Merry Christmas to Me!

It was about five a.m. Christmas morning, 2016. I woke up with my head spinning with what felt like an infinite number of thoughts. My efforts to return to a peaceful slumber were thwarted with just more thoughts. Now, it wasn’t unusual for my mind to be acting like that, but it was always at night when my head hit the pillow; never in the morning. It was around 6:30 a.m. when I finally gave in and got out of bed. All of the thoughts had come together forming a complete package- like a present. You see, my thoughts never really would end, they would always just keep going, but this time the thoughts had completed a whole idea, gift wrapped like a present. It was Christmas morning after all.

I had a story-a beginning, a middle and an end. There were characters and they all had names. The story even had a title. The only thing I didn’t have was any idea of what to do next. I read books but they were all non-fiction. I don’t think I had read fiction book since college. Why would I even write a book that I wouldn’t read? I just kind of laughed at myself, moved on and turned on the TV.

As I started to watch one of my favorite TV shows-CBS Sunday Morning, I began to wonder if I was still sleeping and having a dream. There were three segments on the program that morning that caught my attention. The first one was about a Christmas wish for what is truly important -the true meaning of love between two people: a woman and her dad. The next one was about the Dali Lama talking about our true purpose in life is to live with joy and seek peace. The final segment was about the darkest places to go in the US to see shooting stars. In case you’re interested it’s the Great Basin National Park in Nevada. On the program that followed there was a character named Emily. That was the name of one of the main characters in my story that I had already chosen.

When I was convinced that maybe I should continue to follow this lead, I wrote the outline of the story including notes of significance to help me remember the story. I did not know for what purpose, because I had no ambitions to be a writer. It wasn’t even on my bucket list.