This post is written for the weekend Trifecta Challenge: This weekend we’re asking for exactly 33 words inspired by the following photo. Please remember that if you use the photo on your own blog, you must give proper credit (with clickable links).
Photo credit: Bérenger ZYLA / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
Life’s mirror reflects the things that I hold close. It may not involve truth, but it involves dreams. My dreams. And it will only make me see the things I want to see.
The morning air was crisp and it shocked my lungs as I inhaled. The sun was doing its best to warm the day but the cold still bit at my face as I walked. The tears kept flowing and froze to my cheeks. The all-too-familiar saline tasted bitter as I licked the frozen tears from the corner of my mouth.
I could still hear him shouting as I reached the end of the driveway and tried to drown him out by listening to the snow crunching under my feet. The road welcomed me and the freedom of the open air embraced me. I had made this walk many times and the path was becoming worn with my pain.
The argument played in my head like a movie trailer. Scattered pieces of the screaming match from this morning and all of the other fights combined into a three-minute synopsis of an unhealthy relationship. There were no physical marks but the emotional scars ran so deep I could almost feel them etched in my skin.
From my hiding spot, I could hear the engine of his car come to life. Peace was only moments away and I involuntarily held my breath as I watched him speed down the road. An immense sense of relief poured over me as I followed my well-carved path back to the house.
I knew in my heart what the next step was and I finally had the courage to see it through. I was ready to put myself first, ready to see the value in my happiness. I was ready to find a love that I could accept and one that I deserved.
The time had come to tell him it was over.
(photo credit: tomorrowstheme.blogspot.com)
This post was written for the Trifecta Challenge:
1a : the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues : duration
b : a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future
c : leisure <time for reading>
2: the point or period when something occurs : occasion
3a : an appointed, fixed, or customary moment or hour for something to happen, begin, or end <arrived ahead of time>
b : an opportune or suitable moment <decided it was time to retire> —often used in the phrase about time <about time for a change>
Please remember:
Writing is a passion that requires discipline and focus. With encouragement from Sage Doyle, I have made the conscious effort to drag my body from the warm cover of my duvet two hours earlier than usual, saturate myself with coffee and develop my relationship with the characters in my book. Ensconced in the darkened tomb of my living room, I go on a two-hour journey with people I get to know more intimately the longer we spend together. They take me with them on their epic adventures and I am merely there to document their trials, tribulations and triumphs.
Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings are now dedicated to coaxing those characters from their lair in the cerebral hemisphere they call home and watching how they interact with each other. They help me understand their quirks and allow me a brief glimpse into what makes them tick. They seem to have complete faith in my ability to share their tales from the most genuine and descriptive perspective possible.
Monday night I decided to set the alarm and throw a Tuesday into the early morning writing mix. I woke up early, grabbed a steaming hot cup of coffee, a liquid that is quickly becoming my life’s blood, and sat waiting for the characters to emerge from their cranial apartment. I sipped coffee and waited. I filled the mug again and waited. I knocked several times on the door that shields them from other cerebral functions, and still, nothing. I pried open the door to their locked quarters and they were gone.
Those elusive characters, seeing the calendar and realizing it was Tuesday, thought they had the day off. Not one of them had stayed behind with the hopes of participating in a spontaneous writing session. They sent me holograms of photos from Disney with trite lines about wishing I were there and each one of them, even the villain, was wearing Mickey Mouse ears.
(image courtesy of yourwdwstore.com)
I will set my alarm tonight and wake tomorrow with the expectation that they will be here and ready to go to work. I will only knock on that door once and if they stand me up again, I will have their pink slips ready to go. They’ll never work in this genre again!!
As the days get warmer I have a renewed sense of faith in nature, but the person responsible for daylight savings time has a very perverse sense of humor. I know the typical lyrics of the song are “Morning has broken”, but in my case, sitting in my living room at 6:00 am, that is not the case. Morning seems to be broken. The blackness that swallowed my house in the night still holds these four walls in its confines and my outside world is invisible.
(this is a photo of my front lawn taken with no flash….isn’t it beautiful?)
After several cups of coffee and much patience, that darkness gives way to the day and the world is brought to life again. When the sun finally graces the sky in our hemisphere, its heat seems to increase in intensity each day. The dank smell of dirt pushing its way through the melting snow permeates my nose and the morning darkness no longer holds the same power it once had. Light breathes life into the day and the earth stretches and yawns.
Soon the mornings will become brighter and rising to greet the day will require much less effort. The days will become longer and the seasonal creatures will poke their heads from hibernation to inhabit the freshly revealed landscapes. Blades of grass will breathe deeply after being suffocated under the weight of the snow, flowers will bloom and allergens will perform their invisible dance .
Within the morning darkness, the promise of spring awaits.
I love blogging. It allows me to truly be myself, to express words and feelings that come to mind without having to think about them. Stories that would be otherwise untold rise to the surface and hurtle themselves at the page through my fingertips.
