I think I finally know what I want to do.

I have always loved writing. As an avid reader, I have dreamed on and off all my life about writing thrillers along the lines of Stephen King and Dean Koontz.

My first Stephen King was “It”. I read it the weekend before my high school examinations were to start – examinations that made the determination whether I was going on to “sixth form” (pre-university level studies) or not.

My mother bought it for me in the hotel gift store where we were staying for one of Dad’s annual meetings. She bought it on the agreement that I would promise to only read it once all my studying was done.

Now that I look back, I realize that my mother was no fool. She knew exams had only just begun. If I was to wait until all my studying was done, I would have waited at least 3 months to start reading. She knew that once I had the book in my hand, I wouldn’t be able to resist reading it. And read I did. The book was bought on Wednesday evening. By that Sunday, I was done. When I say I was an avid reader, I wasn’t kidding.

I used to write a great deal too – in my journals. I wrote tons and tons and tons of words in my journals. A lot of it was stream of consciousness – just random thoughts jammed onto the paper as they occurred to me. A lot of it was repetitive anger and frustration. A lot of it was obsessive musings on situations that I had no control over. Ranting to myself gave me a sense of peace.

I even tried writing poetry and short stories. There is one story that I am holding onto because deep down I believe it’ll make for a wonderful story. But for some reason, I can’t get started on expanding 1400 words to a full fledged story.

I write articles – when I get the motivation and the subject matter to write about – but I feel blocked most of the time. In fact, the state of my blog demonstrates just how blocked I am. I haven’t been able to really write for a long, long time. I tell myself that it’s for this reason or the other … but I really have no idea why I am so blocked. And I spend a lot of time agonizing over why I am blocked.

Then I stumbled on a career description today that just sort of … “spoke” to me. It’s the description for the copy editor; an editor that edits for spelling, grammar and factual integrity.

It is the career that goes with my never decreasing need to correct every single grammatical and spelling error I see or hear. It’s the career that goes with my need to know the meaning of and usage of each and every English word ever created. It’s the career that goes with my love of researching random facts and always knowing what it is someone is talking about so that I can determine whether they are full of shit or not. It’s home.

And, as luck would have it, I am in the perfect program at the University of Phoenix to help me attain such a career.

Whether it’s too late in my life now or not to make a change like this remains to be seen – hell maybe I’ll set up my own service. We’ll see. All I know is that I want to help people put out their best when they write. I want to help writers sound like they know what they’re talking about and to actually write English with some accuracy. It might even help me eventually write for myself – someday.

But … I think I finally found what I want to do when I grow up.

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I don’t have to write 400-600 formatted words everyday, I don’t even have to have anything to review or report everyday. I just have to put some words on the screen, and click publish.

This is how I have to get back into practice.

Struggling to figure out what to write about, and how to not offend … Shouldn’t be a restriction or a limitation – it should be THE subject.

Once I start, sometimes I find I have a LOT more to say than I had initially thought.

So many times, these days, I find that what I want to say is likely to offend.

I need to stop thinking that way and just write.

Nothing wrong with voicing my opinion, is there?

That I hate having to defend it or bump heads with others over my opinion shouldn’t be relevant to whether I write or not. There are ways to write about something without being offensive.

I do avoid REALLY well these days. Probably not something I should be proud of, but there it is. Instead of really digging into a thing, I just avoid it. I’ve been avoiding writing because I am afraid of offending.

I get on the defensive so often too – it’s as if I think everyone in the world is out to make me look stupid or to contradict me. So untrue – when will I get that? People have different opinions than I. This is not news to me. It’s always been like that. Since when did it become a problem?

Actually – I know when … It was when I was attacked for voicing my own opinion in response to someone else’s.

See? There are ways to write potentially offensive content without begin offensive. No one even knows what I’m talking about there – do you?

Stay tuned – this COULD get better.

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There was once a time when I truly loved to blog. I filled paragraph after paragraph with drivel or opinion or rants. It was all truly personal and extremely subjective … and sometimes downright hateful.

Apparently, I have either lost that ability – or motivation – or I don’t remember how to.

In those days, I was not known – I was invisible, simply another voice in a sometimes discontent sea of voices. It didn’t matter what I had to say because no one could take personal offense to what I was saying. I could rant and rave in relative anonymity and not think for a second that I was going to be causing harm to others.

Things have changed and just by virtue of who I have become – per se – I am no longer anonymous and what I say DOES matter and WILL offend.

