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Thursday, July 29, 2010

Weaving Dreams Can Be Messy


I’m exhausted this morning. I had a good nights sleep, but my exhaustion has nothing to do with lack of sleep and more to do with emotional upheaval. I don’t know if that’s even the right word. But working with the developmentally delayed, although very rewarding, can be intensely challenging at times. I don’t want to write about that though because I live it day to day, and it’s not where I need to go this morning. I don’t know where I need to go. I want to crack open my inner egg and find something “me” inside. Mushy mixed up me.
My life is unconventional if compared with the typical married woman’s life. I live away from my husband at least five days/nights a week, sleeping in a bed I bought at a used furniture store, in a condo the next town over. My husband is currently sleeping with our dog. I get homesick sometimes, and at other times I’m glad for the privacy and the time away. I’m a writer and writers tend to need privacy… Although sometimes things at work can get insane and moments alone can be as rare as a unicorn.
I miss my home life though, and long for the day when I’ll get to live there again, full time, and fuss over window treatments, paint my walls, and clean under the bed.
I mentioned that I was a writer. Well, it wasn’t until I turned fifty that I became brazen enough to call myself a writer. I didn’t think I had the right to “title” myself until I was published. But that’s a bunch of snobbish crap. If you write you’re a writer. If you paint you’re a painter, if you dream you’re a dreamer. I not only called myself a writer but completed a 360 page manuscript and am now shopping editors to help me get it “agent ready.” It’s a wonderful thing to have a completed manuscript. My heart smiles when I think of it, stirring up hope for the future; for my future as a writer.
My dream is to write full time and quit all my other jobs. I am steadily working toward that dream, sloshing through the mucky mire of my life, day after day, and mentally chanting “I know I can, I know I can,” when things seem impossible. I just keep moving forward like a driver in a heavy downpour with the windshield wipers on hyper slap, my hands double gripped, and sweating, on the steering wheel, and my pupils fixed and dilated on the road in front of me. It isn’t pretty at times, but alas, I’m still doing it, making certain that my book has a future. It may take me years, and seem unattainable at times, but I want to give my novel a shelf (in a top notch bookstore) to smile from, a lap to lye open on and fingers to dog-ear the pages at their favorite parts. It’s my way of leaving my voice here on earth after the rest of me moves on to the other side. Writing is my passion and my dream, and I’m so grateful to have a dream at a time in my life when I thought all my dreams had dried up. Yup. That’s my dream, now what’s yours?

2 comments:

Lacey said...

Super proud of you and I'm pulling for your dream to become a reality! i dream of being a really good cake decorator and having a storefront. It won't be a bookstore but I'll proudly display your book on one of my shelves! :)

Leah Griffith said...

I love it. And we can put a little table near the window, and eat cake and read, and watch the people walk by.

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