!AHA!

The past 20+ hours or so have not exactly been pleasant ones for me: A migraine crept up on me and attacked about 8:45 p.m. last night and lasted all the way through to 3:15 p.m. today. Luckily for me, the hubby was here and was able to help me get to one of my migraine medications – it melts on the tongue and tastes almost like oranges – which effectively knocked me out, but not continuously. I woke up several times in severe pain either from my head or from one of my joints from having been completely still for a while. This morning there was an attempt to get some extra sleep, but the telephone kept ringing. A migraine and a ringing telephone do NOT mix.




As I got my pounding head out of the bed (by this time all I felt like was a pounding head) and stood up, my stomach felt as if it was going to empty itself of all of its contents even if there really wasn’t anything in there to empty. Nausea and a pounding head do not make you a happy person. THEN I had to call about a household bill. Right off the bat I told the call center rep a) I had a migraine and he may have to repeat himself; b) speak slowly; and c) let me know if he could hear me because I sounded very loud to myself. He was a trooper and we got the bill paid in no time. Despite feeling as if putting my head in lava might just be a good idea, there was a feeling of accomplish inside. I like feeling accomplished and successful, evidently even in misery. Go figure.

Any way – as the day progressed and the headache eventually got better and went away thoughts of how I was going to make a little extra money entered the consciousness. As it usually does in these sorts of moments, writing took center stage: I could WRITE and make a little extra money. I could SELL some STORIES and pad my pockets a little because writing you can pick up and put down at different times and you can…. Yeah, I attributed it to the migraine, too.


Once the migraine was gone, though, I sat quietly for a few moments and listened to a Kitaro CD and actually let myself think about this idea. Did I want to write? Yes. Did I want to write for a living? Maybe not for a living, but I still want my own stories and poems published. It is more important now for me to do so than ever before because I seriously do not know when that little bone spur is going to move and kill me.


(Yep, that little critter is one big motivator in my life for quite a few things now, and it is sad that it took something like this for me to put my life in order just in case a bad scenario happened. I could kick myself because I should have been living like this all along instead of just riding through life and putting things off, planning for tomorrow instead of today.)


So, exactly HOW IMPORTANT was writing to me (really, no bullshit this time)? It is important, like a lifetime goal that hasn’t been achieved, nor truly pursued in a very long time. Was it important enough to work on, seriously work on? Yes, but not to support myself. If I end up adding to the household income with writing then I will thank God for still letting me keep this wonderful gift, tithe, and keep on writing.

This caused me to take a deep breath and make a list of some of the basic things I needed to do in order to start writing again. At the top of the list was, of course, writing. I need to write and write a lot…and well, because no one wants a badly written story or poem. Next came the decision to actually put what little money I had where my love was and I purchased a monthly account of Writer's Market.com so I would actually know where I could send poems and stories out to once they were finished. Purchasing that monthly account made me so nervous I was half afraid the migraine would come back because knots formed for several long minutes between my shoulder blades and I had to do qi gong breathing to get everything relaxed again.


Getting the Writer’s Market monthly wasn’t anything new, mind you. I had kept it religiously way back when buffalo thundered across the mighty plains and dodo birds were aplenty. It hadn’t made me almost hyperventilate then. Why was it causing such a reaction in me like this now? I didn’t like the answer when it presented itself: Because then I was serious on a youthful level that everything would work out. Period. Now, I have to make it work out, there just isn’t any other answer.


This led me to think of what else had to work out and what needed to be done before I died so that when I faced God and looked back on my life I wouldn’t be quite so ashamed for wasting such a beautiful one. The list was surprisingly short, yet it too was accomplishable. None of what I see before me, and have set before me, is going to be easy to accomplish, but it can be done; I can even have great fun doing everything…. Migraines or not.