Bad Dreams/New Year

I'm having a midlife crisis brought on by a bad dream.

I dreamed I was seventeen again, and back at my high school  locker. The locker between the Industrial Arts class and the Home Economics class. Mr. Chichak was still alive, but I never saw him.

There was a massive jukebox blocking the exit. I would go to that jukebox everyday, spending money on songs I liked even though I was wearing my Sony Walkman with my favorite Metal cassettes in my pockets. I approached it everyday, noticing that every week the songs changed until I didn't recognize anything in the selection. The titles became gibberish, and all that was left were guitar instrumentals on mix tapes.

That upset me, but I made a decision. I could learn to LIKE those songs. I could change my mind. Maybe....I could change who I was, adapt. Conform. Just a bit.

MAYBE I could suck things up and stay home. Maybe I could graduate. Maybe if I just kept quiet and sucked it up, I wouldn't have to work minimum wage jobs with maximum physical effort that caused me to drop weight at alarming speeds and force me to work even when pulled muscles and aching tendons screamed at me to rest.

Maybe I'd already be a successful writer with more than four titles. Maybe I'd be a BETTER writer. Maybe I'd be someone else, and just maybe....my father would still be alive. Or maybe it wouldn't have been such a vicious shock when he died. Maybe maybe maybe.

I cried for two days. I'd like to thank Colleen and my mother for making it stop, but it's still bugging me. Who would I have been?

Re-Start

This will be my third attempt to write a Christmas/New Year's blog. I found that as Christmas approached and winter closed in it got harder and harder to stay upbeat and not to leak my anger and self pity into this blog.

The truth is, this year, all the fiction I wrote was one single Drabble. 100 words. Don't worry, I've still been editing a bit. Until I spent two months working graveyard shift at a toy store. (Oddly rewarding and educational.) Then edits fell by the wayside.

I only have one New Year's resolution this year. I need to rekindle my passion for writing. I need to let go of my guilt and regrets. I need to give myself permission to be kinder to myself. There's so much I haven't said, but I'm not here to bring people down. I'm here to tell you I will write again. I'm here to tell you I'm returning to my edits in the hopes that I can get 'Her True Name: Volume Two' out soon. I'm going to continue work on my anthology about my dreams.

Thank you Sharon, Sherri and Judy,  Jesse and Michelle, and always Mel, Colleen, Sylvia, Rita, Kevin and Ashley for being there when my father passed, and for sticking with me and supporting me. Thank you to my husband Dan and my perfect cats Freya and Spartacus for the much needed cuddles.

Happy New Year and I'll see you all in 2018.