Busy But Fun Week Ahead

In addition to several new Elance projects I've just been awarded, I will be hosting De Kelley fans twice this week.


On Tuesday Mary Rodeman Harrison and her roommate will be driving over from Spokane (clear across the state!) to meet me and we'll all spend some time getting to know more about each other. We'll also take in a convention tape or two since neither of them had the good fortune of seeing or meeting De when he was doing them in the 70's, 80's and early 90's.

Then on Thursday or Friday (depending on her schedule) I'll be meeting with a Doctor and De fan, Mary Jo Robinson, for a mini De fest to watch a convention tape or two and perhaps a remastered episode or two. (Both of these De fans have Facebook pages, so you can check out more about them there.)

I usually only receive flurries of De fan visits and De fan emails around special dates -- 35th, 40th, etc, anniversaries of the original STAR TREK series, or around "De dates" -- his birth date (Jan 20) or the anniversary of the day he passed away (June 11th -- especially this year, since it's the 10th anniversary of his passing). I suppose the infrequent flurries are also because during these well-remembered anniversary dates, media folks seek me out to ask for radio or magazine interviews, and it's when I'm most likely to be invited to speak at conventions, all of which bring up my name from the dusty confines of memory and make fans want to reach out and touch someone who understands, and continues to promote, their undying love for the man, which he richly deserved.

In between times (as you can tell by these almost 1,000 blog entries!) I can go days/ weeks/ months without mentioning De much at all, and without receiving De-related contacts from his fans (unless I've befriended them, as frequently happens, and then we talk about many other things besides De).

The on-again, off-again white-hot interest surrounding De throws me for a loop at times, but it also keeps me in the loop regarding STAR TREK-related happenings, something I wouldn't otherwise pay much attention to. I have a busy life that is nowhere near as De-centric as it was when he was alive (DUH!). I mean, I did have to "move on" after he passed away; I couldn't hermetically seal myself up in saran wrap and stop living. No one wants their friends and loved ones to stop living when they die, unless they're completely narcissistic, a malady which never affected De.

On Wednesday Jackie and I will be having dinner with a dear lady named Darlene who Jackie lived next door to before we moved here just a year ago on June 26th. We haven't seen Darlene in months (pathetic), so it's overdue, and Jackie scheduled it. I'm very much looking forward to this get-together, too.

For a gal with a wee bit of a social anxiety disorder (I'm the shy type, except on paper, but am such a good actor that nobody has noticed my shyness in years!), three meetings in three days makes me feel a wee bit frantic, but the nervousness will only last a few minutes each time. I'll get over it almost as soon as I say "Hi!" because there is a social animal in me (and a bit of a ham as well) that enjoys some attention.

A little background for those of you new to this blog or to me: I was born a Shirley Temple-type "sparkler" - dancing, twirling, singing, chatting, interacting with everyone in an ebullient manner - which my folks felt they had to "tame down" or I'd end up monopolizing every social interaction that took place within "my" realm! When they did this, it made me feel there was something intrinsically "wrong" about the way I interacted wih the world, so I became very shy and withdrawn in public. This lasted until I was in junior high, when I "willed" myself back into the limelight by signing up for drama, public speaking, and debate because I was tired of living in corners, praying no one would pay me any mind. I just knew that I was somehow beyond the norm, alien to my species; I'd been re-trained to see myself that way. My painful shyness is also why I became a writer at a very young age: I had stuff to say, was far too timid to say it in public, but could write it down and be understood, and even received positive strokes for my efforts (even though the teacher's kind comments in class embarrassed me horribly and made me want to melt and run underneath the nearest shoe).

Note to Parents: You can really mess up your kids' minds and ways of being in the world if you haven't taken DISC Personality Profile training, which probably didn't even exist when I was a kid!

I took DISC training a few years ago and discovered that I'm a "very high" I,D,S (Shirley Temple material, indeed!) and that my parents were high C's and of course didn't understand their little "sparkler" even a little bit! As far as they were concerned, I was from another planet/realm. I must have been a real conundrum their entire lives! And they were to me, as well... but we loved each other, so we all survived... not always amicably, but hey... how many folks didn't grow up in at least a semi-dysfunctional family?

Very few!