Thursday, May 3, 2018

Book Excerpt

The following is from a book I am currently working on. Just wanted to share.  

Chapter 5 - Childhood Ambitions and I Still Don’t Know What I Want To Be When I Grow Up

I was nominated my senior year of high school as being the one ‘most likely to still be in college trying to decide what to major in’ for our senior year future predictions. 

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a movie star actress more than anything in the world. I dreamt of it often, walking the red carpet with my Oscar in hand. And I didn’t want to be a stage-actress playing lead role in the same part every night for three months straight. But I didn’t want to just be a movie star for the glitz and the glamour. The appeal of fame and fortune was not as strong as my need for privacy and my not wanting to be chased by photographers everywhere. The main reason, the overwhelming reason I wanted to be a movie actress were the roles. In one movie you got to be a fighter pilot, in the next movie you might be a princess; in another you might be a firefighter hero and then turn around and be a stay-at-home mom who drinks too much. But it was always changing. You could be whoever you wanted to be, in different careers, different geographies, far away planets that don’t even exist - that’s what I was always interested in. And it wasn’t that I was unhappy with my life or who I was, or maybe I was and didn’t know it, but more like monotony has always bored me. Routines are hard to follow, as was sitting still behind a desk for ten years of my life, taking orders from people who quite frankly, nine times out of ten, didn’t know their ass from their elbows. I have found a job that I love though. I do really enjoy real estate, my current profession, and have interesting stories I could probably tell from my journey with it thus far. Wait, what, did you think I was a writer? Hahahaha, well no, I’m not. I don’t go around introducing myself as “Hi, I’m Jennifer. I’m a writer.” Instead, I say, “Hi, I’m Jennifer. I’m a real estate agent.” “Can I show you a house?” “I have some property you might be interested in.” I write because I love it. I love to write. But I am not a writer by trade or profession. It’s my hobby. It’s my own entertainment, and sometimes my own therapy. I was born to write. I’m not sure if I have mentioned this before or not, but I started my first novel at the age of 10 or 11. True Story. I never finished it. As has probably been one of my biggest weaknesses/faults in life was not finishing. Not the book, I’m sure it was not that great of a book, at ten years old, but in not finishing many things I once started. I’m not gonna say I didn’t come by it honestly, either, but that’s no excuse. It’s something I have had to openly admit to myself that I have many times in life taken the easy way out like just quitting something I had committed myself to without real cause, other than I just didn’t want to, mostly. I’m working to improve that side of myself. They say acknowledgement is the first step in recovery. I intend to finish this book, sooner, rather than later. And I’m not being doom and gloom, but I feel a renewed sense of urgency in getting these thoughts and words down on paper. 

….Stop and smell the roses. I have to remind myself of that sometimes. To look around, acknowledge the world around me, and give thanks for it. I am currently doing that right now. Sitting on my front porch, trying to type without looking at the computer screen thinking of my high school typing teacher, Ms. H, while a bee buzzes above my face, and the wind rustles the small, delicate yellow flowers in my front yard, with too tall grass that needs mowing. My Father in Law is supposed to be on top of that these days. He’s retired now. I like to think it helps keep him busy. He’s a piddler, if ever there was one. Folks from the South know exactly what a piddler is and if you don’t know, you ain’t from around here. 

I recently divorced myself from an on-going group text message with around 6-9 of my gal pal besties. I hated to do it, but it was time. It had gotten too big, too frequent, too time-consuming, and too distracting. I was getting anywhere from 100-200 text messages in a single day from one single text thread. And the majority of the conversations were not what I would call urgent need to know information. It was more like gossip, silly antics, funny this-just-happened-to-me conversations, and random whatever from someone with nothing really to do a the moment. It was taking a lot of time out of my day from other things in my life, and just since my “break-up”; which was coincidentally, yesterday, I have already noticed a difference in my day and have gotten far more done today than I have any other day this week. And the quiet… Now, granted, my phone rings and dings a lot. Pretty much all day/night at least in random spurts throughout the day. After all, I am a real estate agent. My phone is how I make a lot of my living. But honestly, with the group text, it had gotten to where all my phone did all day long was ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Ding. It was constant; all day. About nothing in particular, becoming just an annoying noise that kept driving my attention back to it. Life, is like that sometimes too, a buzzing, dinging noise in the background. Slow down.  Turn your phone off. Stop spending your time living in a group text or living vicariously through television or social media, and actually get out and start living your life. It’s slipping away right now, perhaps slowly or more quickly than you may realize. Enjoy. Relax. Read a book. Read my book. Write a book. 

Maybe one day I will introduce myself as a writer.