Just A Note

I’ve been going through blog file, looking for something to write about today that wasn’t just a rehash of what I’ve written before. I’ve been bored with my blog writings(so I know anyone reading them must be bored, too. There aren’t that many, but I really don’t want to bore them. After all, a reader is dear.) feeling a little like I’ve been on a déjà vu train. You know, a vehicle without steering—willy-nillying along over the same old track.

I am ready to move on while my baby (Ella and the Tie-down Man) goes out in the world and finds a place. I’ve been poking around in my previously written Western Historicals: a series and several stand-alone books in various stages of completion. I abandoned the series when Western Historicals fell out of favor, but western are my love-to read and write. It’s the direction my heart and voice wants to go. I don’t know much, but I know there lays my strength.

I think of it a bit like a plant. I take pride and joy in my gardening, but of special joy is my inside gardening. A houseplant has needs to be met: the right soil, the right sunlight and the right amount of water. Given those things plants thrive, without, they may live, look all right but they never really take off.

I think writers are a lot like that. Some writers can write everything and thrive. I think I could do well enough in any kind of writing, but to thrive I need my westerns and my poetry. So if I know that, why not do that. It is my best bet to doing my best writing.

But where to start? A fresh story or finish one of those already in the works. It’s a dilemma for me. But as I was flipping through the blog file, I found a few sentences writing on a torn piece of paper. No attribution, which in itself is very strange. I’m obsessive about making sure the author of every pithy, smart or funny sentence is noted.

This is what was written on the note:

Thought you could use a thought or two. You cannot abandon what you do not know, to go beyond yourself, you must know yourself. Remember a voyage of discovery doesn’t begin with new lands, it begins with new eyes. Stay in touch.

I don’t know who wrote those words or whom they were for. Maybe to me, from someone who knew my oftentimes dilemmas. It doesn’t really matter, for they spoke to me when I needed them. So I’ve been rereading my old work, assessing what I’ve done, what I need to do next. And as I do, that spark of excitement has begun simmering. I feel it. I reach for it. All the scales of my illness, the frustrations of caregiving seem to slip away into I don’t-care-I’m-going-to do-this-for-me knot in my gut. A knot that’s been muffled too long.

Wished I could tell the author of that note: Thank you, I needed that.