We came home today to a pouring rain that will turn into heavy snow in the morning. We are excited to be home.

The weekend brought a neat new motel ($89 for the night), the discovery of a new and excellent Korean Restaurant, and a powerful musical production that offers gifted young blacks a chance to speak about their culture and the impact Step Dancing has had on their college lives.

Watching some dancers and singers last night in Massachusetts, I heard one of the singers say during a Q&A afterward that he loved the production because “I want to create better art.” This rang a big bell in my head.” He was so sure, so young, of his life mission.  It took me decades.

I turned to Maria when we got back to the motel and said this is what I want; this is why I am radically altering the comments page on my blog. ” I want what that dancer wanted: to improve my art, writing, and photography. Next to you, that is where my heart and soul are.”

Maria started to cry; I wanted to cry. I’ll save it for meditation.

Thanks to my faithful readers for recognizing the idea; they know it will make me better, happier, and more comfortable.

I’m re-structuring the blog comments with Mannix Marketing to limit the blog posts to readers I know who will or already have committed themselves to being civil and thoughtful.

Three things contributed to this compelling realization about what I want to do in life: Maria, a therapist, my blog, and my photography all led me to accept that making art that touches people is what I want to do.

I don’t want to spend my time arguing with people, drowning in their often silly corrections, or being shamed by people who have no idea what  Dyslexia is or how it affects the writing of a prolific daily blog.

This is not anybody’s problem but mine. The rude and intrusive social media messaging – believe me, it’s not just me – is an ugly distraction, and I won’t accept it in my life any longer.

I know what I want to do, and I plan on doing it.

I’m grateful to that gifted singer last night for setting me straight. Very little in my life is more satisfying than improving and sharing my art with people who notice. I’ve learned what is essential in life and what isn’t. Having a blog and being open doesn’t mean I have to be a toilet bowl for broken people; it means the freedom to do the best possible work and improve it.

No regular or civil blog reader will be put on any list or blocked from posting. The pompous and the peckerhead will have to go somewhere else. I reject the self-serving (unhinged people) idea that writing openly on my blog gives people the right to be cruel and dishonest about me and my work and life.

I am worth more than that and entitled to more than that. So are you.

My readers have been urging me to do this for some time now, but I am working to know them and learning to trust them rather than shut them out. There is some advice I need, and some I don’t. Yes, I’m complicated. Sorry.

Today, I begin pruning and blocking the rude, the addicted correctors, the people who can’t handle a Dyslexic blogger, or who are pompous, polluted by politics, hateful, or cruel and have nothing purposeful to do.

Blog Reader Amy W. calls this decision “filtering the effluvia.” I loved that. The definition of the word is “unpleasant smell or exhalation, as of gaseous waste or decaying matter.” This perfectly captures the people who exploit the Internet’s freedom to hurt others and violate their space.

That wipes out a massive chunk of the people on social media, which has gotten much worse since 2016.

Even when disagreeing, my readers are never malicious, judgmental, invasive, or rude. That’s how I know they are regular readers.

They don’t have to do anything to remain on the blog. I believe the Web people can set it up so that regular readers or posters can post whenever they want. We’ll take care of the others and make them disappear or cut off.

This may take a few weeks, given the holiday season. Still, it was a significant revelation, a thunderbolt last night, to finally come to terms with what will fulfill the dream of a safe and calming place to go every morning, every day, to feel grounded and hopeful in our tumultuous world.

I got a score or more of messages, all thanking me for doing this. I get it.

I know this is better for me; I am coming to understand it is better for all of you of good hearts as well. This change is not about disagreement.  I love to argue, as is obvious. The problem is contempt, lies, and cruelty. Civil conflict is fun and suitable for all of us. I can skip the lies and death threats.

You’ll see the results immediately. You will not see another hostile, rude, or cruel message on my blog posts as of right now. I can do this manually until Mannix can change the software when they get to it. I don’t want to wait.

We had a sweet time at the Mass MoCA Museum in North Adams, Mass; last night, we went to see Maxine Lyle’s new work, Step Show: The Musical, a two-act theatrical product, hoping to get to Broadway. The musical is a two-act theatrical production with the famed dance program Jacob’s Pillow. It is a work in progress that showcases the African-American step dance and its significant role in Black college life.

The dancing and singing were both powerful and deeply touching.

I see now – my readers are most often way ahead of me – that I am accepting my Vocation as an artist; my heart and soul are yearning to be a better writer and photographer. I am working on both things all of the time. There is no happening other than death that will make me stop wanting to be better.

I want to focus on making my blog a creative, successful, and uplifting place. I’m very close. The blog is the home of the Peaceable Kingdom, two people whose vocations are now clear and which we are both working hard to fulfill, and of Zip, the dogs, and our beautiful animals.

