Dear Friends,

This coming April will mark the eleventh anniversary of A Napper’s Companion. What began as a vehicle for offering thoughts and information about napping morphed into a place for sharing my expository writing. To date I’ve posted 320 compositions, nearly all of them accompanied by photographs. Early on much of what I shared was insufferably long, but gradually I settled into a routine of 750 words—a reasonable count for a newspaper column. In fact, some of what has appeared on this blog also landed as “Report from Oniontown” in The Record Argus, a daily from Greenville, Pennsylvania.

You may have noticed that A Napper’s Companion has seen less activity than usual over the last eighteen months. I’ve been writing a book, the first draft of which is finally complete. The topic of my pile of 83,000 words is religious doubt and hope. I’m now at the stage of nipping, tucking and correcting. Another absorbing task has been seeking representation for the project, an arduous and vexing task in itself.

As the fever of my book endeavor has lifted some, I’m turning once again to A Napper’s Companion. If you’re a frequent visitor, I trust you noticed changes in the blog’s appearance. It’s hard to go wrong with a Van Gogh of field workers resting against a mound of hay.

By way of content, you can expect to see two types of work in the months ahead:

• Every Friday I’ll repost one of your favorites culled from the 320 that have been waiting patiently for another look—or in many cases, a first look, depending on when you started reading the blog.
• Following no regular schedule, I’ll also share short pieces on solitude and sanity. 2024 promises to test every thoughtful person’s ability to remain calm and centered, but don’t expect prescriptive self-help from me. My next book will record one retirement-aged man’s efforts to maintain a loving regard for the world and restrain myself from engagements that do more harm than good. Posts generated by this attempt to be the person I want to be will land here now and again.

One more thing: If you appreciate A Napper’s Companion and aren’t already a subscriber, please enter your email address just to the right of this post and hit “follow.” The moment it takes to subscribe means more to me than you might imagine.

Peace,

John Coleman