’t write that line as advice. It wasn’t meant to fix anything. It just showed up one day, the way honest things tend to do. And the more I sat with it, the more I realized how much of life can feel like that…