Write Anyway

“Have you ever stood still and scratched your head and said, ‘Where in the world?’ Is there somewhere in the world you would love to go? Are you looking for someone or something or a place that makes sense to you? Where in the world are you?”

Haha. I stand in the middle of a room and wonder where in the world I put this or that way too often. If not me, my husband is usually asking me where I put this or that. Haha.

It’s funny that one of the questions is ‘is there somewhere in the world you would love to go’ because I posted this on my other blog not too long ago:

This is just the start of a list, but these are the places that first came to mind…

Peru
Berlin
Canada
Egypt
Italy
Greece
US West Coast (California, Washington, Idaho…)
Wisconsin
New York via Niagara Falls
London
Bath
Stonehenge
Amsterdam
Singapore
Hong Kong
Tokyo

I’ve started working on planning a world trip. While, if it happens, it’s many months and dollars away, there is no reason I can see to not start planning one now. You never know what can happen in the future, and I would like to start thinking about the good things.

So, where in the world? Anywhere. The world is a fascinating place, and I want to experience it. Whether it will come to pass is for the future to tell. Half the fun is the planning.

“I looked to see if we had done this topic before (it’s getting trickier to remember!) and found that the only time we had used the word ‘indulgence’ was on the fourth week and it wasn’t even the topic! It has been a little bit too long since we were indulged. What do you make of that?”

Ah, indulgence. It’s almost scary when the prompts reflect the ‘theme’ of the past week in my life.

At the moment, I am trying to lose weight. I make no secret about it; I figure the more people know about it, the more people I have supporting me. Heck, I think most people on this planet can relate to some kind of weight issue - be it gaining, losing or maintaining. Body image has, unfortunately, become such an important thing…

I’m trying to lose weight for two related reasons. The first is for my health. The second is so I can (hopefully) conceive a child without any medical assistance.

Anywho, I started on meal replacements in late May, not really sure if it would work. I’ve had limited (about ten pounds lost at most over long, long periods of time) results from all sorts of diets along with ‘regular diet and exercise’. Lo and behold, it has been working quite well. I’m down about thirty pounds.

This week I cut loose a bit and let myself indulge. A meal voucher in combination with celebrating my permanent residency has made for delicious meals, drinks bought for me and a general good time.

Of course, I’ve gained a couple pounds back, but I think it was totally worth it. Indulgences - kept as indulgences - are needed in life. They remind us how to live, love and enjoy what we have.

Then it’s not such a hassle to get back to doing what we have to do to survive.

“There is a lot of talk these days about vision. What do you think about it? Do you create vision boards? Do you have 20/20 vision? Have you seen a vision? Is there a ‘vision of loveliness’ in your life? How’s the view from where you are?”

Vision is such an interesting thing. I think a lot of people don’t take time to think about vision and exactly what it means for their lives.

Relativity says that the observer is important in that the frame of reference for the observer will change what the observer actually sees. Quantum theory says the observer or consciousness creates the reality.

Now that is food for thought, isn’t it?

You may think the whole thing very strange, but I think the power of the mind or the consciousness to be a great tool.

When I was younger, quite young, I had dark brown eyes just like my mother. Very dark. My father had blue eyes. While I didn’t want blue eyes, I absolutely hated having brown eyes. I didn’t have anything against them specifically, but it just seemed like me having brown eyes was somehow wrong. A mistake.

Above and beyond all, I wanted green eyes. I felt convinced that I should have been born with green eyes. I would look into the mirror sometimes and will my eyes to turn green, but that seemed so impossible given how utterly dark brown my eyes were.

I grew older. I got glasses because I’m nearsighted. Life went on and I forgot about how much I had wanted green eyes.

That is, until they started changing color.

I can’t tell you how long it took, but I can tell you that I have had hazel - not quite the green I was after as a child, but close - eyes since I was about fourteen years old. They turn a more vivid green when I cry.

