Category Archives: doing what you love

Recognizing the people that cause me to think

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I needed to post something positive after being glued to the TV all day and following the events in Newtown.

At the end of November, Homesick and Heartstruck nominated me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award.  I mistakenly filed the notification email and feel guilty about not saying a very tremendous THANK YOU!!   When fellow bloggers recognize your words as having affected them in a positive way, it is inspiring to feel that your words truly do matter.

The rules of the award are to dispel seven myths about myself and nominate fifteen other bloggers for this award.  I’m not sure if there are seven show-stopping bits of drivel that won’t send you running in another direction, so I will save you the ocular discomfort of having to read them.  As for nominating only fifteen bloggers for this same honor, I can’t choose only fifteen.  Without sounding completely trite, all of the bloggers I follow inspire me in some way.  Your comments keep me motivated, your likes cause me to smile and the words in your posts make me laugh, make me cry, but most of all they make me think.  I find you all very inspiring and hope that you will post the award on your side bars!!

Recently Angie at Angie’s Grapevine nominated me for The Blog of The Year for 2012.  Another honor which I greatly appreciate.  It is always humbling being recognized by fellow writers for just doing something I have a passion for.  Some other blogs that fuel that same passion in me that I would like to recognize are:

Angie’s Grapevine – she strives to post every day and is very encouraging with her comments

Dianne Gray – I would like to have her brain in my head

onthehomefrontandbeyond – thought-provoking reflections on life

Homesick and Heartstruck – poignant stories of struggling so far from home

Honie Briggs – keeping the blogging world amused and connected

Teeny Bikini – always amusing, I love to laugh

(And though I know some of you listed above no longer accept awards, I wanted you to know that your words inspire me!!)

Congratulations! on being chosen for the ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award!

The ‘rules’ for this award are simple:

  1. Select another blog or other blogs who deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award;
  2. Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there’s no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and ‘present’ them with their award;
  3. Include a link back to this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award at the Thought Palette and provide these ‘rules’ in your post (please don’t alter the rules or the badges!)
  4. Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the ‘rules’ with them
  5. You can now also join our Facebook group – click ‘like’ on this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award Facebook group and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience
  6. As a winner of the award – please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award – and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars…

6 stars image

Unlike other awards which you can only add to your blog once – this award is different!  When you begin you will receive the ‘1 star’ award – and every time you are given the award by another blog – you can add another star!
There are a total of 6 stars to collect. Which means that you can check out your favorite blogs – and even if they have already been given the award by someone else – you can still bestow it on them again and help them to reach the maximum 6 stars!

Blog of the Year 2012’ Award Badges – there are six badges for you to collect – you can either ‘swap’ your badge for the next one each time you are given the award – or even proudly display all six badges if you are lucky enough to be presented with the award six times!

Thank you for the shout-outs and I hope we can all continue to inspire each other!!

What word defines you?

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Tenacious is a word that I have come to love.  It sums up so much of my personality and my desire to succeed.   It gives me an excuse to fall back on when I seem like that proverbial bull in a china shop.  But when you know what you want, why should you not use everything in your arsenal to get it?

Words continue to fuel my fire and the roaring blaze is only intensified by my yearning.  I want to write.  I want more than anything to support my lifestyle by putting my thoughts and images into words, and I want people to get lost in the spectral portraits that I create with language. That tenacity is what keeps me going.  My stubborn refusal to accept my current station in life is evident by the passion I seek to create in the many fables I wish to share.

words

There are many adjectives to choose from when someone asks you to define yourself.   Honest, trustworthy and loyal are among the top words that people will use to exemplify the traits they find most honorable in themselves.  I embody all of those things, but my tenacity is what sets me apart from those benign words.  My ferrous belief that my writing will allow me to have a career by incessantly tapping at this keyboard is the light that beckons me through these dark nights.  It dangles that rabbit that I continue to chase in circles around that unending track.  It gives me hope that my dreams may come to fruition.

Some say words are only words. But words are unique.  Each word that is chosen in a story is selected because of the way it truly reflects the emotion and meaning of the sentence in which it is written.  And just perhaps, those words will lead me through the current reality of my days and into a world I had only once dreamed of – a world in which I was not just a fairy tale character, but the writer of that story.

Tenacious = determined, obstinate, persistent.  Tenacious is the word that defines me.

If you had to choose only one word to describe yourself, what would it be?

A sense of accomplishment

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The month of November came in like a lion and is going out like a hibernating bear.  But within the tumultuous days in what is quite possibly my least favorite month, there was a light, not only at the end of the month-long tunnel, but emanating from inside of it.  NaBloPoMo cast the glow of a warm light that bathed me in its radiance.

