(no subject)

I am already 4 days behind my resolution to write for at least an hour every day. Mostly because I am old and I forgot to do it. Not that I didn't want to do it, or didn't have time to write, but I just plain forgot.

So this is the first time writing in a long, long, long, long, time. Probably at least 12 years as a matter of fact.

I want to finish the story I started back in Taiwan. I know it has potential, and others who have read the first few chapters like the storyline. Why don't I finish it then? Who knows? Am I afraid of being a failure? Even if I never publish the story will be a nice gift to my family, especially Sarah since it is her (fictionalized) story.

Am I afraid of earning a little extra money? Phfft, stupid question?

Am I basically a lazy, bored, depressed, writer? This is most likely the correct answer. To go along with that, I know that once I have done something, running, swimming, educational TV, publishing, I find I have proven to myself it can be done, and then don't do it again.

The problem with this story is that even after 20 some years, it is still pounding in my brain wanting to get out. I just don't know where to go with it from where it is now. I know where I want it to go, I just don't know. how I can get it there and keep it within the accepted lengths for a young people's book. I am struggling. I need to talk to a real published author.

Ah, that may be another holdback. I don't feel I am really published. All of my work has been published outside the US. Taiwan, exclusively, to be truthful. None of it was my idea, in my heart I believe I was chosen to co-author mainly because I am a native English speaker, to work with a non-native speaker.

Actually, that is how I feel about just about everything someone considers an accomplishment of mine. I know I could have/should have been a better parent. I feel guilty (still) about my daughter's health and its causes. Back then, smoking and drinking while pregnant were not so frowned upon. And I did it from day one. She was born under average weight, only a little, and from about the age of 12, she has had medical and mental difficulties that I hold myself accountable for. Catholic guilt in its purest form?

I could have been a better teacher. I know that. I was well-liked, I had a student who still contacts me. He is married with children of his own. In Kuwait, I won an award for teaching. I never bothered to get the thing translated, so I don't know exactly what the award is for, but I was told it was for teaching. I tried to pitch it when Sarah and I moved, but Kelly told me to keep it and show it proudly. I haven't. I feel like a charlatan.

Crap, I have only been writing for 15 minutes. I am going to stop. I swear I will write more tomorrow. And longer. I have made a resolution. I will keep it. It is the only resolution this year. Unless you count the promise I made to Nancy to clean out my closet by the end of February of this year. 579

(no subject)

Well, now, I just learned something. My computer is sitting one degree off level. For the longest time, I have felt something not quite right with the monitor. Now I know.

I have always been sensitive to my surroundings. When we first saw this apartment, I could tell there was a change in the floor between the living room and the hallway. I lost my balance going from the LR to the bedrooms. There is a definite dip as if part of the buildinng has settled' It has. After living here for five years, I am used to the dip, but every once in a while, it trips me up.

I get momentary dizziness when I see a building that is not set square on the property. Some homes out in the country are built to catch the morning and evening sun. They shake up my world.

When Mother and Sarah moved to the Hawthorne house, I couldn't find my way out of the neighborhood for weeks because we came in from a direction I wasn't expecting. I knew that neighborhood, but my arrival was not from the direction I expected. I got turned around.

Going into a house or any building that does not meet my expected blueprint can make me physically ill. I get sick to my stomach when I walk through the doorway into a room that, in my mind, shouldn't be there. Weird, I know.

But enough about me.

Or more, maybe.

The things I hear in the news are alarming. Trump, in my mind, is a crazy, unreliable, president who is leading the US and perhaps the rest of the world into total annihilation with his antics towards Iran. The mere thought of his being willing to destroy historical sites that are millennia old saddens me. Sites like the Tomb of Daniel, and the Gardens in Iran that are thought to be the last Gardens of Eden on earth, and others I cannot remember makes me sad to my soul. These sites have survived all this time for a reason. Should Trump bomb all 52 as he has promised to do, the world will be a much uglier place.

If he bombs those sites in Iran, which places will the Iranians bomb in retaliation? The loss of lives. The loss of history. I am fearful.

This has taken quite a bit of time to spit out into words. My 15 minutes are up, and I no longer want to write. I have put myself in a funk. 422