First Day of the Rest of My Life

 Cliche warning:  Today is the first day of the rest of my life.  A new beginning. I retired from my career yesterday. My department was really great in giving me a virtual send-off. It was nice seeing all my co-workers on the z**m call. It was a very nice send-off.  

I went to the office -the empty, vacant office - and turned in my computer and assorted equipment.  Turned over my notes on tasks to my boss. Left my badge and secure ID with the security guard and my career is over, done, kaput, complete. I set out to do what I wanted. I was a professional writer.  Check that box on the bucket list.  

Years ago while camping with a church group, I remember wishing on a falling star. I wished to be a writer.  Never doing much really to work towards that goal. Writing at my desk late at night.  Never revising.  Bad poetry, some essays, three lousy stories. Ideas. Lots of ideas. Papers stuffed in manila folders for future reference, or future sweat. I wished. I dreamed.  

I am a lazy writer.  I waited for inspiration.  Some works come from deep in my subconscious, late at night when the distractions have faded, or are non-existent.  I thought that was how writers wrote.  So, I waited for those moments. The more life got complicated the less often those moments showed up.

As a way to realize my dream, my wish, I sat in a writing seminar with "The Writer's Ink" in San Diego. The instructor had just described a term which described what kind of writer I am. Hypnagogia. A state of mind between wakefullness and sleep. I have some of my best ideas at this time, if I muster the energy and strength to get up out of bed and go write.  Some ideas are just lost.  "I'll write them down tomorrow,"  I always tell myself.  Most of the time that is just me lying to myself.  Sleep makes me forget my best ideas.  

Instructors tell you to have a notebook next to your bed.  Yeah, and turn on the light to write stuff down.  Wake your partner.   Wake the pets, who think it is morning and want food.  Or, as I get older, I have to fumble around in the dark for my glasses so I can find the notepad and pen.  Whatever happens, I never seem to catch all the hypnagogic ideas.  Some I do.  Sometimes I get up and go to my desk and write for 20 minutes, or an hour.  Mostly, I get short quatrains, or small 20-liners that I believe are so profound and beautiful that no one wants to publish them.  

But, I ramble. I wished to be a writer. I look back now and I realize I should have been more specific. I should have wished to be a best-selling writer, or a great literary writer. But all I wished for was to be a "writer". And so, yesterday I retired from my career as a technical writer of aerospace procedures. I was a  professional writer. I guess wishes and dreams do come true.  

 So, now onto the next dream.  If it weren't so rainy up here in the Pacific Northwest I would go sit outside and look for falling stars.  The next one I see I will wish for that best-selling author status, or that world renowned poet title.  But since it is rainy and cold I will toil away at my desk, til night fall and bedtime and hope that I am not too tired for the hypnagogia to lure me to creativity.  

 DN.