A Decision is Made

It has just occurred to me that I am coming up on 200 posts. That just seems little bit crazy to me. It is funny, I was just looking through the archives and remembered how excited I would get when I would get 6 comments. Like, 6 comments was a really, really good day! I have to just shake my head and laugh at myself now. I mean, it isn't like I have 80 comments like SOME (ahem, you know who you are...and I still like you anyway!), or get interviewed for newspapers (ahem again) but still-I have a ***following***! Yep, makes you chuckle out loud, doesn't it?


A lot of people in my real life don't "get" the whole blogging thing, and I don't know that it can be explained. For me, so much of my life has revolved around writing, around trying to make my thoughts into words so as to make them REAL, that for me this seems a reasonable offshoot of that. The fact that people READ me just makes it all the better.


Due a rather strange series of seemingly unrelated conversations-from the comments made here and in my day to day life-I have made some decisions regarding this whole writing/blogging thing. Don't worry, I am not going to do a bunk and just disappear, nor am I moving to another location and not telling any of you where I am. It isn't anything less than what I am doing now; instead, it is more. Or has the potential to be. You all know about my money issues, and while things are looking up so that I can put off getting a second job immediately, I have got to find a way to get more money coming in. This seems like such a no-brainer to many people, but the long-term ramifications of taking on another job are far-reaching in terms of, "Who will raise my kids?" and it isn't a decision easily made. I find it nearly impossible to contemplate making my 16 year old daughter have the added responsibility of taking care of her younger siblings three or four nights a week, and I would have to work at least that often to make any appreciable financial difference. Also, I would be unable to continue to be the kind of mom I AM if I am gone. While I can't go so far as to say "I have thought of little else!" in the last month or so, the thoughts have been circling around in my mind on some level nearly all of the time.

Then, in the space of a few weeks, some of you made the comment about writing for pay (paraphrasing, okay?), along with some suggestions, and then several people in my everyday life have made comments about how much they like my writing, how good I am, and that I should be doing it part-time. Honestly, I kind of blew them off, all of them, because that icky, self-conscious little me was all like, "No way could I ever do something like THAT! I am not good enough!" As usual, the voice sounds like my mom. So I have thought about this, too, a lot...

And I realize that not only CAN I do it, I HAVE done it. I had an article published in a (little-known) Attachment Parenting magazine. My college (and that was mere years ago, I was 32) English Professor took ALL of my essays to use for examples of "The Perfect Paper." This isn't to say I see myself as perfect, not by any means. But what I am, at the risk of sounding cocky, is good. I have gone through some of my old posts and some of them really stand out to me as, "Wow." Of course, others make me cringe and want to delete delete delete, but those I just put down as part of the process.

So that is what my decision is; I am just going to grab life by the balls and start writing. I have begun to write about the ongoing situation with Hannah, using different parts of different posts, pieces from my journal, etc...and when I get it all wrapped up and ready it will be submitted to a magazine I know and love. I already own the Writer's Digest for 2008 (can you say GEEK?), which is an invaluable resource. In short, I am going to begin doing seriously something I have wanted and needed to do for a long time.

I know that the likelihood of me becoming wealthy is non-existent-and that is okay. I know that writing is hard, painstaking, frustrating work, but that is also okay (I am not exactly a paragon of NON-Laziness, but I am also no stranger to hard work. So, meh). I just think that maybe desperation has been leading me to this place of doing what I really, really want to do, physically need to do, yearn for. And if I happen to make enough to pay the occasional bills sometimes? All the better.

So that is the decision for the day. I have been carrying it around for a little while, not wanting to really say much to anyone or for God's sake on my BLOG, because you might laugh at me or think it is silly. But then today, saying it out loud, I think, "Yes. This is exactly right."