For the record, no I haven’t lost my mind. No, I didn’t make a mistake. Yes, I meant to ask that question, and yes I really want an answer. Do you know when it happened? Was it all of a sudden or gradually?
For me, I’d say it happened gradually over time. One day, I looked around and realized I wasn’t living, and as far as I know, the opposite of life is death. Now, of course, I don’t mean death in the physical sense but more in the mental sense. The fun died. The excitement died. Your life, like mine, felt like it was on constant rewind. Today felt the same as yesterday.
I wake up, go to work, come home, cook, help with homework, go to bed and wake up again and do it all over. Sounds exciting right? Well, it wasn’t, but it was routine, and it was comfortable because I knew exactly, or at least had a close idea, of what the next day would bring. Some things, of course, I couldn’t predict, but what I could control remained the same.
Do you know when I realized I’d died mentally? When I started writing my novel Dirty Little Secrets. This novel was about a schoolteacher, which I was then, but when I was planning the novel, the thought came that she had to have something going on in her life. Her life COULD NOT be like mine because, let’s face it, who wants to read about me teaching, cooking, and sleeping. I know I wouldn’t want to read that. However, just to be clear, I also don’t wish for the life of Holly James either, the main character in my book. She had more drama than this little country girl could handle LOL!
So, plotting the book showed me that my comfortable life was quite boring, but that wasn’t all. Writing that book gave me a new feeling. I was stepping into unfamiliar territory, and it was scary, yet very exciting. My mind was experiencing something new and different, and though there was some push back and hesitation in the beginning, that changed the more I wrote. Before I knew it, I’d finished the book and found myself agreeing to do book signings and speaking at different events. I went from no calendar at all to a full calendar of events for ME, not for my husband and not things I needed to do with the children, but something I enjoyed.
Standing in front of a crowd of people was something else that was new for me. Up until then, my audience consisted of little people all under the age of 10. In their eyes I was smart, sometimes funny, most of the times mean, but they loved me anyway :). They were my comfort, but they weren’t the people I was talking to about Dirty Little Secrets. No, these were grown people…my peers. People who could judge me and talk about me if I messed up. I was sooooo scared, but again soooooo excited.
I guess what I’m trying to say in this very long blog is that it’s time that you evaluate your life, and if you’re on constant rewind, then do something different. Something scary. Something exciting. Something that reminds you that you’re not dead. You’re very much ALIVE, so start LIVING!
Writing and Wisdom 