Walk down memory lane

This is so funny. I am taking an unexpected walk down memory lane today. I found an old filing system my parents gave me a long time ago, with a whole bunch of old documents in it. There were even a dozen or so old backstreet boys posters from my early teenage years. How I love reminiscing sometimes. 


I love chicken soup for the soul books. I bought this one book a long time ago...Chicken soup for the writers soul. I never could get totally into it to read all the way through it, but apparently I decided at one point I was going to try and write a story about my own experiences with writing to try and enter into the book. I have no idea when I wrote this. Probably before the year 2000, because it was clearly printed out from a printer that wasn't a laser printer. The sides of the page have holes and you can tear them off from the page when it comes out of the printer. The pages are all yellowed.

Here is what the story read: 


Looking back now, I realize my love of writing started when I was very young. When I was nine and in grade three, the teacher assigned us a holiday writing assignment. I was absolutely thrilled with this. Even as she was describing what our stories were to be like, I already had an idea for a masterpiece, or so I thought. I wrote a story about a talking Christmas tree. The Christmas tree wanted desperately to be taken to someones home for Christmas and decorated with Christmas decorations and lights. When the teacher saw my story, she made some Christmas tree paper for me, and I rewrote the story on the paper, and I had a Christmas tree shaped book. I ended up getting an A+ on the assignment.


In grade five, the teacher assigned yet another writing assignment. She told us to let our imaginations run wild, and write about whatever we wanted. I wrote about a big purple blob who chased two girls around a house, trying to make them blobs as well. The teacher loved my story and gave me an A on that assignment as well.


The first time I got paid for something I wrote was in grade six and it was for a poem I had written. Our teacher was teaching us how to write poems and over a period of a few weeks, we wrote many poems. The teacher then helped us pick out our two best poems, and they were submitted to the school board for a book of poetry they put out each year. A couple of months later, my teacher announced that two people from my class had a poem in the book. It was a fellow student and I. I got paid fifty cents for that poem, and I was so proud! Fifty whole cents! It was a big deal to me not only because I got paid for it, but because something I wrote myself was in a book.

After that, my love of writing became a hobby. My best friend and I wrote fantastic stories about someone we didn't like at the time. We'd write thing like the person was at the county fair on the Ferris wheel and the seat she was riding in flew off. Wed also write that the person was walking down the street and got attacked by a mean-people eating monster. As we got older, our stories became less fantastic and more exciting and interesting. We grew to love music almost as much as we loved writing. Our stories became fan-fiction stories about our favourite band.

When in high school, people started deciding what they were going to be if they hadn't already, and working towards that. I, on the other hand had an extremely difficult time deciding. I didn't know what my talents were or where I fit in. Finally I settled on being a Developmental Service Worker (DSW), because I loved working with children. One day though, my moms' friend said to me, "Why don't you go to school for journalism, or writing?"  "Why?" I asked him, confused at the suggestion. "Because you're always writing. You could do something like that," he told me.


It was almost like a light bulb went on inside me. Writing as a profession hadn't even crossed my mind once, but once he said that, it got the wheels turning in my head. Over the next while I was thinking about what specifically I could do. One day while on the phone with my dad, he suggested I get my (fan fiction) stories published. I laughed at him. What publisher would want MY stories? Memoirs of a fan, he suggested. That sounded cool. It got those wheels in my head turning a bit  more. 


Then one day it hit me like a ton of bricks. I'd work for a music magazine. That way I could be around my music AND my writing. It was the perfect idea.


Next for me is college. I know I"m going to have to work my but off, but it'll be worth it. I'll do anything to achieve my dream and if that means working my butt off for three years, then I'll do it. I'll do anything to achieve my dream.


----end.

Well, it is quite obvious God's dreams aren't the same as my dreams, but that isn't always a bad thing. My love for writing is still there, and I am still waiting for my inspiration to come back. I know that things don't always happen on my time, they happen on God's time. But man oh man, was that ever good to walk down memory lane re-reading this again!