Category Archives: success

Turning myself into Elvis Costello

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Elvis costello

I am neither becoming transgendered nor am I becoming a rock star but I am going to fit myself into a frame of Elvis’ mind – Every day I write the book.  Come November 1st, that statement will become my new mantra.  I have idly complained, mostly to myself, that I have not been spending any time with my work-in-progress.  We have severe detachment issues but all that is about to change.

With NaNoWriMo looming, I have made a promise to myself to set a writing schedule and do everything in my power to stick to it.  I am not going to set myself up for disappointment by saying I am going to finish my novel in a month but I am going to write as much as my brain will let me in the month of November.  Hopefully the writing Gods will smile on me and allow my creative juices to flow freely and possibly continue on into December until the full story comes to fruition.

I am excited to get back into the character’s minds and allow myself to become fully involved in the process.  There is a great story rattling around in my brain and it is time to put it where it belongs.

Perhaps I should also heed the advice of another popular Elvis – A Little Less Conversation (a little more action).  Wish me luck!!  And to all of you who will be officially participating in NaNoWriMo – may the force be with you!

 

I wish D.I.Y. meant ‘did it yesterday’

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Today was my first day off in what feels like a month and, instead of spending it resting as one is wont to do, I spent it doing all of the things I have had on the back burner for months.

With the resurgence of winter just around the corner and the increase in the noise level of vermin trying to nest for said winter, it was time to go on the offensive.  Thankfully I am a woman who is not afraid to get her hands dirty.  I cannot fathom paying someone to do a job I am fully capable of doing myself so today was spent filling holes in my foundation, repairing the holes and cracks in my drywall and raking my lawn.  And, as accomplished as I feel at the end of my day, I wish I had done this sooner.

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Having done all of these tasks when I should have done them would have meant I could have soaked in the rays of the ever elusive sun.   I don’t often procrastinate, but these menial jobs have been put off too many times to count.  Life seems to have gotten in the way and all of my D.I.Y. projects have been collecting dust in the corner of my good intentions.

But now they are done.  Those little tasks can now be labelled as “did it yesterday” and I can move on to tomorrow with a clear conscience.   Any moral judgement I have of myself can now be reserved for the next batch of tasks I put off until “tomorrow”.

 

 

 

 

Of portents and hints, and frogs behind Chintz

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I should have expected something strange to happen after finally getting my mind back into the creepy place where it likes to linger when I write fiction.  I crossed back into that dark place in this blog post and felt a sense of relief knowing that I could still find refuge in the shady corners of my brain.  Perhaps that energy drew the unexpected visitor to my window.

The overcast sky left the early evening completely devoid of light.  The dense bushes and large overhanging trees did everything in their power to make sure no illumination was cast on my little house in the woods.  From my nest on the couch, a slight movement diverted my attention from the television.  In the ambient light given off by the TV, three discernible fingers were visible between the window frame and the cloth blind.

Although startled by the movement, I quickly ascertained, by the size of those little digits, that I would not find myself in harm’s way.  I lifted the blind to get a better look at my late night visitor.  This little tree frog spent several minutes jockeying for a higher vantage point on my window.  I don’t think he was too appreciative of my flash blinding him every few seconds and the sudden burst of light seemed to make him lose his grip.  He slid down to the bottom of the window and hung there for a while.  I’m not sure which of us lost interest first but he left and I immediately Googled “frog on a window”.

My little visitor is a symbol of transition, transformation and cleansing.  I had already begun to formulate a plan in regards to making myself a writing schedule and changing some things in my life.  Cutting out the mindless hours I spend in front of a TV would be a great start.  Getting back to my healthier way of eating will be a close second.

It’s time to feel better and put my brain energy to good use creating ideas instead of digesting other’s ideas.  Thank you little froggy.  Next time, pull up a chair and stay a while!

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How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

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There is a myriad number of things I have seen on Facebook.  Most are mindless, time-filling, nonsensical things that I waste too many of my spare moments looking at, but every so often I come upon a sign or saying that really strikes a chord deep within me.

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?”

~Satchel Paige

It was a simple question but those words really resonated with me.  Sometimes I forget the number of my authentic chronological age.   I have honestly never felt that my time on this Earth truly reflects the age I feel I am on a daily basis.  I have always thought that I have an old soul but I have a young energy.  Time strings us along, giving us a sense of comfort as we grow older and we are more comfortable in our own skin.  But time does not have to make us feel any older than we want to be.  Wisdom does not always come with age, wisdom comes with understanding and acceptance.

live your life

Too often we are classified by our age.  The year on our birth certificate does not have to define how we must act or how we should feel about ourselves.  Age really is a state of mind.  I will never define or categorize myself by the number of times the Earth has orbited the sun since I was born.  Nor will I let the stray grey hairs that peek out from under my Garnier Nutrisse #535 hair color affect how I live my life because of the number of years I have been alive.

