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Since the number of people interested in following my work has increased, I've decided to restate how I started this journey. I always felt I had something to share, but I knew that my mental ramblings needed to be in a more concrete form so others might appreciate what I had to say.
A Long Story
I wrote down personal events in the form of short stories for decades, and about thirty years ago, I decided to put them into what I call a Time-Line. Strung together, they would form all of the critical events in my life, from birth to the present. It only seemed to make sense to create a chronological recording system to give further order to my precious facts. The categories needed to perform this extraordinary task noted the dates of every job, schools attended, closest friends, favorite movies, music, places I’ve resided, and every important event that I could remember or scrape together through friends and relatives. As this hobby grew, so did the sheets of paper that I was documenting the information. I taped together sheets to form a continuous timeline until, finally, the running testament of my life stretched out to be about twenty pages long! Because this method eventually became a folding nightmare, I knew that I had to find a better way to keep this information running.
Bad Computers
During the late 1990s, I attempted to use my first computer (an IBM) as a way to keep up with my quest to document my journey permanently. After many hours, the five pages I had so carefully typed suddenly disappeared from the small screen, to my disappointment and discouragement. Not being a typist and, at the time, not knowing what the word back-up meant, I reverted to my paper and pencil in frustration.
​A few years later, my second attempt to try this again occurred with my then-new Compaq computer. This annoying machine helped me to understand what the word crashed meant. I was able to print out the first ten pages of my life, but when the computer choked and finally stopped working, all of my hard work was again lost. If nothing else, I was learning what home computers of the day were capable of. Besides the occasional video game, I was not happy. Still determined, I finally got another literary companion (a Dell computer), but it was another two years before I got the guts to attempt again placing my over-whelming project into a machine. I feared that it might either swallow up my information or die while doing it. I learned to use Microsoft Excel to keep up with all of the dates chronologically. I rejoiced when I discovered that I could even insert pictures and the information to give a clearer picture of the memory I was trying to preserve. As the data turned into longer stories and the images took over more and more space, I felt the need to expand and give more detail to the stories past the Excel program.
By 2010, I decided to convert some form of the information into a self-published book. There was no way that I would write an autobiography and throw it out to the world with all the rich, intimate details of my life, so instead, I used a lot of my own experiences and either altered or added to them. After all, there is such a thing as writer’s privilege. I still find it remarkable how a person can start with one idea and then, through inspiration, follow another path. The feeling that accompanies inspired creativity is a story for another time, though.
As it is now, the purpose is to continue to spread the joy of storytelling to all those who might be interested. I appreciate those that continue to come along for the ride, and I promise to do my best to give you an exciting journey. See you next week, if not sooner.
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