Category Archives: words

In the wee small hours

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With no curtains for protection, the jagged streaks of moonlight spilled through the bedroom window across my duvet.  I had awoken only moments before, trying desperately to talk my body into falling back to sleep before my brain woke up but it was too late.  In the same time it took me to blink twice, my brain had formulated twelve simultaneous problems that it was determined to solve before I was allowed to return to slumber.  And, as an afterthought, those cranial neurons began formulating ideas for new blog posts and I was scrambling to record them before they evaporated into dream dust.

I have lost count of the number of times I have awoken from a deep sleep with a great idea for a post.  But between the darkness on moonless or cloud-covered nights and my inability to locate my phone to document them, those potentially great ideas vanished into thin air.

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There must be a gigantic vault of lost ideas – a safe so large it contains all of the great writing ideas that were unable to come to fruition because they were never forced from our subconscious onto our keyboards.  It hides in the vacuous space of our imagination and traps wandering thoughts as they escape during those wee hours in the morning.  If only I knew how to break into that vault.

As my late-night Kathleen Turner voice gurgled out incomprehensible syllables I tried my best to recall and record the latest gem last night but, as I replayed the audible gibberish this morning, I couldn’t really comprehend where my thought process was taking me.

One day I’m going to crack that safe and I’m going to need a lot of Red Bull to keep me up long enough to record the wealth of ideas that is trapped in its metal casing.

 

I already went through this once…

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“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ~ E.E. Cummings

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It is a rite of passage and a fact of nature that, when we grow from a child to an adult, our voices change.   Perhaps I hadn’t realized when I began my blogging journey that I was a child of writing.  I was a mere toddler grabbing at words like they were all mine but contrary to a toddler’s way of thinking I wanted nothing more than to share those words.

Recently, I have been going back through the moments of my childhood.  I have not been pouring over photographs in family albums but I have been going back through the early stages of my blogging days and I am amazed at how dissimilar my writing voice is from then to now.  The nuance of my phrasing is a far cry from what it once was and my voice has changed to signify the growth in my writing.

Contrary to going through that awkward teenage phase in life, my progress as a writer has been uncomplicated and relatively steady.  I feel comfortable in my writing skin and I walk down the hallways of the writing school in my mind with great confidence.  There are no cliques to contend with, no teachers to please and the only club I wish to join already has my name on the roster of its members.

I want to write, plain and simple.  I want my voice to continue to develop and be able to show the experience I gain each day by simply writing more words on a page.  I want my voice to whisper.  I want my voice to sing.  And I want my voice to yell at the top of its lungs when it has something to say, anything to say.

Maybe this is the puberty stage in my writing.  And just maybe I have reached the cusp of adulthood and I can finally embrace the voice that will truly represent who I am as a writer.  There may a be a few breaks in the inflection and the tone but I think this voice is here to stay.

 

 

 

Excuse me while I expose myself

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The title of this post conjures up several images.  Some of those images are quite flattering and sexy and others are the images that I wish I could wipe from my memory.   Spoiler alert – this post has nothing to do with anything remotely related to nudity, apart from the flagrant display of flashing in the image below. (sorry)

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When we are authentically naked, when we truly bare ourselves, we are baring our souls, not our bodies.   We let others into our hearts, our minds and our dreams.  All of the hypocrisy is stripped away and we are left naked with no false fronts to hide behind.   We bare ourselves here on our blog sites, with our words, and we run naked through the blogosphere.  We put more honesty and integrity into our words because, here,  we feel comfortable in our skin.  Here, we feel like we are representing our true selves.  Here, we feel a kinship with like-minds and we feel a comfort level that truly allows us to just be who we are, stripped of any preconceived notions.

Our thoughts and prose give us permission to expose ourselves.  The only shroud we hide behind is the blanket of our truth and our musings.  We leave the most important part of ourselves open for all to read and, in that part, we find the inner strength to continue our journey.  Our inhibitions are no longer stifling us from exposing our innermost thoughts and feelings.  We feel accepted in our natural state.

We do ourselves a grave injustice and we add nothing to this world if we cloak ourselves in any cloth that hides who we truly are.   To be completely ourselves, to be truly naked, we need to trust in the path we follow.  We need to believe that the people who are near and dear to us know the true essence of what we represent, and we need to feel that the people meeting us here for the first time understand the inner workings of our brains.

Be honest in your writing, let it reflect who you are, and don’t deny your readers the opportunity to see you as you truly want to be seen.  Let them into your mind.  Let them see you naked.

The more things change, the more they are different

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Blogging is a fickle mistress.  Back when I started this journey I had no followers and no clue what I was doing.  I just wanted to write.

With much persistence and an avid desire to keep writing, I did just that.  Along the way, people began to read what I had to say and, not only that, took the time to make comments and leave their two cents about the words I had spent so many hours crafting into submission.  Those were blissful times in my life and, as the momentum continued, I gained new followers and new friends throughout the process.

