8:50am Writing Practice 61° Boise
I've been hand-writing in my spiral journal. Very enjoyable but today feels like a typing-it-out day and so I'm here. The busy summer continues. My backyard renovation is almost complete. I have to go find gravel as soon as I finish my morning chores. I have to take a handful of what I've got with me and try to match it. I think it's granite gravel and common, so that's good. And also cheap. I should be able to get two yards of gravel delivered for under $100. Then Rio will spread it all for me for under $100. So for less than $200, my backyard will be completely redone and ready for pots and a glider bench and that won't happen until next spring.
I'm having a party on the 28th to celebrate 24 years of sober living. My new deck will be the star and I'd love to hang some white fairy lights out there but the party will be over before dark. But I'll see about doing that anyway. So may details to take care of still. Plus I'll have to clean my house. Pretty bad in here, it will take two days of concerted effort but then it will all be really clean and ready for fall. I'll even wash the windows. I still have some paint to repair before I can schedule an appraisal. That's the goal of all this work ... get an appraisal for $160k and then get the mortgage insurance taken off my monthly payments, thereby saving me $112 a month. In 9 years, I've already paid over $12,000 for mortgage insurance and what does that get me? Nothing, that's what! I want to get rid of that and have a total house payment of $701 a month. Then I can put that extra hundred toward my principle and it will do some good!
OK, off I went dithering around on Facebook and talking on the phone. It's now 10:20am I have little to show for my writing efforts today except some posts for my suicide group on Facebook. Those are always valuable and never a waste of time.
The writing project, Self-Empowered Health, is still in the works. I keep getting ideas about what to write, what stories to add, how to format the information. For instance, the book will have two parts. Part One will be memoir, Part Two will be information and instructions, all easy to access. I've already written the prologue and have started the introduction for Part One but since it's a memoir, I may have to just begin writing the stories. Early life stories to start with, like the ones I put in the prologue which my not actually be a prologue at all, but a beginning. I don't have to get it right, I just have to get it written. Time is a factor. If I took 1-2 hours a day to write my stories, I'd have Part One finished in no time. And Part Two is already outlined and well begun as the Healing Sampler Class. When I write it out and look at it like this, the book starts to take shape in my mind and it even makes sense.
The personal stories include:
1) My sugar addiction at an early age, all the cavities I had, why I was motivated to work to get candy money, how I started my first business at age 11.
2) How my mother was so good at some parts of mothering and so bad at others. She was a hypochondriac and I was well on my way to being one, too, and why (seeking attention and approval from Mom).
3) My first experience with a muscle spasm in my neck, what caused it and how it affected my life. (8th grade tumbling class in PE, Leotta Nelson reaching over to crack my neck as I sat next to her on Donna Warden's stairs, years worth of chiropractic care, exams and visits all to hold off the degeneration of my spine caused by the injury.
4) Mental illness and depression set in at puberty, escalating into a suicide attempt at age 18. I already have that story written, although it's not finished. How I left Baker with strangers and began the uphill climb to sanity in a whole new life in Portland.
5) Then as an adult trying to deal with depression and loss with no help or guidance. Met and married Bob, moved to LaGrande, had a baby, got back into the JW religion and all was pretty good for a while. Then we moved to Hermiston and within a year, my life fell apart again. Turns out religion is no substitute for a solid mental health practice.
That takes me up to 1977 --- the first 24 years.
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