Seventh Blogiversary HICK CHIC Giant Link-O-Rama Greatest Hits and Missteps! (Seriously there's a lot of stuff going on here!)

(Man I've been working on this for a week. Enjoy!)

SEVEN YEARS AGO  I started writing this blog.

I Needed to write.  I wanted to write about what it's like   to be someone who just IS a country dweller, with a need for wide open spaces,  living in town and dealing with it.  I was living in a subdivision in a house I cherished,  despite its one irreparable flaw of being located in town, and surrounded by wonderful neighbours who made me feel like I could survive in a place that wasn't my natural habitat. 

I called it HICK CHIC because I believed you could be a boots-wearing country bumpkin and still look good.  

Sounded like fun eh?


Of course, it sort of turned into a list of my favourite things, including horses,  my husband,  pickup trucks,  rockstars,  Johnny, my black house cat who was the very old best-cat-in-the-world, my Pug puppy,  and of course, my kids.

And the family business worked its way into the story too. 

Being a bit of a pop culture junkie, I even worked a few of my favourite celebrities into the discussion.

I can relate almost anything to Johnny Depp.     It's a skill.     It's a natural talent.  

Yeah I have a weakness for The Famous.  Especially Rock Stars. 
 I love them. 
They make music and they rock and I love them.  You might think a proper hick would be a country music fan but I have theories and rock music and its relationship with rural dwellers.  It's extreme out here: windier, colder,  hotter, smellier.  Everything is just MORE.  Now go do some headbangin'.

What I didn't expect was that the blog evolved
into a sometimes 
painfully honest confession
of my mental health struggles and triumphs.

I actually think some of it was kind of funny.   Not sure if that's good or bad.  Don't care, really. If I wasn't already aware that I am kinda weird, writing this blog made it pretty clear. Then I found out for sure without a doubt, that I do actually have ADHD and things started making sense in ways that wouldn't make sense unless you get it, get it?  I am brilliant at the whiplash subject change, it turns out.


You know, I have gotten so scattered with this blog project.  I went off on the rebelliousness of interior decorating,    dissertations on style and clothes,    my slightly embarrassing pirate fixation, my shameless love for gnarly old cars and pickup trucks,  not to mention my lifelong association with scrap metal (what, you didn't grow up playing in junk?) and threw some fabulous blog parties!


My husband and I had been together forever and had big plans to build a recording studio in a barn, and like, dominate the world and stuff like that. 






Things have changed so much in the last few years.



Well, Jethro and I are not dominating the world -- just a small corner of it.  We just want that recording studio in a shed behind the barn, or whatever, as long as he can walk across the yard to get to it and doesn't have to live in the city part time to do his work. But in the meantime, he's made me into a rather well-travelled hick.



When I started this blog, I intended to finish writing my epic novel and then go through the process of writing query letters and getting a literary agent to choose me, then waiting for him/her to find me a publisher, and then go through all the emotional turmoil of my book becoming a real book and all that entails.   I still want that.  Who knows how it will go; maybe I'll land an agent.  Maybe I won't.


I did finish that epic novel by the way, and got pretty far with it before realizing it wasn't as ready as I'd hoped it was.  So I started another one and then another one.  And finished one.  And am now finishing it again for the second time.




Things haven't gone quite as I had planned back when I started this blog.  Yes, we sold our house and moved to the country, but it wasn't the way we had imagined or planned.  We moved into the place we'd gone for weekends and holidays and family events, the place we kept our horses and our sanity and peace of mind.  We moved to the Ol' Homestead.  With the parents!

Living in the country,  has been wonderful.  I am with my horses every day and I even get to ride three times a week!

And the whole time I've been writing this blog, Life Has Been Happening. 

I wanted to ride horses and write stories.

I teach people how to ride horses for a living.     I love my work so much.

I have realized that I AM A WRITER.

And I feel much better now.





I think I've realized the real focus of this blog.



It's for all of us who just don't quite fit in, can't quite behave, don't think they way we often feel like we're being told to think.  We all find each other eventually.



I haven't been making much time for blogging for the last year or so and I have been considering just shutting it down and leaving it alone.

But I don't think I will.

As long as four or five of you are still reading, and you can wait a month for something new, I'll keep writing.

There was a time several years ago when I wondered what I'd have to do to become a career blogger, writing blog posts every day and end up with book deals and TV appearances and... it just wasn't the path I set myself on.

I keep poking at the idea of turning some of this into a book, though.  A Hick Chic Guide.  To Life.  And stuff.  I've still got words in me needing to get out.