Sometimes I wonder, if I wanted it enough, if I could turn my eyes blue. But part of me feels I can’t. Partly because of the cynicism brought with age. Partly because I know my eyes are supposed to be green. Or, at least, nearly completely green

“Hello there!

Happy Scribbling!!”

To be completely honest, I think this is the first Sunday Scribblings prompt to completely stump me. Absurd? Is there anything in my life truly absurd?

When in doubt, start with the definition:

*inconsistent with reason or logic or common sense
*a situation in which life seems irrational and meaningless
*incongruous;inviting ridicule

I hope this isn’t taking the easy way out, but I find the very fact that I’m having trouble with this prompt to be absurd (in the first meaning of the word). I’m a writer, for goodness sake. Published. Surely I can write something on ‘absurd’.

I guess, though, that it only fits with my personality that I should have trouble with this prompt, looking at it from the second meaning of the word. I’m not one to believe in coincidence. I’m not one to believe that anything in life is meaningless.

Sure, a lot of things piss me off and I wonder why they happened, but I don’t consider them meaningless.

As for the third meaning, I’m not one to ridicule; at least, I try not to. I always endeavor to try to understand people rather than judge them or make fun of them. And my life is hardly a thing of absurdity, so I’m lost of a topic on that account.

So I guess I just don’t have much to say on absurd…

Hi everyone! Apologies again for the delay. I’ve moved house and don’t have any internet or phone yet. It is amazing how much I have come to rely on being ‘connected!’ In honour of the occasion, I’d like to hear your take on being disconnected.

Disconnected. I think a major player in the problem with the world today is the feeling of being disconnected from everything - nature, each other and ourselves.

We are encourage to become part of this world where importance is on the outside - looks, wealth, where you work, what you wear, where you live… Everything is surface level. Passion is looked at strangely and often feared.

People who dig deeper into thing - or at least attempt to - are considered conspiracy theorists or new age nutties.

We are discouraged from connecting with something bigger. Even most religions are highly regimented with middlemen who tell us what to do, how to pray to the divine being in question, what to wear, what to say… Since when is belief in a higher power anything but a personal thing?

But no; it’s all disconnected. We have people stepping in between us and the environment, us and the ‘real world’, us and each other, us and our inner selves. Do you meditate? Do you take time for yourself? Do you take mental health days?

Likely no. Maybe you think it’s too expensive, too self-indulgent, too time consuming, too whatever. There is the disconnect. For your whole life, the only person you have is you, so why would you not take time to take care of yourself?

Because we live in a world of disconnect where time is money and money is the driving force of all. When time is money, taking time for one’s self is considered to be a waste.

And people wonder why there is so much anger in the world…

“The prompt this week = healing. From an injury, an illness, a broken heart. What do you have to say about healing?”

Sometimes life is funny. You think you’re all alone, struggling, you don’t know what the point is… Then you start to notice things. Whether you notice them because you are subconsciously looking for them or you notice them because of some other-worldly force - that’s up to your beliefs. All I know is that it happens.

Over the past two and a half years, my life has been all about healing. Sure, I’ve been doing all sorts of things like applying for permanent residency, starting my life as a freelance writer, getting to know my new home, but all along there has been an undercurrent of healing going on.

I’ve been healing from many things, most of which only my husband knows about. Few other people know some general details and that’s just the way I’d like to keep it for now.

Right now, I am working on bringing to light some of the worst hurts, the worst… nightmares in an effort to make me a better person overall. It hurts. There is no getting around the fact that it hurts. And the hurt will get worse, as you have to relive some of the pain to accept that it happened and work through it.

But healing is worth it. If you don’t heal, the same reactions, the same habits will happen over and over. Unless you make that conscious decision - effort - to change you life for the better, you are simply doomed to repeat the past.

I refuse to repeat the past.

“In honor of Laini being included in Jamie Ridler’s Your Creative Spark Audio Collection, the prompt this week is: Celebrate. What have you got to celebrate?”

First off, congratulations.