November is typically a month of dull, grey days that do nothing but merge into dark, lifeless evenings.  The clock has fallen back to make those days even shorter and without snow on the ground, November is nothing more than 30 days of lethargy and gloominess – until NaBloPoMo came into my life.  Since I am relatively new to the blogging world, and have only recently re-acquainted myself with the writing portion of my cerebral cortex, I wasn’t sure if I had enough verbiage that would span 30 days.  I couldn’t have been further off the mark.

Words seemed to tumble over themselves to jockey for positions on the screen.  They pushed and shoved each other until the line up resembled a bar code for the Tassimo brewer – everything had its place.  If one of those words lined up incorrectly, the flavor of the post left a bitter aftertaste.

It’s been a great month-long ride of diving into the fountain of my creativity.  I still find myself blissfully afloat in the calming waters and feeling like I am home.  The tepid water envelops me, yet keeps me buoyant and cradled in a sense of unity with its tides.

So I shall pat myself on the back for posting for thirty days successively,  and hope that the next 31 days find me still floating (face up) in that fountain of ideas.  I thank all of you for your continued support and encouragement and look forward to sharing more of my ideas as well as ingesting so many of yours.  I can honestly say I love the new community I find myself ensconced in and look forward to a continued journey of words, phrases and friendships.

On the eve of my 100th birthday

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Written for the Daily Post Challenge: You have the chance to write one last post on your blog before you stop blogging forever.

Last blog entry – March 27th,  2069 – the eve of my 100th birthday

I am a smoldering pot of emotion.  This blogging journey, and all of you, my fellow writers, have taught me a great deal about myself.  I was apprehensive beginning what I thought would be a whim, but what truly turned into a collection of moments that, once they were added together, defined me.  From the rare glimpses into my humor to the things that truly touched my heart, I have bared my soul through pontificating on these random polysyllabic profundities.

Many suns have set as I assumed the position at my keyboard, unaware that the day had passed and the night had now enveloped the walls of my widow’s peak to which I have become accustomed to writing behind.  The wind has frolicked through the leaves and tickled them on its way.  Those same leaves have fallen to allow for the snow to blanket the branches, season after season, and I was none the wiser.  Months, even years passed as my mind was lost in thoughts of future tales to tell.

And now, in what may be my eleventh hour, I am overcome with grief as I say goodbye to what has possibly been one of few true friends that genuinely understood me.  This blog has been the one confidant that I was able to tell my deepest secrets.  It let me rant when I needed to release my anger, it laughed at my humor and embraced me when I wrote about things that absolutely broke my heart.  It has nursed me through the passing of loved ones and helped me welcome the next generations into our family.  And now, as I sit alone on my last night on this earth, it is this blog that is my only companion, for it sees me as I truly am.  I want my family to remember me full of life and not a feeble, bed-ridden old woman, barely able to type.

There is a slight chill in the air and I feel the darkness seeping into the corners of my eyes.  I shall hit ‘publish’ one last time so my last words will enter the blogosphere as I enter the light.  My words will be there to greet you one last time as those who have passed before me await my arrival to join them in that place beyond our world.  Thank you for joining me on what was a very long, but extremely fulfilling journey.

Like sands through the hourglass – these are the thoughts in my head

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At the risk of seeming overly loquacious, I have challenged myself to post every day for the month of November.  What began as a drip of creativity has turned into a steady stream and threatens to flood my thoughts, and my keyboard.  The words that I envisioned having to struggle to find are lending themselves with no contest and ideas present themselves in unending fashion.  The sands in the hourglass that represent my ideas seem to refill themselves as quickly as they dissipate through the pinhole in that blown glass.

No longer is my imagination confined in such a small space.  No longer are my thoughts trapped in a glass bulb, buried in a myriad of cognitive ideas.  With one gentle turn, the essence of my words now flows as freely as those infinitesimal grains.  Ideas churn in the vortex of sand as they fight to free themselves from the bottleneck and into their new-found freedom.

Those thoughts, each small granule of sand that escapes into the path of indulgence,  remind me why I began this journey.  I am compelled to follow this yearning to put letters and words on a page.  I find myself creating characters and dialogue while I shop for groceries.  I compose outlines while driving home from work and I dream in paragraphs.

I write because I am inspired to write.   I write to indulge the little voices in my head that lead me into creativity, and I write because, through my writing, I have finally discovered who I was meant to be.

Be the change – a journey of self-discovery

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Today’s Daily Prompt was intriguing.  The question was posed –

What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?

