Category Archives: freedom

It could be really great…..or go completely pear-shaped!

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spare time

Spare time is defined by thefreedictionary.com as “time available for hobbies and other activities you enjoy”.  I had to read that to refresh my memory as to its true meaning since I have not been able to really enjoy any for quite some time.

When you work in the hostility hospitality industry, time of the spare variety is few and far between.  Those waning hours of consciousness after working a twelve-hour day consist of having a libation of your choice and trying to keep your eyes open for longer than an hour after your body pours itself onto the couch.  It is difficult to enjoy an artistic hobby from behind partially closed eyelids.

But all that could change.  The summer staff are arriving, one by one, and my weekly schedule is set.  No more twelve-hour days are in my future, at least that is my conviction at this point, and this fleeting “spare time” could become more of a realistic part of my day.

The weekly calendar begins tomorrow.  The first of many crazy Saturday check ins will come and go and the weeks in between should be routine, in a perfect world.  Life, as I used to know it, should allow me a little more freedom to walk my dog, read the words of fellow bloggers, read a book or just simply enjoy the ever-elusive unoccupied moments of my life.  If all goes well, I will have moments of greatness spent doing exactly what I want to do.

To quote Marthe Troly-Curtin, “Time  you enjoy wasting, is not wasted time”.  (image credit)

 

 

Where I find myself

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My head is here,

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lost in what looks like a painting.

Texture emulates emotion, freedom.

The horizon represents reality,

meeting effortlessly with creative indulgence.

There are no rules in the clouds.

My heart is here,

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 swelling with emotion,

nurtured by nature and blessed by light,

comforted by the embrace of the essence of life.

free to move in a path that is meant only for me.

A cottage in the woods

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“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

I am going to make the gross assumption that everyone has thought, at least once, about what they would do if they won a big sum of cash.  I just had a dream the other night that I was handed a cheque for $500,000.00.  When I woke up, my brain rapidly began to compile a list of my desires and the list was (not surprisingly) simple.

Haliburton

(image credit)

I want this house on a big piece of land that affords me privacy, sunsets and a vast array of nature.  I want the peepers to chirp me to sleep at night and I want the caress of the morning sun to touch my cheek while I rouse.  I want to sit on that top deck and enjoy my morning coffee while I watch the dogs chasing squirrels.  I want to glance to my right and see the roof of my garage which also houses the space I can use to dabble in wood-work.

This house has always been the house I want to build.  It is small, charming and has a big kitchen so I can cook and bake to my heart’s content.   A picture of this house is pinned to a board on my refrigerator.  Each time I look at it, I send that wish into the universe hoping that some day my wish will be turned into a reality.

Many times I have closed my eyes and pictured myself sitting in my eclectic, but not expensive, living room.  The candles on the dining room table are lit, soft music plays in the background and the smell of roasting lamb permeates every room in the house.  The wine is a perfect temperature and every now and then I urgently run upstairs to my writing room to document my latest burst of creativity.

My happiness is not waiting for me in distant geographical locations.  My happiness does not consist of collections of things.  My happiness lies within those four walls and the grass and trees that will surround it.  I want to love everything about my life, I want to live deliberately and I want to do it in this house.

What would be your wish if you were able to afford anything you wanted?

 

Gazing into your own eyes isn’t weird, it’s necessary

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For us to be ultimately happy, we need to take the time to understand the person that we truly are, blemishes and all. It is not very often that we allow ourselves that pause to face ourselves and spend a while gazing into our eyes of truth.

mirror

(image credit)

 

It takes a great deal of honesty, and some humility, to admit to ourselves the things that are important in our lives and what will make us truly content – to embrace the person that we are and to love everything about ourselves. We are each born with unique qualities and characteristics and understanding what really makes us tick is half the battle. Being able to accept those things and allow ourselves to be satisfied with those traits is the other half of that battle.

Contemplating our own thoughts and feelings is a daunting task. But to really reach into the depths of our souls and seek what is most important to us means we are required to admit to ourselves the truths that we avoid on a daily basis. Sometimes that revelation is uplifting. But sometimes realizing who we are and what we want makes us really understand the distance between our reality and our true bliss.

Before we can be honest with anyone else, we need to be honest with ourself. Mirroring someone else’s happiness will only delay our gratification. If we take the time to really delve into our psyche, to look deeply into what makes us who we are, we will come to terms with what gives us the greatest pleasure in our life. So many people spend so much of their time trying to be something they are not. They only try to present the image they feel others want to see. But they do themselves a grave injustice by not being their genuine self. Maybe our warts are what make us truly special and by ignoring those so-called inferior qualities we lose our individuality.

We are all truly unique but embracing those true parts of ourselves means we have to go face to face with nothing more than our honest perception of who we are to the core. In no realm of our reality should we give the power of that perception to anyone but ourselves. There is no single person on the planet that has the right to tell us who we are or what we can become.

Hold a mirror to your face. Look deep within yourself and be honest enough to admit who you are and what it is that is right for you.  Everyone has warts – some are visible, some are masked. Being introspective will allow you to embrace those warts and realize that the things others see as flaws make you stand apart from every other human on the planet.

Things are not always what they seem

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As the nights began to get colder and the days grew shorter, a non-conforming sparrow decided not to fly South for the winter. The winds shifted, the snow began to fly and the mercury dropped to frigid levels.  Realizing the decision not to go South was horribly wrong, the sparrow reluctantly began its journey to a warmer climate.

