Plan with a Man

It's funny what different people's ideas of how your life should be shape up. Whenever my dad talks about that vague time in the future when my life will be better he mentions "some great guy." My mother focuses on whatever teaching job I'll have, and hasn't quite accepted my need to move to Chicago (then again, nor has the rest of the family). I think about Chicago, of course, but I also think about writing.

I've been writing fiction since I was a child. I wrote my first story at age 8 on notebook paper, illustrating and collating it for public view. I brought it along with me to school, showing it to all my friends. I even clasped it to my chest at recess- dropping it once in the wind on a moist fall day. It still bears mud spots.

I wrote new stories regularly. My file cabinet is brimming with folders labelled by grade and stuffed with drafts of tales full of horror, unrequited love, and unrecognized genius meant to mirror the inner turmoil of my true self. As I got older, I wrote poetry, plays, and even an unfinished screenplay or two.

Being a writer was one of my early career aspirations, that is after queen of the world and nurse. I actually started out in that direction. I've gotten paid for some freelance articles, some blather and treacle about kids who won math awards as such. I even won a national semifinalist spot in a playwriting contest in high school. But it's been a long time since I've been in contact with that muse.

I am fairly out of practice. My heart has not been in the many book reviews and research papers I have been writing as part of my graduate studies for the last many years, and the creative outlet I had in music and writing dried up after high school. I would like to begin writing again. I have had a few ideas for fiction percolating in my thoughts for a couple of months, and I am anxious to start a new, regular routine that includes writing for myself.

In my ideal version of my life, that is, without winning the lottery, I will teach part time either at high school or community college, and spend the rest of my time writing fiction and participating in some community or small time professional theatre after teaching full time and writing for a few years in order to get my footing. It's not as if I don't want a man in my life. Heaven knows a little snuggling and companionship would be nice. However, men do not a life make. I am possibly more excited about getting another dog when I get a new apartment than I am about finding a new husband/partner.

So with this being the last day I will work at the video rental place and thus about a 60 hour week, I will now make it part of my routine to write a little bit for myself each day. It's time to start using that muscle again in order to get it ready for that someday. It may not be a plan with a man, like my father often suggests, but it is my plan.