Tag Archives: Writing

Every New Moment, First Time Ever

05 Wednesday Feb 2025

Posted by in Better Version of Me, Living Life on Life's Terms

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Voicemail to myself on December 15, 2024:

I’m listening to an audiobook by Rob Bell titled How To Be Here and what came to me was this: This moment that I’m in right now is the only time I’ve been in THIS moment, ever.

I’m driving on the 10 in Southern California, probably heading West. I do this often, driving from my desert home to my former stomping grounds. I just did this two hours ago, drove this stretch of highway, and I’m frustrated. It’s unfounded frustration, because there’s nothing I can do about it. I need to get to Orange County and this is the way. I can to accept that I am where I am, and just surrender to the fact that this is where I am right now. (Or I could stay home, pout, and throw a tantrum or stew silently.)

So, I’m driving on this freeway for the second time today in the same direction and I realize that even though I just did this two hours ago, I’m doing it NOW for the first time ever. The sun is in a different location in the sky. Now I’m the driver instead of the passenger, heading to the same destination, but it’s not the same.

Everything in my life that I do, even if it FEELS like something I’ve done before, I am doing right now for the first time. Laundry, phone calls to friends, gardening, walking in my neighborhood.

I was reflecting on Rob’s words, about taking risks and learning from the failures and taking different risks, seeking to find my place. I’ve been struggling with that concept: my place in the world.

I still don’t know, at fifty-nine years old, what I’m “supposed” to be doing. I’m not even clear on what I WANT to be doing, but I know that even if it’s something I’ve done before, this will be the first time I’m doing it as who I am right now. This is the first time that I do the thing I’ve done in the past, in this moment.

Everything that I do, even when it seems like I’ve already done it, I haven’t. Because this moment is a new moment. For example, right now I’m driving past the Cabazon Outlets, which I’ve driven past countless times over the past seven years, and this is the first time I’ve passed the shopping center in this moment. Holiday shoppers are clogging the streets on the frontage road, trying to find a place to park, and while I’ve witnessed this over several seasons, these are different shoppers, or the same shoppers parking in new spots.

So I’m also in the same spot, contemplating what I want to do next with my life, my time. I want the excitement, the butterflies that come from the feeling of fear of uncertainty and also the thrill of territory uncharted. I ruminate over the things I may need to do in order to find the first sentence of my next chapter in life. I realize that right now, in this moment, I am doing the thing, writing that first sentence, taking the next step, in the forward momentum of this vehicle.

I’m doing the next thing I need to do. Into uncertainty.

If You Want To Be A Writer . . .

09 Thursday Jan 2025

Posted by in Living Life on Life's Terms, Writing

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Stephen King’s advice whenever anyone asks him what it takes to be a writer is to JUST WRITE. Write consistently, write all the time. Write. Write. Write. Doesn’t mean you’ll reach the level Mr. King reached, but if you don’t write, you’ll never know.

I AM a writer. When I sit down and take a stab at putting words to the page, I’m a writer. (I’ve actually written a total of ONE book, published.) I love to edit. (I’ll admit here: I do edit spelling and punctuation. The ideas though, no planning and very little forethought this time around.) I also love to “dump.” (That’s writing whatever comes and leaving it be. See: this blog so far.)

This week’s writing brings my attempt at being consistent in writing weekly dumps to WEEK FOUR. As in, I’ve posted something four weeks IN A ROW. I aimed for Wednesday as my weekly writing day. Two of those Wednesdays landed on holidays. And yesterday I was driving home from a visit, and the thought didn’t occur to me until it was too late to write (my brain was mush). And, here we are.

There were ideas during the past week of what I might write about that never really stuck. I’d like to delve into fiction, make up a story. I used to be really prolific as a teenager, writing multi-character tales in spiral notebook after spiral notebook about a tough female police detective and the two men who vied for her affections while she solved complex crimes.

I also heard a really good line in someone else’s book about tree seeds and the need for fire to allow those seeds to sprout and make new seeds by breaking down the protective hulls, and how often humans have to go through the fire (breakdown) in order to grow stronger (heal), and I thought I could make that into something deep and meaningful (I still could).

In the end, I decided to just write about writing. By actually writing. I’ve written many poems, which were all written during painfully emotional periods of my life. I have tried to write poems during times of joy, but it never conveys my feelings in quite the same way as sorrow and despair do.

Here is a poem I wrote after my sister took her life:

My feelings of sorrow. Her life cut short.

That’s part of what it takes to be a writer, I think. Being able to dig in to the real feelings and emotions and being willing to share that honesty, even when it hurts. Want to write a love story? Remember all the truths of your feelings and emotions in the triumphs and challenges of being in a relationship. Want to write a novel about a tough female police detective? Watch a LOT of television crime dramas.

