I suppose that I have always wanted to be a writer. Even as a child I created little stories and then books and a neighborhood newspaper. All of it was recorded by hand with my own illustrations. None of it went beyond the boundaries of the street where I lived. Still, I fancied myself as an author who would one day be famous for her creativity and wit. 

Sadly none of that came to be, not even in high school when the teacher that I had for all four years challenged us to write a theme every single week. I would sweat bullets over the prompt until it was do or die on Sunday evenings. Try as I may I never once had the honor of my teacher reading my work to the rest of the class. As I listened to the offerings of my classmates I wondered where they got their incredible ideas and how I might one day create something worthy of praise. 

I wrote a great deal of prose in college and managed to earn high grades on my papers but I wanted to do more than write reviews or compile facts in a persuasive argument. It was not until I was in my senior year that my work began to receive some notice and I even received several invitations to continue my education in the art of writing through a program that was new to my university. Since I needed to get cracking with my career to earn some money I passed on that idea and settled into the life of a teacher. Ironically I spent all of my years teaching mathematics because the first principal who hired me did not need my English major but was taken by my minor in math. 

Since retiring I ply my mediocre talent with blogs that I compose five days a week. I seem to hit a bullseye of delight now and again but I have never been discovered as the next great journalist or story teller even as I dream of such a thing happening. I suppose that I get enough joy out of writing to offset the fact that I mostly seem to be doing it for myself. 

Just when I think that my skills are improving I read a daily blurb from someone like Anne Lamott and I suddenly realize that there is a vast difference between an amateur and someone who truly has a gift. Anne is one of those incredible authors who strings words together in such a way that they light up the page like a fireworks show. I am in awe each and every time that I enjoy the way that she is able to take an ordinary topic and make it feel like one of the most extraordinary things that I have ever read. 

Some writers like Stephen King have such a facility with words that even a short political dig comes across as memorable and brilliant. I suspect that there is not a class that can teach such skills. There has to be some kind of innate talent that begins on the day of birth when they begin observing the world around them. Their words are magical in their ability to bring ideas to life.

My parents created an almost spiritual reverence for genius in me that wraps me in a kind of elation when I encounter a wordsmith. My worship and envy of them almost always coincides with wonder of how they became as good at delivering ideas as they are. I suppose it’s the same kind of admiration that a wannabe athlete experiences watching Michael Jordan or Caitlyn Clark. 

I’ll keep reading the best of the best and pecking on the keys of my laptop in a quest to one day write something so wonderful that anyone who reads it will feel exactly the way I was hoping to coax them to be. I want to hit the kind of high note that nobody ever forgets. I know its in me somewhere if only for that one great moment. 

I laugh as I reveal my inner feelings because there was a day when one of my students just knew that he was destined to be the next basketball great. He was well under six feet tall and mostly sat on the bench during the games that his mediocre team played. I did not want to murder his dream because I truly understand how hurtful such truth can be. Instead I encouraged him to develop as many of his talents as possible so that if the career as a basketball star did not work out he would still have a backup plan like I did with my teaching. He tried several pathways but eventually found his own kind of joy in computer work. Now he simply enjoys a quick game of basketball with his buddies after work. I suppose this is what I did with my own career, so I wonder if he still dreams of dunking the winning ball in a major game as I do in wondering if my writing will ever be known beyond the limits of my tiny group of readers. I suppose that everyone sometimes imagines what it would be like to rise above the mundane.