Is a membership in Story Circle, along with an online portion which will allow me to do a host of things that right now at 12:25 a.m. CST escape me. However, I am sure it is worth it; it seemed to be so when I was more conscious yesterday at 4 p.m.
It will demand something that I don’t like to give – commitment. I’m too used to doing what I want when I want. Not the best road to a self-disciplined life, for sure. The Mom in me has got to take over again, because that bratty little girl is much too inclined to overeat all the wrong stuff, stay up way too late, and needs a cattle prod to fulfill many of her obligations. Hey, I’ve been at everyone’s beck and call for decades now, a very responsible and upstanding adult, full of some visible amount of integrity. Why can’t I just flake off for a while?
Here come’s “Mom” preaching, “Because life doesn’t stop and neither do the bills. Or the dishes.” So, the implication is that now I’ve had my little vacation from life, so let’s get back to it. Which is where confusion moves in. What am I supposed to get back to? I’m applying for SS/Disability due to chronic, progressive lung disease that took a downward spiral in 2009. My memory and cognitive function took a downturn as well, causing me to distrust myself and my accuracy in transcribing medical records. Too many ways to make errors that could kill a person. No thank you. I need another way to make a living, preferably in an artistic field. Hopefully by myself. Some days I don’t play well with others. That’s why writing has appeal. It’s solitary and creative. And possibly lucrative. However, I’ve been to those book stores where obscene piles of books written by unheard-of authors are sold for a song. These stacks of books each represent someone’s dream, and they haunt me. Fear then asks me, “Why do you think that anyone would actually spend money to read what you have to say?” Fear reminds me that I, too, could fall into that Books-A-Million swamp, and has so far been very effective in corralling the second page of the book’s very first chapter. Somehow Page One escaped on its own, and is now begging Page Two to quit being such a wimp, continuously knocking at the door and hollering that Pages Three and Four should come along as well because the adventure wouldn’t be complete without them.
Thanks to the commitment mentioned above, it will all escape anyway, never mind the consequences.
Tags: commitment, discipline, new writer, writing
