Dishwasha!

I feel like I’m pretty old to be starting this whole writing thing sometimes. I know that people change careers all the time. They spend ten, fifteen, twenty years doing other peoples’ taxes or delivering babies or some other impressive “real” job type thing they can look at and call a career. Then they have an epiphany about
spending time with their family, or how they got into the line of work they’re in because their parents pushed them into it.

Me? My resume reads like a high school dropout’s for the most part, though I have a BS in Biology. My parents never pushed me into anything, really. For the most part, they were absent or too busy scrambling to make enough money to put food on the table and clothes in the closet to really do any actual parenting. Optimus Prime, Snake Eyes and Lion-o kept me out of trouble, though, showed me how to treat people and not to take drugs. And people say TV is worthless. (I did also watch healthy doses of Nova and Wild America, etc, so it was truly educational at times.)

The point is, I was born to be a writer, it just took me a long time to get around to being anything like serious about it. I have a wide range of interests without apparently being capable of being an expert in anything. I’m periodically reminded of a scene from Dragon, the Bruce Lee Story in which Bruce is handed a wad of cash by his boss and given two scenarios: He can take the money, go to school and make something of himself or run around spending it until he was gone and come back to her for the job he had now and spend the rest of his life paying her back as a ‘dishwasha.’

I’ve been a dish washer, and a gas station worker, donut flinger, overnight innkeeper, and all those taught me things about life but also tried to suck my life from me. With writing, at least for now, I’m my own boss, working when and where I do so best. I may not be making ‘bank’ as the kids used to say, but I’m working toward something in which I can express myself and keep myself at the same time. For the first time I feel like I’m not just paying my dues, but learning and growing and moving toward a state wherein I can make some kind of difference beyond making hot coffee and spotless dishes.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts, as well as the chance to see that what I’ve gone through has some value.