Has it been that long? Too long!

So, my most recent previous post was in 2017. Really? Okay, I guess I've had a rather eventful life since then. Here's the short list:

     1) Started writing a novel. No, that's not quite right. Began a three-book series. (Why do anything in a small way?) So that's occupied a bit of my fairly limited spare time. The spare time is limited because of point #2.

     2) The wonderful lady mentioned in my About Me (Doctor of Philosophy and mother of four) has become a very LARGE part of my life. And she is writing the first of a fiction series as well. She's an overachiever. Hers is five books ... so far. Book one is in the agent-search stage. It's a zinger. My book is somewhere in the earlier formative stages. I have large pieces of it put together, but the whole is yet to come together. And it's an historical novel, so it's required a lot of research. (That's my excuse for being so slow. So much to do, so little time).

     3) In August, I was laid off (as were several others) from my full-time position with a magazine (owned successively by two publishing companies) after helping to build it into the premier publication in its market over eighteen years. Magazines aren't the coming thing. They are looking to cut costs Still looking for a position. Seems I'm too old or over-qualified for most.

So, what with writing a book, helping to raise young ones and looking for work and an editor, blogging has, once again, taken a soccer-mom mini-van, third-row back seat.

The problem? Writing —blogging in particular — isn't just something I'd like to do. It's a significant piece of who I am. For me, words aren't just a means of communication. Words are food. Life. I can't wait for years for my book to come out. I've got to know that at least someone, somewhere is reading what I write. Now.

Wasn't always so. When I was in kindergarten and first grade, I thought reading and writing were the most boring thing on the planet. "See Jane run. Run Jane, run. Run, run, run." I couldn't imagine anything more boring. But then, a miracle happened. I was moved to a new school in a different neighborhood. One that had a library. It was full of books. All shapes and sizes. Books with sentences that didn't repeat words over and over. Books that told stories. Interesting ones. About fascinating people, places. Where had they been hiding this? I read voraciously. My eyes would pass over the lines of words like a starved man who had not eaten in days. I would actually salivate at a well-turned phrase.

I had a medical condition at age eight that kept me indoors. While other kids expanded their worlds on their bikes in the three-dimensional world beyond their home street and local neighborhoods, my world expanded in the magical realms fiction writers created in though the mythic power of words. I did not miss that outside time. The inside time, with writers in their inner worlds was extraordinary.

The real world, of course, impinged. My medical condition was resolved. I re-entered the realities of my street, neighborhood and the wider 3D physical reality in which I actually live. But my heart still pines to play in those places where words shape worlds and magically shine insightful light into the hearts and minds of those who live in them. In the best of those word worlds, I have found the wisdom that has guided me, comforted me, led me, cautioned me, supported me — saved me — in this sometimes harsh, painful and lonely walk through real life.

In college, I was given encouragement to write by two instructors who took me under their wings, as it were. They told me I could fly. But I quickly determined that I had little to say of lasting import. Young, foolish, a child of the 1960s, I intuitively knew I needed to grow up. I spent years, instead, writing for hire. Writing and editing other people's ideas. Developing others' verbal voices.

It is only recently that I've found my mission as a writer. I've found something I really want to say, a word world I wish to create, a time in history I need to recreate to share a timeless message.

Yet real life is actively conspiring to keep me from my word world. Its demands shout, while the kingdom of the Word calls softly. I've struggled mightly with that. The urgency of Today in Reality so often takes precedence. Can I now, despite all the loud shouts from the "musts" and "shoulds" of daily life, give ear to the quiet call to write what's in my heart of hearts, here?

Time will tell if this missive is the first of many — evidence that I will write because I must to live — or just another one-off, a meager effort that gives way to the tyranny of the urgent.