Easily Distracted

At this point, I'm having doubts that I'll ever get anything done. I start each day with good intentions, but somehow time slips away and all I'm left with is regrets and recriminations. 

I can trace my problems back to the memory book I was gifted for Christmas. I'm sure it was supposed to be a "fun" project, answering specific questions about my life, with my answers ultimately compiled into a hardcover edition. Well, guess what---it's not fun; it's stressful. 

Initially, I was presented with the questions that would be in my queue, which I chose to receive two times a week. Well, I didn't like most of the questions---they weren't relevant to me, so I substituted, and also composed a couple of my own. Also, some of the stock questions would be touchy to answer, and I just didn't want to go there. (I get it; the company can't please everyone.) 

I previously posted about how I froze up, knowing that my kids would want to read the finished book, so I didn't want to come across as a complete moron. They "sort of" know that I'm a writer, but to their knowledge, I have nothing published, which is fine---that's the way I want it. But knowing that I write, I assume they expect an interesting read. It's not that I can't be interesting, but it's easier when there is only a "hypothetical" reader; not an actual one. (My books have tons of hypothetical readers, by the way.)

So, I managed to get through the first question easily enough, although I thought about the best way to answer it for a few days, then finally decided I'd never get anywhere if I didn't just dive in. And this was an easy question! 

The second question, too, was one that I had a ready answer for. Still I procrastinated. I figured my second question of the week would spur me on to get moving before the unanswered queries began piling up. But I never got another question. Hmmm....do they wait for the previous answer before hitting people with a new question? That seems rude and presumptuous. I went to the site to give them a piece of my mind ask a polite follow-up, and found that questions had been paused (by me?) Granted, the site isn't very user friendly, so maybe I did inadvertently check a box.

I got that fixed, then typed out my response to Question #2. Now I was already behind, so I didn't wait for an email with the third question. The user can see which questions are upcoming, which kind of ruins the surprise, but nevertheless. That question asked which teacher had the biggest impact on me. Yay! That one's easy! I really only had one teacher who impacted me in a positive way, and she was a treasure. I have lots to say about her.

The thing is, though, this was a really long time ago, and I'm stuck on the correct spelling of her name. It's one of those Scandinavian ones that has various iterations, few of which make sense. Now, in the context of my memory book, it doesn't matter a whit if I get the spelling wrong...but it matters to me. This led me down a hopeless rabbit hole of trying to locate anything about the woman online.

While I understand that if she is still alive, she'd probably be in her nineties, according to the internet she doesn't, and never did exist. How is that possible? I've found a few people through online sleuthing, one being my husband's childhood friend. (They're once again best buds, thanks to me.) Did I misremember her first name? I'm pretty sure I didn't. And I tried various spellings of her last name. Even if I hadn't, Google will produce any and all variations, regardless of whether the searcher wants them. 

I spent hours trying every trick I could think of: her name plus the town and/or state where she taught, adding "teacher" after her name, adding the school after her name, even adding an approximate year span of her tenure at the school. Nope. The "best match" was an obit for a woman who yes, had a teaching degree, but spend her life in a logging camp in Minnesota. (Granted, that's pretty interesting, but not for my purposes.) Worse, my teacher taught in a town that straddled the border between two states, so she may have resided in the state across the river, which led to me searching in two separate jurisdictions (historical societies and what-not). Absolutely nothing.

Google told me I could search for the school's alumni, so I asked it where I could go to find info about Valley Elementary (in that town). "That school doesn't and never did exist." 

I retorted (to the machine), "Well, it does exist, because I attended it!" 

"Oops, sorry," it said. "My mistake." (Idiot AI.) Once I got AI's head out of its virtual ass, it still couldn't help me. Then it told me that maybe I'd want to try genealogy sites.

By now, I was more determined than ever to find her, so I pulled up a couple of Google's site suggestions. They all wanted money, and sure, I wanted to find the woman, but what would I do with a monthly subscription? It was one measly question! Finally, I turned to the only free genealogy site, Family Search. I once used it to trace my dad's ancestry, which turned out to be interesting, but I'd done it years ago, and forgot about the site completely.

Well, Family Search turned out to be my only real possibility, but it offered me over a thousand results (again, with various name spellings), and by that time the hour was late. So, no, I still haven't found her, and I'm growing doubtful I ever will.

You're probably asking, why bother? It's not as if my kids are going to check my work (good luck). I simply refuse to be defeated. I swear I once found her online, back when I was writing my now-defunct memoir, but I don't know how I did it. Sure, I could already be done answering Question #3, and moving on to procrastinating over the fourth question, but no. As Clark Griswold once said, this is now a quest.

If I managed to uncheck the right box, I'll have another question coming tomorrow, and here I am, futilely seeking something I may well never find. I don't care at this point. Somehow, some way, I'm going to win...at something that won't matter by next week...if it ever did matter, which, granted, in the grand scheme of things, it didn't. 

I mean, I could take the easy way out and refer to her as "Mrs. T" in my memory book, but then people might think she was married to Mr. T, and I pity the fool who's that gullible. Mr. T is way younger, for one thing...at 73. I suppose he could be Mrs.T's son, but there are a couple of problems with that. Anyway, then he'd be Baby T or T Junior, nicknamed Sweet T.

Because I know this is all quite fascinating to everyone, I'll be sure to provide updates. 

I'm no quitter.