After a year and a half of hard work, after writing 200 songwriting articles, my songwriting website has begun to get traction, with about 1,500 daily readers. Along with the increased traffic I've begun to receive letters from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, France, Germany, Singapore, Russia, Kazakhstan, Sweden, and Lebanon. This is all very exciting to a boy from the woods of Maine who has never known any other place or culture. I love getting letters from strangers saying, "Hey, your article helped me out. Thank you." I'm glad to be useful. And I'm even more glad that a few people have said, "Hey, you promised you'd have music recorded and released by now. Where's that album, Bucko?" Thanks for calling me out.
Recent world events have gotten me thinking more and more about how I fit into the world. How I can be helpful. How I can contribute to the wellbeing and happiness of others. For now there are more questions than answers and I am comfortable with that--but I am not going to sit still while I could be helping my neighbors. Now that I'm writing to friends all over the world, it's impossible to shrug off bad news just because it's geographically distant. It's impossible to look away, impossible to excuse myself from pitching in. As a species, we face enormous challenges both now and in the future. Some from the atmosphere, some from asteroids, some from disease, some from ourselves.
The question that haunts me is: what's my role? What can I contribute? It's an important question. But the need is immediate, and I'm not going to spend very long deliberating.
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