It was a query that got my mind spinning.  I’d never really taken the time to think of my blog on a global scale, and that thought is extremely daunting.  Although my blog has reached readers on many continents (and I truly thank you all for following), it would be egotistical of me to think that my words could have any affect in the grand scheme of this ever evolving planet.

When I write, I am ensconced in a tiny living room, in a small town, in a very rural part of Ontario.   If the wind blows in the wrong direction, I lose power.  I’m sure if I sneezed with any velocity, I would be writing this in the darkness until the laptop battery ceased to exist and my creative world would be relegated to using the voice recorder on my iPhone to track my meandering thoughts.

Blogging for me has turned into a journey of self-discovery.  It may not make a change in this world, but it has definitely made a change in my world.  It has awakened a part of me that was hidden.  It has revealed a piece of my soul that was cowering from the possible reality that what I wrote may be of interest to no-one but myself.  But I forged ahead, because what I was writing was allowing me to truly be myself and giving me permission to uncover all of the things that I really wanted to say.

By following my passion, I evoked a change in myself.  I awakened my opinions, and within that awakening, I granted myself the indulgence to hold value in the things that were my truths.  I chose to not only put those words on a page, but to share them with whomever happened to stop by to read my thoughts.  Judgement aside, I wrote because I wanted to write.  I wanted to be the change in my world and discover how much of myself I was willing to share.  Even now, writing these words, I am overcome with emotion.  Tears fall as silent cries for the freedom I have given my words.

Perhaps by making that change in my world, I will, in turn, make a positive change on a grander scale.  Words can make me laugh, and words can make me cry.  And somewhere in the middle of those emotions is the true meaning of the language of writing.  Maybe the change I would like my blog to make on this world is to simply communicate to others to follow their passions, embrace their dreams.  Only you can know what will truly make you happy, and only you can be the change in your world.

The circle of a relationship, not the chain of command

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The family resort at which I have been employed for many years has just closed again after another successful season.  If I were to describe it, I would tell you to picture Kellerman’s from Dirty Dancing,  and that is where I work (sans Patrick Swayze and the watermelons!)

I began working there in 1986 and after leaving and coming back, and leaving and coming back, I have been there consistently for the last 10 years.  A lot has changed in the economy and much has changed in terms of the expectations of guests, but the relationship between staff and management remains the one constant that you can take to the bank.

Creating a work environment that everyone can thrive in is the key to a successful business.  Not only do we put great pride in creating a summer experience for our guests that they will cherish for years to come, but we put the same effort into making the staff experience a summer that they will never forget.  The chain of command still exists, but we are focused on harnessing the positive energy and feedback we get from creating that circle of a relationship and leaving the hierarchy of those chains of command to less fortunate businesses that just don’t get it.

It’s like living a continual episode of Undercover Boss, but we are never under cover.  We embrace our employees and engage them in dialogue. We value their input from a perspective that we may never be fortunate enough to have and make them feel like they are part of the progression. And in turn, we gain the true respect of those summer employees because they not only feel like a part of the process, but they are able to have their own experience within that ever-moving mechanism.

The true value of any business is its employees, and the more energized and interactive they are, the more true success you will obtain from both sides of the work experience.  I truly appreciate everyone I have had the pleasure to have had work with me, not for me, and look forward to many more years of our staff and guest experiences being unparalleled.

Chasing the dream

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Do you ever take a moment to ask yourself if you are really doing what you want to?  Are you living the dream?

Nine to five, Monday through Friday.  This is the reality for so many us…..toiling, sweating, dealing with people we would not wish on even the worst of our enemies, and for what?  Sure, the steady pay cheque each second Friday is somewhat rewarding and it pays the bills.  But are we missing a very important piece of the bigger puzzle?

So often we tread through life in a direction that we never thought we would be heading.  Circumstances and obligations seem to navigate our course and we lose sight of the things that are most important – our dreams.  Reality has a way of shifting those dreams to the back burner and we are left knowing that what we truly desire simmers on low heat and never gets a chance to reach a full boil.

Please don’t misinterpret my musings and think that I am not appreciative of my job, my co-workers and my current career.  That is not the emotion I wish to convey or the drive behind my words.  But there is a piece of my puzzle that I have yet to obtain, and a dream unrealized is a dream worth fighting for.

I have many passions.  Some stave themselves from parading in the forefront of my reality and some seep into my subconscious to give me subtle reminders that they are awaiting recognition.  Some have been recently awakened and welcome you each time you read my thoughts on this blog site.  But there are still dreams to be realized.

