Freewriting - Joy

For the class I am starting I need to write every day.  I think we will have to keep a pen and paper journal but I write best when I type - that way I get my thoughts out as fast as they come into my head, and my hand doesn't get as tired.

Today I want to write about JOY. What brings me joy is simple, my niece. Yesterday we spent an entire day together, me and her, and we "let" my sister-in-law tag along too. We rode a pony head on a stick and sang, "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain When She Comes - he haw! - the he haw! is her specialty and I love it.

We played with playdough and I got to mash about my creative side and make a neon orange ladybug, a black momma snake with green eyes and a green tongue and a baby snake who matched. We ate at a loud raucous restaurant geared for kids and I got to watchher in wonder as she took it all in, as she gauged what to warm up to immediately - the fish - and what she did not like at all - the elephants. The fish were real and the elephants were not!

We ate pizza upside down (the pizza, not us!) We danced like rock stars to a song that rhymed but made no sense. We read many stories about a little curious monkey and hid friend, "the man with the big yellow hat". We splashed - she splashed I tried to stay dry, why I am not sure - in a tub with 10,000 bubbles that hid all of the toys.

Her ability to be utterly in the moment leaves me breathless with jealousy. Her world revlolves around her, a handful of people she knows and trusts, and the immediacy of NOW. It is amazing.

My joy comes from just about everything she says and does, from watching her see, learn and explore new things, test her boundaries and beam at her successes. She can be tentative and shy but she can also be precoccious and gregarious in the most adorable of ways. I am not a parent but this must be as close as it can come to being totally, utterly in love with another being. It is different than the love I feel for my husband, it is somehow more fragile because she is more fragile.

I often wonder if the joys of childhood can ever really be experienced again as fully ass when we were young. As adults we can train ourselves to live more in the moment, but reality dictates that we must at some level also think ahead. As adults we cannot be fully dependent on others, and our own self-reliance means that we have to think ahead and plan - the groceries, the mortgage, remembering birthdays and such.

I wonder how to get to the place of now, the place of living in the moment that is just the right balance. A balance between being 2 or 10 and being 37. A balance between being responsible and feeling carefree; between ice cream and vegetables for dinner; between sheer joy and everything else.

Creative Fiction (is that redundant?)

I'm starting a writing class this week.  I know how to write, some people have said I even write well. I just need a kick in the pants to actually do it. I have ideas, stories, and well I have my life. My life along could make one sweet set of short stories or a really long epic. I think I'll start with slightly satirical account of my life via short stories.

There is a memoir class offered but of course I was too late in the game to register before the waiting list happened. I am taking an Intro. to Fiction class, which I figure I can still base on my life. I know, I am giving a lot of billing to my life as interesting. As time progresses you will have to tell me......

I plan to write all of my assignments, my stories and ideas here so for better or for worse the Internet world is stuck with me sharing. All I ask is please be kind.