The Single Step

Yesterday, I decided that I would become a writer.  Just like that?  No.  I've been agonizing over this for the last 44 years.  Ever since, I could write.  I didn't pursue it because I was afraid.  I didn't think that I could be successful.  And plus, my family had decided that I should go to medical school and become a doctor.  I wanted to at first, but I was afraid to pursue that too and after a while, I started getting involved in too many other things: raising a family,  a nursing career, trying to make lots of money...

I'm the ripe old age of 52 today.  I have been such a malcontent.  I mean 16 years ago I moved to Georgia and it has been no picnic trying to carve out an existence down here.  The culture is vastly different from home, which is Massachusetts.  And though I've adjusted, I've never felt completely a part of. 
But, I've had difficulty feeling completely a part of anything in my life.  It's not that I'm that different from anybody else...well, I don't know what it is.

I want to write as more than an outlet.  I would hope that I could publish a book or two. If they never become bestsellers that's fine with me.  I just want to publish.  My brother, who is a Vietnam vet, recently wrote an autobiography and found a publisher for his book.   He said that one publisher said that they could not handle the content in the book.  I am almost reading my brothers novel and the truth that he tells in that book is intense.

See, that's the thing about this society.  We have so blurred the lines between tactfulness and outright lying that people can't recognize the beauty in telling the truth.  I want to follow my brother.  I want to do what he does....in my own way.

So, I sit here.  I'm not sure exactly how to proceed except, that I will proceed.  I don't know wether I will be successful in my endeavor or not, but I haven't defined what success is for me yet. 

I am beginning my journey of a thousand miles....

Okay...My Daughter Myself?

an lions and tigers and bears and o my? i just had a fight with my daughter about her disrespectfulness and how she behaves towards me and i became enraged and hit her windshield with my fist as she drove.  fortunately, neither the windshield nor my fist broke.  i was really upset with her but decided that  i would stop being upset with her because I am just wasting my energy and storing up bad karma for myself.

The argument was about the fact that she was disrespectful.  Of course she didn't take too kindly at my calling her disrespectul After all, she's 24.  She says she is staying with A this week and I told her that maybe she should just move in with her auntie. I think she is.

I will miss her as she. But what I think I really will miss is she as she was.  I vibrant and loyal teenager the yes mommied me into the rebillious and resentful 24 year old that she is now.

I often recount to myself how eager I was to have a little girl, despite the fact that I thought she was going to be a little boy.  My determination to avoid the creation of the same relationship that I had with my mother, basically resulted in my recreating my relationship with my mother. Despite my efforts to give her all of the love and attention that a mother could give, she now voices the same complaints that I had?

How could this be?

I've heard throughout my life that if you don't know your history, you are doomed to repeat it. I'd say even if you know your history...you are doomed to repeat it...in one way or another.  I believe that we are on a crash course with fate the day that we are born. (But, Ill save that for another post). The forces of genetics. and learned behaviorare just too strong to override.  Regardless, I can still choose to do somethings differently.
One of the thing is to let go of my daughter.  Another thing is to cling to God, and  myself.

I'm still a little hurt by some of the things that my dughter said to me.  But, I'll get over it.  In the meantime,  I get to learn some new skills like: continuing to t take care of myself, loving her  and wishing her the best.

scattered and confused and continued

what  i realize is that much of my life has been grounded in fantasy and the future... when this or that happens, the cinderella complex.  and then they lived happilly ever after....after they graduate school, get a good job, get married, have children and buy the house with a white picket fence, plus or minus a dog, cat and/or hamster. i've strived to do all of those things.  all my life i've been like a five year old at a tap dance recital looking out at the audience with a big grin and waiting for a standing ovation... while tripping over my tap shoes.

and somehow, i've grown into a fifty year old who has traded in her tap shoes, taken a bow with her back to the audience and walked off stage...so now what?

i no longer have my future or my self esteem, grounded in what i do or own or associate with.  i've plucked my life out  by the roots.  and i've decided to recreate my identity from the ground up. so who am i without all that stuff? t we not only are born with  but acquire more as we walk this lifes journey so that we can look good to everyone else.  we all walk around with blankeys of fantasy that we keep patching up with bits and pieces of reality depending on what we are willing to accept and deal with. (I'm convinced that everyone on earth lives this way..  I'm tossing my blanky too... at fifty two, you don't really need one if you know who you are ( well maybe I need to hold onto mine a little longer. it has served me well). and even with the uncertainty, i'm totally willing to brave the elements with out it.

okay, so what happens when you detach from all this stuff.?..addictions are what they are. money, food, houses, clothes...planes, trains, automobiles.  my addictions are the house that i live in but don't own, coffee, the internet, people pleasing, reading, dissarray, sugar, and other foods, music used to be one of my addictions.  i still listen to it but i am no longer one with the beat. i can love it without depending on it. also.  so far i've managed to wean myself off of coffee.  it is rough.  i don't like the taste of it anymore as my body detoxes and when i get upset or want to finish a project it doesnt help to have a cup of coffee by my side anymore.

writing used to be an addiction but now it's a passtime.  it's almost like a magic mirror that puts me knows to knows (nose to nose) with myself wether i like me or not.  so now i build an identity.  why?  i've always worked hard to hide and be invisible.  maybe, i'll just stay in hiding. what do you need an identity for when people go around stealing them all of the time?

