Dear Me – Letter to My 16 Year Old Self

There’s a book out, and a blog for others to submit their own 16 year old self letters, and I loved the idea so much I wrote one myself. Here’s mine, and the link to the book and blog is below.

Dear Me:

Sixteen is such a magical age, isn’t? You’ve discovered love and a bit of yourself in the process, you’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as far as school goes and that’s pretty great. I even think you’re learning to love yourself, if only just a little bit, and you’re back to believing you’re going to be a writer some day. Want to know a secret? You know all those stories you send out? Some of them even get published. You’re even going to publish a couple of books all on your own. I’d like to say they are best sellers but um, they aren’t. At least not yet.

I like that you’re trying to follow the big dreams. And I like that no matter how hard it gets to keep following those dreams – and it will get devilishly hard when the kids come along – these little lessons you’re learning now will follow you for years to come.

A bit of advice? Please don’t put so much stock in your boyfriend and your friends. You will learn in a short time what most people learn and that is that life has a way of throwing forks in the road and leading everybody down different paths. It’s fine to live for the moment but don’t for a minute believe that anyone will put their hopes on hold for you, ’cause chances are they won’t and you doing that doesn’t make you a hero or a saint in their eyes. In fact, you won’t even know where they are in a few years so please, take the chance, go do Katimavik, go get that university degree. Who cares if the love of your life wants to be a machinist and can’t fathom you being a doctor?

The love of your life isn’t, sweetie. If you must know he’ll mean a hell of a lot to you and you’ll always wonder how he is, but he’s going to break your heart and you’re even going to have a good friend help in that aspect, so you know what? Love being in love for what it is – the beginning of more love in different forms later on. Keep your self respect, don’t fall so much in love you’re scared he’s going to die. He is, but it won’t be in your time, but there will be one dear friend who does. You haven’t met him yet, but his friendship will also throw your heart into a blender and make you re-evaluate your definition of what a boyfriend should be. You’re going to lose on that one, by your own choice, but you won’t lose the lesson and he will be one of only a very few true regrets you’ll carry.

Try not to carry regrets. They are a heavy weight and in all honesty, don’t we all make mistakes sometimes? Spending all that time rehashing every stupid thing you think you said, or blushing ad infinitim over wearing the wrong thing or doing that foolish move – most people don’t remember these silly things and if they do, so what? Don’t they do stupid things too? Laugh often. Laugh long, laugh until you cry, and when you cry find something to laugh over. It’s in the little joys you will find your bigger joys. Those huge giggle-fests with friends and even strangers, hey, those are things they’ll remember, not that booger on the corner of your nose. And you know what? If they do remember that and endlessly remind you of it, who needs them? Your own naggy voice is more than enough nagging to listen to in your life.

I know you’re very self-conscious right now, but try not to be. When you have kids and spend hours on gurneys getting what seems like dozens of hands groping your privates like you’re a turkey getting ready for your Christmas dinner you’ll lose this timidity. Why not lose a little of it now? Maybe later on you won’t recoil in horror when somebody suggests you dance with someone you like, putting you on the spot. Say yes! What have you got to lose?

My girl, you’ve got a lot going on and your world is about to get so very much bigger. Treasure your dad even more than you do now, he won’t around as long as you’d like him to be. Love your friends but never close the door to new ones, they will brighten up your next phases. If there’s anything you should do wholely in the moment and not lose patience with, it’s your children. It seems like a lifetime getting cranky babies to go to sleep but those little ones grow big very fast. I can tell you this because when one day you write this letter to yourself, your oldest will be 18, older than you are now.

So sweet dreams, 16 year old Cathi, no matter how old you are or how dark some days will seem, it’s those dreams that carry you on.

Catherine M. Harris

Now here’s the link to the site, to buy the book or post your own letter! http://www.dearmebooks.com/

August 7, 2008

So here’s what I am up to creatively:

I was busy finishing my course “Computers and Human Interraction”. I got an
A, and I can’t afford to sign up for another at the moment so a breather to go work on old and new stuff. My first priority is to edit my two novels and get them published!

I have been doing some filmwork and you can see clips from one event I filmed on http://www.youtube.com/talerockerdreamcat. I screwed up the titles though (put May instead of July) so I’ll eventually have to fix that but considering I’m not getting paid for it, well….It did inspire me to continue with putting stuff up on YouTube and a while ago I had started putting together my song “Pepperoni and Pickles” with images on Windows Movie Maker for posting to my own YouTube account and I do think I’ll finish that. I’ll post the link once it is up.

