Redefinition

It’s o-dark-thirty.  I’ve been up for over an hour and I can’t get back to sleep.  “Little People Big World” is on the television.  There is a train going through down on the tracks.  The cuckoo clock just sang it’s “on the hour” song.  I’m struggling with… the thoughts chasing around in my brain.

Yesterday I put Adam’s poems together in short book form and put it up on Barnes & Noble’s PubIt.  He is now the proud (amazingly enough… I really think he is proud) author of a short book of poetry.  “Parting the Darkness” even shows up in e-books if you search for it.  It matters that he knows he can be a success at something.  He is hoping to sell even just one or two of them.

I have been thinking that I need to re-define me again.  Not that I don’t still love what I’m doing as my day job (which is good because we all seem to like to live indoors and eat several meals a day) but maybe I need to expand my view of myself again.

Mom thinks I need to be a motivational speaker.  I have been thinking that it may not be an entirely bad idea but I’m still struggling with how to go about doing it… how to get my foot in the door so to speak.  She keeps telling me that my story (my stories?) needs to be told and people could learn valuable things from my adventure.

I was actually hoping that blogging would help accomplish this… but… yeah… I think the most people I’ve reached in any one given day is 60 and I’m not sure why I got that many.  Blogging isn’t really getting my words in front of a ton of people.  I think that maybe it helps some…. on my “hey… let’s be incredibly optimistic” kind of days.  I think I’m writing words to hear myself talk on other days.  It is what it is.  It is my way of kidding myself.

People have been telling me that I need to write.  A few people have actually read what I brain dump and think it is worth reading and have made the comment that I should be a writer.  Most of them don’t realize that I have actually been published but they aren’t ACTUALLY books that anyone bothers to read.  They are geek books and, while I’ve pulled in a good bit of my personality to even those pages, they don’t reach a very large audience.  Although I did find myself on a couple of those “download this book for free” sites.  I was torn between the fact that people are, in effect, stealing from me by doing it and the fact that at least people find the book(s) valuable enough to want to go to all that trouble for.

Yesterday I was on a conference call about an upcoming meeting that I’m going to have to attend and I was talking about an issue near and dear to my heart and when I got done talking, a couple people on the call made the comment that “you really should be a writer”.  The first thing through my mind was…. no really… I AM a writer… really… I put words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and HELLO… I write, I am a writer, if you poke me do I not squeal?  and then I though… hello… stupid self (yeah, I talk to myself… sometimes I even answer myself)… there is a theme going here… you need to be paying attention.

NaNoWriMo is coming up.  Epilepsy Awareness month is coming up (AT THE SAME TIME… go figure) and I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a book about a teenager’s struggles with being diagnosed with epilepsy.  Okay… I will shut up now and listen.  Maybe I can get my words in front of people.  I can help Amandya understand that she really can be an inspiration to people too (she even seems excited about the idea).  Maybe I can do this

Then… I opened a fortune cookie on facebook…

My fortune?

Your present plans are going to succeed.

do-do do-do do-do do-do… wow… okay… I will shut up and get my butt in gear.

Maybe it really is time to start to think about what I can do to redefine the world in general.  Maybe I really can make a difference.