Part 4 - Writing is my Hobby

This is not the post I intended to write.  Let me back up.

When Grant and I met in 1999, I was about to graduate college with no plan at all. I graduated high school with stars in my eyes and newspaper ink in my blood.  Basically, all I had to do was hand in a paper with my name on it and the heavens would open up and choirs of angels would sound their trumpets and it would automatically be canonized by the Church. Or something like that. Every teacher told me I was good. The local newspaper asked me to write a column for them. I went to work for the newspaper in the nearest big city. I was big time. In a small town.

After hesitating for a year, I enrolled in a university and declared my major "English" like I was the boss of the language. My grades were lackluster. Not terrible but not what I expected. Once I got through the base level classes and began the intensive course work - bad turned worse. I got my first paper back with an F on it. An F and nothing else: no "see me," no "do over." An F - like Who-in-the-F-do-you-think-you-are?

In truth, I was a failure.

And while I didn't actually flunk out of college, I pared back my expectations of a career in writing. And since we already know the end of this story, we know that in the long run this failure actually helped me find my true self and my true calling. I don't know about you but I always like knowing the end of a story before it's actual ending.

So lately, I have seemed to find my voice again. Perhaps it is because I am not writing for anyone else and my happiness is not contingent on how anyone perceives me in writing. I am not writing for money or grades or notoriety. My writing is simply to document this amazing, beautiful life that I lead and to leave behind an account of who I was when I was 37 and a Catholic convert, homeschooling, raising 5 beautiful children, not contracepting, cooking, cleaning, fixing hair, and living out the most romantic of all love-stories with the man of my dreams.

When I say that this is not the post that I intended to write, that is because this week I was given a chance opportunity to write an article for a local newspaper.  I had it all planned for this blog.  I'd write a 5-Day Series on my life aspirations: Day 1) The Aftermath 2)Hairstylist 3)Prom Planner 4)Writer - and I would reveal to you that in the midst of all of this hubbub my article went to print. But guess what?

It didn't.