End of 2012

 In typical end of the year fashion, I have pulled out my 2012 goals to access how much I’ve accomplished. It is that time of the year after all. The time where we say goodbye to the old and look forward to the new. which of course translates into making outlandish resolutions for the incoming year.

As I looked over my 2012 list though, I experienced a surge of disappointment. I hadn’t accomplished nearly half of what I’d hoped in 2012. All those fitness and writing goals I’d so thoughtfully listed had not materialized, nor had this year’s experiences quite worked out the way I’d intended.

This could lead to negative thoughts on the status of 2012. Maybe the year was a failure if I couldn’t accomplish all those lofty goals. But all those items not achieved don’t say anything about all the great things that I did do in 2012.

As I thought about this, I came up with my top ten reasons that 2012 was a great year and not the failure that all those unchecked items indicated.

10.  This was the year of great entertainment. From the Lady Antebellum concert to the two Broadway musicals Mary Poppins and Les Miserable to the opera in Spain, this year I enjoyed one of my favorite forms of entertainment, live performances. For years this is something I would have said I wanted to do but would not have followed through with making plans or getting tickets. This year I made sure they happened, and I intend to continue with this philosophy in the future. Putting things off becomes habit. Habits are made to be broken.

9. I bought a new car… on my own. Even though many people in my life didn’t feel that I should have done it on my own, because I was a woman and that indicated a certain weakness that could be used as a disadvantage. Well tough. I am on my own. If I wait for someone to come around and take care of me, I will miss out on many experiences. I managed to buy the car and get a good deal, even though I’m a woman who knows nothing about cars. Enough said.

8. I turned 35, that halfway point between being still young and feeling like I’m not so young (I will not dare say old.). And I didn’t have a nervous breakdown when I reached that midway point. (I will confess to a little anxiety leading up to the birthday). I celebrated with a group of fantastic ladies who are always willing to celebrate or commiserate, whatever is necessary. And surprisingly at the end of the night, I’d gained the insight that the number of years was a direct reflection on the lessons I’ve learned and the person I’ve become. I wouldn’t give back any of those years or experiences because the number of candles on my birthday cake becomes too many for me to blow out in one breath.

7. Traveling to Memphis via road trip. Blues, barbeque and Elvis Priestly: what more can you ask for in a successful road trip? It was on this trip that I learned that I actually like to travel. Before, I thought that I wasn’t very compatible with it. But here I learned that I liked to explore and learn new things and the best way to do this is get out there and see it for myself. The verdict is still out on whether I’m a good traveling companion. Maybe 2013 will answer that question.

6. Ice skating with the kids. One of the difficult facts I’ve had to face since the divorce is that all the old Christmas traditions I’ve held dear have pretty much disappeared. And for the last two Christmases, I’ve been at a lost to what traditions will become the future. This year we took the kids ice skating. As usual, Cara tackled the challenge with everything she had and Andrew sat back and watched and didn’t even put the skates on his feet. But when it was done, Cara asked if we could do this again every year. And for the first time in a few years, I felt like maybe there could be new traditions to replace the old.

5. Hot Air ballooning in Spain. Even though it was a nerve-wracking experience, it was an experience of a lifetime, and I enjoyed every minute of it. It’s one of those experiences that you look forward to for a long period of time, and when it finally happens, it does not disappoint.

4. I took my first vacation with just my kids and myself. The kids and I traveled to Florida via road trip style for our first family vacation since the divorce. It was another one of those accomplishments that leave you feeling strong and accomplished and capable of taking care of anything.

3. The Magic Fountain in Barcelona. Even though I did so many things in Spain that could fill this list, I’m choosing the fountain to represent the entire experience of being in another country. It was sitting near the fountain and watching its magical water and light show that I finally felt the magic of being in a foreign place and the feelings of inspiration and excitement that are wrapped up in incredible experiences.