Two of my favorite short story contests are the Toronto Star Short Story contest (I was a Judge’s Choice winner in that one year) and the CBC Radio Short Story competition. Both of these will opening fairly soon so I’d love to have some new material to submit. It’s been a couple of years since I sent anything in to either of them so now’s the time I think.

And of course, if I haven’t signed up for another course in the next month or so, there is always Nanowrimo…..

Well what do you know, another blog

My long time blog is actually http://cathi_harris.bravejournal.com . I am on Facebook, and Livejournal, and I hadn’t considered yet another blog thing until I learned about Comicpress. Now you see this is where it gets complicated.

Jim, my very significant other and I started a business officially last month. I do video work as well as web work and for Jim, audio stuff, has voiceover training, also does web stuff and we’re both fiction writers. Jim, whose last name is Wellington, has many years experience in radio at WPKN in Bridgeport CT and since moving to Canada has quite frankly missed radio. He is now a tv production assistant part time but that isn’t radio. A new local radio station started up here last year but before that they needed some volunteer help on the web stuff and we helped them by showing them how to do Dreamweaver.

I remember that evening, I should have been studying for a Finite Mathematics exam but instead I was explaining what Dreamweaver does all the while Jim discussing the differences between PCs and Macs and recounting his very fascinating history of his years with WKPN. At the time he’d hoped that maybe he’d have an opportunity for a job there when it went live. It did go live, he applied, heard nothing, and the last time he ran into the guy running the station he acted as though he had no clue who Jim was. Oh well, he’s better off working doing the tv stuff he is now I guess.

This blog isn’t about Jim though. It’s all about me. The creative me. I likes.

Getting back to our business. We started Talerocker~Dreamcat Creations because we do a lot of freebie web and writing and video and other creative-type stuff for people and times are such we really want to start getting paid for it. We love our friends and acquaintances, really we do, but they aren’t paying our bills. I even have people in my life who are costing me money. Sigh.

Well now, with Talerocker~Dreamcat Creations we have a legitimate licensed business to do our stuff and sell it too. Being broke – and cheap – we’re doing as much as we can Open Source and yay, WordPress and MySQL are that. I recently discovered Comicpress and whee! The bells went off for me. A long ago art I enjoyed suddenly woke up.

Back in the ’80s I took an Animation course at Algonquin College. That was cool. Then, in mid-90s the Toronto Star had a contest for new cartoons. Very cool. I started a strip called Amazing Grace for that contest. I didn’t win and so sadly, Grace didn’t get much more amazing than she was for the contest. But she’s haunted me and I think that I’m at least going to put up the strips I did do here for the world to see.

Life has conspired a lot to change my world in radical ways and who I was in the mid-90s is almost nothing like who I am now. For instance, there was no Jim, and I was a mom to toddler daughter who was subsequently joined by a baby brother, and not long after that dad and mom went their separate ways and that’s when Jim came on the scene. It’s also around the time I started taking a Computer Science degree at Athabasca University, and I have also gotten into doing silly things like Nanowrimo creating some not so silly books, and have also self-published a poetry book on Cafe Press at my store http://www.cafepress.com/cathisplace.

Those links I put here just reminded me of something. I recently joined a community that has personal blogs based on a particular subject and they came back and told me I had violated policy by posting links. If that happens here, I’ll have to strangle something. I can’t strangle my mouse though, it’s cordless.

In honour of that sentiment if in your comments to my posts you put a link here, feel free, but if it goes to some place creepy and nasty we can’t have that (that’s my job). I’ll send your post orbiting off into the great void.

Anyway, so here we are. Two unpublished novels later (one in mid edit for publishing on LuLu I’m thinking), one unpublished comic strip, one thought of another comic strip – this one more of a diary in the life of a mom with a child with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder (my son has Asperger’s), and this site definitely shows a strong possibility of fulfilling possibilities.

My website is http://www.cathisplace.ca – I have a lot of my writing up there if anyone is interested is taking a peek.

And’s that’s it for now while I go try to figure out the link between Comicpress, MySQL on my computer, and the MySQL capabilities of my hosting people (Black Sun in case any one is interested, it’s Canadian).

Oh yes, I’m Canadian. And so is Jim now.