When dreams come true – Are we ready for them?

Life is funny. We dream about certain things. It’s a reality jolt when it doesn’t happen. We were looking at American Idol. Some poor little fifteen-year-old girl was voted off. She was missing something—either talent, maturity, stage presence or popularity. She was bawling her eyes out, and so were her parents.

The young girl said American Idol had been her dream. She just didn’t know what she was going to do now. She’d been dreaming all her life for that moment.

She’s got to be kidding. I thought to myself, she’s only fifteen. How much dreaming and working at her craft could she have done in fifteen years? Maybe she could live a little more, learn some more, and dream some more.

What if she had been dreaming for 70 years and working her craft all those years, yet nothing happened? Then this fifteen year old would have something to cry about. I guess it’s how you look at it.

David, Al’s brother, called and said, send me your scripts on your two novels. I talked to a friend about your work. He’s the set builder for all the studio sets in New Mexico. My friend wants to see them. He has worked with five producers on different movies and television series, and as a favor to me (David), he will send them to his producer friends.

I thought to myself. I don’t know if I’m ready for all these pretty people in the movie world. Why at this time of my life? Why didn’t it happen when I was 30 or 40 or 50 or 60, before 30 extra pounds, wrinkles and all these extra years? The energy level isn’t like it used to be. How can a person dream for something her whole life and then if it happens, she isn’t sure if she’s ready.

We were sitting in David’s home in Albuquerque. He socializes with these pretty people in the film industry in Albuquerque. He’s had them in his home and he’s been in theirs. He said it’s about knowing the right people, and he would help me meet these people and get my scripts out there.

I thanked him. Then the phone rang, David picked up his phone and looked at a picture, he nodded and smiled. He read the text and laughed, “She just asked me out.” He text back. “I’ve got a date with her this weekend.”

He showed me the picture of this young girl. I rolled my eyes. You don’t have any business with her, you’re eighty-one years old. She’s too young for you. On his phone was a picture of a twenty-year old blond with a set of plastics abounding out and above her low neckline top. She was giving him a cheesy grin. She’ll probably be on David’s arm going to the next movie premier and walking the red carpet.

Oh me! I’m fifty years older than this girl, abounding with thirty extra pounds and sporting a set of plastic hearing aids. I won’t be giving anyone a cheesy grin, but I could nod and give them a  I-can-hear-you-now grin. Please don’t ask me to walk the red carpet. Please tell me I’m dreaming.

It might be the right time, the right place, the right people, but I don’t know if I’m ready to live out my dream.

Final Brushstroke! Life is funny. It’s a lot easier to dream than to live it. There’s a scripture I’ve quoted for years and have believed it wholeheartedly. When times were tough and didn’t seem fair, I’d remind the Lord of his words. “Your gift will make room for you.” It’s up to the Lord to make room for the gift.  He knows where we are. It’s not our time or place or our gift. It’s his when he wants to say something and when he wants to use us as a vessel to do it. We need to be ready.

Quiet! - Stop talking for a minute!

I was having lunch with a friend, who is an introvert. I wanted to talk to her about making my protagonist as an introvert. I asked her, if I did write the main character as an introvert, could I make her exciting enough? I thought it was a good question until I saw her look.

She looked at me as if to say, I don’t believe what you’re asking me. Instead she said,  “We’re not dead.”

I absolutely love this friend, she’s a deep thinker, she reads a lot, she listens to me about all my ideas and she is solid in who she is. There is no drama with her, she is so refreshing, and she doesn’t have to prove herself. She doesn’t need the limelight. She has such a deep inner richness I want to be around her as much as possible. I’m wondering why she puts up with me.

She had introduced me to a book titled, Quiet. I bought three copies to give to my family, who are introverts. As an extraverted mother, I always was trying to fix my family. I thought something was really wrong with them. Oh Lord, I had to apologize to all of them.

The endorsement on this book was riveting. Barry Schwartz wrote: “To all extraverts – Memo to all you glad-handing, back-slapping, brainstorming masters of the universe out there: Stop networking and talking for a minute and read this book.”

