Starting out

This is the first blog I've ever written. I started this blog to write about life. More to the point, my life.

For years now I've been "trying" to write my memoirs. I've found it much harder than it originally sounded. Just sit down and write it, right? But sometimes when you are writing about life, life just seems to get in the way. Busy schedules, family life, friends and work. And now I'm writing a textbook for work, which is a completely different style of writing. To be honest, I'm much more suited to write textbooks. I'm logical, frank and to the point. And writing about events and family dynamics demand a much more prosaic and sometimes conversational style.

Sitting down to write a book, or even just a chapter seems a bit daunting, or at least that's been my excuse up until now. So I thought maybe just writing a blog would be, maybe not easier, but more manageable. And hopefully, there will be more immediate feedback, than say writing an entire book, sending it to a publisher and having the whole thing rejected! This way I can get rejection bit by bit!

When I went away to college, and new friends started asking about my childhood, I would tell them it was pretty normal. I grew up in a family of 4 children, 2 sisters, a brother and a mother and a father. I was raised Catholic, we went to church on Sundays, to the beach on Saturdays; we took family vacations in the station wagon and my father worked a lot. Your typical American family in the 60's and 70's.

All of which was only partially true. If you took every element of that statement apart, each was true as a stand alone statement...sometimes. But there has been so much unspoken tension, drama and outright lies, not only in my immediate family, but as I've started to do genealogical research, in our whole family history as well.

In my family, the " bad" things are not spoken of, and if not spoken, they can pretend they never happened. I think for some members of my family it is a case of selective memory; in others a case of denial, and still for others it is just outright lies. The adage "It's somehow not real unless it's spoken out loud" could describe my family. And "Normal" was what I learned to tell teachers and friends because I didn't want them to know the truth. And when you say it enough times, you begin to believe it. As I lived my life as an adult, however, I began to rethink what"normal" really means. So I decided to write about my life just to give voice to some of those memories and get them out of my head and into the open, where they belong.

Someday, I'd like to write a book that somebody else reads. For now, I'll have to settle for a blog, that I'm hoping somebody else will read, and maybe give some feedback on my writing. All of my stories are true, but I may change names, etc for privacy sake.

I don't know how often I'll write. But I hope that whatever I write is at least compelling enough for at least one other person to read. Everyone has a story. And this one is mine.