Ten Minutes

I've been gone for a long time and needed to get started. I chose this writing prompt: "Take 10 minutes to write a stream of thoughts. Try to write constantly during the 10 minute period and do not edit as you write."

My first thought is how am I going to write for ten minutes without editing? Is correcting my spell checking okay? Because I am so old that I learned how to type in high school and although I had the speed from the beginning, I never had the accuracy and my finger automatically goes for that backspace key. I've already edited once and just resisted the urge to edit again. I haven't written in a long time. I have no idea why I resist it. I have no idea why I seem to always stop right before I get to the finish line with anything. With everything. Now that I've had a big health scare, I know that I have to get a lot of stuff done, including and especially writing. I might have twenty years, I might have six months. It's kind of cool knowing that. A wake-up call that I sorely needed. I'm at an age where although I've lost a lot of friends younger than I am, I am faced with my own mortality and really need to think about it. Holy Jesus, though, will I ever get this house clean? That seems to be like it should be a priority. Because I'm already cleaning up someone else's 40 year mess. That is, stuff that has been stored in boxes and seems to keep multiplying instead of going away. And with working full time and not being 100%, there's not a lot of time and energy to get it packed up and priced and over to the flea market booth.

When I told my son about the diagnosis, he asked if I was going to die. I told him that of course I am, just not today. But we don't like to think about it and most of us don't do anything to get ready for it.

I learned with my little near death experience that there's no getting ready. I couldn't breathe and I wasn't about to fight it. I was tired. I simply said, "Well, let's go!" And then when I sat there, still alive, still breathing, barely, I realized that I was going to be here for a while. So I said, "Well, I guess I'm going to have to do better, then."

Big struggle every single day thinking of things that I need to write and being at work or driving in the car with no way to write them down. I forget them by the time I'm free and able to write. Even worse is that the stress at work is becoming unbearable. It's not the work. I love the work. It's the company and the people and the way things are done that scream at me constantly that I am not in the right place. I can't take the small minds and small lives anymore. It's hard not to be able to talk to anyone about what is really going on. Except to each other and that accomplishes nothing. And then I wonder why I should care. It's not my company. But I need a paycheck. And I've never had faith that I could make a living writing or creating. Needing a paycheck has been in the way for a very long time now.

Sometimes I think that my only hope is to win the lottery. So every once in a while I waste $3.00 on a ticket. And then I wonder why, because the only reason that the Baptists finally let it pass was that the money is supposed to be going to education. Yet education is Oklahoma is severely underfunded. And nobody has asked for accountability.

Oh yes, it's become a job lately not to read something negative into every single little stinking thing. It's a lot of work. I have a constant conversation going on in my head telling myself not to think negative thoughts and things and saying "Shut up, that's not nice,"

I read my daily Notes from the Universe religiously and read the books. Mike Dooley keeps saying to just do things and not worry about the how or the when. But if I can't structure the time to write I'm in pretty big trouble. Yes, I should get rid of the dogs. Yeah, right. I can't even go to a shelter or pound without wanting to take them all home with me. Giving away my dogs would be like giving away my children. I always said that I was going to pay someone to help me clean house when I graduated college. That's worked out really well. I have a $150,000 education and chose a field where I almost make less than I would have if I had stayed in the same job and stuck it out for 25 years.

Okay, is my ten minutes up? Looks like I wrote about the edge of everything that inspires me to write all day long but nothing makes it into black and white. Maybe if I put the request out there like this where it actually is in black and white, the answers will come. At least that's what Mike Dooley and The Universe want me to believe.

Hubba Hubba.