Write Anyway

Today, lessons are on my mind. More life lessons than school type lessons, but those play into the picture, too.

Though I don’t think I have enough years on me to say I have lived a long life or learned as many things that those who are older than me have learned, I know I have learned my fair share.

I think life lessons are infinitely harder to learn than school lessons. Life lessons aren’t so cut and dry. Life certainly doesn’t come with a syllabus, though I know many of us often wish that it did. For the most part, lessons seem to come through strife or determination.

And yet, I have learned many things - especially about myself - through positive events. They may have been hard to achieve at the time, but the experiences left me a better person.

What life lessons have you learned? Did any come at a cost? What would you say is the hardest lesson to learn? Are there any lessons you have liked learning? Are there lessons you had to be taught more than once?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

There is a saying that any two people in the world are only separated by six people. This plays into the ‘it’s not what you know but who you know’ way of thinking in our world today, but it’s still quite an interesting concept.

The first time I played the game it was actually meant to be a challenge to connect two things, like toast and trees.

Toast > butter > grass > ground > roots > tree

That sort of thing.

I’m not sure about being connected to every human being on this planet in just a few steps. But, after finding out I have ’six degrees of separation’ type connections to top executives at Fox in the United States, I’m not not willing to simply dismiss it.

What do you think of ’six degrees of separation’? Do you think it could be/is true? Have you ever found out you have connections to people you never thought possible? How were you connected? How did it make you feel when you found out?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

Back closer to when we first met, my husband told me about his childhood hero - Victor Borge. The way he spoke about the man changed his voice and brought a smile to his face. I couldn’t help but smile as well, given his reaction; it was wonderful to see.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t reciprocate the childhood memory. I never had a hero growing up. Most of the people didn’t demonstrate heroic qualities (in my opinion) and I never paid enough attention to the world as a child to find a hero in someone didn’t know.

Though I don’t think my life is necessarily incomplete for not having had a childhood hero, I thought about what it might have been like had someone emerged in my life as someone I could look up to as a good role model.

Did you/do you have a hero? If not, do you wish you had? If so, who is your hero? Why? What makes one person a hero and one person not? What defines heroism? Does one act or many make a hero?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

Hello everyone!

When it comes to the topic of spirituality, you’re not quite in as ’safe’ a zone as you are when talking about other topics. You bring up the word ’spirituality’ and it is only natural for some people to bring up religion as well.

While I personally feel the two terms are completely different (and are defined enough to support that), some people have a harder time separating the two.

I think you can be spiritual without being religious, and I also think you can be religious without being spiritual. Of course, you can certainly be both.

Spirituality is “having to do with deep, often religious, feelings and beliefs, including a person’s sense of peace, purpose, connection to others and beliefs about the meaning of life.”

I consider myself to be a very spiritual person, but I am not religious. I feel with certainty that there is more to the world than what we perceive with our basic senses, but I am technically termed as ‘Agnostic’ (not to be confused with Atheist [call it a pet peeve]) in terms of religiosity.

How do you define spirituality? Do you consider yourself a spiritual person? Why or why not?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

My husband and I were recently talking to the man who married us, and the topic came on to how we were ready to move - anywhere in Australia. I think our friend was a bit concerned, as most of my husband’s and my social ties are to people in our current location and people Mr. JM works with.

Without much thought, I said, “We do love it here and the people here as well, but I think Mr. JM and I are wanderer souls. We’re happiest when we’re on the road. We love exploring new places. We love Victoria, but we’ve been over most of it - and more than once. I think we’re ready for a new place to start exploring.”

Thinking about what I had said later, I realized that, if Mr. JM and I had the money, we would be travelling all around the world. Not so much to live the high life but to discover the great mysteries and beauties the world has to offer.

Are you a Wanderer Soul? Are you happiest when you’re going somewhere new? Do you like exploring new places? Do you know anyone you would describe as a ‘Wanderer Soul’? Did you use to be a Wanderer Soul and now you’re not? Why?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

I had a feeling when 2009 started that this would be a year of change for me and my husband. Call it instinct. Call it intuition. Either way, things are looking just like I thought they would.

Within the next couple of months, my husband and I hope to move. We also hope that he gets a new job (or better conditions in his current one). After the house and job are settled (and my health is settled, too), we hope to start trying for a baby…

Before I moved to Australia, there was a period of about six months where I was in a very bad place. I felt like I was alive, but frozen. I felt like I was just barely cruising around and not actually living my life.

