Month: May 2020

Believe! But I do…

Does everyone have that one friend who always seems to be preaching to us?

Whenever we talk, the friend somehow takes a non-existent tangent to start talking about God or the religion, and almost never really in a normal, conversational way…

We may even follow the same religion, but this friend talks to us like we are atheist to the max… this friend seems to be determined to save us…

I talk about God in my life, and it is, I believe, never preachy – it is just something I talk about, and even discuss, with others.

Other people talk to and with me about God, and it is entirely normal, even if we have totally differing opinions on things.

Yet, that one friend we all seem to have never seems to be able to mention or discuss God without it turning into what feels like an effort to convert us – leaving always a bit of a bad taste in the mouth…

I love God, and I also happen to be of the same religion as you, and my faith in God is not faltering…., so, could you, please, stop always trying to convince me that God is good and that God loves us?

Anyway… not sure what had that pop up tonight…, but it clearly is something that bothers me… hmm…

Boy, do I have other thoughts on my mind tonight (and all day today), but, as much as I have been loving them, they are not thoughts I’m going to share for right now… just know that they are quite delicious and hungry thoughts, and involve a thirst that wants to be quenched. 😉

Post-a-day 2020

Delayed Gratification

“Sometimes, it takes delayed gratification to discover that we didn’t really want it, anyway.”

This has been on my mind a lot today.

At first, all I was considering was how I often discover that, after having to wait to have something – i.e. delayed gratification – I don’t end up wanting that something anymore, and I often even forget all about it by the time I can have it.

This has been so often the case with unhealthy foods (read “desserts” and “grains”), unnecessary items, and even, occasionally, with men.

Today, I’ve been thinking about the men one especially… by not being able to date them or what have you, I end up getting so accustomed to not dating them, and I find that I actually prefer it… I don’t really have any desire to date them after all – it was just a passing excitement and desire, and it, having not been satisfied immediately, passed.

Tonight, though, I am beginning to see the other end of the idea…

Sometimes, it takes delayed gratification to discover that we truly do want it, after all.

Talking with an artist and gallery owner this evening, I saw how art has been one of these particular things for me – I was never given the gratification of studying and learning and doing art…. painting, drawing, photography, ceramics, etc…, and now, after all this time of not being able to have it all, I am discovering how much I truly do want it in my life.

I want to create art, and I want to have a life filled with art and artists.

I have had a taste of this art lately with photography, and then most recently, in being home constantly, in pursuing new skills in other art forms… and I love it.

I feel so at home with it.

This is where I belong, where I feel at home, where I want to be.

I’ve been thinking lately a lot about Charlotte from “Sex in the City”, and about Sophia in “The Longest Ride”, how they worked in art galleries.

And I have been rather envious of them for years, but now I had started to wonder about whether it was something I might actually want to pursue, if only for a short-term situation.

And now, after chasing down what I thought might have been an old family friend – which, it was – from twenty years ago, I might actually be doing it.

Working in an art gallery… how fun… how fantastic… how ridiculous a follow-up to being a high school teacher… I can hardly wait to find out.

Post-a-day 2020

Photo date yet?

I think it is almost time for me to step back into my photos.

I kind of went on a photographer hiatus in mid-March, when life had a sudden transformation to its trajectory.

I’m not sure what it was in particular, but something got me really down about my photography, in a way that had me straight up shove it from my mind…. I mean, I genuinely forgot that I had all these photos I had been wanting to edit a bit and then share with the world…

I think the recent photographer who came into my life sparked a sense of impossibility and hopelessness for me, and something about being alone all the time (i.e. not able to take photos of other people) made the situation even worse.

But, now that I say all of this, I am reminded that my saint is Saint Jude, patron saint of hopeless cases…. Well, Jude, I have been feeling rather hopeless with this photography future of mine right now… might we have a chat about some next steps for me, and some empowerment to make things move in a good way forward in this case?

I would love to work together on this, dearest Jude.

