Disappointing my Public

Ok, I have to set things straight, if only to preserve my sanity.

Enough, already, of adoring fans proclaiming me the greatest pen since Shakespeare.

My grandmother did this to me when I was a kid. I wanted to play the piano. Specifically, I wanted to learn to play "Fur Elise" by Beethoven. She got me a piano, I did very well, I made it up to Fur Elise and the Moonlight Sonata.

At that point, I wasn't interested any more, but I was made to continue. For several years. Even though it was obvious to me, both at the time and now in retrospect, that I simply wasn't achieving anything remarkable, that I hated performing, that I was never going to be the concert pianist my grandmother and my teacher wanted me to be.

To be something like that, you need more than talent. You need drive. Inspiration. Determination. And I had none of the above.

I had a mediocre talent. Furthermore, the piano was never my favourite instrument. I had to be drunk to enjoy playing.

I still enjoy tickling the ivories from time to time, and for certain individuals who do not urge me to go back to music school and learn to play ever more complicated (and uninteresting) pieces. I play the stuff I like, and the stuff I wrote, for my Daughter, and only occasionally do I play for friends.

I don't want to be a concert pianist.

When I went to school, my marks were touted all around my community. I won a gold medal for having the highest all around marks.

Pfft. Big deal.

I learned the stuff, because I LIKED it.

When it was stuff i didn't like (take accounting, for example) I became your proverbial "two short planks."

I do not want to be an academic. Or a scientist. Or any other genius.

Now, I've started this blog, and a few others. I have friends who seem to enjoy it. I have friends who don't. I have well-meaning friends who want me to become something bigger, something better. They seem to think I have a potential for being a famous and rich scribe.

I don't want to.

I enjoy just ranting.

I used to enjoy quilting. Till I got off on the tangent of starting a quilting business.

Now I spend day after day trying to figure out the accounting. This is not fun at all, this is not what I set out to do.

I am not going to re-vamp the quilting world. I am closing my business as fast as I can, and good riddance.

I'd like to take up quilting again, as a hobby.

And this blog, this is my venting steam from daily life.

I am not going to be a great writer. Ever. Because I don't want to be.

I spent my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood trying to run from the icon of me my grandmother presented to the world, to the family, to me. I can never live up to that hype.

Nobody can.

I have spent the last 30 or more years trying to right the wrongs that turned me into an antisocial, depressed, uptight prig. Trying to shed my statues. Trying to run from the "destiny" everybody wanted me to have.

I am making my own destiny. My own peace with reality.

I am never going to be famous, or rich. I won't turn anything on its arse.

I am an opinionated, ordinary person.

I am an "also-ran." Except I'm not running, not competing. In anything.

I want peace.

Sorry to disappoint. Please, everybody, go live your own dreams of greatness. I have a way with words, nothing more, and I want nothing more than to make people laugh and think.

I cannot, and will not, do more than this.