After I moved to Australia, everything changed.

With everything happening, especially now, I finally feel like I’m living my life to the fullest. I have my wonderful husband, soon we’ll have a house, a baby (hopefully) and a dog… We’ll be living my idea of an ideal life.

I can say with all confidence that I am truly living my life now more than I have ever lived in the past.

Define life. Is there a difference between life and living? Can someone be alive but not living?Are you ‘living’ your life or just alive?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

I have never been one to pay attention to age. Besides the obvious physical characteristics indicating age, I just don’t care.

I realized I didn’t care when I was about ten or so and I realized that age has absolutely no connection to maturity, so there really was no reason to give it a second thought.

Even so, the other day I felt like I was getting older. I’m pretty young in terms of biological age and, sometimes, maturity as well, but the other day was just one of ‘those’ moments. I started thinking about next year at around this time and I thought, “That’s not far off at all.”

Ten years ago, I would have thought that a year was ‘forever’. Planning for things a year in advance was never done. Never. Even a month in advance would be stretching it. Yet now that I’m married and planning a future… Well, a year’s worth of time is just on more stretch to wait.

Do you consider yourself youthful? Why? How have your beliefs changed as you’ve grown up? Do you think youth is really wasted on the young? What was the best thing about your childhood? The worst?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

Having had a long distance relationship, having moved across the world at a young age, now living thousands of miles away from everything and everyone I grew up with, I like to think that I know something about distance.

Far from being a purely physical thing, distance is something we can feel as well as see. You can be sitting right next to someone and yet be so emotionally distant that it is the same as being miles away.

Distance can be a good thing as well as a bad thing. Sometimes we need distance to think or to be objective. Sometimes we need distance to be able to be happy.

Of course, distance can be a terrible thing, too, but I’m sure most of you know what the bad kind of distance is all about.

Have you ever been in a long distance relationship? How did you handle it? Did it work out? Have you ever needed distance from someone? Have you ever felt someone being emotionally distant from you? Have you ever been emotionally distant from someone else?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

Throughout our lives, we make dozens of promises, vows and oaths.

As children, we ‘pinky swear’ that we will keep our best friend’s most private secrets. We promise not to tell if our older sibling(s) helps us just this once to get the cookie jar.

As teenagers, we apply for our first jobs and sign contracts - another version of a promise.

Later on as more jobs are applied for, we get married, we have children… More and more promises are made. From big ones like vowing to spend the rest of your life with one person to small ones like promising a popsicle just as soon as you get home… Promises are an extra level of trust that becomes a part of our lives.

What promises, vows and oaths have you made during your life? Have you ever broken a promise? Why? What promise, vow or oath have you always kept? Do you make promises to yourself? Has someoen ever broken a promise they made to you? Have you ever kept a promise when you shouldn’t have?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

What a busy week already!

This week I have been thinking about personality types.

For the most part, my husband and I pretty similar. We’re both introverts (me moreso than he is), we both enjoy a night spent in together just as much as time spent out socializing, we both love to travel… Best of all, we both have wonderful plans for our future together.

Thinking about it, I don’t know if I could sustain a relationship with someone who was very extroverted. Friends would work - I do have extroverted friends - but a marriage would slowly crumble, I think. I’m so much of a homebody and large groups of people just exhaust me. Typical introvert. However, the typical extrovert is able to take energy from a group.

As you can imagine, an introvert/extrovert couple would disagree a bit on what to go out and do on a Friday night…

What is your personality type? Have you ever taken a personality type test? Do you think people around you are more alike to you or different than you? If you are with someone, is that person similar to you in personality or different?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

My husband is the only son in his family. I am the only daughter in mine. We both have siblings. He was a middle child and I was a youngest. However, being the only children of our genders in our families, we also both had characteristics of only child children.

Sometimes I think about my birth order and the influence it has had on my life. Sure, I was a bit of a clown like the typical youngest child, but I also had the sense of responsibility of an only child - especially when my elder brothers had moved out of my parent’s house.

I was a bit spoiled occasionally growing up, but there were also other factors in my life that steered me away from being a spoiled brat.

