When I Grow Up

When we are younger we have dreams of becoming doctor's or ballerinas. We all say "when I grow up I will be (fill in chosen profession)"... but when do we ever "grow up" in that context?

I think the first profession I wanted to be was a vet because I loved my dogs and I wanted to take care of other dogs. Of course my dogs were twelve pounds and also loved me and didn't mine me poking them or looking at there teeth. And I think I realized I that not all dogs were twelve pounds and being a vetI would have to deal with all types of animals and maybe not all of them would be so nice. So I walked away from the vet occupation. But I still love animals.

I think the next profession was a train conductor. When I was younger I watched "Shining Time Station" on PBS which is all about Thomas the Train and his friends. I loved it! I don't know if I ever asked or if I just knew my mom didn't have a lot of money back then so I never asked for a train set. I am not talking about electrical trains I am talking about a train set where you got to push the trains around yourself. But boy I wanted one... so what does a kid do... use their imagination of course! I took our movie booxes off the shelves and used the living room floor as my train track. I even remember my system. My Disney movie boxes were the engines because they were the biggest, the VHS we bought were the passenger cars, and the boxes that held recorded VHS stuff was the coal or freight cars.


Found at Justestuff.com

 During high school my mom, step-dad and I watched a lot of the show The West Wing and I wanted to be Donna. She was Josh's (Bradley Whitford) assistant and she she seemed so cool... she knew everything, she was depended on by every one but she didn't have any of the pressure to make the final call. I think even today I like that for a few months at my job I was a Manager on Duty and I hated those shifts because every one looked to me to make a call or be decesive... I am a great helper I am just not a manager. 

Donna played by Janel Moloney
Found at West Wing Beware

I have also wanted to be Abigail Chase from National Treasure. She worked for the National Archive and knew everything about everything, which seemed awesome (maybe if your a geek like me). This and my love for history might have been the reason I started pursuing my dual masters in library science and history. But after seeing the Library of Congress I knew I wanted to be able to walk through the Thomas Jefferson building every day... rather I was a tour guide, worked in the gift shop or actually worked as a librarian there.


A scene from National Treasure
Found at Aneesh Changanity

Found at Pinterest orginally pinned by Lindsey TePastte Kloeckner

This post isn't really about how what I thought I would be doing when I was young, that was to give you, my lovely readers some background into my life. I have wanted to be other things from TV producer to screen writer. I feel there are many paths I would like to take. I want to be an historian, I want to be an author, I want to be an archivist, I also want to go to culinary school and learn how to make fancy desserts like eclairs (I think there might be a fat kid in me wanting to get out). I guess my dream job is to be a full time mom and when my kids are at school take time write (mostly historical fiction, so I can use my love of history) and then bake yummy desserts on the side.

I guess one day I will have to stop saying "when I grow up" and actually do the things I dream about doing. When will stop saying I am a "wanna-be historian" or a "wanna-be writer" or a "wanna-be archivist" and just be those things. I don't know if there is an actual year or an actual date. I think I will stop saying it when I realize I am it. I am a writer... I may not be published but I write a lot and I will work on getting to the other two.



I found this while doing a google search for "historical research" thought it was funny.
Found at The Trades

  These are my thoughts for the day... hope you are pursuing what you want to be...even if its on the side from what pays the bills.

From the Desk of A Wanna-be Historian

Hello Readers,

I am writing from my desk after just finishing scholarly articles for my Historical Methods class. A class that is laid out by the syllabus that "will explore various different models and methods for researching, analyzing and presenting history in both academic and popular forms (including films, journalism, internet sites, and museum exhibits)." Like most history classes we begin the class by discussing what history is. As it can be confusing... the word history is used in two ways 1) the events of the past (a very simple definition) and 2) the writing and interpretations of the past. It can also be confusing because as Carl Becker "Everyman His Own Historian" wrote that every thing we do is in the past. So what makes the past? What makes it history? Becker breaks the simple definition of "History is the memory of things said and done." Memory is a fickle thing to pass history on. As we all know one event could happen in our lives and can be perceived in many different ways. Also events can be forgotten unless written down right down, and it is said victors write the history. In our first class we read quotes that my professor collected quotes and one was by Winston Churchill "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." So even if things are written down right in the moment of happening they can still be written down wrong because let's face it we are all bias. 