Oh, watching a show (movie, television, shorts on YouTube, whatever) and writing. Last night husband and I watched an episode of a show with an idea that a planet is hiding inside of a space storm. What a fantastic idea for a story!! Except that it’s been done, and I’d want it to be original and fresh. Which it can be if I wait a while and carve out a plot in which this idea has a great story. Why would a planet need to hide in a manufactured space storm?

Stuff like that, ideas for stories and poems, is all around us. In real life and in movies that were already produced.

I’m running out of steam and words and ideas. For now. Plus, I want to eat lunch. And since I’m not holding these and editing them, now seems as good a time as any to wrap it up.

Let me mention those “likes” pages from last week’s post before I go: Fox Reviews Rock, Dirty SciFi Buddha, Coach Esther, The Autodidact Professor, and Maia. Each of these pages is unique. Maia hasn’t posted anything new in a while, but they keep liking my stuff. Perhaps something will inspire new works.

Thanks for stopping by.

Living As A Fictional Character

01 Wednesday Jan 2025

Posted by in Living Life on Life's Terms

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First day of 2025. It’s a Wednesday. Today is a Wednesday. The first Wednesday of the next 365 days on Earth.

Yesterday during a support meeting someone shared about writing a personal behavior inventory. That speaker talked about the loneliness and isolation they felt early on in their addiction recovery. That share reminded me of a couple of things: the loneliness I felt during most of my life and, how much I’ve changed over my lifetime. The thought that came while the speaker was sharing was this: What was the story I wrote about myself early on that led to that feeling of loneliness and isolation in my late thirties?

My life was fiction. I made it up as I went along and eventually I believed it. The marijuana and the beer helped a lot, as a coping mechanism, a social lubricant, and a way to believe the stories I told. I never wanted anyone to know the truth about the house I lived in, the fear we felt or the helplessness we experienced. I experienced. So I made up a new, powerful version of myself. All my stories, that truly ended in tragedy or heartache were transformed into epics where I was the hero. I said the things I was thinking to the people who needed to hear them. I kicked the asses. I fired the weapons. I had the best adventures. And it was all fiction. Well, most all of it.

I did steal a car when I was fifteen. In fact, I stole that car twice. (That’s not actually true, stealing the same car twice. I meant to steal it a second time – I still had the key from the first time – but we got picked up for breaking curfew before we could go get the car.)

I ran away a handful of times and put my trust in people who couldn’t be trusted.

I brawled once with my stepbrother in our garage on a day when we’d both had quite enough of what our parents were modeling as appropriate behavior. The fight came to a draw and we both felt a lot better. Afterward we went back into the house to play a board game.

The point to this post is this: I made up my life to impress you and to protect me. And when I experienced that loneliness, that isolation, that LACK of connection, I realized yesterday, sitting in that room, that I created that. How COULD you know me? Everything you thought you knew about me was a lie. I didn’t know who I really was. How could I expect to connect with anyone?

I spent that first year of my sobriety trying everything that I knew I’d once enjoyed. I tried cross stitch and crossword puzzles, and regular puzzles; painting and card making and photography. I read more. I discarded the things that no longer lit me up. And I did more of the things that I enjoyed.

I also learned how to make friends and discern real friends from folks who were still working an angle.

Over a decade I uncovered all the stories I’d told that I’d enhanced to shed me in a beautiful, badass light – like when I told people that in high school I kicked the asses of these two guys who spit on my friend’s sister because she was different, awkward, not outwardly attractive – factually, there WERE two guys, and they DID spit on my friend’s sister, but I did nothing, and I suppose I wish I had, so I told the story differently. So many little lies like that, so many tweaks, that I had to correct within myself, share with those who understood, so I wouldn’t have to carry that crap around anymore. I still run scenarios in my head about what I could have said to sound brave or courageous or cool, and sometimes when I tell people the first part of a story, the true part, I also tell them how I wish I’d responded, followed by, “but that was just what I thought. I didn’t actually say it.”

I’ve learned how to say what I need to say, to stand up for myself and others, without being mean or shaming or demeaning to others. I live a non-fiction life now. It not nearly as exciting sounding, but it is real.

When you talk to me today, you’re gonna get ME. You can take it or leave it, and I hope you’ll realize I’m a work in constant, never-ending progress. And if I do slip and tell a tale, I will correct it most likely before I even finish telling it.

That’s about it for today.

Oh, before I go: Last week SIX people “liked” my post “Depression, Grief and Holidays” which is more than the week before so I want to acknowledge them here: Storyshucker, Inner Peace, Object Relations, Tiny Hearts, Coach Esther, and Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha. Check them out and share the love!

Thanks for the read! See you when another idea strikes me.