ALL A-QUIVER: WALKING THE STRAIGHT ’N ARROW

Word of the week: skeuomorphs -- design elements that, today, are merely ornamental, even though they'd originally had a purpose. (Yay, for the return of the word of the week!!)

Life is weird.

One minute you’re zipping along on the super-fast happy-track toward what you believe are your ultimate goals, a stupid grin upon your face, hands waving in the air in ecstatic celebration, when—SCREEEEEEEEEECH, CRASH-TINKLE-CRASH-SMASH-RUMBLE-BOOM-TINKLE-CRASH, SCREEECH, SCREEEEEEECH, ZIP-ZOOOOOM-VROOOM-VROOOOM-VROOOOOM. . . . [insert Doppler effect]

Without your express permission, life pulls a severe one-eighty (flipping over numerous times before defiantly righting itself [←yes, the non-onomatopoeic version]), hurtling you off-course and into the scary semi-darkness of the untested and unknown, with you white-knuckled and screaming your head off, heart hammering, eyes bugging out.

With no idea where you’re headed, you immediately dig in your heels to stop the wild-and-crazy ride, only to discover that life has you in a firm, full-body choke hold—and it’s ten-thousand-million-billion times stronger than you are. So you squeeze your eyes shut instead and let life whirl and twirl and zip you through a tangled stringy mess of spider-webby things, a frigid wind whipping at your hair, stinging your reddening cheeks until . . .

Light?

Yes. Small and dim and distant, but it nonetheless glows a gentle pink through your closed lids.

Curious, you slowly, slowly, slowwwwwly open your eyes and . . .

There, within this ever-strengthening rose-colored light sit: new goals, new experiences—new and interesting things to partake of!

Wow!

Excitement floods through you and you wriggle in happiness (remember, life has you in a full-body choke hold still), when all at once, (because life, of course, has not slowed down—at all—mutinous creature that it is) as you stare goggle-eyed at everything, you promptly—CRASH-BANG-SMASH-CRASH! . . . careen head-first into everything.

Ev-er-ee-thing.

Shit!

Stuff goes flying everywhere—PING-SPROING-TWANG!—in all possible and possibly impossible directions, including into, over, under, and through various dark, curtainy folds of dark matter strewn throughout the multiverse—

>>Damn, you made a mess!<<

—and you come to an abrupt and strangely convoluted halt. Possibly upside down.

Soon, though, the dust settles, and as you blink away blurry tears of—pain? joy? fascination? bewilderment?—you view your shiny new goals beneath a soft light of appreciation.

Then you start to giggle.

Yes. Life has taken you here—wherever “here” is—and now you are as wonderfully distracted as a prey-driven pup in a meadow full of squirrels—

Squirrel!

—and you are so ready and willing to dive into these new experiences, to reach these new goals with a renewed vigor and a sparkling light in your soul.

Right. Thus and so ends my overly dramatic explanation of my unexpected journey from writer to archer, from introvert to ambivert, from kennel worker to sports instructor.

Did I write? Yes. Will I still? Yes. Probably.

Was I an introvert? Yes. Am I still? Probably not.

Was I a kennel worker? Yes, for thirteen years. Am I still? No. Never again.

No. Life has now handed me a bow and some arrows, plus a fancy new job with a fabulous co-instructor and friend.

“Go forth, wild huntress,” life’s telling me, “and slay that which stands between you and success.”