So, I’ll see about pulling up a few photos this week, and sharing them online, slowly but surely over the next several days… I know I can do this, and I know I can do it well.

God, and Jude, help me to give this my all and to give it my best, that I might share love in the form of beautiful photography with the World. ❤

Amen.

………..

P.S. Katy Perry – you know, the woman who stole the beloved Orlando Bloom from daydreaming women everywhere 😂 – is in my head tonight, with one difference… I kissed a boy, and I liked it.

Post-a-day 2020

Crazy Reads

Man, I love good books!

I usually do not read scary or sad books, and, though I wouldn’t say it is exactly scary or sad, the book series I am presently reading is definitely intense.

I mean, it’s totally rough, and has me rather on edge at night, and wondering if I might not start carrying a hammer in my bag, too, wherever I go…, but it is not at all focused on the terrible stuff, but on the genius at work within the minds of everyone researching and brainstorming to figure things out and solve various problems that arise, connecting puzzle pieces of the various mysteries throughout the story… or is it really just one big mystery?

As it stands, I love the writing style and the story outline and slow but satisfying piecing together, and it is difficult for me to stop reading the book.

Shoot, even in the opening lines of the book, I was totally hooked.

I am a fan of this book and this series so far.

What’s more, I feel like I have learned valuable tidbits for life from the various characters, and especially the one who shares some points of struggle with me in my own life… yeah.

Reading this book has definitely been more than just reading a story – it has helped me to evaluate parts of my own life and my own thinking.

Perhaps that is one of the signs of a truly great book… the reader does not approach life in quite the same way after reading the book as he did before reading it.

I’ll keep that in mind for my own books.

Post-a-day 2020

Surprise, surprise

Sometimes, I feel myself on very comfortable, sturdy, well-understood ground when I go into something.

And then, after I arrive, I discover that the terrain is nothing like I had expected it – and I can’t tell if it has merely changed, or if it is actually deceivingly treacherous…

Today, I am both grateful and proud to know that, when presented with such a situation, I comfortably acknowledged to myself my discomfort st the discovery, and then I actively took on staying present and analyzing what lay before me.

I remained true to myself and my own wishes – it with a bit of hesitation at times, I still did it – and I readjusted my feet and found my footing again…, and I can breathe oh, so well tonight because of it.

Aaaaahhhhhh…….. ; )

Post-a-day 2020

Third time’s a charm

Or so they say, anyway, the people in my life. 😛

Tomorrow morning, we shall see if the third time, indeed, is a charm.

I have arranged now three times to meet with someone to make and create music together; the second two times being due to rescheduling from an unplanned event in the other person’s life.

Tonight, I had someone reaching out, asking me to do something that would be at the exact time of our third-time-arranged meeting tomorrow…

No, no, I just can’t do that… especially after making the joke today about – is it millennials? – millennials and how they can never seem to make plans and keep them… haha

So, I arranged for an undetermined future occurrence of the pop-up request from tonight…

Which leaves me free to attend our regularly scheduled Saturday morning program… I found myself wanting “One Saturday Morning” last weekend, so this is almost like a version of that for me: a Saturday morning of creativity and fun and interest.

In conclusion and in short, I hope tomorrow’s musical meeting happens and that it is delightful.

P.S. I helped my friend with the first leg of moving today, and I got home kind of late… I am utterly exhausted right now, and my eyes are heavy and burning… Once again, I did not realize that I hadn’t even gotten my shirt on for sleeping… I’ve just been sitting here in only my underwear, and had no idea… I am ready for some much-needed rest, especially if I’ll be musicking tomorrow morning!

Post-a-day 2020

Women’s Bodies

Periodicity.

Did you know that that’s how we got the use of the term “period” for menstruation?

I was researching for a paper that tied in social views of women at the time of the book The Awakening with the concept of insanity, and showed that women were seen as crazy back then when they did certain things and behaved certain ways that are rather normal today.

