[Daily Post Prompt for today: Write a six-word story about what you think the future holds for you, and then expand on it in a post.]
Writing at last, I’m happy now.
Expansion on the title story: “WHAT MY FUTURE HOLDS”
That short story, consisting of SIX WORDS, is self-explanatory–even if it does sound a bit like an epiteth that might be chiseled into my tombstone, IF I intended to have one. But this tiny story, consisting of just six words, a comma, and a period…is anything but maudlin, rather a declaration of a specific stage and purpose in life.
Writing has been to me like a figurative carrot-on-a-stick , promising an eventual reward for years-served. Although I have been writing all of my life, sometimes even getting paid for it, and have used writing skills in one form or another throughout my years as a news reporter, student, instructor, secretary, clerk, and so on…I always had the feeling that I was just biding my time waiting for the time when I could just Write.
All that time writing for “practical” purposes, I had a feeling of guilt…pressure and obligation to various pursuits which did not include Writing as I longed to do.
This all sounds terribly self-serving and contrite, and I confess that I would never be writing this post for a more general audience. The people that I am aiming at are other Writers. These–You are all Writers, real writers that live and breathe writing, and long to spend the most of their time at their keyboard–or with a pencil and paper. No eye-rolling here…I firmly believe I am among kindred souls.
So what my future holds is…I hope…Writing. I recently discovered poetry (again) and am absolutely in love with it! I know that when I publish a post or a photograph, there are readers out there. I’m not so vain as to believe that anyone waits anxiously every morning to see if I have produced something spectacular overnight. Hardly.
But the thing about blogging in and with a community of other bloggers, is that everyone is in the same boat. We write, and we want others to read our writing–but hey, if they don’t–well, it is Out There and available for Readers.
Once we hit the PUBLISH button, it is in the universe of myriad writers, our work there with the greatest writers who ever lived. WHO IS THAT? you ask? Well, that is subjective of course. One person’s Shakespeare is another’s Stephen King, or Dr. Suess. There is no judgemental clicking of tongues when a physicist likes to read Mickey Spillane, or when a historian (like me) really, really enjoys reading Philippa Gregory’s version of the adventures of the English royalty.
I still have a LOT to write about. Never at a loss for words, more build up inside my brain faster than it is possible to squeeze them out onto the computer screen. So my future holds more of the same, but with a concentration and preferential option for the craft of Writing. Obviously there is no time frame, my future could include twenty more years–or not.
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