Plans and talents and things

It is a truth universally acknowledged that life never goes quite as we plan it.

Take me for example.

In my wildest childhood dreams (or nightmares, perhaps), I never would have imagined that I would be a single woman living with her dog at the age of 25. My mom was married at the age of 19, gave birth to me when she was 20, and had my sister the next year, so I, being a kid like every other kid in the world, assumed this was how life as and that mine would follow suit.

Of course, as I got older, I realized this did not mesh with my college plans, so I upped my marriage plans to age 22 – 24 at the latest.

Clearly, God had other plans. Or maybe he had the same plans, and I messed them up. In any case, here I am, leading a life of freedom where I am able to plan trips to Guatemala and Italy and who knows where else after that. So I guess I can’t complain.

And while I’ve always loved writing, I’ve started wondering lately if my love of writing should have been playing a bigger part in my plans. At the very least, perhaps I shouldn’t have stopped doing it almost altogether. While my career plans from about second grade through freshman year of college were to teach, that’s another plan that never came to fruition – I decided to write, instead, working toward journalism. Later, I decided it would be much more fun to read for a living, rather than write, so I made my goal to be a book editor. Who knows if that will ever happen or not (still hoping!), but here I am now doing neither – editing newspaper copy and designing pages. A fun job? Sure. What I planned? Not even close!

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about that parable about the man who gives his servants “talents” and then leaves for awhile. The servants do various things with their talents – invest them or bury them in the dirt for safekeeping or use them to gain even more – and when the man comes back, he rewards the servants who used their talents wisely and punishes the man who buried his in the sand. The point being, of course, that we need to be using the gifts God gave us.(In case you are unfamiliar with this parable, you can read it here.)

I’m not sure if I have any gifts, and if I do, what they are. But I can’t help but wonder if writing could be one of mine. Obviously, I’m a bit rusty, but hopefully a bit of practice will shine me up again. So I’ve created this blog, on which I plan to post something every day … or at least every other day. I’ve thought about doing this plenty of times, but let’s face it – I lead a boring life, so I never felt like I would have anything worth writing about. But I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to remedy that problem is to start leading a life worth writing about!

So here’s to hoping this blog won’t be absolute crap. I’d love to have you come along for the ride. Let’s see if I can stick to the plan, eh?

"But of course we can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts." - Mrs. Whatsit, "A Wrinkle in Time"