I guess I have a Big Audacious Goal to post for 365 days straight. So posting daily is a thing, even when I’m tired and have nothing to post about. Even if I’m on the road and it’s raining out and I’d rather sleep a while longer. It’s good for me while I drag my feet on writing a new novel. It is purpose.
There are probably more than three books that have had an impact on me, but the prompt tells me to pick only three, so I will. These books are very different from each other (and I’m cheating on one of them).
The first book, which I read in eighth grade, was The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper. This book, the second in a series of five, is a fantasy novel set in contemporary Britain in the 70s. It’s definitely juvenile fantasy, of which there was not much during that time period. The depth of the fantasy totally captured me, with its Arthurian and fae undertones set at Christmastime. I totally escaped through that book. I read the series again last Winter, and it read just as well to a 60-year-old adult.
The second book, which I read probably 20 years ago, was The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Although I worry this book is considered New Age pap marketed to those of us who grooved on Carlos Castaneda, those four agreements pack a psychological punch. The agreements are: “Be impeccable with your word”, “Do not take anything personally”, “Do not make assumptions”, and “Always do your best” (Wikipedia, 2025). These could fit comfortably into cognitive journaling (and do make for good contradictions to cognitive distortions). I live by these now, and they offer me a different way of living.
The third book fits the prompt, even though it’s one that I wrote, because it impacted my life. That was the first book I wrote, The Kringle Conspiracy. That book was impactful because I didn’t think I could write a book until I wrote it, and I didn’t think I could publish a book until I published it. I came up with the story when I was in high school, and published it in my fifties.
There are my three books. I would highly recommend all of them.
I do not have some of the typical fears — flying, public speaking, spiders. I have a fear of heights, but I consider that perfectly reasonable, like fearing something that’s about to tear your head off. The big fear that I harbored for many years was a fear of driving a car.
Cars are big and you can kill people with them. That was what was on my mind when I was sixteen and in driver’s ed. When I had to get behind the wheel of the car, I was a disaster. I could barely accelerate, oversteered the car, and hit the brakes too hard. Worse, I couldn’t figure out in what order I was supposed to do things, so I failed driver’s ed by stopping the car in the middle of the railroad tracks to check for trains. So I didn’t only fear being behind the wheel, I had a reason to. After a second time going through driver’s ed, I took my driver’s license test and barely passed. And then I never drove.
When I was 29, I got hit by a car, which didn’t help the fear any. All it did was break my leg, but it pretty much pulverized an inch of bone near the ankle. I now have a metal bar in that leg from knee to ankle.
A few years later, I lived in an area with a vibrant arts scene, except that the scene was spread over several towns. So one had to be able to drive to Franklin and West Kortright and maybe even Albany. I had just broken up with my husband, and the social engagement sounded nice to me. So I decided I needed to learn how to drive.
I took driver’s ed again, this time with a driver’s ed teacher who figured out the problem and helped me get over it. He made me check with him out loud anything I was about to do while driving. I talked myself through it. Then when I didn’t need to say it aloud anymore, I took my driver’s test and passed.
I got myself a car, and I was not a good driver at first. I got into a couple fender-benders, one with a rental car I had gotten while my car was in the shop. Some of the fender-benders weren’t my fault. I was suspended for 60 days for one of the accidents that wasn’t my fault. But I kept on driving.
I am still scared of driving sometimes. I am scared of driving in cities, especially with complicated splits in them. I am scared on crowded interstates. I keep seeing accidents in my head and they keep me from driving solo a lot of times. I don’t like it, but at least I can drive locally without fear.
I’m a pretty self-contained person. I really don’t feel the need to talk to anyone, except my friend and mentor Les, who died some years ago at age 95.
I talked to him the other day in a dream. I ran into him on a stair landing and gave him a hug. He told me he was in a hurry because he needed to meet his other family, and we parted ways. That was the most real dream I’ve ever had; maybe I really did talk to him.
