Where Am I Going?

I hope I can continue to blog semi-regularly since I have two jobs, one of which can be rather stressful; both of which I find rather unchallenging according to my intellect. Also, I am torn about blogging because here I really cannot sit down and craft my writing the way I would in a personal journal.

The temptation of blogging is not to really tailor your writing meticulously because there is always the underlying desire to get what you write out immediately if only to see it in sitting online. Also looking at the statistics of where your readers are coming from only adds to the ego, but leaves those of us who have dreamed of and have been encouraged over the years to take up the writing life professionally feeling a little empty as if we wasting valuable time. I have also noticed that I do a very poor job of editing when I write online, much worse then when I keep a journal or a diary.

I was encouraged when I was a 24 year graduate student by the then editor of a local newspaper to write after he printed a column I wrote about teenage pregnancy in his paper. That editor was Philip Lee Williams, and you can read his biography on Wikipedia right here. He later became a published novelist, and at his first book signing, I was there where I met his agent who showed an interest in me and who asked me if I might have something written that she might look at. Those days seem like eons ago. I have gone through so much and experienced so much which a blog is painfully too small and restrictive to contain. My life has been rather extraordinary for its' ups and down and degree of adventure when I come to think of it, though everyday I feel I still have not done enough despite choosing years ago to not live an average life. I stepped out of the box as an African American woman and developed my own style and uniqueness, and I feel I am so much the better for it.

So where am I now? I am in a place (not really the physical location) that is too small for me, and where I am wasting a little too much time just "piddling" away. I need to be refreshing my knowledge of Spanish which is an important language to have here, and I need to be working on learning how to play that guitar I bought two Christmas' ago. I feel empty sometimes because I need to get back to just old fashioned journal writing far from the maddening crowd of the internet. I will continue to write here though, but entries may come down to only 2 or 3 times a week at most because of my jobs and also because I need to focus on what I expressed above.

Sometimes I think that if Phil Williams remembers me, he is wondering, "Where is her book?" Life is short, and I had better get on the two I have started. Yes, I have started two, and it pains me that I have got them here lying around like neglected children.

Tomorrow will be an event. I have to work tomorrow morning for 5 hours, but after I get off, I will go to the home of one of our neighbors who sold us the land on on which our home was built back in 1966 when I was only 4 years old. Our Miss Lizzie Swanson will be 100 years old tomorrow. The neighborhood is giving her a centennial celebration. Miss Lizzie, as everyone calls her, is a widow whose husband Jack committed suicide during my first year in college when he discovered that he had cancer. He just blew his brains out in their yard one day. Miss Lizzie never had any children and most of her family members have now passed away, so she has a number of people she views as her adopted children, some of whom are my parents. I knew she was nearing the 100 mark, but it was not until a few minutes ago when I asked mom did I learn about her landmark age. It seems that Miss Lizzie just keeps going and going like the Energizer Bunny.

Where as with most things, I guess the same applies to blogs: quality is more important than quantity. Of course, I do subscribe to the belief that if you have a blog, don't go for months on end not writing in it and permit it to die if you can at all help it. Write, by all means, as regularly as possible.

I will end here pointing to a blog with lovely photos which speaks volumes on the Romantic, beauty, exoticism, eroticism, mysticism, just the plain cute, the gritty, the edgy, you name it if you are a Romantic and a connoisseur of beauty like I am. This is an eclectic mix, and I also adore the eclectic along with the Romantic. While searching for blogs that fit my perception of the some of the best of what the blogosphere has to offer on the arts, history, the personal, Romance, etc., I found Images That Speak to Me that can be seen here. These images are a real treat:)