While I was taking college courses, I continued to blog.
The ratings weren't climbing like they had been, probably due to my less-frequent posts.
I'd been waiting for years to write, having tromped through an angry husband, divorce and relocation, years of business building with the cleaning and property management, surgery, and school.
Not knowing what move to make next, I spent my days writing. Maybe I was hiding out, maybe I didn't want to get back out there. No matter the reason, I was taking the opportunity while I still had it to get this writing thing out of my system, or so I thought. I didn't understand that this was next to impossible.
I blogged away, interacting with the other bloggers and leaving reciprocal, positive comments on their blogs. I made a few favorite friends who I corresponded with daily. The ranking numbers for my essay blog kept climbing and climbing. I woke each morning, ready to post another blog, writing about everything from the dog that urinated on my former husband's pillow within the very first hour we brought her home to the time I saw my father walking up the sidewalk from work wearing my band uniform. I blogged about the time I tried to grow longer, stronger hair from advice off the internet, and how the formula I was instructed to concoct turned my hair into brittle straw that fell like cut grass every night onto my pillow. Random thoughts that had been floating around in my head for years, stories that wanted to be told, they all found their way onto my blog posts. Putting them to words left me thoroughly entertained for hours.
By then it was December. The kids were all in school and my husband and I were the only ones home during the day. I always closed the door to my daughter's room, so as not to annoy with my clickety-clacking of the keyboard. I still interpreted that sound to be the sound of slacking. I also closed the door so that if my husband passed by, he wouldn't see me just sitting there, typing. Whether he approved or not, my guilt made that scenario undesirable. I myself thought I should be pounding the pavement, looking for work, although at that time I received more than a part-time job's worth of child support money, and had been getting that amount for years.
The reasoner in me and the part of me that truly wanted to do nothing but write grasped hold of the thought that if I had no debt (I didn't), and nothing more pressing than helping out with a few bills here and there...then why was I so stressed out?
As soon as I'd have that thought, the reason-able part of me would kick in, with all of the name calling like 'slacker', 'mooch' and 'free-loader'. No one said this to me; these were the things I said to myself. Was I doing anything concrete, spending my days writing away? Was this just fun for me, or was there an actual purpose to it? The reasonable part of me said, "You're a grown woman who's been side-tracked from getting a real job and a real education for all of these years. It's nearly too late to redeem you. If you're lucky, you might squeak in a successful career yet if you can do what everyone else has done, which is to get educated and to get a real job."
The guilt won out, and I began to look online for employment, although my heart wasn't in it. My perfect life would have meant writing all day while my children were at school, then being home for them when they returned. I just didn't see that happening. Every day I spent writing, I felt I was stealing. If I stayed at home all the time and seemed to have no goals, what good was I to anyone, I thought.
Meanwhile I was getting comments from my readers:
"You're simply the best writin' winter remedy I ever read, end of story girl!"
"That was great! You're such a good story teller."
"Great writing, so much fun to read."
"You are clever gal. Oh I do adore your accounts. Still giggling - you're so good at how you tell it."
"I always find myself when I read your posts."
"You are such a wonderful writer."
---What was I supposed to do with that? None of it had a paycheck attached.
One thing was certain. I couldn't just hang around the house all week. I needed something outside of the home to give me my sense of usefulness back.
On a cold morning, I felt the need to look up a friend's obituary. He'd recently passed away, very suddenly. I'd known the family since almost the first day I'd moved to town. Viewing the write up required logging on to the newspaper's website. When I logged on, the first thing to greet me was a call for volunteers to the paper's Editorial Board. Something about that caught my soul's attention. Something about the thought of being on the Board felt like the right direction for me to head. I read the obituary and wrote a memory of my friend Neil. Then I went to work writing to the paper, as required, of the reasons I felt I'd make a good Board member. I edited and cut and edited some more, attempting to prove my prowess of the written word, and my mega-literacy. I wrote that I was self-employed. (I had just picked up one more property to manage, quite by accident and only because I found myself unable to say no to the money.) It was a stretch.
Then, I waited, even though I knew I would be chosen. This is something I still can't explain. I'm not a particularly lucky person. I've never entered a raffle or lottery, knowing that I would win. The few times I've ever won anything at all put me into an instant state of shock, no matter how small the prize. In this case, however, I just knew I'd be on the Board.
I was grateful for that knowledge, knowing that once a week I'd have somewhere else to be. I was glad that I'd be associated with a media outfit, no matter how remotely. It was far closer to my dreamed-of chosen path than housecleaning or property management. I'd get to dress up and feel sort of vital, helping to shape the community paper and giving input. My opinion and input would count and be heard; something I've always wanted.
In the weeks to follow, whenever I'd get caught typing away, I'd have the inner thought that I'd soon have just the tiniest amount of clout. I would still probably see myself as all of the names I called myself in my head, but perhaps a little less so. That notion brought some semblance of relief from the abuse I'd self-administered.
The email arrived a few weeks from applying for the volunteer position on the Editorial Board, saying I'd been chosen as a member.
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