Just Be There Blog

Stevi Nicks sings

I just read my last blog entry. Oh boy, did I minimize myself or what?

I guess I better start thinking of myself as something more than a "recreational writer" or a recreational writer is what I 'shall forever be'. I need to change my status in my statics info to something more than what it is too, since it basically says that "i am" a recreational writer. Then I need to start living up to being "the writer, soon to be published"!

That feels good. I haven't expanded on my 'dream' of writing since loosing it nearly ten years ago. Well, not quite in this way.


Stevi Nicks sings a certain Fleetwood Mac song and I've heard her sing these inspirational words (well for me recently, anyway) during these last ten years. Let me explain.

A sudden epiphany hiy me just as Stevi Nicks sang the chorus in Gold Dust Woman"

"Did she make you cry;
make you break down;
shatter your illusions of love?
Now tell me,
Is it over now?
Do you know how to pick up the pieces
and go on?"

Last night at work when mindlessly packaging 45 ACP brass and Stevi sang in my ear Now tell me, is it over now? Do you know how to pick up the pieces and go on?" I realized that I didn't know how. That realization hit like a brick, too. I stopped packaging with the shock of my personal answer to her question. I actually walked away from my station. To cover my reaction to that moment of realization, I went to the restroom.

In that moment, I admitted to myself that in all this time, I hadn't succeeded in really going on. My struggle the last ten plus years with my writing is directly related to the question-- "Did she make you cry; make you break down; shatter your illusions of love? I have known the relationship between the loss of my partner and my diminished will to write, from the beginning. But, I didn't know how to get through it. I didn't know how to over come the loss of both my loves. I knew, my partner was gone so I concentrated on trying to get my muse back. I persisted in making myself write. That is when I adopted the 'BIC' (Butt in Chair) concept to help me get back into writing. And 'BIC' worked in a crippled, haphazard fashion. I would start stories but lose them in the middle; or I'd start a story in the middle and not have a beginning or end; or, I'd get a story written but it would have no purpose within it; or, as in most days, I'd write drivel not related to any story or my reality, just so I was writing something.

I've written a lot of words during these last ten years, 99% of which are meaningless. I do have that 1%, however. That 1% when my struggling muse persisted along side me and 'we' actually accomplished something.

Now, I find a new energy I haven't felt in a very long time. Isn't it 'funny' how my "love of a life time" and I were together for ten years and how it has taken ten years for me to finally wear down my grief of her leaving me. She never felt for me what I have felt for her. I know that. I think I knew that before she ever got the courage to leave me. She 'shattered my illusions of love' and it has taken me this long to forgive her for that. It has taken my muse this long to knock it in my head that she won't be able to come back until I forgive the loss of 'the love of my life'. Finally! I think I "know how to pick up the pieces and go on?"

I forsee myself writing with new purpose and partnered with my muse intact from now on. This IS the year of my turn around and renewed love affair with my creative muse.

Thank you Stevi Nicks for singing in my ear over and over again until I listened. And a very special thanks to my neice who has in a very meaningful way stood by her aunt and kept the faith that I could--she said so in a question recently. She asked me: "'BIC" does it refer to "butt in Chair" or "Because I Can"?

Well, Kiddo from today on BIC means "Because I Can".