Majorly Undecided

I was reading my blog over, happy to have a real live blog in the first place when I skimmed over the side panel and read under my picture, the one of my son and I at my Commencement from BHCC and directly below it, there is a very meager, skinny, slim, small amount of words describing Yours Truly. This bothered me for the past few days. It made me think of the movie The Runaway Bride. It may cost me to admit I'm a Julia Roberts fan, as I have recently learned some people just can't stand her as an actress, but I love this movie and I think she did a phenomenal job in it. Really, I did.

What I was thinking about was when the ever handsome Richard Gere comes to town and after a week or so of getting her to warm up to him they eventually fall in love. He makes it clear to the heroine of the movie that the reason she cannot commit to someone is because she does not clearly know who she is.

I am not single. I have never run away from an alter. I've never even walked up an alter, I eloped. I think this could still apply to me though. It was starting to really get to me that although I can unlike Miss Robert's character name the way I like my eggs (sometimes in a hefty omelet other times scrambled to perfection) I don't really know what makes me tick. I know that I like to read, and write. I live to care for my children and dream every day of travel.

More than these things I think there are some fundamental basics I am not as sure on. I went out with a friend who I have not seen in a couple of years and when we went to order food at the local burrito place, she knew I would probably want something steak filled and overloaded with all the delicious things you can have rolled into a tasty portable wrap. Why was I looking at the menu then, deciding what I wanted while she rambled away my "usual" order, including extra salt on the side? It's like I have been a total outsider on the experience of knowing myself. I have this weird feeling sometimes like I am not really in the present.

Ever since I was a very little girl I kept expecting to wake up and be in "real life" We would be driving down the street in our old Toyota and I would ask from the backseat, "Mom, am I going to wake up now?" I think my parents thought I was a bit strange compared to my mostly silent brother, but I didn't know why I always felt like I was in some perpetual dress rehearsal for life.

When I was in high school I was for the most part on the verge of failing out. I was not stupid, I was simply unmotivated and frankly, couldn't see what the big deal was. My junior year of high school I was grounded for the first time, ever. In order for me to leave the house I signed up to take the PSATS. I wasn't totally up on what all the fuss was about that test either. All around me there were flashcards and panic stricken kids flying around every where from the cafeteria to the nurses office looking for some secret blue print for how to pass the imposing exam. And so on the morning of the PSATS instead of using my parent's twenty dollars to take the "stupid" test, I used it to buy my friend and myself some breakfast. Looking back now I see that I was on a pretty bad path of self destruction, especially considering I allowed to do whatever I pleased. And more importantly I look back and think, who was that girl?? Wasn't I entirely present through all those half baked decisions I made? I totally backed them up with convincing arguments such as, if you're smart you'll always find a way to make life work out the way you want it. I can't believe I was ever so brazen at just seventeen. Was it the arrogance of youth? Or something else? Maybe I had carried that childhood notion that the friendships I made and the experiences I had were not really happening via live time into my adolescence.

The next year when my world of care free living turned up side down and I became pregnant, again it was like it was happening to somebody else. Once I accepted what was happening and started to feel excited about baby showers and future birthday parties, the time flew. And the next thing I knew I was the mother of a one year old boy. I watched the videos of my baby showers, with my swollen belly and even more swollen face, and I didn't see me. I mean, not just because I was short of hideous my first time around preggers, but because everything I saw myself do seemed orchestrated, and feigned and like it was coming from someone else. Are my hormone levels dropping here or something? Am I the only one who has ever looked at her life and thought, that couldn't be me, could it?

Every year when I was in elementary school, at the beginning of the school year I would look back on the previous year and determine where I had matured. Maybe this year I won't switch friendships so quickly. Next year I would look back and decide that the following year would be one of solitude and self searching. I was a very intense twelve year old. But when I look back on my pictures, read the little scraps of notes I find in my keepsake box I find that I was pretty consistently the same girl: a bit of a wise ass, who loved to be surrounded by people.
I can't put into words to feel like you are missing yourself at the very moment but it makes me think of a silly poster, one of those inspirational ones they put up in schools to make kids think about life that said: dear me, I went out looking for myself, if I should return before I am here, ask me to wait. I thought this was ludicrous at the time. I read it and reread it but couldn't make sense of it. Now I get it.

