So, here's the "why"...

I wake up each morning with a stream of consciousness like no other.  My brain is in overdrive as soon as I open my eyes that very first moment of my day.  Granted, my number one rule is "no talking" for the first 45 minutes to an hour.  It takes me that long to control my thoughts to be coherent enough to participate in reality. 

Friends and loved ones often comment on how A.D.D. I am, and it is absolutely true.  Of late, I have learned to embrace it and I realize how happy it makes me.  Never a boring moment, I say!

I own 52 journals.  Every one of them is as blank as can be.  I've wanted to badly to fill them with the volumes of words and complete thoughts and poems and doodles that run through my head like a Times Square marquee. 

I had an awesome childhood and my family absolutely rocks.  I'm the youngest of 5 kids and we are all blessed.  My extended family is so interesting to me.  If we were to have a family reunion of my Mom's side only, we would fill an entire town. 

So, the burning question is:  "Why start a blog?  What do you have to blog about?"
And my answer:  Everything. 

After my angel Mom passed away in early 2005, I began visiting a pdoc.  (pdoc=psychiatrist/psychologist)  Lots of people might be ashamed of this, but not me.  I think that time in my life was one of the most important and influential experiences I've ever known.  Oddly enough, I spent 5 years and 7 months visiting him twice/month.  Every time I went in, I sat down and we spent 45 minutes talking about somebody else.  Not just like one of those "referring to myself in 3rd person" deals.  Nope.  Somebody else entirely.  We examined what my family members were going through.  We examined the lives of my friends, my co-workers, random artists, authors, musicians.  We never talked about me.  And I was perfectly fine with that.  I loved solving the mystery of what made everyone else tick (or at least what I PERCEIVED to be true).  I paid him $100 month to talk about anything else but what I was feeling directly.  I guess I never "got around to it". 

I took medicines.  I took pills to control my mind (my ADD).  I took pills to make me numb.  I took pills to make me feel like going to work.  And every one of these things were prescribed by this doctor.  Heaven knows he tried.  My mind was murky.  I lost direction.  And then, one day, in November, I woke up.  I remember the day well.  It was the day after I got home from Omaha, NE.  I had attended my cousin's funeral.  I felt like I'd lived an out of body experience for so long that I didn't know what it felt like to be IN my body. 

The morning after I'd gotten home, I woke up.  Literally and figuratively.  In my mind, the sun was shining.  I didn't feel murky or dark.  I felt alive.  I'd learned a lesson, but I couldn't verbalize it.  I called my doctor's office and asked him how to get off the pills.  He told me and I did it.  And I smiled.  A big, genuine smile.  Then, for a few moments, I remembered how I'd left my family in Omaha.  They were sad and my heart was sad for them.  And I felt a little guilty.  And then the guilt subsided.  We all have to find our own way through the pain and it is a personal experience.  And I knew that we all were cut from the same cloth--we are one family.  And they, too, would find their own way.  And they would smile again. 

So, this is why.  Because I woke up.  And I want to talk about it.