My husband really really really, like practically insisting kind of really, thinks I should write a book.  He is bossy like that. And ... this morning he very cheerily said he wants to hear all about my female character at lunch.  I was standing in the closet trying to decide if I should "flip" my summer shoes up to the top shelf making my close toed shoes more readily accessible.  Yeah ... that's the sort of thing I have time to wake up thinking about ... . As I look at my picture I see that I have been able to stretch myself away from black only footwear.  That's a good thing.  Female character at lunch.  This is funny; I was so not thinking about writing a novel that when he said "my female character" I thought he meant my female character, as Toby Keith sang, I thought this was my occasionally.
I worked so long and so hard towards something, just the scrapes really, something in commercial flying ... always mindful that it would be up to me to make it fit with my promises ... all the most important of raising children and tending my home ... and movie night. It was a lot of work for how I don't use it now.  It feels a lot like a fail. Writing a book ... . I don't think people just sit down one day and write a book.  It's true that the few people who know and love me best have all suggested I give it, writing a try.  My husband suggests, based on the flimsy fact that I keep a journal and pretty much always have, that I demonstrate a passion for writing.  I don't think that is what my kinda writing is about.  He, very kindly I think, says I am one of the most curious and tenacious people he has ever seen, meaning, when I am interested in something I explore it ... I like learning about things.  He thinks I should take my love of learning about random stuff and make it research for novels.  For example ... if I like astronomy I might develop a character who does astronomy ... I might find a favorite telescope and plan my story at that general location.  I guess that's basically what Sagan did with Contact ... he spun a story from stuff he knew and stuff he just dreamed up.  I just don't know.  I have accepted that I won't be flying much.  I am settled on the choices I have made there.  Most of the time I am really okay with it ... glad for the luxury of accomplishing a wonderful goal ... ask me anything about weather ... wanna know from whence cometh the winds? ...  ask me about airplanes ... I understand the magic ... it's the joy and grit inside the pilots that makes those things fly ... yeah, it's magic, it really is.  It's what's coming behind fly by wire.  People think we'll take pilots out of the planes ... like drones fly, unmanned.  I think it's just as likely that pilots will become even more integral, plugged in, maybe they will call it fly by desire ... I think the human element provides the magic of flight ... otherwise it's just engineering and physics ... it's good, but it doesn't make mankind's collective spirit soar.
I'm 53 and I haven't worked full-time since the week before my first child was born.  If it were just me, I think I would join the peace corps ... something like that, maybe there wouldn't be any flying for me anyway ... truth is, teaching was all I wanted to do with flying anyway.
Well ... my husband really doesn't want me to get a job outside our home.  He is unable to articulate why.  What I actually do feels ... fairly useless ... .  You know ... what is the point of writing a book?  The bookstores are full of them.  I actually think people spend too much energy on empty entertainment.  I loved reading the Clavell books. And the Kidder book, Mountains Beyond Mountains ... it tells a story that I'm glad to know.  Hmmmm ... .
I told my husband I may have another three or so epic failures in me.  One of them could be a writing career I guess.

Got another tree to paint up at the church ... and more Lewis to absorb.  His books have been a great joy to read.  This one I re-read as I read.

Clive Staples Lewis, commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland.