I thought you'd never ask...

The Milton Report
I thought you’d never ask…
September 28, 2009: Volume 13: issue 1

A funny thing happened to me the other day. I was talking with a very good friend and I was taken back to a time when my dreams were still real and life was still full of possibility. The temporary euphoria I experienced was not rooted in my present day circumstance, but in the reflection of a time when possibility seemed closer to reality than impossibility. We talked about the child-like enthusiasm exhibited in our approach to life in general, work, personal relationships, and our social endeavors. We discussed today’s youth and how many of them operate with a similar reckless abandon. At the core of our discussion was the notion that when we were younger, we did not mind taking risks. Time passed. Relationships were formed and lost. Money was made and squandered. We worked hard and we played harder. We lived, loved and learned. Through it all, however, we did not lose our sense of possibility. Then one day, seemingly overnight, we were no longer 22 years old. We had gained knowledge and wisdom. We acquired experience. We had a greater sense of what we should and should not do. We realized that we had become very risk averse as compared to the mindset in our youth. A certain aspect of our lives had made manifest the notion that “Knowledge breeds cynicism”. As we reminisced about the past—good times and times that could have been bad but were not, I realized there was something missing in my life today.

What happened to the passion for living, learning, and loving? What happened to the dreams?

Several years ago, unbeknownst at the time, I think I attempted to answer the questions through the expression of my thoughts through “The Milton Report”. I used my writings to chronicle my post-Enron journey – a sort of blog before “blog” became popular in the American lexicon. The other day my friend suggested I start a blog. My response was lukewarm, but after thinking about it, I realized what he meant. The dream only dies if you kill it. As long as I have breath, and in this case, as long as I can write, the dream will live. I had killed my dream because I stopped talking (writing) about it.

The dreams that once occupied the road I was on had now been replaced by a detour I created by my own inaction.

Several years ago “The Milton Report” was born out of a time when I needed to express myself. It was a time before blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Cell phones did not have Internet access and the English language had not been reduced to LOL, LMAO, BRB and WTF. People were still hanging on to meaningful conversations and no one got mad at me if I did not immediately respond to a text message. Things were quite different and that was only five years ago! I stopped producing “The Milton Report” because I really believed at that time that God did not want me to focus my writing where I was the central character. In other words, it could not be just about me. I had to learn that the world did not stop because I was experiencing pain and difficulty in my life. I am thankful for those individuals who took the time to read “The Milton Report” and “traveled” with me during the first journey, as I wrote about my foibles describing unemployment, soul-searching, the grind of daily living, and essentially what it was like to be inside my head on occasion. I doubt that I can repeat the tone of those writings and those days. Today is truly a new day, but I am inspired by the future and I hope you can get inspired too by this new journey. I am merely the instrument to record. This time, however, the journey is not about me. I am simply a part of it. I feel like I am in the same place as I was seven years ago, but this time the inspiration is different. Where will this journey take us? I thought you’d never ask…


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“It is calming to know that when the final trumpet sounds,
My life will not have ended in vain.
I will run out of time before I run out of words. God has given me the gift of my thoughts.
He has given me the gift of the pen.
I need to use them both to show His will does win….” 1

(1) Excerpt from the poem “ The Things That Matter” –
Included in Voices Inside My Head – Poetry Inspired By God To Heal Pain
Copyright © 2009 Milton A. Brown