Tuesday, March 17, 2015

back to school

{This series was inspired by my son's sixth grade english assignment
 of writing for six minutes, without edits or overthinking it.  
I'll be posting daily quick writes for the month of March.}

I'm reading the iconic The Elements of Style Illustrated by Strunk & White & Kalman  and all I can say is - it's about time.  This is the back-to-the-basics, definitive guide for writing.  I ordered the updated version featuring Maira Kalman's illustrations and it's so gorgeous.  She's one of my all-time favorites illustrators.

I have a lot to learn in terms of sentence and paragraph structure and the do's and don't of writing.  This will be a good first step.

In other news, I registered and signed up to return to college today!  I'm working on getting over myself on a lot of matters that hold me back in living a fuller life.  I'm embarrassed that I never finished, quitting when I received my first-ever letter grade "D" in a sociology class.  Good grades came easily to me during my earlier school years and I was in no way prepared for college.  Instead, I took the easy way out after a full year at the J.C. and went to work in a law firm.

In fact, working in a law office was my sole line of work until I was 32 years old (minus the two weeks I worked at 31 Flavors, but that is an entirely different story).

On my 16th birthday, I was hired at a small law firm and worked as a part-time receptionist and file clerk after school.  This was a dream job to this Virgo who had a boyfriend at the time.  Organizing paperwork and I didn't have to work nights or weekends?  Sign me up!  My parents encouraged me to keep this "good job with benefits" and school fell down on the priority list.  It's kind of haunted me ever since.  I've worked half of my life for law firms answering phones, processing client billings, filing and, in the end, supporting two attorneys who also became dear friends.

In the end, I left that clerical life with a lot of knowledge about filing forms with the courthouse, editing and re-typing loan documents and ran towards the chance to run my own small business in the tiny hamlet of Bodega Bay.

I'm tired of thinking I can't go back to school.  I'm following through on this and showing myself, as well as my guys, that I can do hard things.

When I shared this news with my son, he didn't skip a beat and asked "So, are you going to study art?"

Why, yes.

Yes, I am.

2 comments:

Jess Townes said...

You're going to study art. My heart just leapt at those words. So good. So, so good.

Amy said...

Awesome Tammi! What an exciting new adventure for you!

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...