2. I completed my editing certification and I became an actual editor. After a year and half of classes and hard work, I completed my certification and then began my first editing job for booksBnimble. This is one of those dreams that I’ve had nearly my entire life… to be an editor… and 2012 is the year that it became real and not just a dream that I had let me pass by.

1. Muddy Bayou, Muddy Grave, and Cara the Pirate. In 2012, my writing career has finally begun. I had my first book signing, Muddy Bayou continues to sell, and I recently released Muddy Grave. I also finished Cara the Pirate after my daughter’s repeated requests all year to have the story I’ve made up for her since she was three as a book. Writing became a priority again in 2012.

So even though, my 2012 resolution list wasn’t nearly completed, it was still a fantastic year. As I wrestle with the extensive list for 2013, I know that it doesn’t matter at the end of the year about what doesn’t get checked off of this list. It’s really about all the great things that are yet to come. So maybe we should all keep that in mind when we are making our resolutions or looking back on the ones that we didn't accomplish.

Thoughts on a School Shooting

Luck. What else can you call it? What else could it be but luck that day that I survived the LCO school shooting yet twenty children did not survive the Sandy Hook shooting? I, who have lived years beyond their own young lives. Lives that are now shortened with futures unfulfilled. It must be luck.

It’s what I think now as I get messages from people telling me that they are thinking about me. It’s difficult not to imagine how things could have turned out so very differently three and half years ago when you see the worse case scenario splashed across every news station. I can’t help but think that I survived for some reason. A reason that I may run out of time to fulfill. As if it will be taken away if I don’t use it the right way. Survivor’s guilt, I suppose. But how else do you explain the lives of twenty beautiful, innocent children being taken, but not my own.

Ashamed. As I watched my social media feed fill up Friday with debates on everything from gun control to God in our schools, this is what I felt as the shooting played out on television. On the very same day of a terrible tragedy, political rants began. A day when the only thought that should have occurred was mourning for the loss of the innocent lives to the evilness that lived in the heart of one individual. Instead of an outpouring of support for the victims, my social media “friends” argued over whether or not if teachers were armed, would the deaths have been prevented.

No one backing down from his or her point of view, of course. No listening to each other. Just the refusal to give up or give in.

Truth. When bad things happen, we search for reasons why. Our hearts and minds need a reason as comfort. Each person finds their reason based on what they perceive to be wrong in the world. I tell myself that everything happens for a reason, but even I have difficulty finding reason in the death of all those innocent children.

When tragedies such as this occur, we look to blame someone or something. But the issues around incidents like this are polarizing. Everyone refusing to budge. Gun activists cite the second amendment and those for gun control cite incidents like these to support stricter control. Both having valid arguments, but arguments that are also flawed. The constitution hasn’t always been right. If it was, only white men would still be able to vote. The writers of our constitution could not fathom guns being used to commit mass murder of innocent children. But then again, if gun laws are stricter does that mean they aren’t available? Of course not. Drugs are illegal, but people still use them. Making something illegal doesn’t make it go away. It makes it more valuable.

And then there is the God argument. The argument being that God is not in our public schools. But isn’t He? My students say the pledge each morning: “One nation under God.” They have the opportunity to pray at weekly BASIC meetings. They carry their faith with them wherever they go in our school. It doesn’t leave them as they enter our halls to be picked up when they exit the building. It is part of who they are. Do we teach religion? No. But isn’t it also our constitutional right to have freedom of religion? The freedom to practice whatever religion we please and not be forced to learn about whatever the dominant religion is? It doesn’t mean that the students’ beliefs aren’t acknowledged or present when they are in the halls and classrooms of our school.

I’ve seen many of my social media “friends” contradict themselves by claiming it’s their constitutional right to have firearms, and then claim that what we need in schools is God. These are both constitutional rights. Who gets to decide which one of our constitutional rights is more important?

Guilt. This is what we should feel. Because of our polarity, our unwilling to cross the divide of our own opinions, nothing changes and more incidents continue to happen.

