Day 1

What a day!  I am starting a journey that I never thought I would ever embark on.  English was my worst subject at school, I really envied people who could express themselves.  My mum was a secretary who only ever wrote short, concise letters.  Less was more!!  Whenever I wrote something descriptive she would say, it's 'too flowery'.  

I rarely read books when I was a child, there was never time! We were an active family, we rode horses, swam, were members of the local athletics club,  played outside and walked for miles across the fields that were behind the house. As I grew older, I studied Maths and Computer Science so my reading became very technical and it was only many years later that I began to appreciate books.   I read a lot, especially during school holidays, however my daughter was a very active little girl and as she grew I was lucky if I managed to read the front page of the newspaper.  Work became more demanding and the majority of my reading was technical documents and software manuals and my writing generally involved the creation of worksheets or the production of reports and planning.  I was defeated, confident in motivating others to attempt things that they thought they couldn't do, but unable to put my own words into action. 

I don't want to allocate blame to anyone about my lack of courage, but I think the fear of failure has always been my master.  My motivation to became a teacher grew from wanting to help make school a better place for those students who struggled and for whom learning did not come naturally.  When I was at school only the academics ruled,  I wanted to be able to read out loud like Sarah and remember historical facts like Deborah.  I really wanted to become a Vet and I can still remember the look on the teachers face as I explained my ambition.  She looked me squarely in the face and said your not clever enough, you need to think again.  I think I was about 13 at the time, by the way she also said I would never become a teacher either.

I now know that I am a kinesthetic learner, shown something once and I can generally repeat the task. At school we did very little practical work, it was all reading and learning by rote. The only subject that I felt confident with was Maths, again very little practical work just applying rules and theorems.  It wasn't until I was training as a Maths teacher that I understood Pythagoras's Theorem actually meant the 'Square on the Hypotenuse is the sum of the squares on the other two sides'. I was challenged to make the two squares on the opposite sides from the square on the Hypotenuse.  I looked at the tutor in total disbelief.  "Paper and scissors are you really being serious.?"

So I begin my challenge to explore writing.  As I sit here my heart in pounding and I really don't know how the journey will progress, if at all.  I am happy doing the technical components, designing the covers, formatting the text into ePubs and creating the eStores for promoting the finished products.

Now I am being challenged to write. Linda just sits and writes so confidently and Caroline has been encouraging and told me to "just get on with it".   I am not saying that I am happy about the challenge but I don't want to be a wimp and bow out without trying.  Publishing on this blog means that the writing has a chance to have an audience and if anyone out there does read these musings please feel free to offer comments that might improve the quality of my work as I continue on the journey.

Thanks for reading - if you have.