When we are told as children to act our age but what does that really mean?   How can you behave as a number?  To prove my point, Yoko Ono said it perfectly, “Some people are old at 18 and some are young at 90 – time is a concept that humans created.”

How old would you be if you had to pick a number?

 

 

What do you mean you “end up with”?

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I reluctantly admit that I have been watching too much television lately – and the “reality” television that I have succumbed to is the most destructive of all.  But there is an alarming trend on these shows that really bothers me. After the self-promotion and sensationalism of parading their relationship across television screens across the world they always seem to describe their potential life mate as “the one I end up with”.

Now, I know I’m not the most romantic person on the planet but if someone described me as the person they “ended up with” I would be more than moderately offended.   The quest for love should not result in who you end up with but who you are fortunate enough to forge the path of your life with.  That person should not sound like second prize in a raffle because you didn’t get your first choice.

If you truly fall in love with someone, that person consumes every ounce of your being.  It’s like winning a lottery that you never entered. They become such a part of your life that you don’t know how you existed before you met them.  They understand what you are trying to say without you having to speak a word.

I can only imagine the person you “end up with” would never have the capacity to know what you are thinking before you formulate the thought.  It makes me wonder – if those words are sufficient enough to describe the relationship, the feelings generated from that union are most likely not sufficient enough to make it last.  You need to be with the person you can’t live without and not just the one you can live with.

Perhaps we, as a whole, need to take the time to redefine the feelings that brought us into our relationship. If that person is your true life partner, don’t belittle that relationship by describing them as the one you ended up with.  Let them know that you consciously chose to have them in your life because there is something they bring into your existence that nobody else could ever bring.

Give your relationship the truth that it deserves.  If you have found the person you are meant to spend your life with, be bold enough to describe them that way and don’t ever let them think they were the runner-up.

Wow…..maybe there is a more romantic side to me after all.

It’s about writing (comma) period (end sentence period)

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In what could have been described as a clandestine meeting, a good friend stopped by tonight to merely exchange a handful of cash for two spots in my football pool.  We hadn’t seen each other in a while and we fell easily into a comfortable conversation about our writing.  He is currently writing a novel as well and we both have been challenged with individual hurdles and brick walls in the process.

During our conversation he reminded me of a very basic rule that I had long forgotten.  Writing is not about grammar.  It is not about punctuation, capitalization or italics.  Writing is very simply about storytelling.

Deep down, we both know that being able to creatively express our ideas is the basis for the passion we both have for writing.  Being able to use words to introduce characters, describe beautiful imagery or construct interesting dialogue deserves more of our focus than moving commas, changing adjectives or repositioning quotation marks.

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There are companies specifically formed to pick out those common mistakes that writers make in the moments they become truly lost in the story.  That is their gift, their job.  A writer needs to remember that his or her gift, his or her job, is creativity – the gift of being able to weave a tale like no other because that story comes from a magical well to which nobody else has access.

The writing is about those ideas that swirl around in our heads at 4:00 am and relentlessly linger until we write them down or record them on the closest available device.  The writing is about those characters gnawing at our consciousness until we give them a voice, until we tell their story.

We both need to realize that our gift is that story deep within us.  And the sooner we stop spending time worrying about how to properly punctuate a sentence we wrote six months ago, the sooner we can free our brains to let that story loose and see where the journey will take us.

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Maybe next time

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There is something hiding behind his eyes,

a mystery,

waiting to be revealed.

Maybe next time.

His gaze meets mine,

but his real truth hides under those spheres of blue.

Those eyes suspend me in an alternate reality,

never able to see the truth,

or never wanting to.

 No promise is ever made,

but the promise of what could have been is uttered.

An opportunity presented too late.

A ship had set sail and lost its way in the sea of realism.

 Two souls meant to meet,

were two decades too delayed.

 Maybe next time,

a new life, a new circumstance.

Maybe next time

he’ll find me first.

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Putting things back into perspective

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Lately I feel like I have been extremely neglectful of a very important relationship in my life.  It is so easy to take a monumental aspect of MY reality for granted because true reality gets in the way.

My blog and I have had a very close bond since the beginning.  Like a true partnership should, my blog allowed me the freedom to truly be myself.  It never questioned my motives or my ideas.  It resolved to allow me any creative indulgence I required and it remained steadfast in its desire to soothe me at the end of a tumultuous day.  It introduced me to minds that functioned much like mine, helped me make new friends and it helped my see things, once again, from my own perspective.

