If you would not be forgotten
as soon as you are dead and rotten,
either write things worth reading
or do things worth the writing.
Benjamin Franklin
This is simple. How can anyone not take this advice? Especially when there are two choices.
I know of things worth reading that can’t be read, things written in French that non-French speakers are missing out on. I write those things. In English.
And when not rewriting someone else’s things, I do things worth the writing (which must then, according to B. Franklin, be worth reading). Visiting France in its secret villages. Tutoring little kids, big kids, young and old adults, Italians, Swiss, Croatians, Chinese, Koreans, Australians. Redeeming my father through his war photos and poetry and paintings. Committing to a daily task of observing unusual things.
You can do this. Don’t be forgotten.