Do you have any siblings? Do you think your birth order influenced your personality? Do you wish you had been born in another position in the family or had siblings if you’re an only child? Do you think your birth order has influenced you in any negative ways?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

I was at the grocery store the other day and I walked past the registers. A woman with a full cart of groceries, a baby in a sling in front of her body, drops her mobile phone.

It immediately breaks into three pieces. I see three people - not including me - look over to see what happened.

And they did nothing.

Two other people walked by. On person might not have noticed, but the other person looked and deliberately stepped over the phone to get by as she struggled to hold her baby and pick up the pieces.

I could hardly believe it. I put down my groceries, picked up the pieces of the phone, and put it back together for her. It took me all of five seconds to do so and it wasn’t a big deal. But it was a big deal to the woman, who thanked me with a half-shocked expression.

The whole thing depressed me. Are we really living in such a world where people can’t help other people - even mothers with infants? Are we so unaware of each other that we ignore even the simple things that we can do to help each other out?

Of course I was glad to help, but I couldn’t help but wonder why I was the only one who seemed to care.

Are you aware of other people? Do you help people or walk by? Do you get caught up in everything that is going on with you that you don’t notice other people? Do you make it a point to help people? Do you make it a point to be aware of other people and their feelings?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

There are few things in life I find more satisfying than giving what I can to friends. Because most of my friends are through the internet and living overseas, I love to read (on their blogs) about their wants and needs, and then do what I can to fulfill their needs.

From sending baby clothes to a dear friend to donating what I can to another friend who is raising money for a cause, I always try to give what I can.

And while I know I could scrounge and save every single cent to make sure I get my dreams fulfilled as soon as possible, I know that doing that would make me unhappy. So I simply bide my time and have fun using a little extra sometimes to help support the people I have come to care so deeply about.

Do you like giving? Do you make a point to give to people? What do you give the most of? Money? Time? Do you donate to charities? Do you walk/run/ride bike/etc for causes? What causes do you support? Why? What do you enjoy the most about giving?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

I know, I know. Contemplating weather?

Trust me…

When I was… oh, young. I can’t remember how old I was, really. When I was younger than I am now and still living with my parents, my brother and I were at home. The other brother was… somewhere. My father came home early with a coworker because it was raining at their work site.

They hadn’t but stepped into the house for a minute when we heard the wind, looked outside and saw the spinning cyclones right outside the windows and rushed into the basement. Twin tornadoes went around our house for what seemed like ages.

The house took minimal damage, but we lost all the sheds. And our laundry - including knickers - flew across half the county.

For about a year after that, whenever the wind started blowing hard, I didn’t feel safe until I was in the basement. Scary stuff…

What is your favourite kind of weather? Why? What kinds of things do different weather patterns make you feel? Have you ever been caught in dangerous weather? Has weather ever scared you?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.

Even as a child, I was moved by the ‘Golden Rule’: Treat others as you would like to be treated.

Though certain religions would like to claim the Golden Rule as their own, the truth of the matter is that there is scarcely a religion or belief system out there that doesn’t have some version of the Golden Rule incorporated into it.

It only makes sense that such a rule is very important to achieving harmony in humanity, then, isn’t it?

The concept of Karma, put simply, is that your actions in this life will influence your incarnation in the next life. If you are mean and cruel in this life, you might just incarnate into a maggot the next life.

That’s putting it very simply, but Karma in Hinduism and Buddhism isn’t quite what I want to talk about. Instead of one life to the next, I believe in single lifetime Karma. What goes around comes around. That sort of thing.

I have always been very sensitive to the way things work in my life. When I have been rotten, rotten things have happened to me. When I have been kind, I have had kindness (sometimes the exact same kindness) come back to me when I needed it.

Some may argue that I was looking for those events, so they happened. However, I assure you that the belief came from experience, not the experience from belief.

Do you believe in a Karmic world system? Do you believe in some form of the Golden Rule? Have you ever experienced anything you would consider to be Karmic?

Remember, to help clear your mind before you start writing, take a few deep breaths. Focus on the sound of the air entering and leaving your lungs. Let the noises and worries of the day fade for a few moments while you focus only on breathing.

After you are calm, think about your experiences and start writing.

Wishing you heaps of creativity, a generous muse and heaps of time to write. Feel free to check in here with your progress for the day/week/month/etc.