In Search of a Story

There are many facets to my personality... many identities which I assume. I am a wife, a mother (soon), a friend, a helper, a sister, a daughter... I am shy, but sometimes not. I am funny, but only occasionally. I enjoy organization, but I like creativity. I love color, even if sometimes those colors are black and white. It always amazes me when somebody says they understand me, because after 26 years of study, I still don't understand myself.

One thing I have come to realize and to truly accept and love about myself is my full enjoyment of animals. They are smelly, dirty, often selfish creatures, and I love almost all of them- even the ones I don't like. Animals are honest. Either they trust you, or they don't. They love you, or they don't. They respect you, or they don't. The only way you can earn their trust, their love, their respect, is by giving them kindness, love, and leadership. And they will repay you with everything they have to give, which is nothing more or less than their whole heart. It is an amazing gift.

I've always known I like animals, but having spent the past 4 1/2 years working with them, teaching them, learning from and with them, and being a leader for them, has taught me a lot about myself. I truly enjoy mucking out stalls. I love the honesty of the work. I love knowing that what I do is for living creatures. I love those moments when I get to just sit and be with a horse, or a dog, or a cat... just to be myself, and to let them be themselves. It's an amazing feeling of freedom and relief and peace and lets me gather my strength for whatever lies ahead. I love that when I am done working with an animal, or playing with them, that I come away feeling relaxed and optimistic. I hope I may always have animals in my life.

While working at that job, as well as going to school, my life was consumed by those pursuits. I loved my job. School was not as wonderful, but my job counteracted many of the effects of school and I was able to feel like a productive member of society. It helped me deal with the daily aspects of school. I was happy.

However, I have quit my job now, and have come to realize that there is another facet of my being- one that is very strong and that I have not given much time or attention to in the past 4 1/2 years. I am a writer. Words have always fascinated me. I love to put them together in such a way that my reader can feel what I feel and see what I see. I have always said that I would rather write a thousand words than create the picture they are worth.

I still write, now and again. I love this blog, for instance. Not only is it a way to keep in touch with people, it is a way to share my stories in a medium that I find quite beautiful. My brother and I are writing a story back and forth. At times I will jot down thoughts or poetic statements or words of wisdom that sound wise partly because of the way they are worded.

And so, after much writing and rambling, I come to my point. My life is no longer consumed by my job. I have more time and energy and thought in my head to give to writing. And the desire to write is becoming stronger and stronger within me. It almost doesn't matter what I write; I simply want to put words to paper and create images for all to see.

Yet, I also want to make a difference. I not only want to write, I want to be read. I want people to read my work and to enjoy it. I want them to feel as though their lives have been enriched by reading this thing before them. I want to touch people for their betterment and my own.

There are many options, of course. My favorite genre to sit down and read is fantasy. I have found characters I love and fantastic and wonderful stories and even truths of life buried within the pages of another world. But there is also finding a true story from history and making it come to life with rich characters and daily struggles, such as in The Work and the Glory, or even Braveheart. There is a nobility to giving real people a moment in which to be read and understood. I also enjoy self-improvement, not only for the self but also a call to society to become better than we currently are, and suggesting a method in which we can improve.

I do not want to get locked into one genre, as I fear I may. It is easy, once you become known as a fantasy writer, to only write for fantasy readers. They already know and love you, after all. The same is true for self-improvement. What could somebody who writes about the issues of everyday life have business doing creating a fantasy world? Yet I have ideas... so many ideas... in each of these areas.

I would like to create something meaningful, as I mentioned before, which means that I need to write from what I know. It is only there that my writing will become rich. Regardless of the genre, I would like to write that which will speak to people.

And so, I am in search of a story.