January 1, 2014 My 500 Words

Yikes!  I am excited and apprehensive all at the same time.  I have never done anything like this before in my life.  My education is in Nursing....not English Lit. My  employment experiences have been in direct sales, retail sales and a short stint as a barista.
 I must have been sleeping in my grade school English classes.  I struggle with punctuation...especially commas.  I am so glad punctuation doesn't matter with this exercise!  I have been journaling for over 30 years.  I love to write.  I love journals.  I can be a little obsessive about finding just the right one.  I love pouring my heart out onto a page.  Blogging is new and something I decided  to do for myself.  It was a giant leap of faith. I tend to be an introvert and putting my feelings and thoughts out in the open for others to read was a bit intimidating.  I have been looking for opportunities to learn to write..so glad this came along.  Other than journaling, my only experience at writing was in high school.  A very, very long time ago. I had an English teacher who designed a creative writing curriculum. She gave us movie clips to respond to, cartoons to write jokes for, subjects and words to write about. Every quarter she would publish a small booklet with a sampling of everyone's work.  I still have those booklets after 40 years. I go back to them to read not only what I wrote but what my classmates and schoolmates wrote. After all these years  I continue to be impressed with what she pulled out of all of us.  People who I didn't know had a sense of humor wrote lines for the cartoons that were genius.  The quiet ones wrote deep thoughts about their life that made me approach them with a little more kindness.  I was 17 years old with relationship drama and my writings seem a little dark.  I was growing up in an alcoholic home and didn't know how much that was influencing my life until may years later.
In the early 80's I was gifted with a new friend who shared with me her habit of journaling about her life and her emotions.  I have filled journal upon journal since that time.  I really believe I have saved thousands of dollars on professional therapy!  My first grandchild was born in 2002.  Prior to her birth I burned every journal I had poured my life into from 1982.  A cleansing of sorts, a new beginning for a new generation.  It is again time for one of those burning parties.  I am entering into a new phase of my life and I like the clean slate that comes with purging the past.
I have lived the majority of my life...literally in number of years and in a survival mode emotionally.  I want to take the risk to finally do what I want to do, what I believe I was created to do.  I am anticipating the revelations that will come with writing each day this month!