Authoring

 I started writing when I was 8. It started with a little journal that I started writing poetry in.  Then I wrote short stories,  then long poems that were stories.  In Junior High I won my first writing contest for writing "How I Escaped From the Savage Natives on a South Pacific Island", a sci-fi,  fantasy, action comedy that hung in a glass case for years at Beverly Hills Intermediate.  In 9th grade I wrote and performed in a rhyming play a la Shakespeare for Health Class that the teacher sent to Weightwtchers Anonymous who asked for permission to use and perform it.  EVERYONE,  including me! said I would end up being a Great Writer.  Well, my father changed his mind and said that I would have to give it up someday because he was sure I would be a mathematician or engineer,  but that's a different story.  My first side hustle was selling poetry to student in my high school for their poetry class.  During my teen years I would go to parties and sit in the corner and write poems for people to give to their girlfriends,  boyfriend,  etc. I loved having people tell me what they wanted to say and then making it into a poem for them.  I wrote a poem for Jim Cooper that was his final wishes.  Funny,  almost 50 years ago and I can still see Jim sitting up on a console stereo while I sat below him scribbling frantically to keep up 🙂. I have a poetry page in here somewhere that has a scattering of my poetry but it is only what I could still remember 10 years or so ago,  just a tiny fraction of what I wrote,  but at least some of the best,  including Jim's will, which wasn't nearly one of my best! just one that stuck in my head. I wrote and performed in another poetry play about dentistry while working for Dental Health Alliance at Sitel telemarketing.  I had an extra muse then,  author/artist/actor Rodger Gerberding, whose admiration pulled capability out of me that I've seldom experienced,  thank you, Rodger❣️ I was in my thirties then.  Still thinking I would eventually start writing the novels everyone expected from me.  Then I sadly wrote a couple of eulogies, the one for Jackie Lynn and the one for my mothet are also in the poetry page here.  After the one for Mom I started feeling like I was struggling to write and I have written very little since then.  I think it started with looking back and deciding that 90% of what I had written was actually pure crap.  Then it felt like my muse was slipping away.  Not Rodger, but the muse I believed had been writing for me all my life. 10 years ago while we were living in the Yellow House I started writing again on my Fire tablet and I wrote my last "good" story poem about a runaway slave traveling north to escape bondage. I felt my muse Hugely. I knew really nothing about the subject,  it was one of those that seemed to come from beyond me.  I broke that tablet in a fight with Jeremy and lost all of my writing on it.  And haven't been able to write Anything since. I am old now,  when I was sure I would be writing my novels, if I survived this long! but I have nothing.  No muse,  no brilliance.  NOTHING. I have a lot of brain damage but my muse left long before brain bleeds and White Matter Disease.  It could be partly that I don't have half the confidence.  Is that even the right word?? I no longer feel like I have anything worthwhile to offer and that feeling compounds and grows daily. Maybe it's looking at the mess of the lives I have influenced and how few people actually look up to or even have any respect for me.  Being in your 60's and realizing you have been/are a huge fuck up can destroy you!! And also my Old Age is nothing like I hoped it would be if I made it here.  If I saw old age, I saw no longer having responsibilities for kids etc. and time to do whatever I pleased. That hasn't happened!! I have 2 daughters who will always need some kind of help and I am still raising their children.  Driving kids to school and work Every Day and trying to run a household with 6 people on less than$2000 a month. True, if I really was going to Do It I have hours between driving kids most days that I could be writing ?? but again,  no muse and nothing to offer.  I'm a jet circling the tower waiting for permission to land,  in a holding pattern,  and I know now that the end is a crash.  If by some miracle I am still alive when the last grandchildren leave home and I have figured out how to sustain Jami and Jess I Could Have that "free" time. But again. No muse. Nothing to offer.  If I went totally mute no one would miss my voice, Kira would rejoice! and that's just the honest truth.  I'm not feeling any self pity there.  I don't exactly know how/why but I Know it is my own fault even if it was never my intention.  It's more than just no longer being relevant.  I'm looking every minute for the explanation,  how did I fuck it all so badly? but the answer to that is somewhere beyond me still.  Self realization is so difficult!! and there is that fear that I actually know the answer but somehow can't bring it forth because I can't bear it.  Self destructive self preservation. Involuntary protective delusion.  I don't know. Anything.