It was the end of my freshman year of high school and I was signing up for classes for the next year. I was stymied. I needed to take one more elective class, and I didn’t know what to choose.
I happened to mention this during a meeting of my Civil Air Patrol squadron, and our cadet commander at the time suggested journalism.
Why not? I had delivered newspapers for several years. Remember the kid who would ride a bicycle along the sidewalk and toss a paper on the doorstep? That was me. I woke up at 4 in the morning, rolled the papers and put rubberbands on them, and then loaded them into the double-sided wire basket attached over the rear wheel of my bike. I rode my route and then went back to bed. I constantly woke up for school in a panic, not remembering if I did my route or not.
So I took journalism my sophomore year, loved it and knew that it was my calling.
That one synchronistic suggestion for me to take journalism led to me becoming: editor of my high school paper; a writer and columnist on my college paper; a reporter, editor and page designer on a daily newspaper following college; and managing editor and co-publisher of The Edge.
Why did I happen to mention needing suggestions for that journalism class when I did? Why did I listen when the suggestion was made? Was it because it was part of the plan I had created for myself before I incarnated into the body — and following the plan was just a matter of time?
Dawn of the internet
For several years, a co-worker at the daily newspaper where I worked kept encouraging me to get a personal computer. I finally did, and then I became one of the 1-million subscribers to America Online (AOL). It was 1994, when “blazing 56k” internet connections over the phone line were being promoted.
At that time, AOL was a growing community that allowed members to glean information and news and chat with other subscribers in hundreds of chatrooms where people gathered to not only meet other singles, but to communicate with others who shared their interests…in gardening, in cars, in sports…and in spirituality.
I was a regular visitor to a chatroom that focused just on A Course in Miracles, which supports spiritual transformation, and another chatroom that focused just on Reiki healing. At some point, while chatting with regulars in both chatrooms, I realized that one person was in both groups with me. We began to strike up an online friendship, and in time, we moved from chatting online to speaking on the phone.
We shared so many synchronicities that were “uncanny” — she was the same age as my sister, we both grew up with two other siblings, we were interested in spirituality and healing, we loved the same music, we loved exploring nature — and it wasn’t long before I took a road trip north from Missouri where I lived to Minnesota so I could meet this new friend, who became my wife.
A free publication
During that trip, I picked up a copy of a free publication called The Edge at the Mississippi Market co-op at its former location on Randolph in St. Paul. I loved my first introduction to Minnesota, and it wasn’t long before I chose to move up north. I applied for work at the Star-Tribune, Pioneer Press and The Edge. It just so happened that at that exact time the editor of The Edge was leaving to form her own publication (Twin Cities Wellness), and the job was mine for the asking. The rest, as they say, is history.
I share the contention of “angel geek” Chantel Lysette (see featured interview this month) that we write our life script before birth and then live it out once we arrive. My life circumstances have been one synchronicity after another — and yours have, too. Rest assured that we create them for ourselves!
Oh, and what did my mom cover me with to protect me from the rain when she brought me home from the hospital as an infant? A newspaper.
