Left Turn

Which way do I go?  


I happened across this sign during a glorious morning hike with my neighbor last Friday.  There was an immediate kinship with the figurative message of these bold arrows.  That it would become an image in my blog was a no-brainer.  Telling me I can go this way or that.  Assuring me that I'm not lost.  That backtracking is an option but so is this new direction in which I've yet to explore.  The answer for me is obvious: looking back over the terrain I've managed to traverse, winding trails, steep hills - both up and down - knobby roots and stubby stumps, brush and bush and branch, dense growth punctuated by open rock beds awash in mossy sunlit cover, I'm ready to push forward, look forward, MOVE ever onward.  I'm eager to see what's off to the left and ahead of me.

So here I am.  Standing at that crossroads with this blog smack-dab in the center of the cross hairs.  Unable to discern just where this fits into my earnest desires to further my writing.  Posting photos and pairing them with vignettes from my life provides me with joy and a certain purpose in the doing.  But it, along with Facebook and e-mail and a few highly enjoyable iPhone app games, siphon away minutes and hours which could possibly be useful in creating outlines and characters and chapters for stories and books which are all just itching to be scratched out of my head.  At one point, dropping non-essential activities and chores in my life was the answer to eking out portions of my day for pouring my words onto paper or into the laptop and Mac.  


However,  I did choose a particular life.  I decided that for me, staying at home unless working outside the home was a necessity was the way I needed to go in order to be an effective mother and wife.  I didn't want to try and have it all because I don't truly believe that bandied-about phrase really delivers what it promises.  Somewhere, if we are giving everything our all, SOMEthing will give, some aspect of live, home or health or work or hobby or dream, will suffer and receive less than it deserves.  Thus, writing simmered ever so slightly on the back burner of my life, while I filled my days and weeks and months with  activities pertaining to my domestic self, including titillating tours of duties in booster clubs and fundraisers and potlucks among countless other past-times.  Not to mention that the moment I lightened up on gardening in more recent times, I happened across a certain abandoned satin-eared puppy who requires more time than any hosta or hydrangea I've ever planted.

And often, when I did write, my words targeted a very small and specific audience in the name of family dynamics, especially where my baby brother and younger sister were concerned.  Letters to lawyers and judges and doctors.  Not to mention newspapers.  And when my eldest child struggled through a period of school and social life, that had me zipping off missives to teachers and principals and other parents with obscene frequency.  That all takes time . . . and a great deal of energy.


But that child now works two jobs and has her eye on a future life with her boyfriend of four years.  My son has two years remaining in his high school career before deciding how to approach his college path.  (Actually, he'll have that decided BEFORE the two years expire.)  And everyone is well aware that my middle child now resides in Germany with her Army husband . . . for the next three years.  Hank the Wonder Pup has wondrously tromped right into the middle of his second year of life; I have it on good authority that labs start to settle down in their second or third year.  Though he did chew a tad bit on the corner of our kitchen table a couple of weeks ago (he hadn't nibbled on furniture for a fair stretch of time) he hasn't ingested anything of major value since that unfortunate incident with my first iPhone, Girlfriend GS, back in the spring of this year.  And that old bra he tore up this morning?  Well, it reeked of sweat from my early walk in hot humid morning temps, and it was hanging on a kitchen chair.  What normal curious dog wouldn't be inspired to investigate such a treat as that?!

Anyway, my point is that things are slowing down.  Kids are growing up.  Dogs are settling in.  The husband has his musical hobbies.  And there's a perfectly respectable and sunny bedroom upstairs adjacent to this study with my name awaiting to be written ALL OVER IT!  I have the green light to turn Sarah's old bedroom into my writing room.  Shelves for organizing journals and letters and material I'd like to have at my fingertips.  A door, which this small study does not have, to shut out the world and cocoon me in my own facsimile thereof.  Space for a chair by the windows.  A small section of wall for chalk paint and magnetic paint; large walls for whatever shades of me I wish to roll and brush across their expanse.  Permission to search for a sturdy used executive desk with simple lines, no bulk, just right for this large Mac and my paperwork.  A room in which I can freely explore my ideas and discipline my tired but eager to stretch brain.

There's a place for the blog within this construct.  And that will flesh out as I continue to follow my turn arrow on the path which has led me thus far.  I want you all along for the journey.  And for the choices.


Just keep reading the signs: