I am going to be real here for a moment and share something deep and personal.
I have a great fear and with Stanley just passing away it has really hit hard. It is really a two part fear and perhaps it won't make any sense to anyone. My one great fear is that I will pass away without anyone noticing. That is probably why I have let some not to nice people live in my house when I knew better. The fear is that one day I will simply not wake up and no one will even notice. Then a few months down the road someone on the site would say "whatever happened to that little Katie person?" But no one would know and no one would really care and at best people would say that I had a good idea or two. Since I post so infrequently, it might not even get to that. I would be dead and no one would even notice or care.
It goes beyond the internet though. I really have doubted that people in real life would miss me at all either. The family I have left has disowned me and I'm none to eager to repair that bridge any more. My job would be inconvenienced, but they really wouldn't miss me much unless the person who took over my route did poorly and they might reminisce how I didn't suck that bad.
That has changed a little bit lately. I now have someone in my life and if something happened I am sure it would affect him greatly. I feel selfish that I am in such poor shape and though I say I want to do something about it, I haven't done much. I don't know what is stopping me, but I might be closer to death than I am to a long life and that is worrisome. I am thankful Felix is in my life, that comes with its own fears but I am learning daily.
My other fear is that I really haven't made a difference. I have always wanted to touch people, always wanted to encourage people to be the best that they could be. I don't know if I have done that through my writing or if I have done more harm than good. I'm not saying I'm a bad writer, actually I am saying the converse. But my stories are so dark and depressing. I don't want to be rich, i don't want to die and people say I made money. I want people to say that I challenged them, that I made them want to be more than they were. I don't think I have gotten there yet and I fear that time is running out.
God has bestowed upon me a great creative mind. I often wonder if I have squandered the gift that he gave me. I have written some awesome stories, but I wonder if through my own laziness and inabilities they are less than what they were supposed to be. I fear my time might not be too long to make my mark, and that is also troubling.
I want to finish this current novel. But I really need to focus on who and what I want to be, both as a human and a writer. I don't want my legacy being "Katie did a good job delivering newspapers". I just don't know how to get to where I want to be and I fear I am just churning my tires in the mud; a lot of effort without so much movement. The one thing I wrote to make a difference has fallen flat and part of me wonders if I really have it in me to change the world.
Comments
You have made a difference
KT
I very seldom post a coment but belive me when I say that you have made a difference to my life and you would be sadly missed. I have lived my life thru your stories and the many other authors here. Thanks for a great ride.
My only fear
is of being in the vicinity of someone expressing curiosity, and subsequently being robbed of an honorable death upon the field of battle.
You expressed a fear a lot of us have
Being trans a lot of us can be quite lonely and alone. I don't have a ton of friends and I doubt I would be noticed as being missing here either. Being a netizen I might in my elder years literally will have to pay a service to keep tabs on me; mustn't leave the cats unprotected you know.
Kim
Acceptance
I accepted that I'm not even a ripple in the pond a long time ago. After all, that's true of probably 99.99% of the world's population. Why should I expect to be treated any different? We're born, we live, and we die. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. When we're gone we give back a very small amount of minerals that make us up to the earth. Do what you can when you are here, little or large, then you are gone. "Bzzzzt! Thank you for playing our game. NEXT!"
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Your fears come from the
Your fears come from the existentialist that lurks within all of us. It's called the human condition. Where did you think sheer genius like this came from?
http://youtu.be/Y7phvKXptzo
This guy puts it
This guy puts it brilliantly.
http://youtu.be/kortqbwtBxU
you've changed my world
And Felix's too.
And many more hon.
Fear
I think we all have the same fears that you have.I have followed your stories since the beginning of internet time back before Y2K tht's how long you have been writing.
I think it would be safe to say you & your stories have touched many so don't worry your pretty head about nobody making nice comments about you just be sure when your time comes to keep your browser open to read them.
HUGS & KISSES a long time fan Richie2
Dying is something we will all do
great and small, rich or poor, good or bad - we will all die, it's the only given in life. The means and the manner - yeah, we all perhaps have fears there.
