Rekindling An Old Light

"I have done done some touches to my nonsense fairy language - to its improvement. I often long to work at it and don't let myself 'cause though I love it so it does seem such a mad hobby!" Tolkien's "mad hobby" was at the very core, the foundation of all his wild success in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Without the hours spent (stolen from other more "normal" obligations and responsibilities) he might never have written anything at all, at least anything that endures to the present as popular and well-known.  This gives me faint hope, or justification, for the time I spend on seemingly useless endeavors. I enjoy organizing my digital music, cataloging wild plants, hand-coding HTML and CAD...and posting Tolkien quotes!  Will it all pay? How will it benefit me or others?  I don't know.  Sometimes joy is hard to define or categorize.  Sometimes joy sneaks up on a person.  Quotation from The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, # 4, page 8. 

"I found not being able to use a pen or a pencil as defeating as the loss of her beak would be to a hen." For several weeks, near the end of his life, Tolkien was unable to use his right arm. He had been used to spending hours each day writing...writing poetry, stories and novels...writing letters for business...corresponding with family and friends.  I often imagine myself writing as diligently, as "old fashioned", as Tolkien. I can see myself sitting at a rolltop desk or finely crafted secretary, smoking a pipe, serenely composing a handwritten letter to my children, or drafting another chapter for my next novel. I can imagine Tolkien feeling joy as he writes.  But it's not me. I don't enjoy writing by hand, at least not after a paragraph or so. For me, handwriting is for note taking, or rough drafts (short rough drafts).  But I greatly admire Tolkien for his ability in, and dependence upon, handwritten letters and documents.  Quote fro...