SavageTimes

When talking about this blog to a friend recently, she said, “You just need to decide what you want to focus on.  Parenting?  Being a writer?  A teacher?  Education issues?”  (Disclaimer: I’m paraphrasing, but this was the general meaning).

I’ve been lax in writing this blog because I’ve been thinking about that question. My answer?

I don’t focus. Not in writing or life. To use a cliche, I want it all. Or maybe a better phrase is…I don’t want to close any doors. I want what I want when I want it. And sometimes what I want, when I want it, is just as much a surprise to me as it is to everyone else.

Life is my bucket list.

I have goals I am working towards now, and I do have things I want to do later. But…will I actually finish those current goals? Will I ever get to those things I want later? Maybe. Sometimes what I want shifts before I am done with what I am working towards. If I were looking at a photo of my life, I’d start to drift away from the subject in the focus in the foreground and want to find out what the hell all that life in the background was about. I don’t lose focus so much as shift that focus.

When I left high school, my focus was to become a world-renowned photojournalist, specifically interviewing/photographing both musicians for Playboy and victims of war  for Time (one brings me up, one brings me down; I’ve always liked balance). I would live in Paris with my three adopted children and many lovers and write fiction novels on the side.

I can’t say that was a pipe dream anymore than the rest of my life. As life unfolded, the background of my self-portrait changed. The background of a Paris cafe with my adopted children scampering around the Eiffel Tower while I interviewed Axl Rose shifted, and I wanted to see what that was all about.

Thirty years later, I am here: single again after being married for 25 years, two kids, former PTSA president, a house in the suburbs, teaching again after being a stay-at-home mother for 14 years, becoming re-acquainted with the music scene, looking at a path ahead which soon enough includes fully independent children.

There’s a lot in the background of my self-portrait right now, a lot I want to do. And a lot is a blur at the edge of the photograph. I’m curious about that, even if I don’t know what it is. Will I do any of it? If it feels right. If there is a path, a spark of light, that takes me to it.

Perhaps if I could maintain focus, I’d have the follow-up to Reunion at Lake Whisper, completed already. Perhaps I’d be a premier journalist with press passes to every show that graced Madison Square Garden. Or be on the Senate floor advocating for educational issues.

But…perhaps I’ll hike through the Olympic National Forest. Or publish a book of poems and go on tour, travelling from indy bookstore to indy bookstore reading to my twelve fans. Perhaps I’ll find a lover in Paris. Perhaps I’ll shuttle between suburban home and a condo in the city, writing, teaching, travelling….learning.

So…what is my focus on this blog?

Life.