In that research, I found somewhat shocking information on fertility and on when science actually discovered how the timing of the female body’s reproductive cycle worked specifically (as opposed to having only the general idea that sexual intercourse is the way to pregnancy), as well as beliefs on the female reproductive system as a whole.

These were not my focus of the paper, so I, with disappointment, had to skim them and move on to other things, but they stuck with me nonetheless (and I was just thinking tonight that I might still have them somewhere, either on the computer or in a stack of papers in a box).

I always seem to remember discovering the doctor’s use of the phrase and term “a woman’s periodicity” in one of those papers.

It shocked me, but it also finally gave me the answer to my long-wondered question of the word origin for calling menstruation “a period”.

It was, simply, a period in time, yes, but also a specific period in time that came with consistency and a time-frame… it was a woman’s periodicity that gave her these emotional phases.

Anyway… this is somewhat depression thinking for me, because those were not happy times for women, back then… not women like myself, anyway… frankly, they sucked in many, many ways, far beyond our struggles today.

I am extremely grateful to be here now, to be the powerful woman I am now, in this time and place in existence and in this world.

One final note: hysteria.

It originated as a term used in a belief that a woman’s reproductive organs were causing her to lash out or be inappropriate with her emotions somehow… you know, like how hysterectomy is removing the uterus… hysteria was the irrational emotional state caused by the uterus.

(Roots of the word go to Greek, with the term for the womb being there hystera.)

Kind of makes you want to stop using the word, right?

Well, that’s how it makes me feel, anyway…

But I like the word hysterical… that one makes me smile even bigger, knowing the root is “uterus”. 😛

Haha

Okay, I feel better, now. 😀

Post-a-day 2020

Just do it

I did it!

I started work on creating my first book, and I started work on producing the first edition of the online women’s magazine I am starting!

I came up with ten (10) plot ideas for the book, as I said last night that I would do today, and I even really like certain ones of them… like really like them.

I got on the phone with a friend whom I want to be a secondary voice on moving the magazine forward with me, and she helped me organize out certain bits already for it.

I sent her the general outline I had of everything this evening, and she will look at it tomorrow, and get back to me on her response to it either tomorrow or Friday.

I compiled the contact list for the various contributors who are confirmed, and whom I am considering bringing on to the project.

I reached out on social media for contributors (without saying what specifically the reason was) in a couple areas that were lacking contributors.

And now, my brain is going almost nonstop, just chugging along with considerations regarding the magazine.

It is a good kind of busy in my brain right now, and I think it is definitely helping keep me away from thoughts of the intense citrus smell in my room right now – and the accidental addition of isopropyl alcohol to the steaming mix over the burning candle – due to not only the dying roach I found downstairs this morning, but the live one I found crossing on top of my swimsuit an hour ago in my bedroom… and that is currently trapped in my painting water jar downstairs…

Yeah, so, moving on…

My task for tomorrow with the book – I think I need to give myself a task every day for the book – will be to come up with five (5) more plot ideas that seem particularly crazy and out of my typical comfort zone of writing and style (think zombies and goth and erotic romance novels!… :P), and then to flesh out at least two of my plot ideas, including one of the crazy ones.

Yikes – tomorrow will be a silly one for the book! 😛 Haha

I’m excited, and I can hardly wait. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Book-book

I have been thinking so much lately about writing my first book…, but I keep not writing it.

I ponder and giggle and sigh over various ideas I would like to include, but I never sit down and start putting any of them together.

And it suddenly hit me just now clearly what my main struggle is with writing this book:

I’ve got all the details – they come to me all too easily, and almost all the time – my struggle is that I don’t have the big picture, the main story and plot.

And it practically paralyzes me, leaving me to do no work on it at all, and instead worry more and more about all the time that is passing without my writing this first book.

Hmm…

So, I guess I need to start working specifically on ideas for a main plot tomorrow… I will take out my writer’s book, start reading it, and then start a list of at least ten ideas for general plots for a book.

