Everyone tells you to listen to your heart. Follow your dreams. Don't ever give up on pursuing what you really want, your deepest desires. Express your innermost self! Become your authentic you, and live your unique life.
I am that person who listens to this advice. I have done nothing my whole life, if not followed my heart, for I never listened to my mom when she said not to study athletic training in college ("What kind of money will you make doing that?") And after my physical therapy practice closed down, I found a job designing closets because it seemed like an interesting thing to do. When I got divorced and had to find something to make money, I started a non-profit website, never having run such a thing before, all because I was on a mission to fix congress! Nothing needed my attention more than trying to fix congress, right? Look what a lousy job they're doing!
I spent nearly everything I had in savings to do this thing called Writeindependent.org, and now I have nothing left except my YouTube channel. The money ran out, the website got erased by my web developer, and GoDaddy doesn't help you migrate your website so I lost all of it after the files got corrupted in the FTP process. I have the files, but I don't know php and can't find the corrupted code.
But there's one thing you could still say about me: I followed my heart. I gave it my all. I did everything I could to make it a go, and every time someone said "no" to me, I kept my head high and stayed positive, and kept working at it.
Yesterday I went to the gym, and I was feeling pretty low, because I lost my blog that had 290 posts. Yes, I still have the rough drafts on my computer. And I'm going to take that painstaking process of re-posting all of them, one day at a time, until they're all online again, on an old website called Judy's Homegrown even though they're out of order and not stamped with the proper posting date.
Nobody cared more about the year and a half that I worked on Writeindependent.org than I did, so please understand me when I say that I was crying yesterday, and a fellow gym member walked up to me, his name is Carlos, and he asked how I was doing.
When I told him what happened, I started to cry. I'm a big cry-baby, actually. I feel all my feelings, right out in the open. I'm not afraid to sob in public if necessary. With all the waterworks going, he tried to console me. "You never know why things happen, but they happen for a reason," he said. Makes me want to cry just thinking about him saying that.
I hope all these things are right. They sure feel right when you hear them: listen to your heart, follow your dreams, it all happens for a reason. I wish I could tell you that it has all worked out, but it's too soon to say. My life is nothing if not an exercise in patience. It's been seven years getting out of my marriage and trying to get on my own two feet, and it's still not working out.
Is there anyone else out there who has taken this long to get a life in order? I mean, I don't do drugs, don't drink, I follow all the rules, I work my hardest, I eat right, I keep clean. What more can I do?
The only thing I have left from the year and a half of spending my savings on Writeindependent.org is the memories of the experience of trying to fix congress, of trying to find a better president than Obama or Romney. You got what you asked for, voters. Look at the congress you have now.
I wish you all the best of luck, America. I tried to do my part to fix this country, which is more than most people can say. It wasn't enough, so I'm writing my memoir about what I did for the past two years, and I'm calling it "In Search of the Next POTUS." Until it's published I will be posting 290 entries over the same amount of days at Judy's Homegrown and then you will understand why I cry.