When I jumped into this creative ocean, I had no idea what to expect and absolutely no realization that I would cast myself into a sea of churning drops of water that, although they combine to create a large body of water, each possess qualities that make them truly unique. The vast array of blogs that I read allows me to look at the world through different eyes and see things in a way that may have escaped my attention. They create a path for me to follow through a portal into an inspired world that I may never have found on my own.
(image courtesy of naturealive.asia)
The Trifecta Challenges embody these varying degrees of interpretation. A great number of bloggers are given the same challenge and no two entries are similar in any respect, apart from following the rules for submitting posts. Each writer is struck by a lightning bolt of creativity but that bolt is generated from a completely exclusive storm and the raindrops of ideas saturate only their mind.
When I post an idea I look forward to the comments I receive. Initially I would have child-like reaction if a comment held an opposing view, but I have come to appreciate being able to see my thoughts from another perspective. Each comment is like a golden pin of light shining through the words, altering the original picture and making me look at my own thoughts in a different way.
This blogging journey has expanded my mind, not only in my writing but also my ability to ingest words from other writers and see the world through their eyes. And whether their world is dripping in sarcasm, prolific with poetry or fraught with haunting truths I enjoy being a part of their journey as well as having them be a part of my literary pilgrimage.
How has blogging changed your world?
Finding time to set aside precious hours, or even minutes, for those things we truly love to do seems to be more difficult as we get older. Responsibilities pressure us into doing the right thing and prioritizing family, work and chores leaving little time to do the things we yearn to do. Hobby items collect dust and ideas for great stories become trapped in the vault of our mind waiting for that large iron door to swing open and let the ideas tumble into the forefront of our thoughts.
(image courtesy of Google)
I am learning to make more time for myself. In the winter months it is much easier to make that time since I work the normal Monday to Friday hours that an office job dictates. However, when the resort opens for the season, I am back to six days a week and generally my work days start at 7:00 am and ends at 6:00 pm, if I’m lucky. The summer affords me one day off a week which is spent catching up on the aforementioned priorities, leaving little time for recreation or writing. I am an avid golfer and at the end of last summer had not even played one full round of golf. My gazebo waved at me from my front lawn as I passed it on my way to work and simply sighed as I dragged my weary body into the house on my way back from work.
This summer will be different. Life is far to short to spend all of my time making someone else happy and forgetting about my own happiness. Changing patterns and routines is difficult, but I have already begun the process to alter my patterns. With the help and advice of friends I am slowly learning to make myself my first priority. My alarm encourages me to rise an hour earlier than normal and my laptop is eagerly awaiting the gentle touch of my fingers on its keyboard. My golf bag smiles knowingly at me every time I pass it on my way to work, somehow sensing that this golf season will be the pendulum swing our relationship needs to get back on track. And my gazebo seems more inviting than ever.
I have finally come to realize that the change can only begin with me. If I don’t make time to do the things I love to do, nobody else is going to make that time for me. I am going to print this post and put it on the wall in my office to remind me that life is not all about work. Although I enjoy my job, work is a means to an income. Nothing will ever be as satisfying as writing a paragraph rich in imagery or hitting that perfect drive down the middle of the fairway.
Do you make a point to set aside time for the things you love?
Writing, for me, is like dining on a fine meal. I ease my way into the plate by starting with the vegetables and starches, but the true heart of my writing is in the protein. It isn’t until I sink my teeth into the real meat of the dish that I truly get the taste for the potential of the story. Lately I have been spending an inordinate amount of time being distracted by the side dishes and leaving no room for the most important part of the meal.
Blogging has become a very special part of my life and I look forward to writing every day and reading posts from others afflicted by the same passion. I’ve been so wrapped up in the world of WordPress that I have all but abandoned the book that I had begun writing a while ago. Until recently, I had great intentions of setting aside time to do nothing but continue the journey of the characters I created so long ago. But that has finally changed.
(image courtesy of Google)
With encouragement from fellow blogger Sage Doyle, we made a pact. We vowed to set aside time two mornings a week and make the other accountable for getting up early and devoting time to write. With coffee in hand, we check in with each other in the wee hours of dawn, bid each other adieu for a couple of hours and we write. There is no TV, no noise, just caffeine induced creativity. It’s been a fantastic way for me to shift focus back onto the book because I have that accountability, and it is truly inspiring me to dedicate that much-needed time to the WIP. My characters are animated once again and brushing the dust from their clothing. They have attitude and they now know there is a time and a place that they can bring it.
Fleeting ideas are now forming into meaningful sentences and paragraphs and 1,500 words magically transposed themselves onto the screen on Wednesday. My plate is full and it’s time to gnaw on the chops of my writing as well as enjoying the appetizers.
What is your writing ritual?
I have always been a very independent person. Even as a young child I would get angry when people tried to help me with things that were proving difficult for me. I seemed to get the sense, even at that tender stage of my life, that I was somehow failing if I couldn’t do it on my own.
