Here I sit, writing my 1st blog post ever. O.K., I amend that, TRYING to write my 1st blog post ever. When I say this, I don't mean that the writing is difficult. (In actuality I am not WRITING anyhow, I'm TYPING. I write much faster!) No, it's going about setting up this whole blogging thing, which so far has taken me quite a stretch of time. MUCH longer than I anticipated when I started.
You see, I want to be a writer, that is, a professional writer. I've always been a writer, ever since I learned to make words form on a page. I suppose 'always' isn't entirely true then, because first I was a reader. I learned to read one day when I was 5, a book called, Cat and Dog, author unknown. I did this out of jealousy because my cousin, 2 months older, had started to read. My mother had informed me of this. So I sat on our couch with that book all afternoon and read it to Mom & Dad that night. So...you get the point.
Where was I? Yes, a professional writer. I am a technologically resistant person, and apparently, everything about making this happen for one's self have changed dramatically since I had last devoted my true efforts to it, and this is wherein my difficulty lies. For instance, I will assuredly never love ebooks more than real ones. Truth be told, if tomorrow found the world with no power for machines like those we've grown accustomed to - computers and cellphones for example - paper & pencils would rule again. Also, paper cups and string worked fine as phones when I was a kid, for local calls of course. (Wikipedia it!) In case someone is too far away for mirror or smoke signals, the call would likely not be necessary anyhow. (If long-distance communication did happen to be important however, one could employ the use of carrier pigeons.) It has only been within the last 5 years that I fully recovered from having to switch from cassette to CD. I'm still working on VHS to DVD though, and haven't made it to Blu-Ray yet. At any rate, I feel I'm swimming in quicksand trying to sort out all of these new things one must do not only to write, but to be noticed and paid as one.
(To those readers who are either younger than I or who do not resist technological advance., I welcome your laughter at what I'm about to share with you next. If I were on your end of things, I'd likely do the same.)
Do I still have your attention? I do have a tendency to digress at times. Anyhow, being 39 years of age, and about 25 in my head, I am not old! However, technology today moves faster than I care to keep up with, so imagine - or better, remember -20 years ago. That was the last time I seriously devoted time and effort to making a career of my passion, aside from a brief stint in college where I realized that I couldn't give it the effort it deserved.
I was about 19 then, and though typewriters were the norm for most writers with serious intent, I was a young wife, (my husband Chris & I had been married for a year), with a 1 year-old son, Vincent. Typewriters, especially the one I preferred - an IBM Selectric - were way too expensive. So I wrote, in pencil, on notebook paper. I used pen for the final draft, then tucked it all into a folder & put THAT into a 3-ring binder. Sophisticated, huh? It worked for me. I still have everything I wrote from 15 and older tucked away in a chest. I also still have a right middle finger shaped differently than the left because of the writer's bump at the end joint, which I actually like.
I'm sure that at that time, people like Stephen King, (one of the Gods of Writing in my opinion), had by then, say 1990, switched from even typewriters to the word processor. And so, having missed out on affording that IBM and not knowing about the word processor at the time, I was scribbling the words down left & right. On paper. I believe that it is now sometimes referred to as 'hard copy', but that probably means the paper copy printed from your computer. See why I said that bit about laughing?
Along the journey from then to now, I learned about word processors, I wrote something here & there, (again on paper). My mother, younger sisters, and my oldest son in kindergarten, had all touched a computer keyboard well before I had ever typed a word with one.
To be honest though, I had actually used computers rarely in my youth, but always for something a teacher was having me do. In 5th grade my class did some math problems, (supposedly a game), on an Apple of some sort. At 12, my 7th grade class was taught 'programming' on a TRS-80. We learned how to make a dragon using commands. I think it was BASIC, it consisted of C prompts, and typing in phrases like, "If x = 5, then RUN". Yeah.
During the mid - nineties, I tried to plod through vocational school's Office Technology training, to earn a certificate in what I'd already been doing for years, except maybe adding speed to my typing ability. Office Technology didn't quite suit me. I had conflicts with the principal about attendance - I figured why go 5 days when I make the grade with 2 or 3? I didn't know at the time that schools get paid so much per student each day they attend. I just thought she enjoyed watching me suffer extreme boredom and excessive sleepiness whilst trying to get through accounting, business math, and business English!