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These many months later, this rolling rock of creative abandon has collected a group of followers who seem genuinely interested in the ideas that erupt from my creative well.  Along the way, the number of like-minds has multiplied.  Although I have been delinquent in sharing my comments on other blog sites, I have been faithfully following and hoping to steal back those  moments when I was allowed to spend my time immersed in the blog world.  Since the inception of Polysyllabic Profundities, I have accumulated 2 shy of 1900 followers.

That number made me stop in my writing tracks.   One thousand, eight hundred and ninety-eight people have chosen to read the very thoughts that pour from my brain to my fingertips and they find interest in those strings of syllables and interpretations.

To each and every one of you I say thank you.  Thank you for encouraging me to continue.  Thank you for agreeing with what I write.  And for those of you who disagree, thank you for making me see things from another perspective.  This is a journey I was meant to have and the footprints I leave behind will forever mark a path I was meant to follow.

 

For whom the writing bell tolls

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“Better to write for the self and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” ~ Cyril Connolly

It never ceases to amaze me how simple it is to get lost in the world of words.  How easily we become swayed by others opinions can have an enormous effect on what and when we write. We work so hard to keep our momentum flowing that we become exhausted in the process and dehydrate the well of our writing essence.

Although I still have muddied water in my reservoir of ideas, I have been caught up in the impetus of the WordPress world, as well as other writing competitions, and found myself being pulled in different directions when it comes to the content of my writing. There are no posts that I wish I didn’t write but I’m sure if I read back through some of my earlier posts I would find entries that were written in expressions far removed from the inner voices I contend with on a regular basis – posts written to impress others rather than being written for the sake of writing.

An artist is always unique. Whether a masterpiece is painted on canvas, developed into photographs or has a myriad of materials blended to create a single form, no two depictions of an idea will ever be identical. Each artist has a vision that can only be created by their idiosyncratic brain.  I cannot imagine an abstract artist would ever pause to wonder how many people will appreciate their work – they simply have a need to create.

The-Book-of-Life-a-colorful-metal-art-sculpture-by-David-Kracov-that-depicts-a-book-dissolving-into-butterflies

(image courtesy of mayhemandmuse.com)

The same can be said for the art of writing – authors simply feel the need to write.  Each wordsmith is encouraged by the ubiquitous string of letters that form into words in their imagination and the story will then develop a life of its own.  Writing is an adventure and one that each mind should be free to express on a whim. It should be a journey that begins in our mind and flows through our veins until it reaches our fingertips.  It should embody our true creative process and be written for the sole purpose of expressing ourselves.  Our creativity should not be stifled by the boundaries of an audience but should be free to shout at top decibel to all who understand our passion.

Writing for self is writing from the heart.  This freedom with the written word has no structure, it has no defined audience and it allows us to reach deep within ourselves to convey what lurks behind our conscious mind.

Helicopter parenting and stating the obvious

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Helicopter-Parenting

 

(image credit: teenlife.com)

I had a remarkable interaction with a parent of a teenager who will be ready to face the working world next summer.   This particular parent just happened upon our resort to scope out potential lodging to stay at next spring while his son pounded the pavement to find himself a job.  The most important part of that previous sentence are the words  “to find himself a job“.

Too often over the last few years I have had conversations with parents gushing about the talents of their children and why said child would be perfect for a job at our resort.  Never in those golden moments of being told how great “Johnny” was did I ever speak to “Johnny” himself.  It has become the norm for parents to act on behalf of their offspring in hopes of finding them gainful employment.  One of the most unfortunate parts of this new trend is that the child will never gain that self-confidence that you can only achieve by creating a resume, making that first phone call to ask about a job and securing a job with a face-to-face interview.

While it is regrettable, I am among many in the position of hiring students who inevitably put “Johnny’s” resume at the bottom of the pile.  What kind of employee will “Johnny” be if he is not eager and hungry enough to seek out and secure his own job?   These kids learn nothing about achieving goals if somebody else does the work.  They will never understand the concept that the world owes us nothing – that you have to work for what you get.  The blades of their helicopter parents are slicing away at their chance of being successful on their own merit.

Life is about disappointment, but still having that drive to succeed.  Life is about making mistakes but learning lessons from those mistakes.  If our future generations are to succeed, they need to learn how to try and, potentially, learn how to fail.  They need to fly on their own and crash a couple of times before they have clear skies.

Thank you to that incredible dad who was allowing his son to leave the nest and fly on his own.  Please send him our way.  I’d be happy to have a look at his resume and chat with “Johnny” for a while about a job for next summer.