The cafe awaits…..and as my soups come to a boil on the stove and my cakes are in the bakery counter, I will be the one writing in the corner at the small table with the laptop and the glass of red wine.  See you there!

Tame the drive, not the driver

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I need to put the “drive” back in my drive.   Since the tender age of 17 when I first tested the waters of being behind the wheel of a vehicle, I always had a manual transmission – it has defined my driving experience. Although it was a rocky beginning, we made our way through the rough patches and have forged a bond that is unparalleled.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not going to go beyond my comfort zone and hop into the driver’s seat of a Formula 1 race car yet (although I do know someone who has just done that and loved it!!), but I need to feel like I am in control when I am commanding the power of a vehicle, and shifting gears gives me that sense of efficacy that I lack when putting an automatic transmission into drive and mundanely steering through the back roads.  These roads are meant for driving, and to me, and others who have voiced their opinion, driving an automatic transmission is just aiming.  If you want to really know your vehicle, know how it loves to hug curves, drop from fifth gear to third to pass the chump  law abiding citizen in front of you, that manual transmission is the way to your best driving experience.

The decision to shift away from the only driving I’d ever really known was driven by my choice in vehicles.  (please note the puns in that sentence, I worked hard on those).  At the time I was ready to lease my next four-wheeled experience, I was mad for the Honda CR-V.  I loved every thing about it.  But there was one major drawback.  It only came in automatic transmission.  It was decision that weighed heavily on me, and it took every fibre of my being to make the choice to move away from seamlessly shifting those gears by just listening to the advice of my engine to pushing a stick into drive and moving the steering wheel back and forth.  It is a decision I have come to regret.

Although my lease is only at the halfway point, my go-to guy at Honda is busily looking for a buy out for my CR-V so I am able to get back into a car I can actually drive – not just a vehicle that I can steer and get myself from A to B.  I want to be on the highway again and feel that engine cry for me to shift it from fourth to fifth as those tires burn up some asphalt.

Learning how to drive a stick-shift gave me a sense of freedom that I didn’t realize I had until long after I learned how to master the smooth shifting of those gears.  I could drive any motor vehicle built to grace the pavement.  As a teen, I worked for a property maintenance company that relied on an old pick-up truck as they forged their way into a growing business in cottage country.  The truck had a manual transmission – three on the tree – and I was one of the only staff members that had a comfort level with the truck to be able to drive it.  I took great pride in the fact that I could command any vehicle that I was afforded the luxury to drive, and knowing the subtleties of that manual engine gave me a sense of power.

Never again will I make a decision based on looks and my inability to fight for what I truly want.  My ride has to challenge me.  It has to demand that I put forth the same effort as it does so we may both enjoy the ride from first to fifth.

So jump in the driver’s seat and weigh in – automatic or standard?

Endings are really just beginnings

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After an arduous struggle, and some tenacity on my part, I started the lawnmower for, perhaps, the last time this year.  It sputtered and spewed out clouds of foul smoke while arguing incessantly for the first few minutes.  But my sheer determination overrode any attempt on its part to not rise to the task at hand.

The sweet smell of wet, fresh-cut grass mixed with the pungent odor of rotting crimson leaves made the battle very worthwhile.  Since I live on my own once again, I am the master of indoor and outdoor responsibilities.  Cutting the lawn is my favorite outdoor job.  Trimming those lengthy blades of grass is thirty minutes of pure escape.  It requires constant movement and the noise from the engine all but negates the possibility of any interruption.  And the odoriferous fragrances of fall that permeate my nose make the task that much more pleasing.  Newly shredded Oak and Maple leaves are combined with the grass to create not only a colorful spectral portrait, but a fusion of smells that is unrivaled.

With the falling of the leaves and the inevitable frost that comes most nights, I don’t look at it as an ending.  Each season brings with it new possibilities and new beauty.  Although there is a vast chasm between the rainbow of colors in October and the stark landscape through November until the snow flies, there is still an unwavering sense of peace and solitude that comes with that unending, brown panorama.

As the days grow shorter and the mercury on the thermometer fails to climb, my dog is waiting with great anticipation of the first snowfall.  Admittedly, I may not be as ready for the emergence of winter, but I do eagerly await the fresh crispness of the air and the stunning dance of the snowflakes as they playfully race to the ground.

With a hearty dose of snow-shovelling and roof raking to bide my time through the blustery winter months, my lawnmower will be tucked away, bundled up in the safe confines of my gazebo.  Get some rest, my feisty friend.  You and I will be doing battle again soon enough.