Heather Painter - Twenty-minute story

I’ve been following Writing, Writer, Writest almost since it began. I think it started a little after my own blog. I never really thought about writing a blog before last year. I was talking with my friend Mikey from Seattle. He writes all the time and now makes a slightly bearable living off of transcribing jobs. I’m jealous in a way. I’ve always wanted to write since I was little kid. I was the girl with her nose in a book, being pround of reading a 150 page book in a week when I was in fifth grade. No pictures! I had a best friend, her name was Houng. We bought, read and shared books, then went the library together and checked out books and shared those.

I remember being on a bus for a field trip, having a copy of my Mom’s Stephen King book, "Nightmare & Dreamscapes" in hand. It’s a short story book. My Mom would read those stories to me and let me read them to her. I still remember my favorite story. It’s called, "Suffer the Little Children" ... very creepy story. It’s about a teacher who finds her students to be monstrous things and they get revenge on her. I don’t remember all the details. Maybe I should go back and read it again. There was also a story called House on Maple Street. Somehow it turned out to be an alien ship that all of a sudden took off in the middle of the night.

I loved all sorts of stories when I was little. I’m still an avid reader to this day, which is why it pisses me off when all Hollywood can do is make movies from a book and butcher the hell out of it. Can’t people have their own imagination and fill in the blanks rather than have someone else’s vision shoved in their face? Don’t get me wrong, I love movies. But I would rather see an original movie than a movie based off a book. All it makes me want to do is go read the book. Which is loads better than the movie.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my life lately and what I want from it. What I want to get out of it. What seems to make me happy and what doesn’t. Recently I’ve come to the somewhat wavering conclusion that college isn’t for me. Not yet anyway. I look at my boyfriend and he’s very accomplished when it comes to getting those pieces of paper that our society seems to think validates our so called “intelligence”. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in both economics and political science (he double majored) and just got his Master’s Degree in public administration. I’m so very proud of him and also a little jealous. I can’t stand being in college classes, I feel stuck.

I think I want to go to a culinary school. I want to work with food. Perhaps open up a restaurant of my own someday, maybe a bakery too. I’d need someone to help me manage it. I love cooking and honestly, serving people is fun for me. Sure, there are people out there that are just plain rude and have an entitlement mentality, but I love seeing smiles on people’s faces. I love getting compliments about my service. I get annoyed when the people around me don’t take it seriously. With the job that I have right now, the service needs to be top notch. I’d love to get into the kitchen at work. I’ve worked at a movie theater for almost a year now and come to think of it I should be farther than I am. I’ve been content at where I am for too long. I need to shoot for bigger and better things.

The only thing I know for sure in life is what I feel for my boyfriend, who I hope someday wants more. I won’t say it to him, not just yet. I love him very much and he loves me. I just want us to go farther. I wonder if he’s thought about it... maybe.

My twenty minutes is up. Thanks for letting me unload the things on my mind.