I still have my opinions, most of which are now so inflammatory that I am sometimes afraid to even THINK them much less write about them in a public forum like this blog is. Lately, I have realized that the inflammatory nature of these thoughts and opinions is not only not improving, it is getting worse. And I am moving further away from a time when I could speak freely and anonymously.

I sit and watch people express themselves on Twitter, on Facebook … even on Google+ and I realize that were I to open my mouth about any of the subjects that are now on constant debate I am either so far out of the loop as to cause the wrath of the ages to be called down on me for my ineptitude to research … or I am so far beyond the “norm” that I get the wrath of ages called down on me for my opinion and insight.

Hell, I find even when I state my mind in simple, non-judgmental terms without even attempting to incite debate and drama, I get it anyway.

Therefore, there should be no doubt as to why I have become silent in the last few months.

Unfortunately, it has hampered my ability and my propensity for fluency and it is beginning to affect my work… at this point in time, I can no longer write as I used to because I can no longer find the words to express myself. I am out of practice. Badly out of practice.

As a result, this blog has become a sparse collection of random topics ranging from a recitation of events as they have occurred in my life or a random miscellaneous commentary or review on some new geek toy or service that I have “discovered” for myself.

Not exactly how I want to be.

And so … I have decided that I need to write again – as anonymously as I once used to. For that, I have chosen to move my rants, opinions and scorching commentary somewhere else – somewhere anonymous – where whether or not one wants to be offended or not is separate and apart from my so-called public persona. A place where only a few select actually know me and care about what I think – no matter what it is – and respect for me even having an opinion.

The rest of you will have to deal with my random miscellaneous posts if and until you can prove to be as discerning and objective of what I choose to speak about as I expect you to be.

My apologies. It may seem harsh to you – and maybe even unnecessarily drastic, but I must attempt to save the one thing I have always loved to do … and that is, to write.

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Regrets, I’ve had a few But then again, too few to mention I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption

This was my graduation song … about 100 or so girls in Queens’ School uniforms (white shirt, grey tunic, red tie), with boutonnieres (corsages?), standing on a platform, singing “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. I think we had candles in our hands too. It was pretty impressive, my Mom said. To me, it was just lame.

However, this is the song that came to me just now as I was musing over this thing called regrets. Its had taken the opportunity to present itself as a concept to me 3 times in the last 2 days (including today) and I’ve been thinking …

Yesterday, I got my rose tattoo re-done and expanded.

Amazingly, the whole idea of “regrets” came up twice while I was there … once when one of the artists asked me if I had plans to redo the other tattoo on my chest, to which I replied that I “sort of” regretted that one. I thought about it a while and realized that I needed to explain myself properly so that I got the right idea of the chest tattoo across.

The chest tat is a very faded and quite stretched (blush) image of a heart, wrapped in barbed wire and bleeding. The idea at the time of getting it was that my heart was so broken and wrapped in pain that it was bleeding the life out of me.

At the TIME … that was true. It isn’t true now … and I don’t regret getting the image, nor do I regret having to carry it with me for the rest of my life … it actually represents correctly what HAS happened to that idea of mine … the idea of my heart being broken and bleeding … that idea … it’s distorted and it’s OLD.

I have been renewed and my heart is so full and so whole that I am bursting with it … that the tat has faded and stretched beyond distorted is just the expression of that transformation. It is no longer relevant, no longer current, no longer recognizable as being part of me as a whole.

After the free-hand drawing of the design of my renewed tat, the guy who runs the place mentioned the fact that people on a whole just seem caught up in the stupid shit of the past. That there is really no time in this life for regrets. I pitched in that anything regrettable from each persons past serves as a reminder, maybe even a lesson learned and a mark of maturity along this journey …

You see… everybody has that one (or two, or ten) moments in their lives that they regret. Everybody does. Don’t you dare try to tell me otherwise. We ALL make mistakes. It’s a given. The difference for me and MY mistakes is that I have chosen to learn from them and wear them as a badge of honour and a symbol of my coming of age – many times over.

All those experiences I wish I had known better to avoid … they are part of what makes me who I am today – without them, I would be far different. And I LOVE who I am now.

So … no regrets. None whatsoever. Not even, as Frank said, too few to mention. Every negative experience I have had … I have come away stronger, better, wiser …

And .. what could be better than being stronger, better and wiser ?

Not one damn thing.

No regrets!

Life is WAY too short for that shit!

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