What changed after the LCO school shooting? Only the locks of all our classroom doors. They automatically lock now. But teachers and students become frustrated waiting for them to be opened, so they leave cracks in them. Cracks where bad things can get in.

Because time passes and people forget why that little detail of an open door matters.

It’s easy for some, I imagine. For our mental health, we wrap ourselves in a bubble and convince ourselves that tragedy only occurs elsewhere. Until incidents like Sandy Hook happen and we are confronted by the reality that violence can happen to anyone. But then the same media we blame for publicizing it stops covering the tragedy, and we let it go. It becomes a reference and a statistic. Something too difficult to believe possible again.

Hope. Personally, I don’t blame the gun that fired at me or a school that doesn’t teach religion or the fact that my door didn’t lock. I don’t blame the media or video games or bullying.

It comes down to a person who made a choice. In each of us there is good and evil. We are all capable of so much more than we believe possible, in good ways and in ways that are terrible.

There is wrong in the world and none of the blame we throw around faces the fact that the terribleness does exist inside of people. And the solution to that does not fall under our constitution or in our social media debates or any of the other places that we seek to blame and divide ourselves. It falls under our ability to love and reach out to one another. Hostility and hate and denial will not deliver the changes our schools or even the world need.

But I hope that what is clear to us is that the tragedies will not go away unless we do things differently. There is a of favorite quote of mine that says that if you always do what you’ve always done, than you will always get what you have always gotten.

We can’t afford to keep doing the same things. What’s at stake, the lives of our children, is too high.

Write What You Know

Write what you know. A piece of advice many writers have heard at one time or another. Interestingly enough, it is this piece of advice that got me into trouble during my early writing experiences.

My first stories involved white pieces of paper that I folded in half, used a ruler to draw lines, and then hand wrote stories that I numbered and labeled Forever Friends. I was nine years old, and I wrote myself as the main character that solved whatever childish mystery my nine-year-old imagination could dream up. But by ten, I wanted to accomplish something more than a short story. So I set out to write my first book. What does a ten-year-old write about though? What they know, of course, mixed in with as much creativity one can muster in terms of a mystery. (Obviously, I’ve been stuck on the genre for awhile.)

The street I lived down became the setting of this book, and then I peppered it with characters based on the people I knew. Of course, I took creative leeway with these characters. The neighbor who I didn’t like became the bad guy. The one that I did like became the good guy. I exaggerated the characteristics that annoyed me. It was the early lessons of developing characterization for future stories.

I was extremely proud of all 128 pages (though now I would never let it outside of that container it is packed away in). In my sense of accomplishment, I allowed everyone to read it. Everyone I knew that is, which equaled my neighbors.

Hence, the tiny bit of trouble that ensued after the story’s unveiling. Apparently, many of my “characters” didn’t like how they were portrayed. My father asked me if I thought he was as mean as the father character in the book. Several childhood friends were angry, and we stopped speaking for awhile as girls of that age are bound to do in all the dramatics of that age.

Needless to say, when I wrote my next book at fourteen, I’d learned how to cleverly disguise the people who inspired my characters by mixing traits of different people into one character.

In a way, I still write about what I know. But it’s more about what I intentionally know. I seek out interesting places and experiences so that I can write about the life of South Louisiana authentically instead of play into the stereotypes. The fictional town of Barbeaux Bayou is a conglomeration of the places of the bayou where I’ve lived. As well as a cast of characters that are based on the people I’ve met throughout my years here. No one character is a real person. Thankfully, the people in my life have come to understand that. Otherwise, they might get offended when they get killed off as part of the impending mystery.

I will confess that the character that comes closest in real life to a true person would be Paw. But even then, I took the best parts of my papa and gave him a strong male presence in the story. If my Paw were still alive, I’d probably still trail behind him in the garden, but I don’t think he’d mind his appearance in the book. He’d probably laugh and ask me to pop him some popcorn, so he could sit and listen to me tell him about it.