You Call The Count

Closer to my end than to my beginning, I look back over my life and imagine an alternate timeline where I concentrated on one activity and one activity only.

I have been thinking to myself, analysing subjects, since I was about five.

I have been writing to myself, analysing language constructs, since I was about ten.

What if I chose only one of the two above?  Is it possible?

We tag our lives with points on a circle, saying that the path around our star is a good measure of our physical age but genetics and lifestyle habits age us, not solely a spinning planet.

In my wanderings, while traveling from housing unit to housing unit to gather demographic data from fellow residents nearby, I've received the gift of time from others' life experiences.

I thought the local census count was all about putting numbers and letters on a piece of paper but I've discovered that those who willingly share information about themselves, those who've chosen a path they've walked deliberately, age more slowly and gracefully than those who shelter themselves with flurries of hither-nither, compartmentalised activities.

Some measure success by material means.  Lately, I've seen success in the measure of quiet happiness of relatively low materialistic country living.

Everyone I meet teaches me a lesson implicit in the lifestyle a person enjoys talking about or tries to hide from the world at large.

One chance to live in the moment.  What kind of moment do you call a successful one?