Saturday, July 14, 2012

Challenges and Choices

Starting a new phase of life has never been easy for me. The transition from nursing student to nurse has been tough. Instead of feeling confident and sanguine, I have felt a disabling anxiety. Tomorrow I am starting work with a new home-care client and I know it won't be easy for me to adjust to the new responsibilities, routines, and the unique behavioral issues of my client. It also will be tough for my client to adjust to a new care-giver.

I am hoping that this opportunity will work out, but I am anxious that it might not. I have prayed that tomorrow I will be able to do my best and that my client will have a good day. Still, the anxiety remains. Trusting that whatever happens, God will be with me and will help me do all things through his strength is hard to do. But I have to make a choice not to worry, and instead to trust.

There are many things I can't control, but I can make this decision. Whether this particular job works out or not, God does have a good plan for my life. He is reliable and his promises are sure. I pray he will guide me in this new part of my life.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Suzanne: Writer of Purple Prose

When I was much younger I used to write stories on the computer. I wrote one about the daughter of a missionary who got kidnapped. I wrote another about a princess who was threatened with a marriage proposal from an evil prince and is offered help in this dilemma by a prince-in-disguise. I started a reworking of the story of Rapunzel, and plotted out  a romantic story about a princess who was promised in marriage to a egotistical newly-crowned King but falls for his younger twin brother who actually turns out to have been born first. Yeah I was big on melodrama.

I had big plans to write a sprawling story told from the perspective of Cinderella's stepsister telling what really happened, namely that Cinderella was a spoiled brat who maligned her step-sisters and step-mother. I was about ten pages into this tale, full of flowery prose, and romantic descriptions when I discovered that my brother had a written an ending for it in which a secondary character, the love interest of one of the stepsisters came to call and, in a state of rage and insanity, shoots every member and creature  in the household with his blunderbuss and then turns on himself, killing all except for "the stupid cricket that kept" the narrator "awake at night." It ended "Oh well, I'm dead anyways." After this assassination of all of my well-realized characters, I stopped writing the story. I think it was because I realized it was ripe for ridicule A couple of years later I showed it to my younger sister who wrote a satirical addition that was side-splittingly funny, mainly because it spoofed the most flowery and romantic and idiosyncratic lines in my story.  In my senior year of highschool I wrote a short tale for a short story assignment that was narrated by Cinderella's stepsister and focused on the royal ball and its aftermath. It was basically how I planned my original story to end. 

Last week my mom challenged me to start writing something fictional again. I had a lot of free time and most of my family was away. I decided I wanted to finish my story about Cinderella as originally envisioned. So I rewrote and added to my previous writing and tacked on the ending I had already written from my school assignment. Although I enjoyed the process, I can't say I am particularly proud of the end result. After my mom had read the story, which she pronounced "cute," I showed her my first draft of the story with John and Rachel's endings. She laughed so hard she started crying, and stated that I should have left it with Rachel's ending. I am inclined to agree. 

I wonder what a mature well-crafted story from me would look like?