it's about time!

YAY! In my last post, I mentioned my faith in alternative medicine. Well, I'm going to affirm it even more! For the last two months, I have felt like I was in limbo, waiting for something big to happen that would make my back feel better and working my butt of to get there in the meantime. Well, I'm finally out of limbo and I THINK I'M GETTING BETTER! My measure of "betterness" directly correlates to the number of narcotics I have to take daily just to get by. Today was substantially better!

A lot of credit to this sudden boost of health goes to my new doctor, a wonderful chiropractor/acupuncturist. I went to see him Thursday afternoon and he spent an hour evaluating and treating me. I had my first acupuncture treatment ever, an ultrasound (which relieves a lot of deep tension where a simple massage would not reach), and a chiropractic adjustment. Well, two days later and I'm starting to feel better! My new doctor had an interesting second opinion which is the bulk of the injury was done to my neck and it is possible that a pinched nerve in my cervical spine is what is causing the mid-upper back pain. After my treatment on Thursday which included a lot of therapy for the neck (which my physical therapist had worked on as well on Wednesday), the really harsh, stabbing pain I had been feeling in my back has diminished a great deal! I'd say that is a great sign! I may have to go in for a neck MRI to check for a pinched nerve but I wouldn't mind. It's just really exciting to get a second opinion. I could spend a lot of time wishing I had gone to an alternative medicine doctor sooner but I didn't have one I trusted until this week. So I'm not going to waste time!

Okay, on to some stuff not about my personal life, since I know a lot of my readers either already know about everything I just wrote or are not interested.

I just got back from my house managing job (Darling of the Day with Light Opera Works. See link to left...) and I'm feeling something that I think might just be inspiration. It is nothing from the actual show or even my house managing job. Rather, it is from a book I am rereading which is inspiring me as I think it did the first time I read it. I might have mentioned it in an earlier post. I'm reading a book by my favorite author, Robin McKinley, called The Blue Sword. She is the author I was talking about creating a world where she trusts the reader to accept the circumstances and thus completely envelopes the reader in the experience. The Blue Sword is definately one of my childhood/adolescent years favorites (Dad, I still love Wizard of Oz and Chronicles of Narnia and Mom, nothing can replace Swallows and Amazons...but that was a different kind of experience in reading since it was with my parents... Lord of the Rings doesn't even count since I didn't read them until I got to college, silly me....).

Robin McKinley is an author I read and never want the book to end. I always want more of the story and more of the writing. That is a huge strength in writing because it challenges the imagination to fill in that void that is left by finishing the last page of a good book. I don't know if I'm being clear or not. Maybe no one else has that same experience that I do of desperately wanting to draw out the experience of reading a good book but not being able to put it down, and then lying with your eyes closed when it is over, just letting it dwell in your imagination.

Anybody who knows me can attest to the fact that I am an avid reader which is perhaps an understatement. My mom literally had to make me and my siblings stop reading every now and then so we would get other work done (which is a lesson I still haven't learned....). People who read my blog can tell that I am also a rather verbose writer. But what I write is non-fiction and what I want more than anything right now is to sit down and write a book. I don't know how that makes sense even to myself but when I read someone like Robin McKinley, who seems to write with such ease and grace, I feel like it is possible for me to create an equally splendid wolrld in my head. Yet I have tried so many times and failed. Well, not necessarily failed but given up...When I go home for winter break this year, I'm going to look for my old "stories." I had quite a few novels in the works when I was younger. Much younger. I would sit and write for hours but I never had the patience to finish anything. Now when I try to write fiction, the language just sounds so forced and stunted.

But maybe it's time to try again. I read a wonderful book by another favorite author, Ann Patchett, about her own experience as a young writer and the experiences of a fellow author and friend. The book, Truth and Beauty, delves into the deep issues of artistic struggles as writers and the lives of two very different writers dealing with those demons. I guess what I can learn from that book is that it is not easy to get something you like. But without perseverence, what is the point of anything. The more patience exerted into a project and passion used, the greater the meaning in the outcome. Or somethign like that.

I also cannot be afraid of the editing process. Which I obviously ignore for blog writing. But perhaps if I can get by the strangeness of a first draft of fiction, the stories underneath the bad writing will come otu and I can make the writing match what I see and hear in my imagination.

Well, I'm off to try to write and then I will let myself go back to my very good book.

Here's wishing you a very inspired week!