Take Care of Your Neck

Two days ago I learned that I had a herniated disc between C5 and C6. That explains a lot. It's not that it was a big surprise since I've had neck pain on and off for several years. Chiropractic and Massage got me through until two years ago when a couple skiing cartwheels hurt my shoulder and neck  and took the agony to a new level.

When I sat down and did an injury inventory, I was appalled how one little woman could amass such an embarrassing list–6 concussions,4 whiplashes, innumerable falls involving torn ligaments and cartilage. Then my brother told me a story of his friend who was a rodeo rider and frequent car crasher. That gave me some perspective on wear and tear. What I have is fairly normal. So next step is research and talk to a neurosurgeon. Yikes!

It All Started With a Journal

Journaling! Why do I do it after all these years?
Habit? Obsession? Therapy? Memory aid, for sure!

But now the big question is why did I save them? Because now they make a stack as tall as I am. They incriminate on so many levels, though most of the folks I railed at for years are now dead. I did make a deal with my best friend years ago. When I kicked the bucket, she promised she would rush to my house before I cooled and whisk them away off the closet shelf.

Why have I saved 40 years of mostly rant, blather, occasional inarticulate rapture, bafflement and self-pity? Burning would be too good. However, since they contain the history and archives of a certain persona that lives in my body, I'm afraid to toss out the baby with the bathwater. For my next novel, I will need 16 years of them.

The solution for me is obvious. Dragon Dictate, the speech recognition software for Mac will allow me to conceal the five square feet of evidence on my hard drive in password protected documents. It will, however, mean reading every word. Yikes!

Sometimes sifting back through old journals is like I imagine an archeological dig if the archeologist had been present thousands of years before. I not only discover my history from the pottery shards but maybe discover that I planted a clue or two for the future me.

Could my younger self have sensed the mess I was becoming and intuited that I would need a map back to the critical junctures, those crazed interludes, dashed dreams, and dramatic leaps? I like thinking so. It gives my life a sense of order it has rarely had in the living.

My journals, when I'm brave enough to read a few years back, are always a huge surprise. The stories are a riot, because I fell backwards into my life day by day. Not a bad way to go, it turns out, though exhausting. I find poetry I didn't remember writing, escapades better left to the past, and characters who impacted me profoundly, briefly, then moved on. Despair always drove up on hope and relief. Even if the urge to write was often ignited by pain, I often wrote myself into contentment. Still do!

All those pages full of me gave me a voice to hear. Now writing is the only thing I can't not do. Now a train load of stories is backed up on a siding inside my head waiting to get out. So I better get going.

Here's to pottery shards!