Monday Musings,late-Worth More Than Money

The older I get, the more I know the truth of what I wrote in the column below. People are worth far more than material gain. Ask the lonely, the forgotten persons who sit home, wishing just to be able to exchange a few words with someone, anyone. Maybe this explains the great growth of various and sundry online groups, from support groups to dating sites. How fortunate and blessed I count myself to be that I may count dozens of people as friends. Some of many years standing. True, many are acquaintances not seen on a regular basis, but many I do see often. If you know someone who needs a friend, why not be that friend? I know I must do better at following my own advice >

* * *

If I should someday make a lot of money from my writing, the money would not be what I'd value most about my adventures along that path. It would be the friends I've made. Without them, I probably would have given up long ago.

Before the flesh-and-blood writing colleagues who walk and stumble along with me, there were those I've never met in person. Like most who dream of seeing their scribblings in print, I huddled at home over typewriter and later computer, reluctant to expose my dreams to the light of day.

Then this wonderful medium of communication called the personal computer came upon the common scene. The first computers were only available to companies and could do the work of many warm bodies. Not so good. As a matter of fact they had a negative impact on my own job situation. But I fell in love with them anyway and when personal computers became available I had to have one. And then a whole new medium called the Internet sprang up, with instant connections to almost anywhere on the globe.

This included the ability for a writer to expose his or her writing to others with almost immediate feedback. You didn't have to wait weeks or months to be rejected by an editor at your target market. Classes and critique groups were, and are, also available to learn more in your chosen field of writing. I am so grateful for this exposure to online writers and teachers. Their acceptance gave me the courage to seek out flesh-and-blood writers to interact with in person.

A writing career is still about as easy as herding cats. You get tired of the battle and a voice whispers, 'Why don't you just give up.' That's when friends come in and encourage or push you along. I prefer to sit home and stare at the computer even knowing I should get out, talk, try to sell books. Two of those friends called and got me into two venues I'd never done, which I actually enjoyed. Even sold a couple of books. And made connections with new writers. Those friends didn't know what they'd done for me. But I do.

Friday Jottings-Rememberies

Is it the fall season or getting older that bids us look back and consider our past? It's been several years since I wrote the column below. The jar has gotten a little dusty. Life has gone on, I'm older and wiser. I hope. I keep busy with housework, church, writing guilds. Today I did something I used to do often, though it is not mentioned in the column. My mother had the greenest of green thumbs, and I inherited some of that skill. I once kept many houseplants, but let them go. I do like to keep an aloe plant or two around for its medicinal value. A dear friend gave me one a couple of years ago and it multiplied, I divided it into three pots and they became potbound also. I knew they must be divided again and now - eight? - eeek! If they survive I shall gift some of them. I now again have a row of plants in my front window. I've also been sewing a little again. What else will I dredge from the past, I wonder.

 * * * 

Rememberies

A clear glass pumpkin-shaped jar sits on my desk, doubtless meant to hold cookies or some such. But I have crammed into it various mementoes that mark significant moments in my life.

Visible on one side of the jar is an old address label with my mother's name and last apartment address. More than thirty years after her death the poignant ache of loss lingers in my heart. I'm reminded of the hardships she endured, raising eight children in deep poverty, and am very doubtful that I could have done as well as she.

Peeking through the other side, my grandson's name tag from the family reunion Holston Valley Medical Center provided for babies who spent the first few days or weeks of their lives in the NeoNatal Intensive Care Unit. I don't like to remember my fear at first sight of his tiny, mottled body after long, anxious moments waiting for the delivering doctor to bring him into view. Or his Lilliputian form as his Mom held him for brief moments, IV tubes in a matchstick arm, feeding tube in his button nose. Now a strapping father of two himself, he bears little resemblance to that preemie in the NICU incubator.

In the jar is a round piece of molded plastic, which covered an indicator lamp on the old cordboard where I began work as a telephone operator over thirty (edit: now, 45 years) years ago. The job that gave me not only independence, but growth and the realization that I was a person in my own right, not just wife, mother, caretaker of an aged parent.

A parking permit from the local community college symbolizes my long-delayed college degree, not fully earned until after retirement. An Allen wrench. I used it to assemble a large modular desk for my computer, ownership of which began another major turn for my life. A red and gold enameled keyring fob with a menorah and the word "Shalom" from my first and only trip outside of the US, to Israel.

A name tag from the Citizen's Police Academy class I took, seeking realism for my writing. Still another tag identifies me as facilitator for a home Bible Study. And finally one ringed with ivy leaves from a ten day writers retreat in North Carolina.

