echo, echo, echo, echo

Echo, echo, echo, echo ....

Funny how some initial course of action -- good, bad, or indifferent -- continues to reverberate and resound, different and yet the same. Open your mouth or lift a finger and it's echo, echo, echo, echo.

Earlier in the week, I wrote a short article about retirement and submitted it to the local paper for consideration. Yesterday, I got a note from the editor saying that the article would run on Monday. I mentioned this to my son together with the small whine that I wished I could figure out a way to get paid for it. Bragging rights were OK and with or without remuneration, I would probably still write, but still ... a little money would be nice as the choke-hold of Christmas and monthly bills make themselves felt.

"You've already done that," my son observed reasonably, "... gotten paid to write articles." In retirement, which is where I am, you don't make money any longer. You spend it ... which, on a fixed income, requires a new and constricted point of view.

Earlier in the week, I wrote a short article ... which will be published in the future ... echo, echo, echo, echo.

Once upon a time, I got paid as a newspaper reporter to write articles and now I am not ... echo, echo, echo, echo.

Kinda makes you wonder whose voice sounded the first note of which this moment is the echo, echo, echo, echo ... and what echo will echo on account of this echo.