Over the years I have been able to let some of that stubbornness go, not all of it, but enough to allow me to see how a helping hand can smooth the rough edges that I used to cut myself on repeatedly. As individuals, we are porous rocks. We are permeable and sometimes allow too many of the negative things in our life shape the person we become. We have bumps and impurities and we develop jagged edges to protect ourselves from unwanted encounters with anyone outside of our realm of comfort.
As we journey through life, we collect friends much like a beach collects grains of sand. And akin to those grains of sand, our friends help smooth our rough edges. They help transform that rough exterior and, with love and compassion, they help us to become more polished by eroding our jagged exterior and finding the beauty underneath.
(image courtesy of Google)
My beach stretches for miles. The many grains of sand that comprise my shore come in all shapes and sizes and although some stay close to me and some remain on the periphery of my seascape they are all equally important parts of that beach. I try to take as many long walks as possible along my shorelines and appreciate each grain of friendship in my life. And though I may not make it to the outer boundaries very often, know that each of you, near or far, have contributed to the beauty of my shoreline.
The night sky had begun to turn from cobalt blue to the midnight blue she loved so much. The sun had given up fighting to keep the day alive and she sat on her darkened porch watching the stars dot the sky. Quickly she slipped inside and began to doctor her martini with a bit of juice from the jar of olives. She liked them dirty.
If the forecast was correct the bright dancing lights of the aurora would be lighting up the sky and the rippling curtains of greens and pinks would soon be undulating across the upper atmosphere.
She returned to the porch with her drink in hand and pulled a blanket around her legs. She could see the sea-foam green colors beginning to emerge and the spectral portrait was phenomenal. Colors intertwined like graceful ballet dancers in a black light theatre.
After only a few short minutes, the colors seemed to dissipate and the night sky lay bare, speckled with only a few stars and the memory of the illusory vision. She finished her martini and closed her eyes, letting the night creatures lull her to sleep with their soulful songs.
(image courtesy of Google)
This post was written for the Trifecta Challenge: On to the weekly challenge.
b : a learned or authoritative teacher
c : a person who has earned one of the highest academic degrees (as a PhD) conferred by a university
d : a person awarded an honorary doctorate (as an LLD or Litt D) by a college or university
b : medicine man
b : a blade (as of metal) for spreading a coating or scraping a surface
There seems to be a common theme throughout the blogosphere surrounding the celebration of Valentine’s Day. And until I re-read my thoughts and deleted the 500 + words I had written on the subject of the commercialism of the day I would have written an entire post about the monetary veil that looms over this auspicious holiday. But something changed. The words I had composed left a bitter taste in my mouth and what I had written felt inappropriate in relation to the manifestation of my tumultuous emotions.
(image courtesy of Google)
Don’t get me wrong…..I don’t hate Valentine’s Day. I, like so many of you, don’t believe in the hype of all the industry propagation that surrounds it. Candy manufacturers and card makers jump at the chance to cover their windows with hearts and arrows to remind people to spend, spend, spend for their loved ones and money is discarded on items littered with hearts and oozing with sentiment written by the prolific writing staff at Hallmark.
In a moment of what can only be described as lucidity, I realized that there are many people walking the face of this planet who are unable to show their emotion as easily as I do. There are many who do not feel as comfortable with the phrase ‘I love you’ and cannot utter it as often as they feel it is deserved and wanted. In that moment, I understood that Valentine’s Day may be the one day that they can express their love through cards and flowers. They are able to show the love they feel on a daily basis but are unable to articulate as often as they would like. After years of being disgusted by the store displays enticing people to spend money, I got it. Maybe the cards and candy hearts are the only way some can divulge their feelings without suffering the spontaneous embarrassment or discomfort of uttering those three words aloud. Because I feel so comfortable sharing the emotion I have, it never dawned on me that others do not share that luxury and perhaps this day is their moment to shine.
Many people I know are far more fortunate and have displays of love bestowed on them quite frequently. Ironically, Valentine’s Day is hijacked by those fortunate souls and held hostage with threats if they are not bathed in ornate displays of store-bought compensation. They reside on a pedestal, but still hold their partner accountable for lavish gifts and dinner, negating the fact that they see more affection in a year than others are only privy to on a day that comes once a year.
I was watching Anderson Cooper last night and his co-host told a story that brought me to tears. She read on the internet about a woman from Houston, TX who had been married for 46 years had always received a bouquet of flowers from her husband with a card that simply read “My love for you grows”. Her husband passed away and the following Valentine’s Day, the first one she would spend alone, she received a bouquet of flowers. She was angry at first and called the florist to ask about the delivery and was told her husband had prepaid for that same bouquet to be delivered on Valentine’s Day for several years to come. When she opened the card it read “My love for you is eternal”. (yes, I’m crying)
Maybe I’m getting older, maybe I’m getting wiser or perhaps I had that moment where the lightbulb finally shone brighter than it ever has in regards to Valentine’s Day. Whatever the case may be, these words from Henry David Thoreau ring true today ~ It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Happy Valentine’s Day to all of the people in my life. Whether in person or in words, you all inspire me.
polysyllabic profundities 