He opened his eyes and saw the world sideways.

Everything was blurry and there was a pounding in his head that felt as if someone had hit him with something large.

He blinked and winced. Blinking made the pain worse. He tried lifting a hand to his head. He wanted to know what on earth was causing his head to pound so badly. Lifting his arm hurt too and he realized that it wasn’t just his head that hurt, but his whole body. And he winced again.

The moss-covered stripe that he had drooled onto seemed to be some sort of demarcation. He couldn’t see where the end of the line was, but he could make out a building in the distance. There were people standing around too. Why weren’t they paying him any attention? He was lying on the ground, clearly hurt. He could feel the trickle of blood down the back of his head, and down his neck.

He winced again and wondered whether he might give sitting up a try without causing a blood vessel in his head to burst from the pain. He put his palm on the ground beside his cheek and noticed that it was covered in dirt and blood and flakes of what looked like gravel. He couldn’t see if there were any cuts or bruises so he pushed hard against the ground, trying to raise his body upright. It worked right up until he tried to use his other arm to support him. A red mist of pain fell over him and he screamed loud and long.

There was a rush of footsteps coming towards him.

‘Ha! They finally noticed me, did they?‘ he thought to himself.

Someone fell to their knees beside him; he heard the impact on the concrete and managed to think, ‘That must’ve hurt.‘

“Dude! What happened? Where do you feel pain? What’s the last thing you remember? Where did you come from?”, someone babbled at him.

“I don’t remember …”, he started to say and realized that the only sound he made was a loud moaning.

And that started the images. He remembered!

There was a building behind him, he remembered that now. He had been standing on the edge of the roof on that building contemplating life. The roof was slippery and his foot slipped. He had fallen off the roof! Three stories! He had fallen three stories and lived! Amazing!

The red mist cleared enough for him to realize that there was a crowd gathered. He could hear someone yelling something that sounded like a description of injuries. There was a woman probing his right leg. Someone else was holding his head in place, saying something that sounded like “Should we be moving him? Let’s wait for the ambulance.”

Through all the confusion, one question nagged at him: had he jumped? He wasn’t suicidal. His life was fine. Did he really just slip? Or did he jump? He couldn’t remember.

It was going to be a long climb upwards out of the pain, through the healing, to the answer.

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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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Application junkie – that’s me – well that’s one word that can be used to describe me (others are gadget-geek and internet-junkie, but that’s a whole other story for another day). If it’s new and/or cool or “perfect”, I have to try it out. I’ve tried out tons of apps …

• At least 10 twitter desktop clients (and a couple web and iphone clients)
• A few blogging platforms (WordPress is my current choice and probably will remain so)
• Web browsers (I used to use Netscape – what does that tell you?)
• IM clients (I’ve used Miranda, Pidgin, Trillian, and all the native IM service clients as well).

Even after I’ve settled on my favourites, I tend to go back and re-test apps just to see if things have changed and in what way. I don’t always intend to switch from my current list of favourites, but sometimes that is exactly what happens.

1. AppCleaner

   With all that testing, I need to be able to cleanly remove apps when I’ve vetoed them from use and AppCleaner is free, easy to use and light.

2. Textmate

   A premium text editor, it has a multitude of uses and I like it because it’s simple yet powerful. I especially like it now since I discovered it lends itself to blogging quite easily via what is called a Bundle. Being the geek I am, I type in my blog post, adding the HTML where necessary, and upload it to my blog when I’m done. It’s a convenient way to blog without being dependent on either an internet connection or a web browser.

3. Notebook by Circus Ponies

   Yolospat introduced this to me less than 24 hours ago. At the time I had told her that I was perfectly content with Textmate and a new editor I had found Ommwriter, but now I am not so sure. I really like the way Notebook lays out your project and lets you see easily what’s what. The jury is still out on whether Notebook will replace Ommwriter (in particular) for my more serious writing projects, but I have to say that right now I am impressed.

4. Twitter client

   I must have a twitter client running at all times … or almost all the time anyway. (Right now, I’ve closed them all because the number of them I had open used up my 150 requests per hour allocation). Lately, I’ve been using Echofon for Mac, Socialite and Nambu a lot. I like Echofon because it’s simple and uncluttered – plus it has an iPhone counterpart that’s probably my absolute favourite twitter app for iPhone (another post there too). I liked Socialite because it was also a news reader and I could consolidate my reading and tweeting in one place – but it proved way too clunky and buggy for my use. So I closed it out and loaded up Nambu for Mac beta. Which I very much like, but it is missing a few key features for me – namely the ability see a conversation and sidebar links for the lists I am following. Next up for another test round: MacLounge.

