Why Write?

   My focus has never been writing. I have been a singer, an actor, a model, an artist, a speaker, a housewife, a teacher, an executive, and a philosopher. Writing just always went hand-in-hand with whatever hat I'm wearing at the time.

   My first published work was a poem in 1989. It was terrible. I cringe every time I read it. But the editor liked it, he printed it and he compensated me. I was 8. Since then I've been writing poems, essays, and articles with the occasional publish here and there. I've been asked to write my life story for publish but until now I have never been able to bring myself to write directly about myself. Sure all my writings have been genuinely my words or my thoughts but not usually about me or for a non-academic audience. So why now?

  Now, I am at a point in my life where my time is mostly my own. I have left academia, supposedly for good, and am working on developing myself. I'm building an art studio in my backyard to be able to focus on my sculpting. I'm getting ready to try my hand at being a mother. I'm also on the neurological decline.

  When I was a teenager I was in a pretty bad accident and suffered traumatic brain injury. The cognitive effects weren't really noticeable through the pain and anger of those earlier years. However, now that I am approaching my middle age the accelerated decline that many TBI sufferers experience has started to show itself. I am more forgetful and confused than I should be and my brain is getting slower at resolving the sensory input my eyes and ears give it, while those organs are functioning properly.

   While science gives people like me, and not so coincidentally my father, hope that dementia can be slowed or stopped it is important that I record and explore myself before I lose that ability. Besides with all the social media platforms full of people posting about what they ate today, there has got to be a little room for me too.