When I think about celebrations, I think about my upcoming second wedding anniversary.

On the second wedding anniversary, you traditionally give cotton gifts… Hm. I wonder if anyone is going to get me a body pillow. I’ve been wanting one of those for ages now…

Haha, just kidding. I don’t expect any gifts, except maybe from my husband. I just get amused by the ‘traditional’ gift giving. I found a list here about the gifts by year. Hey, maybe we can skip this one and go straight to year three: leather.

Purr.

Just kidding!

Sometimes it still boggles my mind that I’m married and that I’ve been married for nearly two years now. Time certainly flies. Our wedding and anniversaries have been traditionally (it can be ‘traditionally’ after two years in a row, yes?) awesome events.

Our wedding celebration (reception) was held in Mr. JM’s and my favourite little Chinese restaurant, which just happened to be owned (it has since closed, pout) by close friends of ours. We had less than two dozen people there, but they were all our close friends and we loved having them there.

Even now, after so long, people still tell us that we had the best wedding they’ve ever been to.

On our first anniversary, my husband got me thoroughly lost in inner Melbourne before taking me to Cafe Sweethearts, where we had our first breakfast as a married couple.

This year? Well, I don’t know what’s on this year from my husband, but I know I need to think of something wonderful to make the celebration special…

“The prompt this week is, “I come from…” or if you like you could try, “I came from…” This is all about your perspective. Where did you start? Where do you start? How did it all begin? Where do you stand right now? Where exactly do you come from?”

Oh boy. Of all the Sunday Scribblings I wouldn’t want to talk about…

I’m going to go ahead and write about this, even though it would be much easier to simply ignore it and skip the Scribblings for a week. As much as I avoid things I don’t like, I do occasionally ‘harden up’ and do things that I don’t want to do when I feel they will be of some benefit to me. “It’s good for you” and all that such nonsense.

I come from… a place that’s not all bad. Then again, no place is, is it? We do our best to keep up masks and facades, and sometimes our dreams to become reality. We experience real joy and happiness. Sometimes we even get to take off the masks, drop all the games, and we still experience happiness.

Other times, the masks become more elaborate, and those who seek a true life just become more depressed.

I come from… a place that was full of light and goodness – when I was still too young to realize that just because my family did it didn’t mean it was normal or right.

I come from… a place I probably wouldn’t recognize if I saw now. I wouldn’t recognize the people, except for physically. Everything has changed and, while I’ve proved that I have no problem with change itself, I do have a problem with people who change for something other than strictly *true* benefit.

I come from… a place filled with people who would be horrified to know I was speaking this way. And that makes me doubt myself. But then I remember the pain. The depression. The lies and the hurt.

I come from a place that made me feel like I was never safe and always had to be on guard.

But…

I am stronger than I was.

Oh, gosh. This one is going to take a bit of thinking…

“What pressing matter do you have weighing on your mind? What would you like to say to someone? What would you like to say to the world? Or to yourself? What do you think is important enough to make people listen? What would make you say, “Listen up because this is important?”"

I’m too tired to have any pressing matters on my mind beyond how much sleep I can get during the day without screwing up tonight’s sleep too much. Hehe. Bleh. The joys of being sick.

I guess anything that I would like to say that I feel is important would be said to the world. Anything important I need to say to other peoploe is and has pretty much been said.

With the exception of some truly wonderful people, I want to give the world a collective slap across the face and say, “Just look at yourselves!”

People hating other people without knowing them. People using religion and race as excuses to be rude and do bad things. So-called ‘Christians’ talking seriously about assisting people they don’t like to commit suicide. People who do nothing but complain about everything and yet do NOTHING to change their lives. And people who condemn the people who are brave enough to stand up and say, “I don’t have to take that.”

Come on people. Get a grip and see that you really do create your own reality. Examine the things that have been ingrained into your mind and decide what you actually know and believe.

