My ordinary world is fairly that.
Ordinary.
I
have a husband and a dog,
a son, a stepson
and two daughters.
Sounds perfectly ordinary . . . doesn't it?
You tell me...
Is it really all that strange to have three identities? To be married to a man I met over the internet? To have a son who spends his money on vinyl LP's and spins at local raves and Techno clubs? One daughter, whose hair changes cut and color on a whim, cramming to finish high school in three years? Another who should be Queen but is known to her friends as Red Devil? To own a dog named Smith out of a Pit Bull and a Rottweiler?
Actually, the most mundane part of my world is the most extraordinary
of all.
Instead of spending my days putting to paper the worlds I create in my mind, I work in accounting. I suppose my left brain needs the exercise and my right brain the vacation -though anyone who writes knows the creative faucet is impossible to turn off. It would be nice to regain control of my thoughts, but I'm afraid I would miss the voices in my head.
Instant entertainment. Who needs television?
Writing while working a full-time job requires sacrifice and adjustment, as well as a whole lotta luck - luck that family and friends realize they'll be the ones making many of the sacrifices and adjustments! Fast food. Frozen food. Priorities have to be set, discipline maintained. I wish I was capable of doing either. (I, personally, have given up cooking anything that takes longer than fifteen minutes and now have a close relationship with HEB's frozen pre-cooked meats.)
What keeps me going when I've only had four hours of sleep? And the dishes didn't get washed the night before? And the refrigerator holds only a quarter cup of 2% and no cream for my coffee?
Simple. It's all about the readers.
"Of
course it's hard! It's supposed to be hard! It's the hard that makes it
great. If it weren't hard, everyone would do it."
-Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks), from the movie "A League of Their Own"
"I'm
not what I should be, I'm not what I want to be, I'm not what I'm going
to be, I'm not what I could be, but I am better than I used to be."
-John
Wooden, Hall of Fame UCLA basketball coach
And another one, just because . . .
"'Twas
brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy
were the borrogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe. Beware the Jabberwock,
my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird,
and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!"
-Lewis Carroll
Yes. I think I'll keep writing.
Ordinary
World | Call To Adventure | Refusal
Of The Call| Meeting The Mentor
Crossing The First Threshold | Test,
Allies, Enemies | Approach
To The Inmost Cave
Supreme Ordeal | Reward-Seizing
The Sword |The Road Back
| Resurrection | Return
With The Elixir
Main | E-Mail
| Books