Threatening to rain. And there are places out there that would give anything to have our weather, because elsewhere it’s so hot. Now if I were to go elsewhere, the heat might literally kill me. As it gets warmer elsewhere, people are migrating here.

In most respects, we are no different than animals. We go where we will be most comfortable. And, this is where everyone else is. Now to live someplace else, that is with few people, you have to accept the fact that you will be uncomfortable. This is how you keep the numbers down.

I remember the last time I was in California – I was very much aware of the large numbers of people. And before that, I was in New York City. I went into a library in order to get away from the sheer numbers of people and discovered that there were many people in the library, and that I was in close proximity to them.

Today at the Lions Club meeting, the woman sitting next to me said that a 140 unit housing development was going in on Maud Road, in the Butte. Hearing this I shuddered, thinking first of all about the increase in the amount of traffic, then about how an uptick in population (an increase in density) plays havoc on small communities. I asked the woman next to me how she felt about this, and she said it was okay as long as good people purchased the houses. Then when she asked me, I told her what I just wrote.

I foresee that we will move, hopefully, to a less populated area. We may not be comfortable as we like there, but for me at least, it’s a small price to pay.

I worked some on Shelf Life this morning and at the Lions Club meeting I announced that it’s coming along, which it is. I didn’t get very far this morning which is why I am going to work on it this evening. I am almost at the point in which I have to come up with new material. Here, in this particular section, I must start to really answer the question – why am I doing this and what realizations do I come to?

The most important realization of all is that I have come to the conclusion that as a writers that we have a responsibility to deal with this specific type of excess, which is books, so as to get books that are already here into the hands of appreciative readers. Also, we need to get our own books into the hands of appreciative readers. I have to flesh this out a bit – I am going to write about my own writing block and how I dealt with it. This by seeking and finding a balance. I will add that there can be no balance when you are dealing with this sort of thing because the workload never decreases. And if you end up doing what you want to do, you will just be putting more hours in the day.

All true, all true.

Next: 153. 5/6/25: Size Matters