The elements exploded from the winter sky and battered the poor bird.  Soon ice began to form on its tiny wings and the sparrow could no longer remain in flight.  The wind and snow volleyed the bird in mid-air and the sparrow fell to the Earth, landing in a barnyard.  Its heartbeat was weak and the sparrow faced the inevitability of freezing to death in the vast expanse of farm land.

sparrow-in-the-snow

 

(image credit)

No sooner had the bird given in to its undeniable fate, when a cow wandered dangerously close to the dying bird, lifted its tail and crapped on the sparrow.  Stunned by the irony of being shit on while it slowly died, the bird began to feel warm.  The heat from the cow patty was melting the frost and the bird began to feel its heart pounding stronger and stronger with each beat.

With growing warmth and a sudden optimism, the bird began to sing.  It celebrated its narrow escape of impending death.  It basked in the glory of being to continue its journey South and it laughed in the face of fate itself.

The sparrow’s song grew so loud that the bird did not hear the approach of the feral barn cat.  Investigating the sounds, the cat circled the bird and pounced, clearing the cow patty and carrying the now deceased bird back to its lair for a late supper.

There are lessons to be learned from every story.  Everyone who shits on you is not necessarily your enemy.  Everyone who gets you out of shit is not necessarily your friend and if you are warm and happy in a pile of shit, keep your mouth shut.

~~

This was a joke I remember hearing when I was in high school.  I embellished a bit (no surprise there) but I think the lessons are still worthy of sharing.

 

 

 

I chose, but then I chose to choose again

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choices

Life is about making choices.  Every day we are presented with numerous situations in which we have to decide the outcome of the situation by using our instincts to make those choices.

I am certain I have made many choices that, given the chance to go back and do again, I would change at the drop of a hat.  But making those choices has made me who I am today, warts and all.   I learned a great deal about life and especially about myself by choosing the way I did.  And I learned even more about me by giving myself permission to make the choice to choose again.

I chose to get married.  It was a bad choice for me, given the circumstances, but it was a choice I needed to make to learn a very valuable lesson.  After that lesson had a chance to penetrate my brain, I made the choice to not be married anymore.  Some frowned on my choice without having understood how much that life was not meant for me.  It was a road I needed to venture down, but it was also the path that showed me who I could be if I chose to finally put myself first.  That was probably one of the first choices I ever made with only me in mind.  I didn’t gauge how many others would be affected by my choice.  I just chose to make myself happy without putting anyone else’s needs ahead of my own.

Just because you’ve chosen, doesn’t mean you can’t choose again.  While your first choice may have seemed to be the one that was best for you, perhaps making the choice to choose again will be the choice that will make you the happiest.  Life is not predictable and giving yourself permission to choose what is best for you should always be your first choice.

 

 

Holy shit…..I knew it

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swearing

 (image credit)

I always felt there had to be a positive outlook on my sometimes expletive vocabulary!   As much as I try not to swear in my writing, I can curse like a trucker when I’m watching a football game.  There are days when those words seem to convey how I am feeling more than any other word….and I love words.

Sometimes there is no better expression of emotion than to simply let a few cuss words out in the conversation.  Those words are able to convey a simple honesty about how you are really feeling rather than having to grapple with finding the perfect word to sum up your feelings.   That one curse word is short and succinct and the person hearing that word is not left wondering how you really feel.

I will still strive to stretch my vocabulary when it comes to my writing but if I’m giving you a brief verbal synopsis on how something made me feel, don’t be surprised at the number of f-bombs I drop during our conversation.

Ashes to ashes – fiction

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heart-ants

She knew his heart would crash, landing right at her feet the moment she told him it was over.  What had been a fairy tale beginning had quickly turned into the twisted relationship only Dean Koontz could do justice in one of his macabre stories.  It had been tumultuous, to say the least, and she just needed to be free of him.

Over the course of their relationship, he had retreated into a cocoon inside his mind, fueled by the haze of booze and cigarettes.  She had not realized his heart had shrunk to such a miniscule version of what it once was until she saw it laying before her, cold and lifeless on the stony ground.

His face seemed to become more emaciated the longer she looked at him.  He had not reacted verbally to her accusations.  He could only nod in sullen agreement because he seemed to have lost the ability to speak.  She berated him, lashed out for each minute she spent wishing her life with him had been different.  With each bitter word she uttered, her Machiavellian intention became clearer to him.

She couldn’t tell if his eyes actually became bigger when he realized what was happening or if it just seemed like it because his body was withering at such a rapid rate.  His hair-line seemed to recede as she watched and his gaunt complexion resembled more of a skeleton than a human body.  She pulled the small doll from her pocket and lingered before she pushed the last pin into the woven material that covered its chest.  A small sigh escaped her lips and she plunged the final pin into the doll.  What remained of his skin and bones hastily turned to dust and fell to the cobblestone street.

She stood idle for a few moments and watched as the ants began to march single file through the crack in the stone.  Like a well trained army, they worked as a team to circle the tiny carrion and haul the remains of the lifeless heart down the hole to take home as a trophy.  Little did they know, the spell she had created would only allow that heart to exist for mere minutes after the rest of his body had disappeared.  The ants would get it into the hole but it would never remain solid long enough to present it to the colony.

As she walked away, she carefully removed each pin remembering the outcome that each jab had on his physical being.  She tossed the pins in the gutter and placed the doll safely back in her pocket, hoping, once again, this would be the last time she would need it.

~~

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Written for the Grammar Ghoul Challenge – to use the picture above – Just a lonely heart by Marina Carvalho
is licensed under CC by 2.0,  and the word crash with the following definition – Move or cause to move with force, speed, and sudden loud noise