Just in case…

Just in case…

I’m writing this one ahead, to post the day after I have a minor surgery.

There is always a risk when you have general anesthesia. Of course, there is always a risk when you walk across the street or drive to work. Every morning you wake up, there was a chance that you weren’t going to.

People have always found that a bit of an odd attitude on my part. They know I’m generally optimistic about the world, and I tend to think that people are usually good.

However, I also mentally prepare myself for the worst.

Every day, I think there is a chance I’ll be fired.

I have awakened on thousands of mornings, and checked first thing to see if the pets were still alive.

That might seem morbid. I’m not really expecting those things to happen. Logically, I know I’m a good employee. I understand the odds.

I think I’m just…rehearsing the situation, so I can respond to it in the best way possible.

In an emergency, I want to be the one who reacts logically, who gets the best outcome by not reacting out of blind fear.

I immunize my emotions against the disaster by exposing them bit by bit, while the threat isn’t real.

In this case, I wanted to write something to you, my readers, in case something goes wrong.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be all sad and sappy. 🙂 Obviously, I’ve had an incredible time with you, and hope that continues for many years. I do think about Amazon ending the blog program in the Kindle store, or just kicking me out of it for some reason. There are all kinds of things that could happen, but nothing could negate the great things that have happened so far.

I thank you for that.

I thank you for disagreeing with me and showing me new perspectives. Every time I’ve gotten a respectfully written comment from someone who had a different opinion, I learned something and became a better person.

I thank you for thanking me. 🙂 Kind words matter in the world, and yours have mattered in mine.

I thank you for accepting my quirkiness. For example, people have rarely pushed me for things I don’t choose to reveal. I don’t think that’s because I”m particularly boring. 😉 I think most people naturally are curious about certain things about anyone they meet…not asking about them is a conscious courtesy.

I also wanted to talk a little bit about the books I own.

When I was a brick and mortar bookstore employee (I eventually became a manager), I was told we could take home paperbacks where the cover had been torn off to return to the publisher for credit (showing we hadn’t sold it). We couldn’t donate those “strips”, or sell them, or give them away…just own them and read them.

I have a lot of those. When I’m gone, my guess is that the ethical thing is to recycle them. That feels like the contractual thing to do. I hate seeing any book anywhere destroyed, but this wouldn’t be destroying the book…just a copy of it already accounted for as out of circulation. I don’t think any of those are going to be rare…they tended to be popular books. Those are the ones where you would have gotten more than you could sell. You wouldn’t have widely overestimated demand on an obscure first time novelist, for example.

I have a few real rarities that I’d like to see get into good hands. One is

The Lake Worth monster [of Greer Island, Ft. Worth, Texas]

That one is definitely in the category of ephemera…something people don’t expect to last. I guess I’d want to see if Loren Coleman wanted that copy for the museum. We’ve never met, but we’ve had some correspondence, and I’d be sure Loren would treat it with respect.

Ideally, of course, I’d like to see it digitized and made legally available to the public…along with every other book copy I own. That one may still be under copyright protection, but I want them preserved…I want everything and everybody preserved, if possible. 🙂

Another one I have is the

Reference Guide to Fantastic Films: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

That one is the result of a truly geeky…er…academic…no, I’m going with “geeky” labor of love. I think my edition is rare, although it appears it may not be highly sought after.

Those are probably the two stand-outs, although I have a lot of other rarities.

People shouldn’t live forever, and I don’t expect to do that. I know that the odds are very, very high I’ll be around to write something on May 11th (although I may not feel much like doing it…this is ambulatory surgery, meaning that I don’t stay in the hospital, but I’m not supposed to drive for 24 hours…I don’t think that driving a keyboard counts, though). 😉

Books, though, should live forever.

They should be here now and forever, and we should be able to reach into the past and retrieve them, and into the future and read books which haven’t been written yet.

Books are what we are as a species. They represent what we think and how we feel. They are the purest form of the formless. They take what separates us from simply mechanical flesh and blood and presents it to other people.

I’d much rather that a future alien race find our books than our bodies…that would tell them who we were, not just what we were.

I expect that you’ll hear from me again soon…that’s the logical expectation, and it’s certainly the bet I would place. If you don’t, let this be the last thing I say to you:

Thank you.

Update: I’m home recovering. 🙂 Yes, those were the odds, and what I expected. I’m a bit frustrated by not being able to do my normal routine (no exercising today), but my Significant Other has been here supporting me, and it’s all good. 🙂

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.