Is writing, right?

I mull the question over in my head for the thousandth time today. Is this what I was really born to do.

I had just gotten home from a stint of two hours with my ailing mother, followed by three hours with my daughter and my two adorable grandchildren, who had visited afterward. Now alone, after my family of five had retired upstairs I sat for the thousandth time staring at my tablet at a various blog post from other writers that made it into freelance writing and wondered yet again should i. should I really. I had been trying for the most parts of my fifty years to write, to get published, anything.

 Many times too much to mention I had given up and gotten myself manual jobs, in which I had toiled relentlessly to help my husband provide bread for our children. Some of these include kitchen assistant, laborer on a friend's construction site, painting houses to name a few.

Over the years I had put pen to paper and drafted as much as four completed books and eight outlines. But getting published in my country was difficult unless you try self-publishing and self-distributing yourself. And this I did not want. I wanted to start big. See my name on a beautifully crafted cover, New York Times, best selling author scrolled across the top. Great plans, well at least I thought so. But It was not happening. At least for me.

There was a time though a couple years ago when I had gotten really serious about it. The children were grown the last of five having completed his high school education, and I was ready to make a serious go at it. I even invested in a laptop that I purchased online from Amazon, and I was set. 

Dusting off my old handwritten manuscripts, I had settled in, to type at the speed of the roadrunner. This I did, keeping a close eye at the twitter manuscript query contest and practicing on my off time to shine my ability at writing query letters and pitches. I read everything I could find focusing all my attention and spare time on the task at hand. I read every post I could find about blogging before I could try my hand at one post. Until one night someone broke int my home and stole my computer, manuscripts included.

Wow, major setback, not to mention heartbreak, the manuscript was one thing, but I had grown to love this new laptop, limited edition, mind you. All I was left with were the handwritten now scribbled over version of my newly revised life work. Shaken I had placed then back into their holding place to accumulate and new set of dust.

Afterward, I had thrown my self into jigsaws puzzles and found great joy in it, needless to say, I never completed that either. The words kept coming back for me. With my hand on the pieces of the puzzle, words bombarded me on all sides. I saw life events in rhythms and rhymes. Every moving thing a story in itself.

Why would God, give me a gift that I could not benefit from I wondered. My friends were fashioning hair at two hundred dollars a fix. Another sewed dresses for entire churches at one time. One had a tire shop she ran from the living room of her house. Making money they were, living the best life. While I was forced to watch them live, Peter Pan and his friends on another escapade in my mind.  What good was my gift? 

Of course, people love to hear me speak and I was always asked to represent the families at funerals and other speaking events. But when all was said and done the bills remain unpaid. And my chin was still dragging on the floor.

But the writing kept calling, the words the expressions, life events flashing across my radar in colors and rhythms, moods and moments, what am I to do under such strong temptations, but carry a pen and notebook with me everywhere I go. Unable to resist and continually asked by my children to stop staring at passersby. The writer in me pressed on, I couldn’t help but notice, the slumped shoulders, the weary eyes, the dragging footsteps all in all a story to be told. How did the spark of youth abandon the eyes of the fortyish-year-old gentleman, why does the doting husband now walk behind the wife that we one thought shared intwined hips with him? There is a story there. Something, begging to be written, curious eyes waiting to read.

But am I the one, I ask myself again, is this a million times now. Those writers sound so great, so different, my pitches had never landed any likes on twitter, who is to say that anyone would ever like them at all. Maybe they were just for me, to get the mad jumble of words on paper so that they don’t slip out of my mouth when I open it. Maybe.

Some of the writers I follow said, just try, get out there,  put yourself out there.

Fifty and tired of trying, I sit down to write, maybe I could try to revise a book again, or just start with a blog. The technology of the new HP computer was a lot to adjust to. Do I really need all these complicated things could anyone manufacture a laptop specifically for me so I could just write and press save and send. 

Anyway enough with the procrastinating.

Hello, world.

Here I am.