Prologue

Growing up on a cattle ranch in Montana meant that winters were long and cold and dark….and ENDLESS.  We had a radio and two television channels, neither of which were particularly reliable.  No internet, no Ipads, no audiobooks, no Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.  Can you even imagine?  

We had books.  I would race through books because I couldn’t wait to see how they ended.  My friends were Anne of Green Gables, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.  What all that reading did was create in me a love for writing. I wanted to create my own adventures that maybe other people would like to read.  I was in elementary school when I started writing short stories.  I wrote poems and journals and letters.  Writing became my friend in wintertime when we were mostly isolated under frigid temps and drifts of snow.

Putting words to paper became my passion.  It was all I ever considered for a career path.  All that reading and writing during my formative years meant that school came easy.  I could write my way through everything but math, which somehow I managed to get through and still keep  my GPA.  After graduation I couldn’t wait to leave Montana, which I believed was much like living in Antarctica, and fled to western Oregon with a lofty goal of a degree in journalism and a career as a feature writer. Then I met a guy.  A story for another blog, but my writing career  got put on hold because….life.

So here I am.  Kids raised, recently quit my job of 19 years, and not a clue what I should be doing now.  Suddenly I was ridden with anxiety and self-inflicted guilt about not contributing and lacking productivity with no idea how to rest in this new stage of life.  One day someone said to me, “You write really well.  You should start a blog.”  A tiny and long forgotten spark deep inside suddenly lit.  The small, flickering flame became a full-blown fire.   The writing started to pour out of me once again. For now this blog; maybe next a children’s book or a collection of poetry.  THIS is the next chapter, one page at a time.  There will be insights, observations, questions and random ramblings with some humor and sometimes a little sarcasm (my love language).  As a bonus, I’ll thrown in some of my amateurish photography. 

My thanks to Kenji Nitta who prompted the blog idea, to Graham Wardle for encouraging me to take one step at a time until the next chapter presented itself, to Keith who has always been my biggest fan, and to all my friends near and far who promised to read my work.  Hopefully each footnote will build a story worth reading!