As for making a difference? I stopped trying to do that deliberately and just go on with doing what I wanted to do, because good and bad are subjective values and one man's meat etc. However, I do good when I can and try to avoid doing bad - I don't always succeed, but then I'm a human being.(It's official apparently).
As for my writing, not sure if I've read anything here I'd consider awesome, because it's not a term I misuse like most of the world. I've written one or two things I'm pleased with and others seem to like, but that's for them to decide although we know people of good taste like the same things I do.
I decided changing the world was an act of total self-indulgence and instead decided to change myself because in doing so I changed my own perspective and guess what, everything else changed too. Too much navel gazing will give you a stiff neck.
Angharad
Do no harm......
It's the main tenet of the Hypocratic Oath, and a good way to live your life. Unfortunately, I can't claim to have lived by.
Even though the indications were there even in my childhood that I was not and am not male (contrary to all the physical indications!), I was pushed into the family Cavalier Tradition of joining the military upon achieving adulthood. For those of you who are not familiar with this, those of us from old southern families within the United States (I speak of the area once known as The Confederacy) grew up in a tradition where the male members of the family were expected to live by certain traditions. These included the oldest son inheriting the property, and the younger sons being expected to join the military, join the church, or find some other acceptable life style.
As time passed, the tradition changed somewhat due to the changing morals of the society - most notable of which was the abolition of slavery - but also the industrialization of our country made the agrarian lifestyle less important and emphasized other career paths. However, he military service part of the tradition remained strongly ingrained in the family traditions. Sons were expected to perform their service, and a career in the military was not only an accepted lifestyle, but one that was looked upon as honorable and with great approval.
I bucked the tradition a little by not making THE ARMY my life (and yes, the capitals are on purpose as that was the accepted form of service as my family traces it's traditions back to the Continental Army. I joined the US Navy as a form of rebellion against my father, who was an abusive asshole. He was also an officer in the 82nd Airborne in Korea, and I was expected to follow in his footsteps. Instead, I earned an appointment to Annapolis, as well as an NROTC scholarship. I chose the scholarship over the appointment as it allowed me greater freedom in choice of schools and geography. You see, I wanted to go as far as possible from him, and found a way to do it without being beholden to him in any way.
I spent my early adulthood learning the most efficient way to kill people. You see, I moved from being a gunnery officer on a destroyer to commanding an ANGLICO team. I became an expert at using air strikes and naval gunnery to "reach out and touch someone" - our euphemism for using an asset over the horizon, or sitting at 30,000 feet to kill. I learned the most efficient uses of ordnance, and how best to employ it.
I graduated from that to weapons development, and helped to develop the early fuel/air bombs into the hyperbaric munitions in use today. My last task before leaving the military was to help in initiating development of a project known as Velocitus Eradicus - a naval railgun which from what a few friends tell me is nearing deployment. A method that will allow naval gunfire to reach new heights of distance an lethality.
The point behind this little sojourn down memory lane is that I woke up one day and realized that not only was I tired of death and destruction, but that I had squandered the talents and gifts that God had given me on death rather than on helping people. I often wonder what I might have been able to achieve had I only had the courage to rebel a little bit more. The courage to say NO to my family traditions instead of simply treading a slightly different path. My asshole of a father turned out to be very proud of me when I saw him years after leaving home at a family gathering. I was in uniform and he was glowing with pride at being able to show off his son and my decorations. Of course, the jump wings I had earned didn't hurt, but I often wonder how the asshole would have felt if he only knew how little they all meant to me. Today they sit in a box packed away.
The two things from my military career that mean anything to me today are my Purple Heart, and the decoration that I earned for the little bit I contributed to saving a Marine Corps unit that was encircled and in danger of being overrun. That one I got for saving lives and it means more to me than all of the others combined.
It's never too late to turn your life around and make it what you want. I am, and you can too.
I vowed to never use my skills to kill again, and to find a way to be a positive influence on people - even if that is limited to opening the door for a senior citizen each day, or helping a child, or mentoring a teenager. There are an infinite number of waysin which to make a difference- we just all need to find the one that works for us.
Dallas
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus