John Pickens

It’s Woodnesday!! 🌲🪵 Let’s see your “Old wood/tree!” photos!

Writing is a marathon 15 books Over 14 years Almost 25k sold Not too shabby for little ole me 🤭

Convince me to buy your book by showing me your pet.

@RHolemanWrites I so feel this

I took a year off from promoting my books. As Bob Seger put it, I was tired of my own voice. The constant marketing began to feel disingenuous; like hunting sales rather than promoting stories. It's time to get back to it, so just a friendly reminder that I wrote some stuff.

@amylee_writer Darned near made me weep.

@JohnInspired Thank you, John 🩵

She Longed to Disappear Pack her bags, leave Where she could be Anyone, anything Undisturbed by her life The trappings of her existence Places where no one Would ask anything of her (1/2)

My friend got me a mug

😂😂😂

@AuthorGoodwin Hahaha. Yes indeed. The best part, his deplorable behavior was all true.

I named one of my nastiest characters after a girl who was mean to me at school. Have you ever got revenge on someone in your stories?

I’m Still Me (For Those Who Kept Going) There are days when I don’t feel so great. There are other days when I feel downright rotten. There’s nothing wrong with me. No diagnosis. No condition to point to. I’m just old. And age brings challenges no one fully explains when you are young and in the full flower of youth. Or perhaps they tried, and I simply wasn’t listening. That seems at least as likely. I was speaking with a friend recently. A capable man. Always has been. The kind of man who built a life on what he could do—his instincts, his experience, his skillset. And he said something that has stayed with me: “I’m still me…but I can’t do a fraction of what I used to.” There was no self-pity in it. Just frustration. The kind that comes from a disconnect you can’t quite reconcile. Because he’s right. He is still him. And that’s the tension. There is a particular frustration in aging that has less to do with pain than with recognition. You still recognize yourself. The same thoughts. The same instincts. The same sense of how things should be done. But the body that once answered so quickly has begun to hesitate. The energy that once showed up without being asked now requires negotiation. The margin you once lived in has narrowed without your permission. You are still you. But the terms have changed. And if that weren’t enough, there is another realization that arrives, usually uninvited. I have been a talented fellow my entire life. Music came easily to me. Creation came easily to me. Rightly or wrongly, “Genius” is a word that has been used more than once to describe my work. And somewhere along the way, I made a quiet agreement with myself: No matter what happens, I’ll always have my talent. It felt like a constant. A kind of personal equity that would always hold its value. Yes…well. What talent gains you in one generation does not necessarily produce the same dividends in the next. And that realization is its own kind of reckoning. Because now it’s not just that you do less. It’s that what you do may not carry the same weight it once did. The room has changed. The audience has changed. The currency has changed. And you find yourself holding something that is still real…still yours…but no longer valued in quite the same way. That is a strange place to stand. It forces a question most of us spend our younger years avoiding: Is what I do who I am? Or does who I am exist independently of what I can still produce? We don’t have to answer that question when things are working. Success answers it for us. But time has a way of removing the easy answers. And in that quiet stripping away, something else begins to surface, if we are willing to see it. Perhaps we were never meant to anchor our identity in what we could do. Perhaps doing was always meant to be an expression of something deeper, not the definition of it. Because if identity rests entirely on capacity, then every limitation becomes a diminishment of self. And yet, something in us resists that. We know, instinctively, that a person is more than their output. Even when we struggle to believe it about ourselves. So maybe this is one of the final disciplines of life: To remain who you are even as what you can do begins to change. To accept the frustration without letting it redefine you. To acknowledge the loss without mistaking it for disappearance. To understand that value is not erased simply because it is no longer measured the same way. Because there are things that do not peak in youth. Perspective. Restraint. Clarity. The ability to recognize what matters without needing to prove it. There comes a moment—quiet, unannounced— when a person realizes they are no longer being asked to prove themselves. And if you are honest, that can feel like loss. But it may also be something else. Eventually, life extends an invitation to each of us: to stand without performance…and still know who we are.

Share your moon 🌙 photographs. Moon is always gorgeous

@8ntmuch I paid for it. I was on a walk and was so enraptured by the swiftly approaching clouds that I didn’t even think of shelter. Wind dust rain hail. I got it all.

@JohnInspired That’s a wonderful capture!

Let’s see your cloud pictures! ☁️📸 “The sky speaks in clouds for those who take time to look up.”

@amylee_writer Oh you BRAT!

@JohnInspired I got the added bonus of a dramatic meteor shower!

Beautiful first day of spring evening. 🩵🩵🩵

@glassofbrycet Yeah. 94° here today. California.

Welcome to NC- where it is *actually* Spring.

@8ntmuch Lovely. Serene!

From dusk to dawn there is magic to be seen, show us what you’ve got!! (From sun down to sun up!)

@Bobtown__ @8ntmuch Nice!