5. Google Reader

   This needs no introduction or explanation. If you’ve got RSS feeds to read, Google Reader is the app to use. Granted it IS web-based and consequently dependent on internet connectivity as well as stability of the browser. Frankly, that’s not that much of a drawback for me because if I lose one or both, it just means I can close it out and go do something else. No great loss. It’ll all be right there when I get to log in again.

6. Internet browser

   This also needs no introduction or explanation. As an internet-junkie, this is like a hammer for carpenters. Currently, I’m using Google Chrome. I used to be a die-hard Firefox user, and a sometimes Safari user when Firefox was cantankerous, but I am thinking they both have gotten run out of town with Chrome. It’s light and fast and simple. I am loving the experience, but I am mourning the lack of use of my addons. Extensions for Google Chrome for Mac is not yet supported and so I struggle on without. For the sake of mention, however, 2 must-have addons? XMarks and LastPass.

7. Adium IM client

   I’ve tried ‘em all, as I said before. But I’ve settled on Adium -for better or worse. Frankly, I would remain and apple user forever because of Adium alone – it is that wonderful. (BTW: I notice the homepage shows you the current version being 1.3 – well the beta 1.4 is available for the adventurous with Twitter support and sometimes I revert to using Adium as my twitter client too.)

8. Mac’s native dictionary app

   – I read a lot, I am beginning to write quite a bit too. A dictionary is another basic tool that is absolutely necessary for this. I like the native dictionary app – as with just about everything else on a Mac, it’s fast and light and easy to use.

9. Skim – a PDF reader for Mac

   Thanks to @adriancharles, I was able to ditch Adobe for good with his introduction of this app to me. Again – light, fast, and easy to use. Can’t be beat.

10. Transmit

    – because every geek needs an FTP app.

11. Mac’s native terminal application

    Even though I’ve heard that Textmate has some terminal capabilities, and I have Coda installed, I much prefer the native terminal app for working on my webhost server and locally on my own machine

12. Evernote

    I like to have stuff at my fingertips from more than one location – my resume, shopping lists, recipes, wish lists … the uses are endless.

13. Dropbox

    And for another spin on the same theme, Dropbox allows me to keep documents synchronized between my iMac, iPhone and my Macbook.

And there you have it – my lucky-13 list of must-have apps for me. What about you? Any apps you like in particular and want to share?

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I keep thinking I should go get a “real job”. The extra money would be awesome right now – I could pre-order the next generation nook! But I have to ask myself whether that is what I REALLY want to do. With FRG duties warming up and opening up a whole new world of possibilities for activity, will getting a day-job leave me with time to write?

On the heels of that, I ask myself if writing isn’t what I really want to do. I have no concrete idea of where my writing is going to eventually take me, right now I am just content to write, and write and write … I know I need a plan, goals, dreams … and I am not averse to a novel or other similar publication sometime in the near or distant future. That would actually be awesome. I realize, however, that I have a lot of work to do with my writing before I get there.

Maybe part of that realization is based in fear – can I write something that people will enjoy, want to read, make them come back for more? How do I deal with the possibility of getting a “real job” which takes time away from writing? Suppose I am offered a job … what then? Should I say “no thanks. I am working on my writing career” or do I take the job and use the money to invest in my writing career?

Of course, having worked a full time job in Kentucky before moving here with hubby, I know full well that an 40-hour-job is going to render me incapable of doing anything but just existing. And frankly, I don’t want that. I know this. Yet I still struggle with the decision – even though it is essentially already made. What does this decision say about me? Does it say I am determined to make something of myself? Or does it say I am making excuses to stay home and be lazy?

lazy |ˈlāzē| adjective ( lazier , laziest ) 1 unwilling to work or use energy : I’m very lazy by nature | he was too lazy to cook. • characterized by lack of effort or activity : lazy summer days. • showing a lack of effort or care : lazy writing. • (of a river) slow-moving.

I want to write but I fear what people – my husband first and foremost – will think of me if I insist I want to stay home and work on a writing career. I don’t want to be seen as lazy, or reluctant to work, or a deadbeat. I do tend to be somewhat of a procrastinator but I get things done. And one thing I have been noticing about myself for a week or so now is that I like to write! Lazy doesn’t fit someone like me who cooks, cleans, washes, writes – oh yes I write a lot – read, care for my husband and cats …

So, maybe my goal for now needs to be convincing myself and those who I consider closest to me that writing is a perfectly reasonable career to work towards. That it has merit, that MY writing has merit. Maybe that will be my newest short term goal: the point at which the decision to work on my writing career no longer has a cringe attached to it when said out loud.

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