Maybe I will wake up in three years and read this and think, who was that? Maybe that's something I can come to anticipate in my personality. Sort of like I'm realizing I may never be Suzy Homemaker considering I can only keep my room let alone house neat for no more than three days a month. Maybe this is an archival growing up, learning to wait for myself when I think I am already there but not really. I am the girl who will be slighted, or offended but not realize it and not think of what to say back to that person for another two months. I am the girl who still has the thank you notes I wrote out five years ago for my son's very first baby shower.
I also hold on to every birthday card I have ever gotten. I still have dried carnations from Valentines Day in 8th grade. I cannot see the importance of dusting, over finishing the last really good chapter in a book.
So instead of This is me, it's more a process I'm finding of, Is this me?

For all Content and Purpose

I have decided to invest time and effort in my process of becoming a better writer by blogging once a week. Although my number of followers is modest at best I still feel I owe it to them and any others passing by to get down on this visible medium, if only mildly interesting, at the very least a consistent blog. You see I am coming to terms with the fact that I am a dreamer and although all of my dreams may not come true I will still actively pursue them. Even if it means making sacrifices to do so. Like living paycheck to paycheck, or raising my children for part of their lives in a country where the language spoken is not our own. I am willing to take big risks with the hopes of big rewards. Making the decision to follow my dreams is as serious and concrete as deciding to have a second child. Because more than the fear of failure is the fear of the sadness I know would follow me all of my days if I simply don't try and follow my heart. Since being a writer is up there on the list (alongside world travel and changing the world) then in the position I am I can do no more justice to that desire in me than to write weekly for this newly endeared blog of mine. Hate not small beginnings, the bible says. This is just the start.

I have one of the most self motivated, productive and uncontested most impressive friends who has lived a total of about a thousand lives by the age of 23; whom is constantly telling me in more eloquent words that her secret to success is having a plan of action. She is an expert at living the dream. She has taken risks and gone out on all sorts of flimsy limbs to soothe that inner voice in her heart. She is the first person in my life to have shared the experience of that fire that burns in the core of you when you are really passionate about doing something. She knows how to really live life. A talent I suspect she has had since she was very, very young. Always the president of this or that club, activist in the making since the age of 12, She is one of my Heroes. So of course this blog in particular is a salute to her. And her audacious and intimidating levels of achievement.



I am figuratively stepping out into an unknown plane of creativity and I can only ask for advice and guidance from any and everyone who has ever been in my shoes. Like the title says, I will be writing for Content and Purpose. In my attempts to have a blog I can proud to post I think writing (at least) once a week will help me choose the things worth sharing and leave out all the riff raff. Hopefully. The tricky thing about wanting to be a writer is that you can sort of write about anything. In the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron she encourages all of her students of her workshop to write morning pages every day. Three pages of whatever comes to you. Because she knows, that when channeling your inner artist you have to clear the static. So I will use that practice in between posts, to hopefully try and eliminate ramblings... Kind of like this one.

According to Christian author, Philip Yancey, sometimes feedback as negative as it may be is a must for you as a writer. I want to hone my craft so that it is as natural as breathing. I don't care if I am told that I am cheesy, hopeless and have too many run on sentences. I probably am and I know I do. I have never been able to cut my word use down like an economist might cut down their spending. It takes me too long. Almost as long as choosing what to eat at a restaurant; I simply cannot deal with all of the options. So,bring it on people. Bring it on. I promise to bring nothing but my most honest and sincerest experiences to the table in return.

