Hello Everyone.
It's always a bit hard to start an article, especially when writing honestly about oneself. I am a woman who is nearing what is called retirement age and who is afraid. I am not afraid of death - we all have to go through that. I am afraid that I will never realize the dream that I formed as I grew up and learned about myself. I am 60 and by all accounts of life expectancy, I haven't much time and should have been further along. But life gets in the way and unless we are fearless early on, that drive to succeed diminishes.
I dreamed that I was an artist. Not one that paints pretty pictures of landscapes and children, but one that puts paint on a canvas that bleeds from what my eyes see, my ears hear and from what the feelings that emanate from the structures that our chemical, physical and metaphysical matrix build around us. I have not succeeded in this. I draw buildings and portraits and I draw well. I create things. I build with fiber and ink, but the blood that I wanted to show on the canvas is still hidden. It's there, seething below the surface. I'm thick-skinned now. You get that way as the years fly by. They say that your skin becomes thin when you get even older. That would be a good thing. If the blood of the ages flows from my fingertips to the vacant canvas, then I will have realized that dream.
I wanted to be a scientist. I grew up in the country. Poor, with no hope of going to college. But I had this drive that just did not quit. I would do what I could to be a scientist. One that traveled the planets, studying the air, the volcanoes, the gravitational fields. I got as far as a diploma and became an environmental specialist in air quality, but then life and someone else's politics got in the way. The choice I had to make was to be that scientist or to be a mom. In my novel, the children would always come first. But through them I passed the love of science, let them be curious, gave them the room to explore, discover, fail and learn, to question everything and to embrace the new and unknown. In this, I have seen a fraction of the dream that I envisioned for myself.
The hope and the remaining dream that I have left was always at my fingertips. It was a part of me since my eyes saw wonder and my mouth wanted to tell everyone. It came from Dream 1 and Dream 2: To write. To write a lot. To write well. In this last I am close to realization. In this last dream I may be able to crush my fear.
I lost my job last year. In so far as it was a worthy position - no big loss there. But it was my only source of employment and sustenance. I started back writing and have been able to eke out a small benefit for my food and board. This along with a temporary and very meager stipend from unemployment insurance. So I went to work for a student loan servicing company - convinced by their ads that it was a 'service' to help people with their student loans, only to find out that it was a glorified debt collector position. I was just not cut out to try to collect money from people who were desperate and afraid. I became anxious. I cried thinking about what I had to do. I had been homeless once with two children. I knew the fear and no matter how I tried to convince myself (do we really think we can), I could not do the work. Consequently I lost the small unemployment insurance and must live on what I make from my writing.
I joined Reddit this week and found STEEM. I googled it and found out that this could be a platform for my writing and that if I was good enough, then I would be rewarded in kind. In two years I can retire. Retirement meaning that from the years that I worked, I will be able to collect that money that I 'invested' in the US Social Security program. I will be able to support myself then - just barely, but right now it's hard. Maybe though, it is good. Maybe now I will be hungry. I will be hungry to write well or to be a true artist. Hungry to get it out. Hungry to bleed what is inside of me. Hungry enough to face my fear head on and do battle.
I am excited about STEEMIT. I think I will be able to write honestly here. I think that I will be able to be creative here without having to be someone else to succeed. For if I can write like I feel, then that in itself will be success.
Thank you for reading my post about this old lady and her dreams.