You don’t have to love your country. You don’t have to love your parents, or your family. You don’t have to put up with anyone treating you like you’re less than human because they’re related, they’re blood, they’re in-laws, they didn’t really mean it…

You can change yourself and your life. You just have to do it.

Happy Sunday Scribblings!

I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend so far and are enjoying the first day of March. I don’t know about you, but time has just been flying for me! I can’t believe it’s March already. It’s almost getting to autumn here in Oz…

On to the prompt.

“Gotten lost in the woods? Driving? Lost a child in a store? Lost something else of value — found it again? Lost souls, lost innocence . . . write about the word “lost”.”

Talk about an interesting prompt. I read it and quite a few ideas flooded into my mind… I am going to go with one in particular, but you will have to forgive me if I am not exactly clear. I am a bit ill at the moment, so clear thinking isn’t my forte. I hope you will forgive any mistakes in clarity.

~~~~
The Most Important…

I have nightmares about losing the most important element of my life. It’s a fear I have, and I know I have to deal with it, but it’s hard to avoid the occasional dark thoughts that flitter into my mind when I least expect them.

There are things you can do to prepare for the loss - as much as you can prepare for such things - and to make the time after the loss less harsh, but you can never replace what was lost. That’s the hardest thing. You can deal with it, you can work around it, but how do you get past the loss of something so precious? Something you cannot, no matter how hard you try, get back?

I don’t know what I would do if I ever lost my husband.

Hello everyone! I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend. I am - now that the heat wave in Melbourne has cooled a bit. JM = melts in temperatures higher than 103F. And it got up to about 112F. Crazy stuff.

But for now, that seems to all be over. It’s still warm, but tolerably so. Tolerable enough to sit in shorts and tank top in our non-air conditioned flat to do some work. And how lovely that we’re starting a new month on Sunday.

This week’s prompt:

“Got any? Things you wish you’d done differently? Things you wish you’d said or not said? Things you want to be sure to do and say now so that you don’t end up with regrets?”

When I was younger, I used to say ‘no regrets’ and lived my life to that philosophy. If I made a mistake, I learned from it. I refused to regret any of my decisions.

That’s all fine and well, but as you grow older and more things are available to you - and more responsibilities are given to you - you decisions and mistakes affect more than just you. They can have more devastating effects and can prove to create deeper scars.

At this point, I am glad to a certain extent that I only have two events in my life that I regret. If I have regret in my life, at least it’s not spread across multiple instances, right?

I won’t get into the details (because I am, to this day, utterly ashamed of the choices I made), but my regret comes from hurting the two people in this world I care the most about. Any damage done to me in the process is nothing compared to all I could have lost, were those two people not as forgiving and understanding as they were/are. The hurt I dealt them is something I will never forget, will always regret and will probably never forgive myself for.

This doesn’t have to be religious (but it can be). Is there something you’d like, in your lifetime, to go far to see? It can be a quirky personal journey to do with your hobbies or interests, or something very serious, meaningful, and/or spiritual. For example, I’d like to make a mango pilgrimage — a mango world tour, to try every variety on the planet; I’d also like to go to Finland to visit Moominworld; and to Calcutta to meet the young girl I sponsor. I have a lot more; how about you?

I love to travel; flying is beyond amazing to me and I love doing it. (And I feel bad for people who are the opposite of me and are afraid of flying.) There are places all over the planet I would like to go to…

The place that I would classify as closest to a ‘pilgrimage’ journey is my urge to go to Perth. I really don’t know much about the place or even specifically why I want to go there; I just feel drawn there like I need to visit. It’s a strange thing, I suppose, but I will get over there sometime.

Another place I would like to go is to Greece. I would love to wander amongst the temples and take in all the wonderful architectural feats that were accomplished there. Then I would go to Egypt (I’ve been told to not go to Egypt first because it will spoil Greece a bit) to take in the Pyramids. My husband went to both places before we met and I just wish we would have known each other back then.

Where would you like to go?

“Twists of fortune, wedding vows, the woes of the economy, dreams of riches. You might write about what it was like being a poor college student, or what you’d do if you won the lottery. Or about what true riches are, or different kinds of poverty: poverty of the spirit, of the imagination, of the pocket. Have you ever encountered true poverty? How about ridiculous wealth? Most of us probably fall in the huge spectrum in between, but if you’ve had any experiences with the extremes, it might be interesting to write about that.”

For this week’s Sunday Scribblings, I am inspired to write some flash fiction…

Toby scratched at the dirt between the cracked edges of the concrete sidewalk blocks. Both the young boy and the sidewalk had seen better times.

Toby’s scratchings were not the idle activity of a bored young boy. Keeping his head perfectly still, raising his only eyes, he surveyed his surroundings. Just across the road in the front yard of an elderly couple’s home stood a beautiful apricot tree.

He resisted the urge to lick his lips, lest the action give away his thoughts. He’d been quick to learn the horrible mistake it could be to give away your thoughts unintentionally. His stomach would have growled, but it had long since given up being so expectant of food.

The fence he had to get over was, thankfully, short and concrete - more decoration than actual defense against intruders. Toby would probably get over it and back easily if he only took a few apricots. He couldn’t tell for sure from his position, but being sure didn’t hold a lot of importance in his life anymore. You did what you had to and if you failed, well you just tried harder the next time.

#142 - Late:

“In honor of being late putting up the prompt (hey, I thought yesterday was tuesday!), the prompt is “late.” What do you have to say about that?”

What do I have to say? Finally! Someone else besides me is late with something. Haha.

I’m usually spouting the line “always late but worth the wait” when it comes to things online. I’m often late replying to emails, putting up posts, getting back to forums, etc. About the only thing I always do on time online is pay my bills.

The whole lateness online is somewhat weird, though, considering that I get really anxious if I even think I’m going to be late for something in ‘the real world’. I can get to quite high levels of anxiety, and yet when it comes to emailing people back…

A story idea just popped into my head for this one, so I’ll put it on as a bonus.

