{"quotes":[{"text":"Lacking natural equilibrium, I used writing as an illustrative means to center myself in a world filled with haziness and uncertainty. My self-drafted obituary will not bemoan death but shall celebrate life by giving heartfelt thanks for all the people that brightened actuality with their kindness, friendship, noble acts of charity, and expressions of universal goodwill. It was a privilege to exist in this wrinkle of time with many people devoted to burnishing the sharpen edges of life. The heavens blessed me with many years to discover why it is beautiful to live and die in a world where the hills and wind, the rivers and seas, stars and moon, and revealing sunlight shall persevere.","author":"Kilroy J. Oldster","tags":["beautiful-life","beauty-of-life","beauty-of-nature","beauty-of-the-world","death","death-and-dying","essay-writing","essayist","memories","memories","memory","writers","writers-on-writing","writers","writing","writing-philosophy"],"id":281,"author_id":"Kilroy+J.+Oldster"},{"text":"Writing is a cerebral journey where the writer molds experience into useful thought capsules and thoughtfully takes recitative inventory of their spiritual depot. The act of personal essay writing is a subtle search to track and discover how a contiguous chain of occurrences links the essayist’s case history of rational and irrational behavior. Writing a person’s life story fosters acceptance of their prior personal failures and serves to open a doorway to living modestly and harmoniously.","author":"Kilroy J. Oldster","tags":["essay-writing","essayist","memoir","writing","writing-lesson","writing-life","writing-process","writing"],"id":16861,"author_id":"Kilroy+J.+Oldster"},{"text":"The womb of the world births us. My filth comes from the same earthwork that gives rise to all stories. My interior light connects me with all the other creatures that inhabit this world of rocks, air, grass, woods, and water. My genetic code links me inextricably with all of nature. I enter the medley in the river of life with the ability to respond as life unfolds before my childlike eyes. My homemade medicinal poultice might not be of any benefit to other people. Nonetheless, we should each write our stories because each of us aims to attain a greater degree of awareness of our own authenticity. We owe a moral obligation to our family, friends, and ourselves as well as to the community to make a determined effort to wring the most out of life. We must applaud all efforts to investigate the human condition. Even if my writing amounts to nothing more than a clumsy attempt to travel the same tracks other people burnished with much more insight, clarity, precision, and style, it is an act of self-definition to ascribe to any philosophy. Philosophy represents a living charter; it is a life of action.","author":"Kilroy J. Oldster","tags":["autobiography","essay-writing","essayist","essays","memoir","memoir-writing","memories","personal-essay","personal-essays","philosophy","philosophy-of-life","philosophy","writers-on-thinking","writers-on-writing","writing"],"id":35999,"author_id":"Kilroy+J.+Oldster"},{"text":"Storytelling entails weaving a narrative out of the disturbing, strange, inspirational, and unremarkable detritus of life. By picking among the litter of our personal experiences to select evocative anecdotes to weave into a narrative format, we reveal which of life’s legendary offerings prove the most sublime to us. Acts of omission are momentous. Our narration of personal sketches divulge what factoids inspire us or do not stir us into action, or contain obdurate truths that prove virtually impossible to crack.","author":"Kilroy J. Oldster","tags":["autobiography","essay-writing","life-story","memoir","memoir-writing","personal-story","story-of-my-life","storytelling","storytelling","writers-on-writing","writing","writing-philosophy","writing-process"],"id":43345,"author_id":"Kilroy+J.+Oldster"},{"text":"The principal advantage of narrative writing is that it assists us place our life experiences in a storytelling template. The act of strict examination forces us to select and organize our past. Narration provides an explanatory framework. Human beings often claim to understand events when they manage to formulate a coherent story or narrative explaining what factors caused a specific incident to occur. Stories assist the human mind to remember and make decisions based on informative stories. Narrative writing also prompts periods of intense reflection that leads to more writing that is ruminative. Contemplative actions call for us to track the conscious mind at work rendering an accounting of our weaknesses and our strengths, folly and wisdom.","author":"Kilroy J. Oldster","tags":["essay","essay-writing","memoir","memoir-writing","narrative","narrative-writing","personal-development","personal-growth","personal-responsibility","self-improvement","self-realization","self-reflection","story","story-of-my-life","story-of-your-life","story-telling","writing","writing-philosophy","writing-process"],"id":46175,"author_id":"Kilroy+J.+Oldster"},{"text":"The whole of eternity is present now. We apprehend eternity through our senses and mental imagination. We can never recapture lost time. Memory allows us to taste the scintillating experience of living by recollecting our past in a series of sequential personal events and an orderly arrangement of a linked series of cultural happenings. Writing our personal story calls for us to remember the sensation of what it entails to live tactilely before losing lucidity of the mind.","author":"Kilroy J. Oldster","tags":["essay","essay-writing","essayist","eternity","eternity","lost-time","memoir","memories","memory","past","past-and-present","philosophy-of-life","philosphical","story","story-of-my-life","storytellers","storytelling","time"],"id":70718,"author_id":"Kilroy+J.+Oldster"},{"text":"Writing about oneself is an egotistical adventure unless the act of self-exploration revolves around the distinct goal of heightening a person’s cache of knowledge, ideas, and level of self-awareness.","author":"Kilroy J. Oldster","tags":["essay-writing","memoir","memories","personal-essay","personal-essays","writing","writing-philosophy","writing"],"id":77263,"author_id":"Kilroy+J.+Oldster"},{"text":"Writing places a person in the community of those imaginative spirits whom preceded their birth. Writing also connects a person with the intrepid spirits whom share the present as well as with those souls whom are not yet born.","author":"Kilroy J. Oldster","tags":["essay","essay-writing","essayist","essays","memoir","memoir-writing","personal-essay","writers-on-writing","writing","writing-life"],"id":97629,"author_id":"Kilroy+J.+Oldster"},{"text":"I thank my mother (Ma, you're only second cause you got the dedication), who used to make me write essays whenever I got into trouble, explaining exactly what I'd done and why I'd done it.","author":"Ta-Nehisi Coates","tags":["essay-writing","mothers","mothers-and-sons","parenting"],"id":110279,"author_id":"Ta-Nehisi+Coates"},{"text":"Writing is an exhausting and demoralizing task that destroys human conceits. Writing an elongated series of personal essay opens a person’s mind to explore paradoxes and discover previously unrealized personal truths. Writing is as arduous as any trek into the wilderness. Every sentence takes a writer deeper into the jungle of the mind, a world of frightening inconsistencies created by our waking life’s desire that the world of chaos conform to our convenience.","author":"Kilroy J. Oldster","tags":["autobiography","chaos","essay","essay-writing","essayist","essays","journey-of-self-discovery","journey-of-the-mind","know-thyself","memoir","memoir-writing","memoirs","personal-essay","personal-essays","self-actualization","self-awakening","self-aware","self-awareness","self-awareness","self-discovery","self-discovery","self-knowing","self-knowledge","self-knowledge","sentence","sentences","writers","writers-on-thinking","writers-on-writing","writers-on-writing-books","writers-on-writing-life","writing","writing-memoir"],"id":118514,"author_id":"Kilroy+J.+Oldster"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":22,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}