But as with all things that change, and contrary to the subjective saying, nothing every really stays the same.  Life gets in the way and those little joys that were once so ingrained in our daily lives are shelved to make room for reality.  During the last three summers, work has taken a front seat while my creativity has been stored in a tool box in the trunk of my life.

Every autumn, I find the key, open that trunk and hope my creativity has maintained some of its shape during the bumpy rides it has been made to withstand.  Although the integrity of my imagination seems somewhat intact, the struggle to achieve the same level of contact with readers and followers seems to wane.  It is the fault of no single circumstance and it simply means I have to delve back into the vigor of writing that I had when I began this wonderful pilgrimage through written expression.

I have sworn to be diligent, not only in my writing but, in my covenant to be a good follower of all the blogs I have chosen to support with my likes and comments.  I have been inattentive, through no fault of my own, and have made a pact with myself to make up for my negligence and become more of a presence in this world of words, especially with those who have stuck by me on this ride.

Relationships of every kind take effort.  I look forward to challenging myself to put forth my best effort to post things of meaning and to post them often.  I look forward to mending fences, creating new connections and having my little typewriter appear in many areas of this blogosphere and throughout the other worlds of people who love to read.

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Sometimes it feels like only your keyboard will listen to you, but if you keep at it your audience will grow and you will find your true voice.  ~ SN

 

 

I should have paid more attention to my Physics teacher

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It never ceases to amaze me – the amount of hours one works in the real world is directly proportionate to the eradication of the creative mind in the artistic world, especially following a long season of working in the hospitality business.

I remember my Physics teacher in Grade 11 throwing around words like ‘inertia’ and ‘for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’ but I don’t remember studying the direct correlation of physical exhaustion to prolific brain death.  Sure, the basic functions in my body still happen – I breathe in and out, I walk and talk, but the rest of me seems to be on autopilot – like that object in motion that tends to stay in motion.

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I want to be an object at rest and I want to remain at rest for at least 48 hours.  I want to have my brain back – the brain that wakes me up at night, swirling words around in circles until I can grab them all from those cartoon word clouds above my head.  I want the ability to form those words into whimsical, thoughtful or romantic lines and be able to feel that creative flow coursing through my veins.

I wonder what Newton’s theory would be on my chances of winning the lottery and being able to spend my precious moments writing a best-seller?  Time + creativity = true bliss.  Until that moment, I shall struggle through the hours required at my job and hope my brain can keep up the frantic pace until Thanksgiving comes and goes.  Then, and only then, will I finally be able to strip myself of my frenzied schedule and bathe myself in lethargy.

 

 

The prodigious exultation of being a word-nerd

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Blogging has allowed me to become a true, and very contented, word snob.  I have always loved words.  As a teenager, I kept a duo-tang (who remembers those?) filled with lined paper and would make note of all the unfamiliar words I came across while devouring all the books I used to read.  Those words that eluded my pubescent mind became a staple of my vocabulary once I had defined them and cemented them into the library of my brain.  They circled my imagination and urged my cerebrum to come out to play.  They tickled my tongue and they began to flow like blood in my veins.

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(look at how lovely my penmanship was in high school)

I assiduously began to incorporate those words into as many scenarios as I could.  My teachers were duly impressed.  My fellow students merely looked at me like I had three heads.  My flamboyant wordiness was an ephemeral fantasy and I had to tone down my elevated rhetoric to become a conventional high-school student filled with angst rather than synonyms.

Today I still continue to incorporate those words into my daily conversations, not to sound more intelligent but, because I enjoy the way those words sound when I say them aloud.  I relish being able to use the phrase ‘alarmingly verbose’ instead of just saying “he talked a lot”.  I enjoy describing winter as arduous and not just “shitty”, although shitty can truly encapsulate the past winter months and potentially the ones to come.  And I will forever want to be mystified by language and not speak simply to communicate.  I want to thrive in my love for words.

My enthusiasm for articulate phrases has never waned.  It has followed me throughout my journey.  It has haunted my sleep and clandestinely pursued me during my conscious hours.  May those words forever churn in the maelstrom of my imagination and may I always be able to maintain my romance with the language of expression.

 

What I might be

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“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” ~ Lao Tzu

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I have been so consumed by my job lately that I have begun to redefine myself by my career and not by the person who is performing that job.  I give up small parts of myself to become a larger piece of the work puzzle and, although I thoroughly enjoy my job and the people I interact with on a daily basis, I lose sight of the potential success of my personal goals.

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I saw this quote and the cogs in the wheels of my creativity began to align and click into perfect place.  By allowing myself to become what I might be, I give myself permission to become all of the things I wish for myself.   Work is a means to pay the bills but work will never be the summit of the mountain of my possibility.

Each day I write this blog, each day I allow the words to flow from my brain, is a day I step closer to what I might be.  There is a part of me still lurking in the shadows.  There is a creative mind waiting for the moment that reality does not quell its desire.  When I finally am able to truly let go of what I am, that creative mind will become what it should be.