There were two classes there that didn't cause narcolepsy however. My typing class proved to be an utter wrestle with myself every day for an hour, trying to overcome paranoia at not looking at the keys, using proper form, and increasing speed at the same time. I somehow did make the grades, but it was way too much stress for 47 words per minute. The other was my word processing class. Since I really needed this class for personal use, I had looked forward to it when I enrolled. That ended soon after I started it. It really got the adrenalin going!
It was teaching how to use Word Perfect, Version 3.0 I believe. Now at least, I could follow the steps and learn how to work with whatever people use nowadays, but back then I had a temper that would ignite as fast as a wildfire in California, along with patience so short you'd have to measure it with a micrometer. NOT conducive to learning the material. My instructor would notice me boiling, then tell me to work backward to find whatever I had left out or typed wrong. When I was done she'd have me go help others who were really having trouble learning it instead of just making dumb mistakes from speeding through it. I never lost patience with them, only myself. I hated the tedious learning of it. I just wanted the end product, typing my work. After the principal & I had our discussion, I never went back. So, the pencil/paper thing continued to be my method.
When I wrote, that is. In the mid to late 90's, Life decided to teach me a few things that I, (though being in the 2nd half of my twenties), had failed to learn thus far. Things like: what being a good mother actually meant, wanting to kick the ass of my deadbeat brother-in-law for not being a good father to my nephew, grief at losing my Grandad, what it feels like to truly want to kill someone for hurting my mother, etc., etc. You know, the stuff Life gives you that matures you. Then the big changer came about in 1998 when my 2nd son was born, and writing took a seat way back in the theatre of my mind.
It was 1998, and Chris & I were looking forward to our son being born. Vince was 9, and it took us 8 years to agree that we wanted to add to our family. Things were going well for us, we were happy, so we thought it was finally the right time. On September 24, our son Reis was born with Down Syndrome, not even the biggest worry at the time, but with a heart defect that threatened his life at every second. For the next months, I did almost nothing but try to keep that from happening. For the next couple of years I did the same. When things finally seemed to be smooth again we decided to have another child. Our 3rd son was born in a hospital across the street from the hospital where Reis was still trying to recover from a 2nd open-heart surgery, along with other complications too horrible to mention. Jake was born at about the 2 month mark of Reis' 3 month stay. It was supposed to have been a 2 - week stay, 1 open-heart surgery, home in plenty of time for Jake's appearance. During those 3 months, my husband & I were separated a lot, our son Vince was at home and I missed the summer & start of his school year. Reis had succumbed to anaphylactic shock & flatlined right before my eyes once. That was a couple of weeks before Jake was born. He'd actually cheated Death twice before though during that time. I had no more thought of writing then than I do of bungee jumping now.
One would think perhaps that once Reis recovered and got to come back home, and once baby Jake had gotten past the newborn stage, that need to write would've returned. It started to, and by this time our family actually had a real computer! I was still busy of course, Reis had therapists coming every day, he still had lots of specialized care necessary just for normal days. I did write a few things then, or at least had ideas flowing back. Well folks, that was when Life came around and smacked ole' Writing back down in that theatre seat!
Our quiet, easy baby Jake, (who was now a toddler), began to exhibit more & more odd behavior which I finally brought up to one of Reis' therapists. We took him for testing, and at barely over a year was diagnosed with the neurological & behavioral signs seen in Autism. A computer I did have, but it's use at the time ended up being diagnostic instead of creative.
Skip on up to 2002, when I decided that my family was taken care of by myself well enough to at least try to fulfill my dream of going to college. Chris was working, Vince was in his early teens, Reis was enrolled in Head Start. I put Jake into daycare run by a lady who's grandson was Autistic, not full time, but for some socialization while I was at school. He would be starting preschool the next fall when he turned 3. That 1st semester I had classes 6 days a week. I drove back & forth 25 or so miles between my school and the town where I live 6 times a day. I managed about 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night if I was lucky. Even so I managed to make the Dean's List, but even better I was learning. I was writing! I didn't care that it was just Eng101, that back theatre seat was no longer occupied.
Summer began, Jake turned 3 in July. My 2nd semester would resume soon. I started to realize that maybe my family wasn't as thrilled as I, but they weren't complaining. They knew how I'd wanted to go to college. Then, I bet you can guess - Life came back around. This time, Death sneaked up and stole my Father. While I wasn't paying enough attention, Death took Dad and laughed while watching Life smack me down like a pro-wrestler. The last time I spoke to him was the day after Father's Day. I saw him 5 times in 15 years, not nearly enough. It was a hard blow. Did I still try to go back to school, a month after he passed? Yes. Did I write? Yes, some of the best writing I've ever done. Did I make to the end of that second semester? No.