Wow! Is this Me? Who Me? I don’t think I want to be me. My children tell me all the time it’s always been about me. I quit apologizing for myself and decided it was a waste of time and good words. I decided to like me. Now I’m finding I’ve got to take another look.

At lunch, my friend said to me, “People are always trying to team me up or introduce me to someone. They think I can’t do that for myself.”

Really. Do I do that? Within fifteen minutes after we sat down, another friend came up to the table. She likes to hike and my other friend likes to hike, too. I said to them, “You two need to get together because you are both looking for someone to hike with, aren’t you?”

I realized what I had done. I answered my own question. I was trying to fix my friends up as if they couldn’t do it for themselves. We had a big laugh, at my expense.

I told my friend, after reading this book, it made me want to be a introvert. It talks about the leaders who are so influential, the world-changers, they are not extraverts, but deep thinkers, who give thought to what they say before they make decisions. She had a whole list of them.

I had prided myself in quick decisions. I make them easy and I thought it was a good attribute. I hate it when it takes days for someone to move on a good idea. Now, I’m wondering about all of this.

I said to her it’s like changing gender, you can do it, but you are still who you are. The DNA is different in a female than a male. If you are an extravert, you will probably raise your hand with the answer or always be ready to talk. The introvert will have something to say, but won’t say it until they think about it. They will have much more honesty in their answer. Then they talk. To me, it takes too long, people forget it and have moved on.

In another passage from this book, the author talks about a woman, shoulders ach and swollen feet, quiet and shy, and she said one word, “NO.” When she died in 2005 at the age of ninety-two, the flood of obituaries recalled her as soft-spoken and sweet and small in stature. They said she was timid and shy but had the courage of a lion.

She would never had stood up and said she had a dream, but five thousand gathered to support Park’s lonely act of courage. It took the partnership of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. to be heard. “Mrs. Parks refused to give up her seat who preferred to stay quiet. She didn’t have the stuff to thrill a crowd if she’d tried to stand up and announce that she had a dream. But with King’s help, she didn’t have to.”

Final Brush Stroke! We are who we are. It takes both introverts and extroverts. I’ve had to do some serious apologizing. I’m learning the value of both. My protagonist in my next book will be an introvert. I’m going to make her really exciting. Ha!

Good Neighbors, Sweet Al and Turkeys

I thought of our neighbors today and felt safe, blessed and happy. They’re good people. We all moved to the Lower Blanco in 1976, and have lived peacefully next to each other ever since. They mind their business and we mind ours.

I’ll send over compost for their goats and chickens and give them our empty egg cartons, expecting nothing in return. They’ll send home a carton of fresh eggs. It’s a simple exchange, doesn’t cost anything. It’s not big, but it’s big in the way we respect each other and the length of our friendship.

Turkey season will be here in April and it also marks another anniversary of 55 years for My Sweet Al and I. We have lived together somewhat peacefully all these years. This is how we do it.

Al’s been reading up on Turkeys. He’s sitting in his camouflage, with only one good eye showing through his facemask, the other one is closed. He’s got his gun pointed on the turkey mounted on our wall and he’s telling me once again how he shot it.

I’m looking at the turkey hunter mounted in his big brown chair and I’m listening to the same story once again. I’m pretending to be interested in his turkey story and practicing the good neighbor thing. My mind is somewhere else and it’s like sending over an empty egg carton.

I’m trying the good neighbor thing with my Sweet Al who loves to tell his turkey stories. I nod and say, “Yes Honey.” I could care less. My thoughts are on the next article I want to write.

He said, “Listen to this.” He put down his gun and picks up the Turkey Country Magazine. He begins to read.

The article is interesting, my ears perk up. There’s an exchange going on under our noses and in our backyards. Most of us don’t know about it. Maybe I could incorporate this turkey information into my next article for the Artist’s Lane.

This will make a lot of big points with my Sweet Al and he’ll think I was listening the whole time. In a way, I’m sending over a full carton of fresh eggs for his breakfast And, I’m even cooking them for him. I think myself very clever.

