My Ten Year Goal – a long freewrite

Inspired by Kimberly's Thursday Writing Essential's prompt and a whole bunch of freewriters helping me to expand on this cool new hobby (freewriting. Don't know if it's supposed to be turned into a verb, but no one ever asked if "googling" was supposed to be turned into a verb either.)

Health issues have royally screwed up "normal life" for my husband and me. There are advantages – lots of time, time together, no worries about insomnia, generally – but one hell of a disadvantage – MONEY! If you're American, I don't care if your 18 or 70, do NOT, under any circumstances – no way, no how, no excuses – retire with the naïve notion that Social Security is enough money to see you through the rest of your life. And, yes, I know, "but we own our own home" doesn't cut it. Social Security means, "The federal government dictates how you shall then live." Consider how the federal government has "helped" us so much in the last 60 years, if you need examples of why there are no excuses!

BUT, even starting this like that, this is not about the "virtues" of being stuck on Social Security – this is how to survive, because I AM stuck on Social Security and AM disabled. Social Security does not keep up with Cost of Living – even if it is raised accordingly. (Could grab my soapbox back out on that one, too, but, like Len says, "Use what you get on a freewrite for other times." I'll leave a link on his name. Seriously, want to learn how to freewrite, post and comment stalk the guy. He's a regular freewritelepedia of helpful hints, just as he uses them and then comments on other's freewrites.)

Anyway, "disabled" as in "cannot do even 4 hours of work per day in any normal or semi-normal ways. (Have considered illegal ways too, and thankfully, because really?! Ewww! I'm too old and unattractive even to put a bag over my head to make money in "the worse way possible." (Been thinking about this subject all ten years I've been disabled, so my mind is full of every conceivable way.)

BUT, came up with one way, and my husband helped me there, too. And he came up with the idea when he was the sickest he could get, but still worried about me, so you know why I consider having so much time together with him as an advantage, not a disadvantage.

His idea was simple. It started because of my love for a certain teddy bear, (if you don't know that about me yet, boy, you have some catching up to do), and his growing love for his. Yes, "man loving a teddy bear. Sounds creepy." His teddy bear was an earlier money scheme that didn't work out so well. Was buying teddy bears, making outfits for them, with the idea to sell them. Made his bear look like a computer techie – so he could take it to work, since he was a computer techie and so were all his coworkers, with the idea that they would see him and want one. Instead, he got too sick to work anymore, before I finished making the outfit, and face it, when you're terribly sick, you'll seek any comfort you can, no matter how silly it seems. (Although, granted, most people are smart enough never to bring this out into the open.) His teddy bear, all the other stuffed animals in the family, and I helped hubby through the worst of it, and through that, we've grown to laugh through the teddy bears. (Again, going to have to go back to a few of my posts to figure out how "pieces of fabric stuffed" can make adults laugh.)

Which brings me back to what he said and the title of my post – yes, I can babble well, and this isn't merely five minutes. I turned off the clock, and am hoping it's just strange enough to get you to keep reading this freewrite.

I needed to be there for hubby 24/7, and had no problems doing so, but he saw I needed to have some fun, too. He made a little suggestion that ended up redirecting my life. Unbelievably simple, but amazingly profound.

"You like to write. Why not start a blog about Spaulding and Teddy's life. They need a vacation anyway!"

And so, "The Teddy Bear Journals" were born. Well, the first one was, anyway. It started out simply enough. We did very little but worry about my husband and watch TV back then, so we had heard about this new thingy happening on the Internet, called "blogging." We learned one of the best places to go back then was some place called "Blogger." I've never removed that first blog, even after coming up with "the new improved" blog (also titled "Teddy Bear Journal"), the coordinating "Teddy Bears' Den," and coming up with the second part of the idea – the part where I can make money doing this.

I'm not sure exactly when the thought hit me, but it seems as if I've always known. I've spent six years of my life, BG (before Gather), writing story after story, adventure after adventure, musing after musing about the lives of two teddy bear brothers, Spaulding T. Bear (my bear) and Teddy T. Bear (his bear. Oh, come on. Don't laugh too hard. Remember Teddy was just supposed to be a marketing ploy, so we never chose his name.) Somewhere along the way, I knew I could use some of the stories, or "blog entries," to write a series of children's' books. My ten-year plan. (Bet you thought I'd never get to that part.) I've started the series several times, but, if you write from a certain character's point of view for six years, you keep seeing the character in different ways, and the stories didn't hold out for the whole ten years. Ultimately, the two blogs and associated websites are all there for two purposes – as a receptacle for beginning ideas for my books, and as a way of starting some buzz about the books before they even are written. In part, they are there to capture the right audience for the books, and BG, I was averaging 10,000 hits per month. (There is an audience, if you ever wondered how strange is this woman, who uses Gather to write teddy bear stories.)

Then along came Gather, which is another long story, I'll try to avoid for now. When I came on Gather, I came to learn to write better. (Honestly, this is a freewrite, so don't consider this one of my better writings.) Took me a while to figure out where to go to do that, but, sure enough, it all came back to Kimberly – the Kimberly mentioned way back when I started. The Kimberly of Thursday's Writing Essential's fame. By the time I found out she was even around, I had already dove in and created a couple of other characters that need to be in books, but at least one of them is Tee T. Bear, Teddy T. Bear's son, a stuffed kitty cat. (By now, you know you don't want to learn that story now, too.)

But, two months ago, Kimberly gave a prompt to write a children's story – something easy to do for me – and included a few books to read on how to write children's books to get published. I bought one! I now know how to write children's stories to get published. In that book, the author cited another book that I bought. I now know how to start my adult fiction book. I've started writing both.

In doing all this, I've started accomplishing another goal for Gather – I'm finding other writers, good ones! Really good ones. And, equally as important, writers like me. (Not great yet, but working at it.) I'm learning quickly, how to write, but, more importantly, how to ask the right questions. (So naïve before, I couldn't even think of the questions to ask.) That series of children's books and the adult fiction book will be finished and published within my five-year goal.

Did I snag you there? Are you wondering how "Ten-Year Goal" just turned into "five-year Goal?" Sorry, started my Ten-Year Goal five years ago. I've really been telling you the story of how God totally discombobulated our lives so he could redirect me into doing something I would have never considered doing, until he pushed me into doing it and making it feel like my idea. Cool "puppet master," huh?

And hubby? Don't know yet. Obviously, God is pushing him to places he didn't want to go either, but eventually we'll figure that out, too.

For us, it always comes back to the verse that got me through hubby's "worst-of-times:"

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Rom. 8:28