I find sometimes that there is just too much to say. I can't tell you how many times I've started this entry, been distracted, or un-attracted to the words on the screen. How I've struggled to write words that feel real and hold meaning for someone other than myself. I've started to talk about how I never follow through with anything (a few weeks after the entry on Tae Kwan Do saving my life, I quit again). I debated talking more about the 360's and my return home to Roanoke (too painful or complicated). I've started over and over and over and over. There isn't much more left to say about things. In fact, there's just too much to say about everything that is on my mind and I find that I can't say it at all because it becomes jumbled. It's like I took a Scrabble board and just poured the letters out and see what they form. They don't form many things.
So I'm sitting here talking about the future. Yet I feel that in order to properly talk about my future, I want to talk about my past. I want to talk about the name of this blog. I want to to talk about who I feel I am and the things that have gone on in my life that seem strange to me, or touched or created the person who sits here and types.
I know that a lot of bloggers tend to obsess over what they write. They won't post anything until it's been edited or perfected. It has to be read over by a close individual and even then, its under the highest levels of scrutiny. I don't do that. I don't edit, I don't care if I have misspelled something, or if a line seems awkward or long, or contains multitudes of horrible grammar. This blog is an outlet for me. It's not part of my writing process. It's not my book, or a poem, or required for a class. It's not anything other than just a way for me to get writing. I don't expect anyone to read it (and to those of you that have, I feel eternally grateful for the wonderful things you have said to me).
I am a verbose woman. These are not short blog entries. I'll apologize to people for how long they are, but truthfully, I don't know a way to make them much shorter. I should probably start breaking things into parts. That's for another time.
This is the time for reflection. When I first decided I was going to start a blog, one of my professors from college had just returned from China. He had these beautiful, colorful, vivid blog entries that had such glorious depth and perception to them. I wanted to try that. I wanted to have experiences that had this feel to them that draws in a reader and makes them read for hours on end (like I did one day at work). I enjoyed this new idea of "blogging" but let us be honest here: a professor living with his family in China is a hell of a lot more exciting then I could hope to be (esp. when I first started this blog). I don't write about the issues in the world. I don't write about what it's like to be an American in China, or a new mother (or a mother a second time over). I don't even have much understanding in who I am or what I do to be good at it.
Like many things, I just gave the blog up and lied to myself that I would come back to it someday. Every once in a while, I'd open up the webpage, start a new post, hate it, and move on again until I got the urge to write again. To share.
I apparently like to share.
I've gotten horribly off topic though from my original thought. I had a lot of issues trying to come up with a name for this blog. I wanted to be something that stood for me. I took all sorts of writing classes. I pull up names for characters in my novels-in-progress with a flip of a switch. I can't name a blog. A really good friend of mine suggested "Visions of A Walker."
It stuck. There is something about the name that makes me float just a little bit above sea level and dance in the spray and foam of the waves. In short, I am a walker in this world. I understand and experience things in a different way then the people around me, as everyone does. These are the things that I see, that I look at and examine. These are my dreams, hopes, plans, and plots. It was perfect.
It makes me feel like a Native American. You know how so many of those old movies laugh and joke about the names of Indians, and mock them for their names like "Runs With Leaves" or whatever. I remember when I was a kid, I used to love dressing up and playing games. Oregon Trail was one of them. My sisters and I used to pack up our dolls and dress up clothes, and some books and whatever else tickled our fancy and run up and down the street like we were spending days on the trail then camp at night in the front yard until Mom called us in for supper. We used to pretend we were Native Americans and I always wore this one dress that had bright blue polka dots on it. I used to call myself Blue Moon in Snow or something ridiculous like that. Who am I now? I'm sitting here in fuzzy green pants and a purple long sleeve shirt. Am I Fuzzy Woman in Grape? I'm not defined by my clothing, but the choices that I make, the things that I do. I'm a visionary (or so I like to think) and I walk this world.
It's funny where this blog goes. I didn't expect to talk about playing dress up.
Then there are the things that touch my life in ways I can't explain. It's no big secret that in high school, I didn't have many friends, and most of those that I did have didn't turn out to be so great of friends anyways. Even my freshman year of college, I didn't really seem to be making those connections of a lifetime, the people I'd always turn back to, the people would would forever change and define my life as time wore on. Then I came to Roanoke. I've talked a bit about the 360's and the friends I have outside of it. I've talked about really random things involving the people I've met. Truthfully, the entire affair baffles me.
I've talked to several people about how I find it weird that for as much as I hate people, I sure do have a lot of friends. Yeah, I have a lot of friends, I know a lot of people. I even have friends in that group of people that really would give the world to me if I asked it and they had the ability. For whatever reason, people find me charismatic, and I apparently seem to be something of a leader. I don't get it. I'm just a dorky girl with lame dreams and ideas that even she doubts most of the time. I'm going to use the word "collected" here very loosely. I have collected around me a group of individuals who really are some of the best people in the world. They are kind, generous, vivid people. They open their hearts, doors, wallets, and homes to people in need (including this writer). I couldn't ask for anything more out of them. They give their all and hardly if ever expect anything in return. I would give them my left and right arm if asked. I don't know if they are just that sort of people, or if I am the sort of leader that people just do that sort of things for. I just know I feel great responsibility within the group, and that I will never be able to fully repay them for the things that they do.
There will probably be more on this later. As for now, It's after 1030 at night and I have to be at work fairly early in the morning. Who knows, maybe I'll even get a post up and going while I'm there. For now, thanks for reading, thanks for understanding, and thanks for sticking through.
-Chaos
Dr. Paul Hanstedt's Blog: www.whiteboyfromwisconsin.blogspot.com
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