What I Am (Part 3)

What I am (part 3)

Not a nice person sometimes. (And that is okay, too.)

Not feeling sorry for myself. (Just telling it like it is.)

Not full of  pretenses.  (What you see is what you get.)

Not  planning to MLGA/make Linda great again. (I’ve “been around the block” a few times in my 70 years. Maybe even been a little great a few times.)

Finally fed up with this “what I am NOT” stuff. 

That is what I am❣️

What I Am (Part 2)

What I am (part 2)

Not a good sleeper. (As I have gotten old/older, I can not quite just crash when I am tired. A glass of milk sometimes helps me out in the middle of the night.)

Not a good listener. (My mind is sometimes focused on what I will say next as a response, and I miss the other person’s message.)

Not a lover of extremely hot weather. (How I ever ended up way down here is still a mystery to me. I hate to sweat. I hate to get sunburnt. I hate having showers several times a day. I hate the heat.)

Not a finisher. (I have loads of WIP that I started but never got back to finishing. But no regrets. I just lost interest.)

Not an idle person. (My Dutch mother-in-law said that my hands were never idle, and her husband said that washing clothes was my hobby. Being retired the last ten years has been a challenge. I am always looking for a new hobby.)

Not a good friend. (My dad always said to make friends and influence people. Actually, I would rather not do either.)

Not a reader of books. (Gosh that is hard to admit, since I taught English and reading for 37 years. Ten years ago I stopped reading books, but I still plod my way through at least a couple each year. 😴)

Not a great writer. ( I never even knew how to write an essay until I began teaching my students how to write. Perhaps I learned from them instead of them from me.)

Not a great ender. (I am sure there will be a part three of this.)

What I Am

What I am:

Not a great cook. (I hate to prepare food and cook meals. But I will bake when the weather gets cooler.)

Not a great seamstress. (I often do not visualize the outcome and make huge mistakes that I must rip out or abandon.)

Not a great housekeeper. (I clean only when something is gross to me or when I know that we will have visitors.)

Not a great car driver. (I don’t trust anyone else’s driving, but I really don’t like to drive either. I broke my back in a vehicle accident 51 years ago. I was not the driver.)

Not a smoker. (I grew up with my father dirtying all of the ashtrays in our house and flicking cigarette ashes out his car window into the backseat window of our family car. I have never even taken a puff.)

Not a drinker. (Back 40 odd years ago I had a steady boyfriend who drank a lot of alcohol and often crashed in a drunken state onto my sofa. As he was also a smoker, kissing him was like licking an ashtray and also a highball glass. I think that I even threw up on him one time because of that.)

Not an animal lover. (Before our two doggies found us, I had never touched a dog, much less given one a good scrubbing. I am good at the scrubbing part, and they know it. )

Not a finisher. (There will be more of these reveals another time. 😉)

What the Devil?

I usually write my blogpost when I am in a good mood or when I just want to get something off my chest. 

I thought that I was in a good mood this morning. Then I opened my iPad. 

Guess I’ll be putting that “red devil” down for a while. 

I haven’t been blogging much lately, but for my own sake that will change. 

But first I have to find a pad of paper and my pen. ☹️

Linda

To Be Committed

To be committed has several different meanings. The first one that comes to my mind is be committed to prison. Then there is to be committed to an insane asylum or the like.

But on a Saturday in May as I watched Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding first alone and then later with my husband of 38 years in two weeks, I thought of the commitment that two people who love each other make when they literally “tie the knot.” Just as if you jump out of an airplane to skydive, you had better pull the parachute cord and enjoy the dive, since there is no going back. You are committed.

That cord or rope of commitment or obligation may seem to be strangling or restricting your freedom or happiness, but you agreed to be faithful to that exclusiveness. And as in most wedding situations, you made that commitment in the presence of witnesses and for many in the presence of God.

June is slipping away. That month has always been associated with weddings and June brides. I was a June bride in 1980 and made a commitment. 

I am keeping it. 

Know Your Audience

Having never professed to being a great writer, I still try to consider who will possibly read my written works. In other words, I try to anticipate my audience.

In the last year, I have done some significant writing (My Story) and some insignificant writing (my Wetcreek Instagram). The story I published on this Wetcreek Blog earlier this year had no real audience intended. I just wanted to “open my cupboard” and let my story be known to the World Wide Web. Since then I have specifically shared those writings with others who have a connection to the Methodist Home Hospital in New Orleans. That sharing opened up some good discussions, especially among the other birth mothers. So I guess that I found a good audience.

If someone read my story about surrendering a daughter for adoption almost 48 years ago and gleaned anything from my experience, then more power to them. If sharing it inspired someone to share their own story, search for their birth parents, or search for the child they too surrendered, then that is an added bonus.

Lately I have been considering writing a book. At the moment, I really can’t remember much more than what I have already written. I do not want to “make anything up” to just fill in pages. My writing must be true as well as believable. 

Actually I am pretty sick of so-called authors who write “this is BASED on true facts and events and people.” While plowing through their work, I find myself questioning what is true and what is fiction. I do not want to be that kind of writer. I want my reading audience to believe that what I write is true. 

I want an audience who will conclude that what I tell in my writing “is what it is.” Nothing more. Nothing less.

I Have Been Away

I sort of abandoned my Wetcreek Blog, but I wanted to come back to share a video. This could have been my story.  I am still dealing with this after 48 years.

Plus, I am also still dealing with a Pacemaker implantation three weeks ago while on one of our regular trips to The Netherlands. More on that experience when I get back home to southwest Louisiana.

Growing older isn’t easy.
Linda