I started this blog to mark my new life as a new writer.  I know I’m not keeping to the ‘rules’ by sticking to one subject and perhaps this blog will end up being several blogs in one.  I have so much to learn about blogging and I am amazed that someone has already taken the time to visit my blog, ‘like’ some of my posts, comment and even ‘follow’ it!  Wow, totally unexpected, a lovely surprise!

Thank you so much dear family, friends and my new blogging buddies!

So far so good 🙂

Despite not sticking to one particular theme, however, you will have noticed some familiar threads that weave their way throughout my posts – my cats, my robin, my children – but one which is most prevalent is my regular mention of California. As it turns out, and it is pure coincidence, in the same year that I launched my blog I am going back to California, in a few short weeks! It is the first time in ten years and I can’t quite believe it!  Dear people who I will be reunited with, who I haven’t seen in all this time.

As a writer, I write about ‘what I know’.  My struggle is/was, who on earth is going to be remotely interested in what I have to write about?  Well, all I know is I have a story to tell, several actually, and I’ve just got to get them ‘out there’.  I’ve just got to take that risk that somebody will not only be interested in what I write but that they will want to read more!

One thing I’m learning is the importance of conveying what I want to say in as few words as possible.  In other words, edit, cut, edit, cut and cut again.  This, for someone who can talk the hind leg off a donkey – or, as we Brits say, ‘has more rabbit than Sainsburys’ – (“Really?” I hear someone say in mock surprise…)  has not been an easy lesson to learn!

Me with my boys in Cambria, California early 90s
(c) copyright Sherri Matthews 2013

With all this in mind, what I’m really trying to say is this: I’ve written about my long-standing, complicated relationship with California and sort of what happened  in approximately 1,000 words. I’ve done it as a static page called ‘California Calling’ to keep it up there as a reminder of what has, for me, never really gone away.  Yes, I’ve ‘moved on’, time heals and the past is the past and all that.

 But the call of ‘my’ California remains and always will.

Listening to songs which remind us of the good times and the bad times are extremely evocative.  Incidentally, don’t ask me about anything that happened in the UK during the entire 90s decade, I wasn’t here.  Unless an actor, band, singer, indeed anybody from the UK happened to ‘make it’ in the States, we didn’t hear about them.  I certainly had never heard of Gary Barlow!  Of course, it goes without saying that news of Princess Diana appeared as regular as clockwork in all the magazines, she was my news from ‘home’.

I used to go for long walks after dropping the children off at school in the early mornings before it got too unbearably hot to go outside.  My then mother-in-law, the lovely Olivia, had given me a Sony Walkman (remember those?) so that I could listen to my CDs whilst out walking (I loved that old Walkman, and it even had an anti-skipping mechanism!)

It was great because I could listen to all my angst-ridden music whilst pounding the pavement (sorry, sidewalk).  Puddle of Mudd’s ‘Blurry’ and pretty much all of Nirvana (love that grunge) made for fantastic workouts as the pained music and  lyrics belted out full blast  in my ears, utterly lost as I was in my self-contained, anger-filled world. If I thought I was capable of horrific acts of revenge before I stepped out for my walks, I would return calm, positively tranquil, forgiving even.

Until the next day that is, and the next, and the next after that…

I’ve got to get all this out of my system. I’m soooooo excited to be going back to ‘my’ California and I’m terrified all at the same time.

I’m sorting it out and I hope you will stay with me for the duration.