Wandering through time - an outloud journal entry

March 06, 2024

Wandering through time - an outloud journal entry

Never in my life did I ever really wanted the label of writer. It was never an ambition of mine. Some may not believe that since I made a mediocre living reporting on small town America in a rural Wisconsin county, but honestly, that all happened by accident. I was trying to afford life as a separated mom of two with my soon to be ex becoming more and more violent, emotionally and physically. I found my way into that job purely by trying to survive.

I can remember telling myself to just be a fly on the wall and observe, keep your personal opinion out of it, allow the readers to decide for themselves. It was something I would make an honest effort at maintaining for those almost 13 years.

Some days I loved it, some days I despised it. It wasn't what I wanted to do, it was because I had to - isn't that the truth for most of us? Sad.

We have dreams as children and somewhere along the line they get derailed, altered, or just plain left in the dust of the chaos of our lives.

People and culture throughout time has always been a fascination for me, needless to say when I learned what anthropology meant, it called to me. I could see myself out there exploring life, researching, and then sitting in a basement of a museum somewhere staring in fascination at the finds. All those stories, all those experiences conveying the story of our world, US, all of us.

The other part of me wanted to go work in the inner cities and make an impact in the lives of children, especially children who were like me and had a childhood filled varying degrees of trauma. I knew they needed the love, I need to give it and feel like it mattered.

But, as for being labeled a writer, nah, never. Now, don't get me wrong, I did do a lot of writing in my younger days, but they were more essays on life, emotions, my surroundings and questions of why. There was some really poor poetry and some really good pieces, too however none of those ever saw the light of day. I filled notebooks with my then tiny cursive handwriting. It was a way for me to process everything in my head along with my heart - how sometimes the two contradicted each other. Very personal, very deep, and now lost in time somewhere in one of the many moves of my life.

I wish I could go back and look at some of those conversations I had in writing with myself. The ones from the period I call the my own Dark Ages, my teen years. I'd probably blush at some of things I admitted from my heart, and maybe laugh at the sarcasm I am sure I was training at the time - but maybe there would be words of wisdom I didn't appreciate then that I would now and I could beam with pride in knowing I wasn't as pathetic and too sensitive as others had convinced me I had been.

Even this blog I started wasn't a goal of mine, it came out of the suggestion from a friend.

I don't know why I am thinking about all of this tonight, but I am, therefore it all must be for a reason. I don't discuss all of my life on here, of course there are things that will never be seen as typed words -there's no way to convey those things and believe it or not I do keep a lot personal. Us women are entitled to those personal treasures, it keeps us believing in tomorrows even if our hearts have been broken repeatedly in the past.

If you asked me what my profession was in life, my very first response would be a mom and then an observer.

Maybe I am trying to figure out next steps in life when our world, our country, is so messy. As a single/divorced 56 year old woman labeled now as disabled, it's scary to think about what may be coming our way if we can't get the great divide stitched together with some threads of peace. It's scary for people like me in the good times and for obvious reasons, fixed incomes are not fun. But this....this shit storm we're in, it is terrifying.

A little off topic, but not really, last night I joked to my son that I finally figured out where these medical issues I've had most of my life came from, a lame joke after doing some genealogy searches. On my Mom's side it is looking like we have a Templar Knight and on my Dad's side they were from East Prussia, original Prus lineage, along with some Nordic and Baltic bloodlines..the very lands those Templar Knights went through during the Crusades and battling to convert the last of the pagan clans, the Prus. I came to a conclusion that those two sides are still battling but in my dna and causing all of this - lame, I know. It was a Mom joke - we got a few too.

This afternoon I thought about how we look in the mirror and we can see bits and pieces of our ancestors in our reflections, but then why don't we understand they are also deep within us, our cells, our dna...all those things coming together. Maybe, just maybe, if we gave all of that some real thought and knowing where they came from, their lives, and realizing our ancestors have been battling each other within us since the beginning of time - maybe realizing all the pain it caused in our own families, each of those branches on one tree, we'd stop this crap. All the trauma we end up having to heal. I don't know how else to say it...disagreements are one thing but wars, internal and otherwise should be teaching us something, but obviously, they don't. There are no winners.

Anyway, those are my thoughts and truths today...