In the next 3 or so years, I took care of my family, got certified as a Para educator and worked with children in Kindergarten, which gave me another spark to get some ideas onto paper. I read a rough, (very rough!), draft of a children's story to the kindergarten classes. I was encouraged when most enjoyed it, though it had no pictures!
I decided not to return after my daughter was born in October of 2006, I thought I'd have time to develop that children's story, maybe even submit the manuscript to a publisher. Wynnie, short for Gwyndolyn, was the most lively but demanding of all my children, her 1st year felt almost like an endless day! She didn't care for sleep, still doesn't.
One morning in November of 2007, I woke up to get everyone going for the morning. Life! This time, while I was asleep, my left arm and leg had launched a coup against the rest of me. I figured out how to get the boys ready with one hand, doing a kind of walk-drag to make it upright through the house. I didn't wake my husband. I don't know why, but I didn't feel bad, or odd aside from the obvious feeling when suddenly confronted by pieces of yourself that refuse to obey. I took Wynnie with me to my mom's house, where she & my sister's finally convinced me to go to the hospital. They did the tests, said I'd had a stroke, wrote a prescription for an expensive anticoagulant, and sent me home. I spent a month or so terrified to go to sleep, thinking that the next time I might not wake up. By the time 2008 rolled around, I was able to walk, though still with a slight drag, and thanks to my Guitar Hero games for the PS2, I was working my hand back into use! As you can probably guess, I didn't do any writing, once again.
In February, it came back. This time, I went to Paducah, a larger town, with a better hospital. They laughed at my MRI report from the first hospital. They told me I might have a brain tumor. They stuck me in the hospital, and after another test or two, I was diagnosed with MS.
Since 2008, I've made the journey from being afraid, being angry, being on medications that caused everything from pain, feeling sorry for myself, feeling suicidal - NOT a me characteristic - then to anger, denial, and acceptance. Chris took care of me and stood by my side even though I was difficult to be around a lot of the time. I stopped taking those medications, and am using a completely different approach to healing, which is working. I've realized within the last year that I have only one life, (that I can remember anyhow), so if I want to fulfill my dreams I better do it.
At the age of 39, I finally write. I finally submit what I write. I still write on paper, but I can also peck at the keyboard for a few hours. Someday, I'm gonna figure out how to make my voice-recognition software work. I'm tackling blogging today, tomorrow maybe I'll set up a website to go with it. (Thank you Vincent, who explained to me last night that the word 'blogging' comes from sort of code & not a word meaning something like, "blah, blah, blah".)
Thank you Pooh, for sticking right there with me the whole time. Happy Anniversary #1, I love you :)
Wish me luck!
O.K. - here we are at the end. I appreciate the fact that you made it this far! I'm adding this last bit, frankly because I realized something when I reached the last word. Stay a minute more if you will, and thank you for doing so.
I know that this sort-of short story version of my life sounds a little depressing when I read it back. It's not, well most of it's not. Most of these events I'm describing have worked out in wondrously joyous ways. Every one has been enlightening in some way. I'm admittedly long-winded, but there's so much more I would have to write if I actually were writing my life story. Would it not be the same for you as well? I'm positive that it would be.
My purpose, when I began this morning, was to humorously frame the way the craft of writing has changed for me over the years and how absurdly lost I am at times! I started out sharing these pieces of my life to show how Life's events caused roadblocks, if you will, to my being able to write. In doing so, these things caused me to miss the strides technology has made, therefore creating the humorous predicament in which I now find myself.
That isn't at all the case. Did you see it before I did?
I've suddenly realized that my creative ability, my passion for putting thoughts onto paper, my writing, wasn't hindered by what Life threw at me over the years. Life was giving me fodder for the fire. I was allowing immaturity, narcissism, laziness, and more often than anything, I allowed fear to stifle it.
IF you weren't lulled to sleep while reading this, I sincerely hope that something I said made you laugh. I hope something I said made you mist up, just a little. I hope something I said made you think, or wonder, or get curious. Most of all, I hope something I said made you realize, as I just did, that Life can't stop you from working toward your dreams - only you can do that.
Peace
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