If I were to talk to him again, I would tell him how my life has changed since my bipolar diagnosis, how I didn’t feel like crying for hours anymore, how my crushes didn’t control me. I would tell him I had more trouble feeling in touch with the spiritual world and how that worried me. I would tell him how my ordinary day reflected quiet joy, and how a lot of that had to do with my husband. He would know I was in a good place.
I would thank him again for all the times he listened to me, above and beyond the line of duty. How I don’t think I would have gotten through life without that. And I would apologize for all those times, because if I had been in my right mind I wouldn’t have needed so much support.
We talked about all this before, a few years before he died, so it’s not unfinished business between us. But I would talk to him again about it, because I am so bewildered about what it means to be become sane after fifty years of crying jags. Who was I and who am I now? He might have known better than I did.
I achieved two items in my bucket list yesterday, both dealing with dinner. The first is that I got to eat a (reasonably priced and portioned) Black and Blue (Pittsburgh) steak, and the second is that I got to sit at a Chef’s table (in view of the kitchen).
My bucket list is ever-evolving. If I see something I want to do that’s not an everyday thing, I put it on the bucket list. Sometimes I put it on the list immediately before doing it. I think ‘helicopter ride’ was put on that list just as I climbed into the helicopter.
Sometimes things fall off the bucket list. Skydiving is definitely off the list, as I have become somewhat acrophobic in my old age. Walking the Illinois-Michigan Canal trail is prohibited because of my knees and my endurance these days.
I’ve got a new one I hope my husband will indulge me on one of these days. I want to go on that big Ferris wheel in Kansas City. Despite my acrophobia.
The book is going slowly; I’m writing an average of 1000 words a day, rather than my typical 2000. It’s a stubborn book; it doesn’t know if it wants to be written. I’m writing it mainly because my husband suggested I should when I told him I had no more books to write.
Writing is no longer the fever it was when I started writing. I have gone through all the obsessions, all the stories that clamored to be written. Writing now is not exactly a trudge, but it’s no longer the force it was when I started. I suspect this is natural, a consequence of time or age. Or of the change in medication I went through about a year ago, and then it’s a matter of finding my equilibrium again.
I miss the writing obsession. It gave me a sense of purpose, a feeling that I labored for something bigger than myself. Maybe it was delusional; maybe it’s a good thing to lose the fever. I miss it, however.
I competed in the Voice of Democracy contest held by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary, which was held in the high schools. I had to write an essay about the topic “What Does Freedom Mean to Me”. I was born in a rather conservative town to rather liberal parents, and I turned out more liberal than they did.
When I got the assignment to write the essay, I included a popular topic of the day, Selective Service Registration. Or more to the point, protesting Selective Service Registration. At about this time, all males turning 18 were required to sign up for Selective Service, from which they would be drafted for military service if the country ever had a draft. Some males were not signing up, and of course the country was enraged. I, as a child during the Vietnam War era, thought I would stand up for their right to protest. In an essay to the VFW. I finally settled on “Freedom is the right to stand up for what one believes in, even if it’s not popular, and accept the consequences.”
When I read the essay to my mother in the kitchen, she said, “Good luck with the ladies at the VFW.”
And then I won the local contest. “They must not have read it,” my mother deadpanned.
I had to compete at the district level, which consisted of reading the essay on radio. I got to read my protest piece over the airwaves by invitation of the women of the VFW. My mother was still laughing. We figured at that level, I would lose to the unctuous young man who compared the country to a family and didn’t even mention freedom, and we were right. But that was okay with me; I made my point on the air and that was enough.
When I was in graduate school, I got hit by a car. I was a pedestrian crossing a street with a friend, and the car merged into traffic — or, rather, merged into me. I had stepped forward when I saw her coming toward me, and I stepped back, but not in time. I rolled over the hood of the car and ended up in a sitting position on the pavement.
“Is your hip okay?” my friend screeched.
“My hip is fine. My leg is broken.” I exuded an eerie sense of calm.
“How do you know?”
“Because when I lift my leg, my foot feels like it’s not going anywhere.”
