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Sunday, March 9, 2014

Discoveries Of A Writer - More Ashley Randomness

I should be writing Blood Gold right now, but instead I am sitting on my blog looking at the screen and thinking, "Man we need some Ashley Randomness right now." And that is exactly what I am going to do.

I just got finished watching NATIONAL TREASURE with Nicholas Cage and it has me in the patriotic and explorer mood. Some of you might know but most of you probably don't know that for many many years I wanted to go into politics.

It all started on a Sunday afternoon in the Kansas City Airport when my mother was picking my brother and I up from the airport. We were just arriving home from visiting my father's house and that is when my life, as a seven year old, changed forever.

I was standing at the carousal in luggage claim with my mom's friend Lowanda. We were looking up at  the television screen and there was this beautiful emblem looking back at us. I asked her what it was and she told me it was the national seal, the bald eagle. And that President Bush was getting ready to be shown. (The first President Bush, remember this was 1990) Now I don't know if this was a live address or if this was just a playback of something previously done, I don't remember that detail. But what I do remember was impacting.

The airport silenced (as much as an airport can) and everyone's attention went to the President. He controlled the room, a room he wasn't even technically in. Men and women were looking up, watching as the words that came out of his mouth resonated throughout luggage claim.

Now to a seven year old shy girl, this was cause for shock and awe. I was myself mesmerized by what this man was doing. I had of course heard of him before,  The Gulf War I had just started and we had been taught about where Iraq was in relation to the United States during school.

But I never had any idea of what power a president could wield. And by power, I didn't mean the ability to force yourself on others. To myself at seven I meant the ability to capture an audience and control a room.

And I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, - President.

Now this isn't the first time that a 'Nemer' had wanted to become president. I later found out that my father's paternal grandmother, who came here from Lebanon had one phrase she knew in English, or at least one phrase my father remembered. "Mike will be President." I laugh about this now - the irony I find knowing that. But it makes me laugh and brings me comfort because it gives me some kind of mental connection to a matriarch of my family that I never had the privilege to meet.

Of course, I am not yet thirty-five so my ability to become president hasn't quite yet even been able to come up in actual conversation but that doesn't mean that that childhood dream doesn't still exist somewhere in the depths of my heart and mind.

I attended Sam Houston State University. My dad and I fought over what I was going to major in. We came to an agreement, I will do Business as my major and Political Science as my minor. Because I wasn't going to let anyone tell me I can't be the first woman president.

And then, Spring 2002 I met Dr. Frank, an Economics Professor who was instructing my introduction to macro-economics class and bamm, it was love at first chapter. I fell in love with Economics. It was like it was in my blood. My entire essence thrived when I was studying this field. I took forty hours of Economics classes while attending Sam Houston State University - and thirty seven of those hours I got a grade of an "A". I tutored it on the side for money, I tutored it while employed with the economics department student aid. I was even accepted into  PhD program at Oklahoma State University for it.

My passion had changed and my political life was over before it even began. Now that isn't to say I didn't love my Political Science classes because I did. I loved them a lot. 4.0 in my minor. And I'm damn proud of it.

But somewhere that passion I had as a child, that used to drive everything I did had left me. And now, I
am not sure where its gone. At my day job, Senior Inside Sales Rep at a construction rental company I use my economics training on a daily basis. Profit, loss, margin, supply, demand and the list goes on and on. My education isn't wasted but that passion I held for America and the American dream somehow dissipated.

My junior year at Sam Houston State University I took an internship with Congressman Jim Turner at his Huntsville Field Office. I had wanted to go work for his office in D.C. so badly but it just didn't line up. I learned a great deal of the workings of our government, watching Anne, my boss, work to fulfill all requests that were needed. And there were a lot.

As a child I could have sworn it was my life's fated path to join politics, but now, sitting at the edge of my thirty first birthday only a few months away I question - Is that really what I was fated to be?

I can make a difference in this world with out joining the rat race of deceit, corruption and bureaucracy. Or maybe it just isn't my time quite yet.

Who knows .... But as my Ashley Randomness often do I have digressed a great deal - the point of all this was I was sitting here, on a rainy Sunday enjoying a movie about a legend of this great country I live in and it made me realize, I wish I was an archeologist. Someone who is discovering old worlds that are long forgotten. Making new finds that could change the way life as we know it exists.

And then I realized, I'm a writer ... I discover old worlds, new worlds and things long forgotten every time I start typing.

So maybe there is a greater plan out there, a path you don't notice until you've passed by many steps along its journey. But here I am ... a Writer, and as Stacy and my motto at the Art of Safkhet is, Uncovering Myths and Creating Legends.

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