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gabriel
Love and ferrets and pretending to be a writer.

2004-01-04 7:56 AM
30 years

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Note: When I have NT in the title of an entry, that means that it is Not True. I like making stuff up, and why not make it up on here? It is my journal, and I'll do whatever I darned well please with it. Also, typoes will be included from now on, free of charge. I have written that before, but then I go back and clean stuff up anyway. I am such a proud creature.

The ferrets are: fresh from baths, rolling and chasing to dry off.

Weather: cold with a new light dusting of snow on top of the old snow

Reading: Ferrets for Dummies

Listening to in the car: Probable Future

***
So I get this email from this boy (presumably now a man) I went to high school with; he got my email address from our mutual friend. He was just heading out the door on a two week trip, so I don't need to answer right away, which is a very good thing because he asked, "What have you been doing for the past 30 years?"

The obvious answer to that question is, "Damned if I know." This would probably be the most accurate answer, too, but I feel like I should go into slightly more detail.

He asks whether I ever play the violin any more, and the answer to that one is, of course, "No, but I never played worth a flip anyway." No great loss.

For over thirty years, from when I was eleven until I was in my forties, I read part of the Bible every day. I'm not doing that any more. Quit cold turkey a few months after I quit going to church. That due to realizing that the church I had been in for six years (only the last in a string of many) was a cult, and because of burnout from doing way too much for the church (the old 80/20 rule, where 20% of the people do 80% of the work) though any one of the things I did (with the exception of teaching Sunday school) was fun. I especially enjoyed playing keyboard with the worship team and doing various goofy roles on the drama team, mostly improv. I am not singing any more, either, which is a thing I love doing with other people. I went to a few rehearsals for a Sweet Adelines group (women's barbershop) and really liked it, but got sidetracked from that when I was just starting out when my daughter was in a small car accident right before we were going to go to a rehearsal.

Over the past 30 years I managed to bear three children, and rear (partially) six, and marry four different men. I wrote eleven (was it eleven?) novels and several short stories and novellas and got some of my stuff published.

It seems like out of 30 years, or any time period, the thing most in a person's mind is whatever's most recent, until, of course, asked what they have been doing for the past 30 years. Me falling in love, at last, at age 45, and getting my illness diagnosed and successfully treated and losing most of my hearing and finally deciding that, yes, I do need to work a steady job, and my present obsession with ferrets seems more important than all the years of religious obsession and bad marriages and miserable self-occupation. I am still very self-centered; I don't think anything's going to change that.

Am I totally content now? No, because contentment would stop as soon as I fulfilled all my dreams, as soon as there was nothing left to dream or do. I am happy in love now, which has always been the main thing I wished for all my life. I have a steady job, which fails to content me because it's not real meaningful work and it means I have to work, which takes a huge chunk out of every day. Yet when I have time off I am not happy because I just screw around. I am rarely satisfied that I have spent a day well. Time goes by so quickly now, and my regrets loom larger in my mind than my successes.

So I guess that what I've been doing the past 30 years is the same as what I was doing in high school: I have been doing whatever comes to hand, and never with any true attempt at excellence. Things have come too easily to me, and I have allowed it. I could decide now to make my life different, but it would be too hard to choose one thing to focus on, so I know that I won't. I'll just go on taking what comes, and doing whatever. Is that sad? Maybe, but how things are lately is so incredibly much better than what I had before that I am going to just relax and enjoy it.

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:: JOURNAL HOME :: SUBSCRIBE TO THIS JOURNAL :: Click on Kathy Gabriel and read my stories :: 2-in-1 Romance by me (but the back cover's misspelled!. grrrrr.) :: November is National Novel Writing Month! :: The Feel Good Manual - happiness can be learned :: Mugs with the wet ferret :: Fractured Frugal Frieds - the best frugality site around :: The ferrets, and other pics by a talented local (very local) photographer :: Kettins_Bob's journal :: Clarion SF & F writing workshop :: Genevieve's journal (Clarion classmate) :: Phil's website (Clarion classmate) :: Nnedi Okorafor's blog (Clarion classmate) :: Online magnetic poetry :: Dave's interactive html tutorial :: Make a snowflake here - WARNING: Addictive! ::