Choosing Your Own Adventure

When I was a child, I used to write all the time. Mostly, I’d create characters and little stories. I had a complete, certain vision of myself as a writer. As I grew older, my world became more complex, less narrow and less certain. My vision of myself became a shifting thing, rather than something concrete. By the time I reached college, I didn’t have the time or energy to write anything except what was school related. After college, writing slipped out of my life almost completely.

Since I started this blog, three months ago, this has been the longest consistent period of writing that I’ve had in years. I’m really enjoying it.

Every time I publish a post, I feel a lot of satisfaction. It’s a sense of having accomplished something, but it’s also a feeling of reclaiming a part of myself, the writer within me, that I’d almost given up as lost. (I can’t resist inserting a pun: "She found the writer inside her." - -- Ugh! Please feel free to groan here.)

The most common piece of advice that I’ve heard given to writers has been “Write what you know”. I used to puzzle over this when I was a child. I’d think “Hey, I’m just a kid. What do I know?” Then, being a know-it-all sort of child, I’d proceed to act like I knew a lot more than I really did. Usually, I’d exercise my imagination. What I didn’t know, I would make up. Don’t get me wrong. I still have an active imagination, but I’ve also gained some life experience. This is something that I’ve seen reflected in my recent writing. Although, it still catches me a bit off guard whenever I recognize these parts of myself in what I create, I feel it’s a good thing that I am able to do this.

I used to love to read a series of books, when I was a kid, called “Choose Your Own

Adventure”. At the end of each page, there were choices to make, and each choice jumped you forward or backward to a different page, depending on what you decided to do. Eventually, sometimes sooner than later, one of the pages would bring you to one of the many possible endings to the story. I remember reading each book over and over many times, making different choices, and journeying to a different ending each time.

In a recent prior post, I spoke of control as an illusion. I think my favorite thing about the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books were that they gave me a feeling of some control over the story. Of course, despite the many choices we make each day, life is not like one of these or any other book. First of all, in life there are many, many more paths and possible ends than could ever be contained in one book. Secondly, we can’t go back and redo the story of our lives as I could when reading a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book over and over again and making different choices each time. Lastly, we can’t peek ahead in our lives to see the outcome of our choices should we feel so inclined.

In my own life, I find that the more I try to control the outcome of anything, the more

frustrated I end up feeling. Life is easier for me when I try to make what choices seem best at the time and then detach from the results. This doesn’t mean I don’t care what the consequences of my choices might be, but rather that I try step back a bit and see what happens if I don’t try to hold the world in a death grip. If I’ve done my best, what more could I fairly expect from myself? If the results don’t turn out as I hope, I can accept that and go from there. I still feel like a novice when it comes to practicing this type of detachment, making my choices and learning to let go of the results, but it is a challenge that I believe to be wholly worthwhile.

For more on the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books which is having its 30th anniversary this year, here is a link to their web page: http://www.cyoa.com/

Until I type again,

Kami