scattered and confused

i'm in virginia with my long lost friend. i met her when i was about 20 and we've been friends ever since.   that was about 32 years ago.  she's another one of those people that i kept asking back then, why she wanted to be my friend. my self-esteem was so low, at the time,  i couldn't imagine that anyone would want to be bothered. i don't remember what she said, but we're still friends. she made me laugh and infused me with courage and wisdom that she had developed from many of the trials and tirbulations that she had experienced in her young life. she's only 4 years older than i.

i hadn't seen her for 12 years, didn't know where she lived and one day my daughter was sitting on the couch reading to herself, a plaque that hangson the wall in the living room. it reads,"  some people walk into your life and quietly go. while others stay awhile and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never the same"... .  i said to my daughter ."do you know that k gave me that  when i was leaving boston?"  and my daughter replied " really...where is she?"  " i don't know," i sighed "i sure wish i could find her. "  my baby girl  proceeded to do some sleuthing on facebook and the rest is history.

(i hadn't quit my job yet). 

anyway, i was talking to k a couple of days after i quit my job and she said i seemed scattered.  " i am", i admitted.
and i wasn't sure why except, i had made a couple of important decisions besides quitting my job (and that's a whole novel in and of itself).  one was that i would focus more on my insides than my outsides and that i would attach myself to the ephemeral and eternal and begin to slowly detach from  the earthly and temporary.  i did not know why i made that decision, nor did i know the magnitude of the decision that i made.

thus...  scatttered and confused.
everything that we identify ourselves with makes us who we are.

if we shed those things then who do we become?  initially, we become scattered and confused...(to be continued).

First, I Quit My Job

I don't know what I was thinking for staying on that job so long.  I look now and think back to the harassment and abuse I endured and I must've been out of my mind.  My boss,  was an elderly southern white lady who must've thought we were back on the plantation.  Oops! Have to be careful what I say in my blog, cause the powers that be... the society gods may not be pleased with my comments and forget them.  Okay?

I don't think I was foolish for quitting my job but, many people preobably think I am. But, hey, you can't please all the people all the time.  So, what's next on my agenda.  I'm not sure but I know that I have goals. One, is to write some novels, short stories and plays and poems and get published.  Another is to take all the money that I make writing all of my novels and short stories and plays and poems and travel the world over.  Meet new people,  learn every language that I can speak and just enjoy life in general.  Oh! and help as many people that I can along the way.  To inspire, and be inspired.

Sounds pretty simple, but is it a worthy goal? I think it is. But, where do I start?  Here now.  I just finished reading Susan Jeffers book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.  She suggests you make a life planning grid and update it regularly.  I haven't made my gird yet. But.I will.  It looks like a hard thing to do.  It's probably not that hard but I don't really want to think about my life right now, cause all we are is dust in the wind.  Ecclesiastes and whoever wrote that song must've really  been depressed.

I;ve been described here lately by my closest travelers and companions as scattered and confused.  And as much as I would like to disput that claim, I  have to agree.  I am.  Just that...scattered and confused. Well who wouldn't be at 52 in financial ruins and finding that you don't want to be in the career you've been infor years?  I mean when I came to that realization it was like what the...?  We latch on to our daily lives llike hungry sharks, refusing to let go wether we should rightly have it in our mouths or not.  That's what I was like with nursing and anything else that fell into my lap.( Notice, I said fell into my lap. 

When I blog, It's like having a conversation withsomeone who is not there.  Oe with myself except I can't see my face, just the keyboard, my boobs and my hands.

I'm on my way to where I want to go.  All I need is  Good Orderly Directions.  Which I'm sure that I will find as I continue on this journey.  From here to there.
D

I Am Still Here

Okay, enough of the still already.  I took a little hiatus from blogging my stuff because I thought that it might be a good idea to consider where I might be going with this.  And with the threat of Big Brother looking over my shoulder and damming me from ever doing anything meaningful in my life again, I decided that I needed to consider the consequences of blogging honestly about my life and blogging honestly about my opinions about my life and life in general and the  screwed upness of society.  and blah, blah, blah.

Well, where do I start.  I have made drastic alterations in my life within the past to weeks without really knowing where I'm headed.  I quit my job (without knowing what I wanted to do next. I reconnected with two old friends.  The first was a best frined that I'd lost contact with and the second was an old high school aquaintance that I used to make out with.  (he actually taught me how to kiss...what fun!)  My best friend, I have found is disabled as the result of an accident in which she slipped on some ice.  The high school crush, was just a a teenaged passing fancy, that I'd hoped to date but which never happened.

Well, I talk to my friend every night.  The boyfriend, crush or whatever is more sparadic texting with sexual inuendo and incomplete and unsatisfying conversation.  The last time that I spoke to him, which was the day before yesterday, he talked about his belief in alines.   Oooookaaaayyy!.  I tried to argue him down but could not get a word in edgewise.  He's passionate about extraterrestrials...and when someone is passionate about something...then where hte hell's the argument.  Huh?

My friend and I argue about everything just like we did 52 years ago when we first met.  Her son is grown and she has a grandduaghter.  I have two grown children and one elementary school kid.  The crush decided at some point the he would repopulate the entire northeartern aspect of the United States.  I ain't mad at him.
This is not all that has happened in the last few weeks, when I was not blogging but carefully ruminationg about why I was still working the job that I was on and pondering not only the meaning but the usefulness of life andliving.

I'll stop here for now.  I communicate best, I've found when I'm using my hands.

I'll keep you posted on whatever I decide to do with this blog....Welcome back