The woman who hit me had a cell phone (an amazing thing in 1991) and called the ambulance. When they arrived, they bundled me onto a stretcher. “Which hospital do you want to go to?”
“Well, let’s see. Which one does my insurance take?”
“She’s paying for your hospital bills.”
“Ok. Which one has the better cafeteria food?”
“You’re going to Carle. It’s the trauma hospital.”
“Ok.”
I didn’t feel much pain as they loaded me into the ambulance. I felt the bumps. I was pretty sure the only place I was hurt was the leg.
By the time I got out of head-to-toe x-rays, five of my friends were there to see me. They warned me that my parents were on their way from about two hours’ north. I was hurting, and finally a nurse gave me morphine. (I’ve been told that I’m pretty funny on morphine.)
All I had was a broken leg, but about an inch of bone was shattered. I understood they were going to take me to my room and then wait for surgery. As I was being pushed through the ward by a burly red-headed nurse, he grabbed the phone, held it out for me, and said, “You know who this is.” I got an earful from my mother, who was absolutely sure I got hit by the car to stress her out. Then he wheeled me past my room (“there’s your room”) and then to the operating room.
Over the next couple of days, I had many visitors. My friends took it upon themselves to run interference with my mom, who thought they were all very nice people. I was on a morphine drip and utterly hilarious.
I spent the next 8 weeks on mostly bedrest, and I didn’t know why they wouldn’t let me go back to my regular activities until I fell a couple times the first week. Then I spent 6 months on crutches, another surgery to put a bone graft and metal bar in, and three months using a cane. I limped for a good few years; now, I have bad arthritis in my knee from the long-ago injury.
It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse. It was probably worse than I thought it was, to be honest. But I survived and made my way through grad school on crutches. And now, other than having to be pat down every time I’m in an airport, I’m doing fine.
I have promised myself I will write 365 days in my blog without a break. So far I’m at 277 days. Right now, I’m at the point where I wonder why I’m doing this. Some days, I have no ideas and the prompts aren’t to my liking. Today is one of those days.
I’m all about Big Audacious Goals. But writing daily for a year is not a Big Audacious Goal. A BAG is more like writing a novel or getting it published, and even that was only true for the first time I’d done it. It’s a goal; I’m sticking with it.
I need a Big Audacious Goal soon. I’ve been through writing a book, getting it published, doing a book fair (locally), publishing the book that was my problem child for a while … I can’t think of anything that represents a new challenge in the way that determines a BAG. The current book is a challenge, but not in the barrier-crossing BAG way.
So I’ll have to stick with my small goal for now, and hopefully get to 365 days of blogging. And then take a break, of course.
I’ve been making progress with the book. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.
If I haven’t mentioned, I am working on a book called Hiding in Plain Sight, which is an origin story of Hearts are Mountains, the Archetype commune in Whose Hearts are Mountains. The origin story is not a small thing, because Archetypes are supposed to be solitary beings, so how do they get into a commune together?
The solitary tendency (an inborn taboo) is breaking down among the Earthbound Archetypes, who are exiled from InterSpace by their unsanctioned birth. But Archetypes in gathering are dangerous, in part because they could draw attention to themselves. As practically immortal beings who are stronger than humans, Archetypes’ discovery could end in a war against them. The Council also fears the commune’s numbers because they could go up against the Council of the Oldest. The book is building to a showdown between the commune and the Council of the Oldest.
But first, the main character, anthropologist and Archetype Dr. MariJo Ettner, has been discovered by a human, her research assistant, Alice Johnson. She is in the position of answering Alice’s questions while impressing upon her that she should not tell a soul about Archetypes’ existence. This works great until Alice wants a child by Mari’s adopted son, William. A half-human offspring, born fully adult, may break the secret.
The book is about hiding a culture, a culture that would shake Earth’s foundations were it discovered. And the culture itself, made up of so many ingrained taboos it hardly exists. It’s writing slowly, as I’m largely pantsing it. Wish me luck.