~~~~~
Melissa tapped her foot on the floor, keeping her head bowed as a way to keep herself from looking at the timer. Time goes faster when you don’t think about it. Just don’t think about it.

But how could she not think about it? This had to be the longest three minutes of her life. And Jeremy was due to be home soon. Ah, and there he was. She could hear him pull into the drive, park and get out of the car.

As soon as he walked in, she shot to her feet.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, immediately noticing her pale complexion and the way she kept twisting her engagement ring around her finger. He put aside his briefcase and walked over to hold her.

She held him tightly for a moment and then eased him back so she could look at his face. “Jeremy.”

“What is it?”

“Jeremy, I -”

The timer went off and they looked at it. Beside it lay a long, white plastic holder with a purple cap.

Melissa looked at him again. “I’m late.”

This week we have quite the interesting prompt from Sunday Scribblings…

“This prompt is inspired by some of you! Often in your comments you will say, “I knew instantly what I was going to write about.” So now you have to write about that.

What in you life did you just KNOW?”

I knew instantly… that I would end up writing about my husband for this prompt.

I knew instantly…, upon talking to him for the first time, that my husband was unlike anyone I had ever met. I knew he could be the man I dreamed of - someone who could teach me new things who I could teach things too as well.

I knew instantly…, well, maybe not instantly, but I knew as a child that I wasn’t where I belonged. It manifested early with me thinking I was on an alien planet. Later in life I ended up moving to my true home - Australia.

I knew instantly… that creative writing was something important to me that would forever be there for me. I started writing stories not long after I learned to write. And before that I was making up stories in my mind. (I can even tell you one that lasted for many years…) Creative writing has seen me through some of the worst times in my life, and I don’t know who I would be without it.

I knew instantly… when my husband started talking about children that I wanted to be the one to give him children. (Good thing, too, seeing as I’m his wife. Hehe!)

Happy Sunday Scribblings!