I found me at that retreat. I'm a writer. One who seeks to trade bits of myself for personal gratification and, occasionally, money, through essays and columns. I now have books as evidence that I'm a writer. Books won't fit into the jar, but the objects it holds show me the path I took to get to the place I am now. And they provide me with inspiration for further journeys on that path.

Monday Musings-Draketown

The piece below was published as one of my newspaper columns about six years ago. But I'd actually written it almost ten years prior. Not a lot has changed even now in the area around Draketown. Brand new subdivisions have not sprouted noticeably, unless they are well off State Route 120, which is entirely possible. I expect that portion of Haralson County adjoining Paulding and other rural Georgia counties is too far from the Interstate highways for many urban refugees to be comfortable - yet. I'm sure some who value the privacy and solitude have built large homes in the tall pine woods. On my last visit we didn't make it to the little country cemetery where our dad's parents rest, not far from Draketown. Maybe next time. I hope so as I've now lived some years past the time most of my forebears left this mortal coil. But I'm still thankfully able to get around fine, do most things I want to do, (and feel comfortable to decline doing what I don't want to do) which is an accomplishment for me! And still chasing my dreams.

* * *

Draketown, Georgia is the original 'little town that time forgot.' In the forties and fifties State Route 113 meandered through the pint-sized metropolis before joining State Route 120 and continuing north.
    It was a tiny town then, and as a town, is even tinier now, as far as retail commerce is concerned. Then again, maybe not. Two convenience stores, which also sell gasoline, and a small restaurant serve the same functions as the three general merchandise stores which flourished on its single block in my childhood.
    Mr. Ike's store was full of all kinds of wonderful junk, the country version of our Dollar Stores today. It held down one end of the street. Reeves's Store stood at the other end. Between them was the Reeves's residence and Stevens's store, which housed the Oddfellows Hall on the second floor.
    Customers helped themselves to ice cold Coca Colas, RCs, Pepsis and Orange or Grape Nehis from.a big floor cooler just inside Reeves's Store. Outside, next to the unpaved street, was an old-fashioned gas pump. The top two feet or so of the pump was made of glass through which the reddish gas was visible.
    A white marble monument about twelve feet tall stood across the street. The legend on its base said that it honored a woman killed by the bootleggers. An elementary school, a doctors office located in his home, a church, and a few frame homes completed the town which was surrounded on all sides by farmland.
    The doctor died, the school was consolidated to the county seat, and one by one the old stores closed. Route 113 was relocated and merged with Route 120, by then an  asphalt highway, three or four hundred yards north of the town proper. And a growing tide of refugees from the city of Atlanta fill the area with new contemporary homes, prosperity, and the usual concerns of a more urban population.
    A while back I turned onto the old town street once more. Reeves's store building is falling down, the other two already gone. But the marble monument to a woman's untimely death remains as does the church, larger and freshly painted. The little town lives on for its few long-time citizens. And for those like me who look back through time and distance, remembering trips to town and penny candy from Mr. Ike's store.

   

Perspective - again

In the several years since I wrote the below piece I've become more 'comfortable in my own skin,' as I once jotted on a scrap of paper. And even far more at ease if I have to say a few words in front of a group. This late-in-life 'bloom,' as it might be characterized, stood me in good stead a week or so ago as I led a sizable group in a writing workshop. I could not have imagined such a thing in my younger years. Of course, I had lots of support from a dedicated committee. We worked diligently for months to bring the event about and it was one of the most satisfying times of my life. I firmly believe God was with us, helping us, because we truly wanted it to be a help and encouragement for aspiring writers. Comments from those who attended lead us to believe we achieved that goal.

 * * * 

To escape criticism––do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. That might as well have been my mantra once. I've written before about my crippling shyness during a lot of my life. I look back now and ask myself, why did I waste all those years worrying about what people might think about me. It's doubtful if the things I worried about ever even occurred to anyone. And even if a stranger on a bus did think an unkind or critical thought about me, so what? I'd most likely never see that person again. And if I did, neither of us would probably remember. I've no illusions that I'm a memorable person to most of those who cross my path. I do regret that most of them are not memorable to me either because I don't pay attention to seeing them instead of my own concerns. I value people more than I did in the past. People I meet through the years now seem unique and valuable. We may disagree on some fundamental areas of life, but that just makes them more interesting. Their perspective was shaped by the things they went through in their lives, as my own experiences shaped mine. I was born near the end of the Great Depression, as it's known. My childhood was during the years of World War II. We lived deep in the country so I was barely touched by the war. My father was deferred due to a medical condition plus he had a large family of children to support. Uncles, cousins served and we did hear of the hardships they endured. But my somewhat sheltered childhood existence was far different from someone whose family lived on one of the coasts or my English friend, Eileen, who lived those years in Cambridge, England. But she and her family survived. She married Ron, a Yank airman, and now enriches the lives of all who know her. Would that someday someone could say the same about me.

