For Christmas last year, my husband gave me a laptop computer. Actually he bought me two laptops and told me to pick one, and he’d return the other. As much as I loved getting a new laptop, December was the month after Mom’s death when I was still in a fog. You know when everything is a big blank inside, but you keep a smile on your face for everyone else. So the new laptops lay in their boxes for a very long time.
During January, I decided the laptop screens were too small for my aging eyes. I gave lots of excuses for not wanting to deal with laptops. And so I continued using my very heavy Toshiba laptop with the broken hinges.
January was the month I went into a mad frenzy where I gutted,
then organized my office for two weeks. A very therapeutic project I might add.
My inspiration picture.
A work in progress.
With an early spring in February, came motivation to write again. I watched the movie Miss Potter, about the life of author Beatrix Potter and I was inspired. I felt her pain. I saw the many wadded up papers on the floor.
I began researching other children’s authors. I’m not a children’s author, but these writers with real lives and real pain, helped me see writing as a way to heal. I watched a video with Kate DiCamillo, author of Because of Winn Dixie. She counseled me to get up early every day and write something. Anything. And so I did. I decided to work on the NeverEnding Story … I mean my Food Storage Organizer book. I dutifully got up each morning and wrote before my household stirred.
I’ve never read one of his books. Sorry Brandon, but you inspired me with your sense of humor to write. Are we seeing a pattern here?
A few weeks later we made a trip to Park City where the hubs and a few kids went skiing. I hauled my broken laptop in a carry-on suitcase into the lodge, set it up on a table and typed for 4 or 5 hours. The lodge got loud with skiiers coming in and out, so I moved to a small room near a blazing fire. Loved it! The waiter even brought me a foam pad for my wooden chair. Yup! And I typed away.
A ski lodge is a glorious place to write. Except when you leave the solitude of the ski lodge and come home to the real world and lose motivation to write. Blah!
Lets get back to laptops. In April I was determined to write, so I told my husband he was going to give me a laptop, a desk monitor and a wireless keyboard for my birthday. Can someone give you the same gift twice?
So we headed to Best Buy and picked out those items with my 10 year-old in tow. Hooray! The whole set up sounded ideal. The desk monitor would be perfect for my old eyes.
But UGH! The new light-weight touch screen Lenovo Yoga 2 was not my Toshiba friend. I faced a huge learning curve. So the monitor and keyboard sat in their boxes by my desk while I tried for weeks to figure out my new laptop.
My husband kept telling me to use the tutorial videos, but I was stubborn. Surely I could figure this thing out by myself. Sometimes I would sneak out my old crusty laptop and work on it and my husband would give me “the look.”
Now that I made it through my first Mother’s Day without Mom … tears, tears … I feel I can move forward and really write again. She looks over me each day from my desk. Encouraging me to be kind. To share my knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with others. To take care of myself and my family. Perhaps in that order.