I (David Porter) have been doing a lot of thinking about my life lately.  You see, someone recently called me a writer and it felt — what to say — incompatible.

Some back story…

When I graduated from college with a degree in vocal performance, I thought I was going to be an opera singer.  However, throngs of graduating baby boomers and an absolutely horrible economy (think Jimmy Carter era) made for no teaching jobs and I was unwilling to head for New York City to see if I might be one of perhaps one hundred people in the world who could make a good living singing opera.

So, knowing that I had an aptitude for business, I headed into business pursuits.

Fast forward about thirty years and we found ourselves “retired”, living in Scottsdale and ready to enjoy the fruits of our labors.  However, as I wrote in our “about” page, another horrible economy, a stock market crash, and a default in the sale of our business caused another serious change in our lives.

Our cash assets would no longer support us until age 100.  Therefore, Dave Porter, retired businessman no longer worked.

What to do?

After a great deal of thumb sucking on my part, we took inventory of our lives and decided that there was opportunity in this rapidly changing world called “media”, and wondered if we might be able to carve out a little piece of the pie for ourselves.  We loved to travel.  We loved to explore.  And I found that I loved to share our adventures with the world in this new thing called a blog.

Now, fast forward another 18 months and I find that someone has called me a writer.

It may well be a male thing, but as I look back I have called myself opera singer (just a dream really), successful business entrepreneur ( yes, thanks to a great many team members and wonderful clients), but writer?

My Apple Dictionary defines a writer as follows: a person who writes books, stories, or articles as a job or regular occupation.

Well, I suppose that’s true, but there are a lot of people who have paid good money to get college degrees to do such things.  Aren’t they really the ones who should be called writer?

Then I began to realize that a successful writer is no different than an successful businessman.  If no one reads your books, are you really a writer?  As an businessman, if no one patronizes your business, are you really an businessman?

All of this to say:  I am not comfortable wearing the title of writer yet.  I have too much respect for those wordsmiths whose craft is far superior to mine.  I need to spend far more time in the books that you can see under my computer in the photograph above.

How about for now that we agree to call me a storyteller.  That suits me just fine.  David Porter:  Storyteller.

And by the way, we are very, very grateful that you follow along and read our stories.

Perhaps, with your continued patronage, and Grammar Girl’s help, I will graduate in my mind to becoming a full fledged writer.

That’s all.  🙂

PS I am a thinking person and I find that I need to ponder from time to time.  Therefore, I have created a new section in our travel website called “Ponderings”.  This will give me the opportunity to get things like this off my chest.  I hope you enjoy them, and I hope you enjoy a peek into this man’s heart.