But we can not just let history be facts "left to themselves, the facts do not speak; left themselves they do not exist, no really; since for all practical purposes there is no fact until some one affirms it" (Becker). He later writes "the history that lies inert in unread books does no work in the world. The history that does work in the world, the history that influence the course of history is living history, that pattern of remembered events, whether true or false that enlarges and enriches the collective specious of, present of Mr. Everyman." There are certain things in the world and in our lives that can not be forgotten. Alexis de Tocqueville (a French political thinker and historian) best known for writing Democracy in America  first published in 1835 and then another volume in 1840 (a source used by many historians to get in the mindsets of early 19th century Americans) writes about the American Individualism. He criticizes Americans that our individualism makes "every man forget his ancestors" he writes that American's seek out newness and he says that each generation is a new people. This is why we can not purely allow on memory as a source of history. This view of Tocqueville is written in David W. Blight's article "'For Something beyond the Battlefield': Fredrick Douglass and the Struggle for the Memory of the Civil War." In Fredrick Douglass' lifetime he faced the problem that people were forgetting the Civil War and the reasons behind the war so the last part of his life was spent keeping alive the Civil War. For me a twenty-first century girl it seems hard to realize that people would forget something like the Civil War especially because when ever I go to the American History section of a book store rows and rows of books are dedicated to the Civil War. But maybe Fredrich Nietzsche is right in his suggestion happiness often requires a degree of forgetting the past (Blight). And after tragic events we have to move on, we are every day faced with an ever-changing present and that requires us to forget, maybe "to forget" is not the right word but "to shuffle away" things in order to move one. Douglass and Tocqueville both seem to agree that "As a people, Americans had always tend to reject the past and embraces newness." 


Is that true? I know most of us always want the newest gadgets, the newest thing in technology but have we have embraced the newness so much that we forget the past. For some things it is true. My post below (click here) is a collage of pictures from when I was younger...I posted them on my Facebook and my mom told me what was going on in them. I know for children we forget things before the age of five, it seems normal so I guess that is part of my forgotten past. But more historically I think it is true, we (every day people) can't remember every detail of the past that's why we have historians. But even still history is full of gaps. And I know as a wanna-be historian when studying history we look at history through our own lenses and that sadly blocks history from being told as well. Plus I know when I told people I was majoring in American History, and now going for my master's in History I know people look at me oddly because they think of history as a bunch of dates, dead people and every separate from them.So I think people have pushed the past behind them because it seems boring and not worth their time but I like the thought of history being a story of how we got to be where we are today and it leaves me with a sense of wonderment or mystery. Author Sam Wineburg in his article "Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts" quotes historian Richard White "Any good history begins in strangeness. The past should not be comfortable. The past should not be a familiar echo of the present, for if it is familiar why revisit it? The past should be so strange that you wonder how you and people you know and love could come from such a time." I agree with this we should view the history as a strangeness and maybe we won't ever fully understand it but I as a wanna-be historian I look forward to being a sort of detective.   

Clio the Muse of History

My sister called me out

My sister who has now become a blogger, chatting about the daily works of her family (that I love to read) called me out for not writing much.
" I know," I said with a sigh. "I don't have time to write besides school papers."
Believe me they would not be fun to read. But I read blogs. Sometimes I get to work earlier than I would like and before I am ready to answer all my emails, I sit with my travel mug of coffee and read blogs. But my sister is right I don't blog much... but as my blog is titled "A journey through writing" this would be the low period of my writing.

I do imagine characters all the time though.

I have a wonderful little dialogues in my head of a librarian, no surprise, since that's what I am going to school for, digging through the of her library vaults and discovering letters from the 19th century (my passion in history). These letters might be from some one famous that everyone has heard of but no one knows her true history because these letters or maybe a diary has been hidden for 100s of years. Or maybe its a no one just a woman who seems to have a simple life (but there always has to be a secret). I don't have it all figured out yet.

What I have been doing with my time is....
http://womenmovement.wikispaces.com/
It is a path finder or resource finder as project for my reference library class. In it I am suppose to be helping a student/ information seeker that is looking for information on a certain topic. I have done my path finder on the Women's Rights movement of the 19th century (something that has always intrigued me).

Also for my history research paper I am doing my paper on a mostly unknown woman who was an abolitionist and a women's rights leader, Abigail Kelley Foster AKA Abby Kelley. I am finding her life quite fascinating.

What I am also loving about both my path finder and Abby Kelley is that these are women that pushed the mold of what a woman should be. Back in the 19th century the ideal woman was expected to stay completely in the "home sphere" and the women that pushed these boundaries I have loved to explore into their lives. Though I do often explain to people I am 19th century feminist not a 20th century feminist (for many reasons). But what I have loved doing about these projects is they have inspired my story ideas.

So Hunter, I will try to write more.

Awh Grad School

I would like to blame the fact that I haven't written in a year on the fact I have been in grad school but the truth is I have only been in grad school for a month. I have been filling up notebooks of story starters but I have yet to finish one.

This morning I got to work, way too early for me and I wasn't quite ready to start my day so I found this blog I haven't written in forever and decided to look at the blogs I used to follow when I made time for it. I sat at my desk sipping on my coffee reading these blogs and realized I do miss writing. Even though I write papers and read text books I miss writting for fun and having that creative flow again. My life isn't very creative now. I wake up go to work, where I work in accounting/processing, then I go to class two nights a week or go home and do homework. Its pretty much the same day in and day out. But I do need to do something creative or I think I will go crazy.