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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (May 16, 2020)
B1 THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, MAy 16, 2020 CONTACT US FOLLOW US facebook.com/ DailyAstorian Alyssa Evans aevans@dailyastorian.com Understanding ourselves through reflection ‘Waiting for the Bus in Long Beach’ offers insights, journal prompts By ALYSSA EVANS The Astorian In one essay, he takes the concept of an eclipse and relates it to how people sometimes talk over one another, without listening to what is being said. In another essay, Wilson discusses how he learned the virtue of patience as a young boy waiting for the bus. “They sort of accumu- lated. One seed suggested another. I could’ve probably put 80 topics in there,” Wilson said. “Toward the end I said, ‘That’s enough.’” The book is sectioned into four themes: “Discover- ing Myself,” “About Others,” “Working With Others” and “Making Changes.” “It’s never been my inten- tion to preach to anyone. I really want people to start thinking about things,” Wil- son said. “It’s meant for read- ers to think about something that’s the topic and relate it to their own lives. Hopefully they’ll read it and find an interesting point.” ong Beach resident Paul Wilson can finally check off an item from his bucket list: he’s a published e-book author. Wilson, 80, recently released his first book, “Wait- ing for the Bus in Long Beach: About you, others, and where to go from here.” “When I was a kid, all I did was wait for a bus. Now- adays kids don’t do that since they have iPads and whatever else,” Wilson said. “Waiting for the bus means something to me. We used to just sit and wait a lot. Life was waiting for something to happen.” The book features dozens of short essays on topics like patience or anger. Each essay is followed by a set of reflec- tion questions for the reader to relate the essay’s topics to themselves. Creating the book “The book will hopefully Wilson wrote, created the help readers more closely artwork and edited the book understand themselves, WHERE TO FIND IT himself. their thought processes, life ‘Waiting for the Bus in Long Beach: About “I enjoyed doing it, writing choices and relationships,” you, others, and where to go from here’ the book and learning about Wilson said. By Paul Wilson the experience of publishing Wilson started writing an e-book,” Wilson said. “I’ve the essays for the Penin- Amazon — $9.95 e-book, $12.95 paperback sula Senior Activity Center’s had books published normally monthly newsletter. About through a publisher but this is 12 essays originally published in the newsletter are totally different. It’s all on you. You don’t have editors included in the book. and publisher heads, which might be good or might “I was taken aback by how many people said they not.” Wilson spent about a year working on the book enjoyed them. It was a short collection at first but I in segments. decided to put it all out in a book, with 40 topics on “I’d put it aside then work on it. I didn’t have a different things,” Wilson said. “I go from one place deadline since I’m retired,” Wilson said. “If I had to another in it, usually from one thought to another.” sat down I could’ve probably done it in a month but The book’s topics are based on a variety of Wil- son’s life experiences. See Book, Page B2 L The book’s chapter ‘Journey to Renewal’ features a pelican.