YOU ARE HERE

You know those directory maps inside of huge disorienting shopping malls that help you when you don't know where to start or which way to go? They always have an indicator on the key that says "You Are Here." I feel like I had a real life moment like that today. Except that the mall is actually my life, and I am still disoriented and lost and need to be told where I am, lest I walk around thinking I'm on the third floor with all the high end shops, when in reality I'm just sitting in my car in the parking lot, thinking I'm in the mall already. So here I am sitting in my car. Looking out at a garage. Nature splayed around it like an after thought. What am I doing here? Earlier today when I was talking with my brother and joking as we do about things that should not be joked about, I prompted a little discussion on what would happen if I took off and just started my life over in Italy. Alone. Completely hypothetical of course. He didn't even flinch. You know how you kind of what someone to worry and say "hey don't get any crazy ideas, okay?" He didn't so much as take a breath before he spewed out that it was highly unlikely something so spontaneous would come from me. "Hah" he said. "It'll never happen." Why? I protested. Wanting to know now why he didn't share the same view as me with me being adventurous and daring in life. Simply stated and not trying to spare feelings in the least- cause that's just not what you do with a sibling; there's some sort of unspoken clause in your relationship as brother and sister that allows you to say the stuff you only wish you had the gall to say to friends and significant others. Although my husband does a pretty good job of telling me like it is,too. Basically he said as he looked in the mirror and got ready for work: "you have too many anchors." imagine that. While everyone else is telling me to go for it and follow my dreams, and life is what you make it. Here is my blood relative saying I am to constant and stable and "anchored" to ever do any of those things. What can I say? I was a little deflated. I argued naturally, to try and make him change his opinion about what kind of person I am. Maybe he just doesn't know me that well I thought to myself. Maybe he knows me all too well. The fact is he's right, while he's been off gallivanting through several career paths and relationships and states, I've been here. With the same job, going to school living at home, taking care of the growing brood.Looking from the outside in, it appears I am not quite the adventurer I like to think myself to be. Is everyone just being nice when they tell me I could actually conquer these unharnessed dreams of mine? Is it too sad to tell the pathetic mother of 2 that chances are she'll be in exactly the same spot 20 years from now? Only older, heavier and instead of dreams filled with regret? Why do I feel like there's a chance I can still change my life around so that I'm not so predictable and conventional. I once told a guy I dated that my biggest fear was to be a married, the mother of two, working as a housewife. He said maybe it's what I actually want out of life and not what I feared at all. If so, why all the unsettled feeling. Don't get me wrong I love my family. But I want to take them with me on an adventure of a lifetime. And to make my lifetime an ongoing adventure. Didn't I conquer teen statistics that said I'd probably never go to school, and therefore always live in poverty? Haven't I come so far from that place? I feel like I have been picked up by the collar and dropped back into that zone of lowered expectations. I keep fighting against this current. I feel like my arms might give out but I'd rather lose my arms than my heart. I don't care what anyone expects of me or sees when they look at the life I lead. I am going to lead life instead by the horns where ever I damn well please. God willing.

Much harder than Say..

It is monumentally harder to stop and write about the flowers than it is to stop and just appreciate them-- and then move on. But still, something in me calls for me to get down in words what my heart says when it's looking out at the world.

I would like to someday be able to introduce myself as a writer; and at the same time, not of course misconstruing concepts of self with what I do for work, and yet it would so much define me to be able to say: Fabia, a writer. As of late you can call me a thinker. Or a hypothetical writer, or kinetic energy waiting for some major push to get my words rolling. Whatever you choose to call me, I am in other words stagnant. Throughout the day I may well have at least 6 ideas for my first novel but I can't manage to get those words down on any visible medium. I spend so much time thinking about words I would like to use that I forget to actually use them.

I am looking for inspiration. Correction. I will start looking for inspiration. I will put myself in places that creativity flows like..well I don't know what like because I am without the creative springs from which to pull any witty expressions from. I am in a creative dry land. I am in the drought of ohhh ten. I am hopeful yet! I will one day be able to sit in front of my shiny black laptop and novels will pour out onto it's hardware. I will successfully complete a work and be proud of it, my brain child. I will mold language into a new vessel that will carry to distant shores the very depths of my soulful expressions. And when it is all said and done and written. I will write some more. Til then, I must admit that it is much harder say than dreaming about what it would be like to do all of these things than to actually do them. I will though. I will see to it that it all gets written. Letting love be my guide.