They don’t have to be good or likely at all – they just have to be.

I can do this. 😉

Post-a-day 2020

Books and movies

Today, I finished reading the book (well, listening to the audiobook, anyway) Crazy Rich Asians.

I had read the book, because I had enjoyed the film, and discovered that it was based on a book, and that there was actually a whole little series of books, and that it was written by a man…, and my interest was piqued… especially by that last fact.

I had just recently been to Singapore a couple times, so the film easily held a little warm spot in my heart, especially since they go to eat at one of my favorite places in the world to eat (the hawker stand when they first arrive to Singapore).

At long last, I got hold of the audiobook, and dove in, and, though it was different from the film, I enjoyed it.

I mean, I knew it would be different from the film – books always are different from their film counterparts.

Except, perhaps, The Princess Bride… that one is purty darn near exactly the same…, though it does have slight differences still…

Anyway, two things came from this, but I’ll wait…

Whenever I finish a book, I let goodreads.com know, and it adds to my list of books read.

It also sends me an e-mail: You finished [fill in the blank book]. What’s next?

And then it gives a brief bit about the book, including the first few reviews on it, and then info on the author and how to follow him on the website, and, finally, other books that people who read this same book also liked/read.

On this e-mail, I saw part of a review that interested me, and so I clicked and was led to the full review, which I read.

The writer of the review and I had very different impressions from the book – I very much enjoyed it, and she was somewhat annoyed by most of it.

I easily disregarded the review, knowing full well that I often disagree with most reviews I see of books.

(Also, I almost never accept film recommendations, because people seem to have such terrible taste in films and in film quality…)

I have certain people I trust with book recommendations, and I rather distrust most others in the world for a book (or film) recommendation.

But this got me thinking more on the book…

There are probably loads of people who dislike and have terrible and ugly things to say about just about any book, right?

As JRR Tolkien wrote in the beginning of the 1976(?) edition of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, there will be always those who dislike things he likes, and also who dislike the way he told these stories.

(He said a lot more, but that is the most relevant part in this conversation.)

As I thought about the film’s being so different from the book, I found myself wanting to talk to the author, Kevin Kwan, and to ask him how he felt about that all, and what his thoughts were on it…

Is it not basically a group of individuals declaring that your story was good, but just not good enough?, I thought at him in our mental interview within my own mind.

Then, it had me wonder, What is it like with reading the various reviews of your books by readers? All those nasty comments and thoughts…Do you just ignore them entirely and never read them, because that isn’t why you wrote them, anyway? You wrote them for those who would enjoy them?

And this idea had me think about whether it mightn’t be a good idea to go ahead and gather together people who love me, and have them tell me how they dislike or do not like something that I have done or created… practice the rejection, so to speak.

Not to experience the suffering, but to learn to separate their unkind words from my own satisfaction and pleasure from the work I have produced… to aid me in learning to love my creations period, with no dependency on what others’ opinions are, good or bad.

My mood is up to me, and my art can be perfect just for me… everything else is insignificant.

If it brings others joy, yay: joy for them and for myself.

If it doesn’t bring others joy, yay: joy for myself.

That’s why I wrote/made/created it, anyway, was for myself, right?

In some way, anything I create must be for myself… it is something I was ready to express, and in this particular form at this particular time… it is for myself that I do it, whether I realize or acknowledge it or not.

Yet, those bad reviews really stick with us… as I recently was called to consider from a quote by Orson Welles:

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that’s printed about him.

So, I wonder, how can we move past that?

How can we be untouched by the bad reviews?

And, even, the good reviews, too, for, if they suddenly were to cease, would we be saddened?

How can we be self-sustaining in our joy and satisfaction with our own art, and untouched by the opinions of others?

The second idea was about how films are always different from the book, even when the book is spectacular already.

Why must the book always be changed?

Why?!

Ugh.

Post-a-day 2020