Blogging again

Yesterday, I was driving by the Walmart parking lot and I saw a couple of women doing pull ups on the bar over the grocery cart return. It kind if made me laugh because I had this whole flash of Walmart Wods (workout of the day for those not familiar with the Crossfit lingo). I could picture the whole thing—laps around the perimeter, jumping over boxes of merchandise, hefting bags of dog food and garden soil from one aisle to another. I sort of miss Crossfit. It was so satisfying to have so much material to make fun and feel strong at the same time.

Sometimes I think I should try stand up comedy. I mean that’s how Roseanne got her start. True, things didn’t work out so well for her, but she’ll be back. She’ll hire some ghost writer and put out something with enough humor, pathos, and scandal that people will eat it up because we like nostalgia and come back stories.

Since the pandemic, I have been thinking about my career and watching job postings a lot. That’s how I know ghost writing is a thing. I just read an ad about a doctor looking for a writer. He thinks his life of sawing open people and bedding nurses would make a grat screenplay. Maybe he is right, look how long ER was on the air. I thought about applying for half a minute. But I don’t want to use my skills to write someone else’s story. Sometimes I think about writing about this schizophrenia journey that has become my life.. But I don’t know how this story ends, and if I can’t offer hope, I don’t want to write it.

I used to think my dream job would be something in a big, friendly office. I could write and be creative and not have to be in charge of anyone but myself. I wouldn’t give up my salary, but I could give up summers off, if I could work from home sometimes and travel a bit. What kind of job would that be?

There’s thing called a content writer, but even though I can teach anyone how to use a comma, and have published a novel, and entertained my family and friends with Charlie quips, I don’t have experience. You’d think twenty-six years of teaching would give me experience points. It doesn’t. No one cares if I have endured hundreds of kids and their dirty shoelaces and broken homes and given them a little light maybe. It counts for almost nothing in the new job market.

So I have been painting. Signs. Walls. Rocks. A treehouse. Murals. When I was sixteen, my art teacher recruited me to paint the giant backdrop for the school musical. I remeber it was a big cityscape. She had me do all the high stuff because I wasn’t afraid of the ladder. I entertained fantasies of moving to New York and painting sets on Broadway. But I had Shayne and life took me in another direction. Lately, I have been thinking about the whole mural idea again. I could be a traveling muralist and do jobs different places and use Canon as my homebase. My cat would miss me, but maybe I could get a topper on my truck and he could come with me. He could do his own blog—Chatting with Charlie. Also there’s a company in NY that hires artists and sends them out on mural jobs in the five boroughs. I would love that. Every time I travel, other tourists are checking out the attractions, and I’m looking at the grafitti in the alleys.

Meanwhile. Summer is ending, and the classroom looms in front if me. Three more years I tell myself. It might not be my dream job, but it puts tortillas on the table and it has its moments. So that’s where blogging comes in. If my friends and family are willing to come along on the journey, maybe I can make it to the finish line.