WHAT I WANTED THEN... AND NOW (Joy Preble)


According to my senior yearbook – which I just dug out of my office closet and dusted off to write this post—I was, among other things in: Concert Orchestra, All City Orchestra and Reutama – which was our student written and produced musical. In case you haven’t had your coffee yet, Reutama is amateur spelled backward. Although I have little memory of it, I seemed to have helped with the Homecoming Skit and served on the Prom Committee – both of which surprise me since I had what could best be described as tepid school spirit. But high school is a funny place. I was also an office aid – which I do remember because it allowed me to wander the halls for 50 minutes, which was awesome. There are a bunch of other things listed under my senior picture – service organizations and the scholarship I won and how I was an officer in this or that club.

But let me paint you the fuller picture: I was passionate and nerdy. I had various minimum wage part time jobs, including one in the ‘fast food industry’ where I was promoted quickly until the incident with the milkshake machine, which honestly I do not regret. They were making me wear a hairnet. My shelf life was limited.

 I loved books. I wrote – God help us—Star Trek fan fiction! This was before the Internet so my fellow fan fic writers shared our stories – mine being mostly about Spock’s love life—on yellow legal pads. To JJ Abrams, I now publicly declare that if I hadn’t lost all these stories when the roof of my parents’ house leaked into my former closet during a heavy snowstorm, I would be able to prove that I had Spock hooking up with Uhura a LONG TIME AGO. Alas, you will just have to believe me on this. 

I was also kept up my moderate viola skills because my friends were in orchestra and theater and I lacked the ability to do anything else even vaguely musical or theatrical except for stage crew, so the viola with its alto key (is that even the right word? I don’t remember) was the best I could do. I dated the bassoon player from the marching band, which I’m sure tells you EVERYTHING else you need to know.

I loved movies and going out to diners (where I pretended to like coffee) and riding the El into downtown Chicago with my friends, where we would wander the museums and the lakefront. I was an urban city kid.  My friends and I had a lot of freedom to come and go.

So what did I want back then, besides straighter hair and a trip to Europe (neither of which I got)?  The truth was – I wanted what I am currently doing-- to take the ideas from my head and WRITE books and stories, maybe even write for a TV show, but I had no clue how to get there. So instead I said I wanted to teach. Or maybe be a lawyer. Or maybe an occupational therapist. In fact, I indicated a different major for each college I applied to. This is how in the dark I was about what I really wanted. In the end, I chose Northwestern, the last to send an acceptance letter, most likely because I put off applying until the last day you could. I began to learn to write there, but I believed that I was supposed to be teaching. And changing the world. And HELPING PEOPLE. All of which are good and noble goals.

A couple decades later—some time after I could write that fan fic on line but by then the impulse had passed, which I suppose is a damn shame since certain on line fan fic writers have taken their versions of someone else’s characters on to fame and fortune (*cough--50 Shades--cough*)—I finally got back on track.

So to answer the question directly: I am now doing EXACTLY what I dreamed of doing my senior year in high school. It just took me awhile to allow myself to do it.


Comments

  1. Great post. Isn't it interesting how we don't always verbalize our dreams, even to ourselves? It's one of the hardest, riskiest things to do--to say what we want, and that is only the first step...
    PS. So what WAS the "milkshake incident" exactly?

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    1. Well... if you didn't put that silver cup on tight, the stuff would spray. It is possible that one *might* do this on purpose flirting with a guy.

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  2. So glad you "got back on track," Joy! And I love that senior pic...

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  3. Great post! I love that you wrote Star Trek fan fiction and that your paired Spock with Uhura before J.J.!

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    1. and others, too... They mostly seemed to stem from this one episode in the original series where when Spock needed to, um, mate, he -- and all Vulcans I guess-- would go a little crazy and unlogical. I found this shockingly sexy.

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  4. It's impressive that you knew what you wanted to do before you graduated from high school and actually did it.

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    1. Yes, but I was such a late bloomer about it!

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  5. Nice! *shifty eyes* I used to write X-Files fan fic!

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  6. Ah, Joy!!! We had so much of the same life! From diners and taking the El to... the Star Trek fan fiction!!! It was STTNG for me :)

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    1. Actually, I just got to see Patrick Stewart and Arman Shimmerman (Deep Space Nine) at Houston Comicpalooza!

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