It only took me 40+ years to find my dharma. My dharma is writing. At least I’m 95% sure it’s writing. If it’s not writing then I have no clue what it might be and do you think it’s possible to live for this many years and not know what your dharma could be? (If you don’t know what dharma means, google the Jay Shetty version of it.)

It’s possible but pretty sad. I always liked words. And in school “Language Arts” was my jam. Misspelled words irritate me to kind of an insane degree and need to be pointed out and corrected. When I was a kid, I kept a journal/diary sort of thing for years written on calendars. I called it a “calendiary”. Oh so clever.

I would write only in the square of each day on a wall sized calendar. I feel like people don’t hang calendars on the wall as much as they used to, do they?

Anyway, I would write just things like what was going on that day, maybe the weather etc. Not personal diary stuff but just random day to day happenings.

Also, I remember taking a notepad on a roadtrip with my parents and sisters and writing down random things that happened as we were driving. The music my dad made us listen to, who said what and where we were on our drive from Manitoba to Alberta. I didn’t realize then how much I loved writing/journaling and how I should have taken that and ran with it, right through life.

I remember bringing the notepad and pen along but thinking like is this weird? Am I weird for doing this? Do other people jot down notes of things that happen on a vacation? I still have that notepad and I’m absolutely glad I did. 

At one point in high school, I decided I wanted to be a news reporter/journalist and hopefully end up of course at the anchor desk on the six o’clock news. Now, given I wanted to be a lot of things over the years and changed my mind at least 800 times. Everything from Snow White at Disneyworld, to a funeral director to a nurse in the Army to an owner/operator of a B&B. And yes, also a journalist.

So here comes a pivotal moment. I’m in high school and I’m riding in the backseat of my best friend’s mom’s car and we are on our way to Winnipeg (my bff, myself and her mom is driving). She asks me what I want to do after high school (the mom), and so I tell her the journalist career thing and she says “oh you don’t want to do that, that’s a dirty old job, going out on the streets…..” And just like that, and I have no idea why, except that I really liked her I guess and appreciated her opinions, my dream career was crushed in that instant. Like a cigarette butt tossed on the ground and stomped on and smushed into the pavement. 

I have no idea why I let that dream die in that moment. It just completely, albeit temporarily, deflated me. Now that I’m older and somewhat wiser I realize that, in the same way I led my life for so long afterwards, I LET it happen to me. My dream didn’t need to die with her words but i allowed it to happen. I didn’t take control of my life, I let life be in charge of me.

And so after graduation when I had worked a few years of parttime jobs at minimum wage, I decided to go to college to become a nurse (LPN). I made that my career but after 20+ year of doing it, I slowly came to realize that I never really fully engaged in it or was super proud of it. Which I’m kind of embarrassed to say. I met someone once and he was a police officer and I remember him saying, like it’s just my job, I’d give it up in a heartbeat, it’s not who I am. And I thought at the time, that’s so silly and kind of sad. To be not really passionate about what you do. Ridiculous. 

Now looking back I realize I had zilch self awareness at that point in my life and was actually in the same boat but just didn’t know it. But life has a way of taking you down roads that lead you to finally figure stuff out about yourself. I guess I was always a late bloomer.

My road in this case was laid out in front of me at a time when I (once again) had switched jobs within the nursing profession. More than three years ago. I had a coworker, a beautiful person we’ll call “Joan” who I chatted with when we had the time, about our personal lives. Joan is one of those light shining from within, warm, strong and encouraging type of people. I had only been at that job a couple of months but was already unhappy there and pretty stressed out. I wasn’t sure what my next move would be.

Somehow we got on the subject of career choices and I was whining about being unhappy there when again, another pivotal (this time in a good way) moment occurred. I was telling her blah blah blah about how I had wanted at one time to be a journalist and how the conversation in the car with my friend’s mom went, blah blah blah and she said “well do it now, it’s not too late is it?”. And she kind of left me speechless, a little stumped. 

I said well I don’t really have a face for TV anymore at this point in my life and I can’t just up and move to Winnipeg to go back to school. But it did get me thinking. She made those wheels start turning in my head and I googled “writing courses”. I signed up for some mickey mouse course through a mickey mouse school online and I completed a writing course. The school and the course and mickey mouse is obviously not what’s important but it set the wheels in motion for me to put pen to paper and begin this therapy I call writing. 

I wasn’t sure exactly what to write about at first. And I wasn’t sure about the mode for my writing. Do people write on laptops these days or still use a pen and paper? How do I write? And what do I write? So I grabbed a spare Hilroy notebook and a pen and got to it. 

Somehow without even realizing I was ever going to write, a few years before this realization, I knew and worked with people who had extraordinary stories. Things that had happened to them, adversities they had overcome, etc yet they lived as completely “normal” people who didn’t boast about or try to gain from having lived through the hardships they endured. You only knew their story if you knew them well. And those were the types of stories that I believed people, especially local people in Thompson, would find interesting. Those were the stories I wanted to write.

And so that’s what I did. Bless their souls for taking a chance on me and allowing me to interview them and tell their stories. That was the most nerve wracking thing at the start, asking people to sit down with me and talk, knowing that the end goal was having it published in the local paper. And the second most nerve wracking thing was submitting the story to the Editor at the paper to see if it was worth publishing.  But I freaking did it.

It was one of the most gratifying things that’s ever taken place in my life. And I know, I know, it’s small beans. The local paper, small town stuff, big deal. There was probably not a lot that wouldn’t have gotten published at the paper if submitted, I’m not saying my stories or my writing were sublime but it felt really good to see them published and know the public were reading them.

I did that for about a year and then casually mentioned to the Editor that if needed any help covering actual local news stories or events, I would love to help out and shockingly he said okay. And then for a while I actually got PAID to write for the paper! My dream came true.

But then life took another turn and a sweet adorable darling boy (a story for another time) came into our lives and things and people changed at the paper and I stopped writing for a bit. But it always gnawed at me. It’s almost like a fix. You crave it, you need it and when you’re doing it, you feel such relief. For me it’s almost cathartic. 

Annnnd that’s how I got here. My mom had actually suggested years ago I start a blog but I didn’t know how. And at the time I didn’t even know what to write. I needed an outlet, some kind of platform.

Although I really can’t say I know for sure what I’ll be writing about with each post, I’m happy and relieved to be here and hope a minimum of one person a year (aim low) will visit my site and read my blah blah blah.