Friday, July 30, 2010

Hangin' Out the Dirty Panties

Most people, when they remember a dream they had when they were young, don’t go startin’ a blog and hangin’ their dirty (or even clean) laundry out there for the world to see. So you may be askin’ just why the heck I am postin’ (is this gettin’ annoyin’ yet?) all my stuff for anyone who traipses by to read. My answer: who the heck knows? Seriously, its part easy file storage (never have to lose a good piece, which yes, has happened before, too many times). Its part because its 2010 and ain’t that what we’re supposed to do – hang all our bidness out there for all to see (but PLEASE wear [clean] panties that cover your lady bits, ladies).

Really, maybe its because I think I should have started doing this sooner. When I read the stuff I wrote when I was 24 (which I will soon paste up for all to see, scrutinize, insult or maybe and definitely laugh at), I wish I could get that voice back. She was hilarious. She couldn’t be nice to her boyfriend (poor guy!), hold one job for long or pay off her credit cards, but that girl had something.

Point is, I don’t want to look back in another 5 years and wish I could get the voice of my 29 year old self back, and I sure don’t want to look back in another 5 years and wonder if my 29 year old self even had a voice because I can’t find anything she wrote down. So I’ll add it to this blog, which will be picked up by Google cache to be preserved for posterity, and then may not matter, or then, may stand in the way of a political future if I air too much dirty stuff. Shoot, why am I doing this again?

(Writing this did not help me answer for myself, “Why”. Oh well. On to the weekend!)

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Girl On the Road

Men don’t forget who they really are. A woman, she forgets.

She forgets the “girl on the road” …that sweet, idealistic young lady with grand dreams and even grander plans.

A man, on the other hand, is still searching for himself and chasing what he wants long after some woman has told him to grow up, get serious and buckle down already. Long after she has forgotten who she wanted to become and what she wanted to do, and given up her own chase.

In PS I Love You (DARE you to try to watch it without crying), her husband writes in one of his last letters that “I’m not worried about you forgetting me luv. It’s that [young, idealistic, dreamy] girl on the road you have forgotten.” So true. As women, we don’t call it forgetting. We don’t realize we’ve forgotten a thing.

We call it growing up or moving on. We forget that we once wanted to chase corner offices, safaris to Africa to save the animals, careers at a big 4 accounting, law, engineering, etc. firm, painting, fashion design, interior design, photography….or writing. Instead, we say that our dreams changed when we met the man of our dreams, or when we ended up in a good career that buys us good shoes, or both. We say our kids, husbands, work, homes, friends, Bible studies, churches, book clubs, gardens, pets, cleaning, cooking, and all those other little (and big) things are what is important now. We don’t understand it when our husbands still want to climb Everest, catch the biggest fish or climb to new corporate heights simply because that’s what they want to do, or even the guy that wants to drop back and take a “dream” job that buys a smaller house. Guess what? They don’t understand why their women have forgotten the "girl on the road," that one they met and loved.

But I ramble. As much as we love him and them, it’s not about the things that drag us away and make us forget and grow up. That’s not the point.

The point is that I definitely forgot my “girl on the road.” That is, if I ever really knew her at all. And it’s time to remember. To write. Because I, as the “girl on the road,” was a writer. Not one that anyone ever knew of or talked about, but one that had piles of ideas laying around, and even one whose professors told “you should be a novelist, not an attorney,” and who relished pen pals (and who perhaps led more than one guy to think there may have been more behind a missive than a girl who just simply loved letter and email writing for the sake of writing – ha! oops!). Who knows where life will lead, or if the things that made me forget will get in the way, ultimately, of becoming any sort of novelist or “real” writer (as I like to think of those who get up everyday to write and get their stuff in print). But at the very least, I’m taking back this little corner of my little world.

Feel free to read the musings, or not. Because while a blog happens to be the easiest way to write these days - the easiest way to not have messy piles of paper laying around, anyway - getting back to the “girl on the road” is not about anyone else, it is about feeding my soul. And if I’m lucky, encouraging someone out there to do the same for herself.

(Besides, I have a whopping four followers who didn’t sign up to see my ramblings, but to look at wedding pictures that I never got around to posting. I heart y’all and you are my Besties, but that’s hardly an audience.)