The article was based on the premise of the old farmer’s fable with adjacent fields. One grew corn and the other grew beans, they exchanged their bounty.

It talks about the expanding population of  wild turkeys in Arizona, which are being exchanged for the antelope in New Mexico?  New Mexico has more than 30,000 pronghorn antelopes, which will be traded in the next few years with other states. New Mexico’s Rocky Mountain big horn will be traded with Utah for their blue grouse.

Brian Wakeling, game branch chief of the Arizona Game and Fish Department says, “Much of what we do in wildlife management isn’t visible and doesn’t give speedy gratification, but trade projects like these are evidence of the success of joint efforts.”

The chief’s words caught my attention, “Much of what we do isn’t visible and doesn’t give speedy gratification.” I would finish those words with, “But the rewards are sweet and it might keep you together for 55 years.”

Final Brushstroke! Listening to Al’s turkey stories is big to him. It takes work and commitment to listen to another turkey story, but it brings longevity and a happy husband. At night I sleep sound, safe and peaceful.

More Truthful – More Redeemable

I told a group of writers this week that I wrote without a filter. It sounds dangerous I know— small town, gossip and such, but I don’t know how to write any other way. There is a vast difference in readers, how they see you or don’t see you behind your words. They could take them all wrong, but you can’t do any thing about it, if you want to write.

Being a writer is probably the most self-exposing career you could choose. It comes with the territory. If I was to give any advice to writers I’d say be honest, write from your heart’s passion. Be childlike and write to the audience of One— One being, God. Commit your words and yourself to Him and become vulnerable. Let Him take care of the readers.

I sent out my writing to a new critique group this week. I told them to be kind. I didn’t know how they would critique my words, with a red pen or a machete. I quit hiding behind a mask a long time ago. I’ve taken off the pretense.  The days of being something other than who I really am is over. I can’t think of being anyone else but me. It fits me. I used to apologize for being me. Wow! That was a waste of good words and time.

A writer friend said to me, “I was told you don’t want to hang out your wash in the front yard.”

Maybe I should be taking her advice, but if a person hangs out clean laundry, does it really matter? Just asking.

Another writer friend said that she saw her life so pitiful and her writings were so sad and negative she didn’t want to leave behind her words for her children to see. She made up a character she writes about and uses humor. Her writings are so funny you don’t see her life as pitiful. You see her words as real. You just wished you could write like her. If she had quit writing we would have missed her life.

My daughter said she’d have to describe my writing as about nothing. Kind of like the television program, Seinfield, which was based on the concept of nothing, a lot about nothing.

I googled some of the favorite quotes on Seinfield. Their lines are priceless. Those writers probably wrote from their own inadequacies and have faced those same situations themselves. Everyone can identify with their made-up characters because they are us. We just live in another state.

One of the finest roles for a character ever written was George in Seinfield. That role was tailor-made for him. When George said, “Like I don’t know that I’m pathetic.” Or when he took a picture of someone in a casket so he could fly free, we all laughed because it was so truthful.

I can’t think of Jason Alexander as anyone other than George Costanza. His 5’5” short frame, balding, even a little on the heavy side makes him George. No other role he’s done has fit him so perfect. A misfit, but unforgettable. There are a lot of Georges around and we all love them. They probably don’t love themselves, though. The bigger the flaws in a character the more redeemable they become to the reader and they make the best stories.

My advice to writers is this, write those made-up characters, but make them real, show their flaws. You have to become childlike yourself. Children do not know to hide themselves from the world.

When I read this quote, these words went through me like a laser beam. It cut away any pretense I had of myself. How can I be anything but real when I read something like this?

William Barclay said that when Jesus went to the cross, he said, “Into Your hands I commit My spirit.” It was a child’s prayer. It was the Jewish version of saying, “Now I lay me down to sleep.”

Final Brushstroke! When I lay myself down to sleep at night I commit myself, and what I’ve done during the day, into God’s hands. I trust Him to read my words to the readers. I am probably more like George than I want to believe.