What if?

“By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.” - Stephen King

What if we really take a chance as go for what feels right? You have heard it said that “Life’s supposed to be fun. “Go for your dream.” “Live the life you have always wanted.” But often we muck around in the mire and complain that we are dirty.

I am trying to get it.

Those of you who have followed my whining and continued search for my place in the world know that daughter and I had decided to be Real Estate Agents. We paid our dues. We took the course. We passed the exams. I even download 145 pages of Oregon laws and read every one of them.  (Poor baby.) We endured the four-week wait for the background check and the fingerprinting to come through, we interviewed Brokerages. And then we came to a screeching halt.

Perhaps we aren’t cut out to be Real Estate Agents.

I feel like the man I heard about in San Diego. He had always wanted a Rolls Royce. And then he got one. He drove his big brand new expensive vehicle out of the Dealership, around the block, and stopped. “I don’t want a Rolls Royce,” he said, and took it back.

How often do we continue with something because we have invested time and money into it, and feel we must complete the job? Now daughter and I have a saying, “We are shingling the house.” We flipped a house once and I thought shingling it was a good idea—the only problem was the shingles were “shakes.” And it looked horrible. Luckily we began at the rear of the house, and pretty much had completely covered that portion with singles-ah ugly shakes—thinking that eventually it would look better.

It didn’t.

Finally we dropped our hammers, stood back and agreed. We hated it. So we tore off all the shingles—ah  shakes—filled the nail holes, wainscoted the house half way up, board and battened the top, painted it creamy yellow with white trim, and it looked delicious, like a Boston Cream pie.

The shake-making facility took back the remainder of the shakes, and all ended well.

And now, I am off into a new adventure, one wrought with fun and excitement, and a service many of you would love to avail yourselves of.

Want to know what it is?

Stay tuned.

Field of Dreams

 You want it wet or dry?

“Grinding it out, paying the bills and going through the motions. This is a stale, energy draining paradigm — conceived by the factory line model of work — where work is simply a means to an end; a boring, lifeless means to survive.”

—Johnathan Mead.

I have looked at this paradigm—as I believe many of you have, and wondered how in the world do we live the life of our dreams and still survive? Writers struggle with this question, and since I believe we are all creative at heart, it does not matter what one’s focus is, the desire is the same, “I want to live the life of my dreams and get paid for it.”

We all know that “Build it and they will come,” is a myth, spattered with magic as in the movie Field of Dreams.  We know it takes blood, sweat and tears.  That is one reason I love writers so much, they just don’t give up. They face rejection after rejection, and still say, “This is what I do. This is my passion.” And they keep doing it.

I have been off this site for a while, but I want all reading this to know how much I appreciate you.  I am honored to have some of your valuable time—for I feel that time is our greatest commodity. It is my deep desire that I give you something in return.

The reason I have been off site is I’ve been studying—I spent 150 hours studying for a Real Estate License, I took their exams, passed, and then waited four weeks for my fingerprinting/background check to finalize. That’s done, and now I wonder if that is really what I want to do. You see, I am one of those die-hard writers who want to write. I didn’t believe that I could get paid for what I really want to do so I went off on a tangent—perhaps if I had focused on writing and selling it with the same dogged determination I used to complete that course I would be a selling author by now.

If you have any comments I would love to hear them. If you would feel inclined to tweet me I would love that, and don’t worry there will never be any “Buy this” on this site. This is ours to share.

A Day in the Life of

“Eat a frog in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

Somebody said that. I don’t know who, but my mornings have been wandering off in that direction.

First thing I take a slug of Noni juice on an empty stomach.  Why am I doing it? Well, Noni juice does good things for my body, and I took all the capsules I had, and am now down to the ton of juice I ordered that nobody wants to buy. I don’t blame them, the taste alone could knock them off their chair, and I don’t want to be responsible for anyone hurting themselves. That leaves me with the juice…

I just gulp it down with a chaser of water. I don’t want to dilute the juice, that would require more tasting and swallowing. Follow that with a good hot cup of coffee, though, and I’m good to go.

(Noni is a fruit of Hawaii, that according the legend, will cure anything. One lady started drinking it and began to lose weight. The family was worried, but found that she was in robust health.)

Next I write to you guys or check my email, or work on my book and in the meantime wait for my Real Estate License background check to come in. By then, Grandson has awakened, and we fight over the computer. No, we don’t fight, he is respectful and waits for me to move to my slow laptop.

The Writer in me sits here writing, that’s my dream, that’s what I really want to do. And for a writer's blog, perhaps I should write something profound about writing, but I’m not profound, I’m just me sitting here talking to you.

I have whined about taking the Real Estate Licensing Exam, that’s past, and then my fingerprints were rejected and had to be done again. (Not because I'm a criminal, because of poor prints.) So, I’m waiting. In the meantime daughter and I are researching Brokerages for a home base, as all new licensees we must be associated with a Principal Brokerage.

So now after a month or so of thinking, figuring, arguing, deciding, un-deciding, Daughter and I have chosen a logo image and a name for ourselves, and with that will come another webpage and another blog for me —something like “The Trials and Tribulations of a New Real Estate Agent.” I have been reading Barbara Cocoran’s book, #Shark Tales, for inspiration.

Here we sit fresh out of school, no lists, no leads, and so sales, hum. (I did meet a nudist at a Banking event, though, that tickled me. And  I got a tip at the same event, the problem was when I found him, he had already bought a house. 

(I’m collecting my no’s, but you know what comes after that. A YES. All you writers can identify with that. )

P.S. I want to unveil our Business image, but that will come later…

Until then, Keep Writing.
Joyce