I’ve been working towards my vocation for some time now. Behind this understanding of Vocation is a truth my ego doesn’t want to hear because it threatens the very ego itself – making money and being powerful.

Almost everyone I know has a life different from the one they want, from the true self. I was one of them.

Every poet, artist, or writer knows this: there is a vast difference between what I was taught, how I put up so many protective masks, and self-serving fiction and ran from my true self. It’s time to let my life speak for itself while I still have a life. This has brought me great happiness, not money.

“It takes time and hard experience to sense the difference between the two, ” writes Henri Nouwin, “to sense that running beneath the experience I call my life, there is a deeper and truer life waiting to be acknowledged. That fact alone makes listening to your life a difficult counsel to follow. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that from our first days in  school, we are taught to listen to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take all  our clues about living from the people and power around us.”

I’ve learned in my spiritual searching that the idea of a “vocation” is not just for religious people seeking God. It’s for everyone who has a dream, wishes to be creative, wants to live a creative life, and listens to their heart and soul.  It means living up to the promise of my life, not surrendering to a culture that workshops only money and this curious idea about security.

I am fortunate to live with an artist who understands and lives this idea alongside me. She has helped to turn my life around just be existing.

Because I started broken and troubled, it has taken me a long time to get there. I was often distracted and derailed by opening up my life and writing about it. Many people responded to this and were very clearly threatened by it. Instead of sympathizing, it too often got angry. I took the bait.

The damage of the troll (you don’t have to be a young geek to troll) is that they hate sincerity, honesty, or empathy. It seems to threaten their existence, their new power to hurt.

They have been taught and are being taught that compassion and love are weak, hypocritical, and the opposite of them. It isn’t personal once you get used to it – none of these people know one thing about me or care – but it certainly can feel pintimate I don’t have enough testosterone; they often got me down and left me feeling poorly about myself. I’m done with it.

I felt bad enough about myself already. After 2016, strangers suddenly appeared like a horde of mosquitoes, swarming and striking. They drive many people into secrecy and silence. They soiled the idea that respecting diverse opinions was a precious American tradition. Their Vocation is cruelty and grievance.

I can promise you I will not be one of them.

My Vocation now is to move forward with my life positively and learn how to make better art, and I am working hard on this, using my writing and photography. Honesty plays a huge role in this, and so do identity and dignity.

It’s not simple being creative; it’s not simple being a troll; it takes a lot of work to be either. The point is humanity.

It’s also a choice.

I don’t wish to be a troll or to fight with damaged and angry people. It’s a complete waste of time, energy and life.

I want to create an exceptional blog that helps comfort and touch people through tough times. I want it to include beautiful and authentic photographs and words. I want to be honest about myself. I know of enough flaws to keep me going for a long time.

I don’t want to fight with people who care nothing about me or know nothing about me.

Earlier this year, I was astonished to invite eight people who read the blog regularly to a weekly Zoom meeting with me when she made it. I wanted to reconnect with the humanity I know exists in America and on the Internet.

The first eight people who signed up are still with me, and I hope you newcomers will be with me for years. They are lovely, honest, warm, intelligent, funny and wise. It was almost magical how this first group of people became the best possible group of people to talk to every week.

How foolish of me to mistrust the people who follow, know, and support me. I am learning to trust and believe in the many good people in my life. I’ve often felt alone.  How self-destructive it is to focus on the lost and the angry. How sad to be the person who lives to harm strangers. All my young life, I fought with hostile and bullying people.

Fighting back is a tough habit to shake.

The blog readers on my Zoom have done much more for me than they perhaps know.

They are restoring my faith in humanity and helping to teach me – a notoriously willful and stubborn man – that humanity is essential and exists. We talk about everything; we differ in many ways,  and there is never a second of hostility or cruelty.

There is nothing for me in anger and cruelty. It accomplishes nothing other than the diminishment of the people messed up enough to embrace both.

We have all been manipulated into thinking the world and the country are falling apart. This is false, a horror pushed by extreme ideologies to keep us angry and hateful towards one another so we won’t turn on them. The Army Of Good reminds me almost daily that there are so many good people worldwide.

You will never see them on the news.

I’m clear now for the first time in my life. Maria was immensely relieved and pleased by this decision; she matters to me more than anyone.

I often talk to people who tell me they want to do what Maria and I did – leave our vocation and creativity to the fullest, even if it took a while and cost too much money. But almost none of these people can break free and take the plunge. That’s up to them, and I don’t judge them or tell others what to do.

But I hope some of them learn what I have learned: not to listen for guidance from everyone except from within. That’s where the answers are. Nothing in life is simple or easy, especially being cruel to people and angry about life.

I’m not going to end this way. Thanks for listening, supporting, and understanding. I think I’m a pretty good man after all.