Childhood dreams can lead to many life paths, did you find yours? Where did it lead?

I remember always being a crafty person.  My mother is and she taught all of us kids the love of crafting.  For a long time as an adult I hated the term crafty, so many people us the term in a derogatory manner that it drove me crazy.  I wanted to be seen as an "artist" and it took many years of adulthood and maybe the wisdom of time to come to the reality that not all of the people thought crafty was an insult and certainly most of the people didn't mean it as an insult, so now I embrace crafty and artist as a compliment.  I am not a person that being complimented come easy too, I have learned to take them with grace now but it was a hard long road to get there. I am not crafty for accolades I am crafty because my soul cries out for it.  I am in many ways a type A personality, when it comes to figuring out how to do something or teaching someone how to make things I am passionate about.  I am not one of those people that if you asks for a recipe I won't give it to you, "heck, I would come over and teach you how to do it hoping you might teach me something new or exciting about it or together we make it better. " I have been blessed with the ability to make most anything or do anything I set my mind too.  I think it is because my dad never told us we couldn't do anything we worked hard to achieve, he never but it like "you can do anything with your life", it was more realistic than that he told us we could accomplish any passion we worked hard to achieve, I think there is a big difference.  I also think that most of us, in my family, were to naive to no we couldn't so just succeed in our ignorance. 

I always wanted to be an artist and have accomplished many things and many mediums as an artist.  I never question that I can't do something I just do it, usually the hard way or the long way, as I never had any money for lessons.  I now have the assistance of the Internet so it is much easier to self teach yourself now than it was 25 to 35 years ago,  whow how old that makes me.  YouTube is a crafters dream when it comes to needing to know how to make a stitch or learn a new fiber art, just push a button and you can learn anything.  Spinning here I come this winter.  But I digress.  I also had a dream of writing as a teenager.

I had two teachers in high school that I let in on my dream.  One had finally taught me to spell, I had learned to begin to read in kindergarten, not in the public school system, they didn't do that then.  I really am old.  The nice grandmotherly lady, who may have been a teacher at one time, I truly don't know, who I do know was a foster parent, had a small kindergarten she offered to the neighborhood kids.  I got to go, I think I am one of the few of my sibling that went to kindergarten, again they just didn't do it then and we moved before I went to first grade.  I learned how to read phonetically and I was told later by me sophomore English teacher that was the worst way to learn, not sure that is true as I think that is alot of how they do it now, but it was his opinion and I loved him.  He didn't actually like me that much, more like he put up with me.  He did take great pains in teaching me to spell, I am not saying I am ever going to be good at it but I can now get by.  Poppie and Yogie are great at it, they can spell anything.  They are regular spelling bee people, Poppie once won the local spelling bee and got to go up to the next step.  again I digress....

I decided in my sophomore year I was going to write the great American novel, well maybe novella, and become famous and become an author.  I can't write, I run my sentences together, us my commas wrong and chatter on about who knows what.  My teacher agreed to read my little novella and he used a red pen to help me,  it looked like a Christmas tree that had been lite when he got done with it.  I moved shortly after that to another school, the English teacher their was a dear, she agreed to read it, she was much more compassionate but I still couldn't write.  She did encourage me to keep trying.  The bottom line was that I didn't know anything about port (the alcohol), the 1930's dust bowl, child birth and death, or being a 6'6" single parent of a new born with a dead wife.  They didn't tell me in the simplest terms to write what you know, so now I am writing what I know and you are my victims, uh, readers. Thank you so much for putting up with my endeavors.  I do know about being a mom, a Nannie, an artist, a crazy goat lady, how to make things and cook, so thank goodness you are not having to read about a child's fantasy or what she things writing should be; but the reality of a simple boring life of one old girl that is getting older and hopefully wiser.... tomorrow.