Friday Jottings - Priorities

Tho I wrote this piece some time ago, it still applies to my life.The two 'p's of a writer's life - priorities and procrastination. Yours truly is a casebook example of both! When I really get into something I must force myself to stop when something else just must be done. Laundry? But I still have a pair of pants clean enough to wear again. Cook something because I'm hungry? That's why God made sandwiches! Ah well, I'm still here trying to determine what has the highest priority.

Priority Paralysis

Is priority paralysis a symptom of modern life? Surely not. Was life so regimented in the past that people knew exactly what to do, when to do it? I can’t believe it. Farmers surely had to choose sometimes whether to plow the back forty or mend the roof before threatened rain. In today’s world, we have so many choices that sometimes we feel unable to make a choice. At least I do. The biggest reason I have a problem with choices is that I tend to over-extend
myself. As a result I am pulled in a dozen directions on how to spend my allotted twenty-four hours per day. Maybe I’m paying for my past sin of criticizing people who spend hours watching mindless sitcoms on television or at the computer playing games.
Now I spend hours doing volunteer work on the computer that I would rather be using to polish or create a piece of my own writing. I enjoy doing the things I do, updating websites, answering email questions and sending out announcements, searching for speakers. Most likely if I wasn’t doing things for others I would find way less productive ways to procrastinate. Writers are experts at procrastination, after all. The only thing that motivates writers, sometimes, is a deadline.
The thought crosses my mind that I’d better keep learning new things and attempting to create as long as I can. Because it’s pretty likely the years ahead of me are not as lengthy as the ones behind me. When you’re teaching yourself, the learning curve can be quite steep though – and time consuming.
On the plus side, since I’m retired from a regular job I can set my own hours, for work and sleep. So I tend to stay up late, very late sometimes. If these columns were time-stamped most of them would reveal that they were written in the wee hours. My friends know this, unfortunately telemarketers don’t and wouldn’t care if they did, so friends don’t call too early in the morning. But even if I’ve been up all night, I welcome hearing from friends. They inspire and encourage me and very often they break my logjam of priority paralysis.

Here and Now

I'm usually glad when February arrives. Even when the weather is bad, which is normal for February, but not this year it seems. But when it comes, it means January is finished and done with. Why am I glad when January is over? First and foremost, it's the month in which my husband passed away, four days before my January birthday. Before that, as I got older, January signaled that I was, in fact, getting older.

In and of itself, getting older is not such a bad thing. If our minds are mostly normal, it means we've attained maybe a modicum of wisdom just by virtue of living so long. At least, I sure hope I have. I really wouldn't want to relive some of my younger years. Some I didn't deal with too well. Bad and unpleasant things happened during some of them which I sure don't want to relive. Good memories, now those would be a blessing to live and enjoy again, but as the saying goes, we must take the good with the bad. So I'll just stay in the here and now.

My life is not perfect now, far from it, but good things are still happening to offset those not so pleasant. One of the better parts of older life, I've learned to accept myself, warts and all, and to expect those who wish to remain in my life to accept me, too. I accept others, just as they are. If I don't agree with them on some things, well, that's why we live in a free country. Hard as it is to believe, some probably don't think the way I do! And actually that makes the world a more interesting place. I like hearing, reading and discussing how others may see life, if it's in a civil manner. Otherwise I can choose not to engage. And do. And life goes on.

Me, myself and I

Yet another one. Blog, that is! I always spread myself too thin. Maybe it's because I've reached the age that I know life is finite and I better make the most of what I have left! I have too many interests and my mind clamors to explore them all. I'm almost envious of those people who are obsessed with one thing and devote their lives to it. They accomplish more than I seem to, in their chosen field of obsession, but then what if something happens and they can't do it any longer? If they are unable to switch to something else, life is to all intents and purposes, over for them. I've always seemed to 'march to a different drummer' which puts me out of step with many people. It was a happy day for me when I hooked up with several writers' groups. By definition most writers seem to march to a different drummer. Being crazy helps, too. Why else would we, as my blog question asks, keep pounding our heads against a wall in our attempts to snare a publisher for our deathless prose?