A writer is one who writes

I’ve been writing down my ideas all of my life.  When I was a kid, I wrote bad poetry.  In high school I tried some short stories.  In college, I took a poetry class and started learning how hard it is to write good poems.  I also ended up with a mass communications / journalism degree, sentencing myself to a lifetime of writing.  (Pun intended.)

My first foray into the world of entrepreneurship landed me a plum opportunity: starting an “alternative newspaper” in the late ’70s.  I got to write music reviews, feature stories, and was Managing Editor.  Boy, were we cool.  Also, mostly broke.

Once the practicalities of life took front seat, I turned my writing skills toward more saleable pursuits and spent roughly 35 years as a marketer.  What I learn, practice, and occasionally teach, from the realm of marketing, helps my writing and entrepreneurship.  So that’s a good thing.

Writing as a marketer might be like being a line cook in a really nice restaurant.  You must have a full array of finely honed skills that you can execute consistently in order to impress your customer.  But then do you want to go home and invent a dish for your loved ones?

“You should be a writer!” More than once I’ve heard this.  My reaction is: “I am a writer. You mean I should write a book.  I’m not writing a book until I have something to say.  I have nothing to say.  I have too much respect for the great storytellers and too much pride to ask to join that club.”

I’ve kept my own creative ideas, musings and thoughts in written form over the years…on scraps of paper, half-full notebooks, and more recently, journals.  I started journaling after my husband and I got married…but that’s another story.  I don’t write every day but usually every week.  Sometimes I go several days in a row and sometimes weeks fly by in between entries.

When I was single I only “journaled” when I was emotionally overwrought, angry, desperate or deeply hopeful about something that was going on in my life.  Now my journal entries include the happy events, the wishes and hopes, the gratitude, the worries and the parts I’m going to include in this blog.

A spiritual being having a human experience

I am the central character in this narrative.  Lots of things have happened.  Scary things, amazing things, painful things, boring things.  I expect more of the same until I’m not here anymore, and I’m not sure there’s any plotline to any of it.  Or at least not a plot that would be interesting to anyone but me.  (I hope I get to see a movie of my life at The End, and if I do, I know I’ll be laughing, weeping and completely amazed.)

There is, however, incessant dialogue.  Conversations with myself, my higher Self, the Universe, the Higher Power, Life itself.* My journal entries, poems and those scraps of paper are full of my interrogations, musings, whinings, longings and eurekas, sometimes aimed outward, sometimes upward, and mostly inward.

I think there are nuggets there, and the nuggets are mostly good questions I’ve asked or answers that I’ve found along the way.  The way to what? I’m not super successful or accomplished, so that’s not it.  But I am much happier and more peaceful than I could have ever imagined even when really messed up, stressful things happen in the plotline.

So I’m going to share these nuggets, these treasures that I’ve found, because I don’t think they’re mine to keep.  I think they came from somewhere full of golden, merciful love.

The physical entity and personality called Leigh Kramer is like a sandcastle that is standing on the shore of an eternal sea, and which will be washed away eventually.  But if some treasure remains that someone walking along the beach can spy, pick up, examine and determine worth pocketing, that’ll be fine.

*I have no hard proof of the existence of any of these recipients and only anecdotal evidence that I’ve been heard, nor am I interested in participating any arguments about the subject.