Life in progress

Author Archives: Linda G. Hill


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How to Live When You Want to Save the World

I’m at a loss. The constant flood of news stories coming in through my Facebook feed about discrimination, hate, fear, war and people fleeing from it, protests that go nowhere, threats to freedom and civil liberties–the list goes on and on–are keeping me from living my own life. It distracts me from all the things I should be doing for myself and my family. I’m not functioning because I’m worried, both about my own future, my kids’ future, and that of the ones I can’t help.

Yes, I can hear it already. Poor me, sitting on my privileged white heterosexual ass in a nice warm house, wringing my hands but doing nothing. It’s true. I don’t feel as though I do enough, yet what can I do when I’m shut in my house up here in Canada? I want to help. I want that more than anything. It’s why I’m so obsessed with what’s going on. So far I’ve shared, I’ve given my opinions and I’ve tried to make sense of what’s going on. I’ve tried to help others put it in perspective. To encourage them to do what they can. I write because my words are the best weapon I have. I give consolation when I’m able, but to what effect? It all inevitably falls flat because I am not living it.

On the contrary, I’m not looking to be absolved for having a good life and I don’t want anyone to tell me it’s okay, that I can just go on with my life and not think about what’s going on in the world. I know I need to look after myself. I’m just not sure how to go about it.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. I’m sure there are others out there who live with this worry, and this survivor’s guilt and sense of helplessness. How do you cope when there’s nothing you can physically do? How do you separate yourself from it all, to do what you must to live your own life? We don’t help anyone, least of all ourselves, when all we do is sit at home and read the reports and wring our hands.

I fear this is the way it will be for the rest of my life. I can’t save the world, and I certainly can’t shut it off and ignore it. Perhaps I need to take a break from it though. At least long enough to care for my own family.

But I’ll never stop asking why peace is too much to ask for.


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The Wrong Stuff: Book launch…

It’s a day to celebrate with one of our fellow bloggers! Guy, or Dale Cooper as he’s known here in Bloggieland, has just released his first novel, The Wrong Stuff!
Please click over to his site and wish him luck! šŸ˜€ ā¤

dalecooper57's avatarDiary of an Internet Nobody.(Archive)

The day has finally arrived!

My debut novel (that still seems like a weird thing to see written down) is published today and I am, not to put too fine a point on it, Very VERY EXCITED!!!

Yes, my accidental novel,The Wrong Stuff,a mystery thriller with a sci-fi twist and occasional flashes of black humour, is released today on Amazon in paperback (Kindle version to follow soon) and will also be available from Barnes and Noble in a couple of weeks.

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UK AMAZON LINK IS HERE.

EVERYONE ELSE, GO HERE.

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Iā€™d like to take this opportunity to thank a few people, for putting me on the road that lead me to this extraordinary and surreal point in my blogging journey:

The sickeningly talentedMr Darmon Richter, who inspired me to take up the hobby of thinking up stuff and writing it down in theā€¦

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#SoCS – Happiness

Yes, I lack the perfect house. My clothes are all years and years old, my furniture doesn’t match, and there’s a funny smell in one of my cupboards. But we’re all happy. Me, the kids, the dog, the cats, the fly flying around, laughing at me when I try to kill it… all of us. We have a warm place to live (now that the furnace is fixed–it was touch-and-go a few days ago), we have food in the fridge (and apparently rotting in one of the cupboards), and we have electricity with which to watch TV and connect on the internet (Hi!!).

And we have stuff to look forward to, too. Tomorrow is the Santa Claus parade here in town, and Alex is very much looking forward to participating in it, on his school’s float. But there’s a catch, of course. The float is themed on the Grinch and he’s terrified of the Grinch. We may be in the parade, or we may be running, screaming from the parade. Something for me to look forward to since it’s supposed to rain. Then there will be the joy of Christmas shopping to look forward to. For the first time in three years I’ll be doing my shopping in Canada. At home. This time last year I was on a plane to Tokyo. So hard to believe. But I have proof:

Mt. Fuji, just below the engine.

Mt. Fuji, just below the engine.

This year I just didn’t have the money. In fact, I’m probably still paying for that trip. Maybe I’ll post about it, finally, for the next ten days, which was how long I was there. Yeah. Happily, I took notes.

But now life is so much more simple. With my old clothes, my mismatched furniture and my funny smell, my dog who’s not a puppy anymore and three kids who are old enough to drive, I’ve proven that I don’t need much. Only love.

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This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click the link to find more posts in the comments, and to join in! https://lindaghill.com/2016/11/18/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-nov-1916/

socsbadge2016-17


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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS Nov. 19/16

Friday’s here, and that means it’s time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. The weather’s lovely and I’m indoors… that’s it, I’m running away. But first, here’s this week’s prompt:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “yes.” Use it as a word, use it in a word, extra points if you start and finish your post with it. Enjoy!

After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at this week’s prompt page and check to make sure it’s here in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!

To make your post more visible, use our SoCS badge. Just paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!

Here are the rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what youā€™re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence ā€“ one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry ā€“ it doesnā€™t matter. Just let the words carry you along until youā€™re ready to stop.

3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say ā€œWrite about dogsā€; the prompt will be more like, ā€œMake your first sentence a question,ā€ ā€œBegin with the word ā€˜Theā€™,” or simply a single word to get your started.

4. Ping back! Itā€™s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours.Ā  Your link will show up in my comments for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If youā€™re self-hosted or are participating from another host, such as Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

5. Read at least one other personā€™s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If youā€™re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, ā€œStream of Consciousness Saturday,ā€ which youā€™ll find right below the ā€œLikeā€ button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if youā€™d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers youā€™ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.

8. Have fun!


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One-Liner Wednesday – Words and Grace

Walking along the trail a few days ago, I passed a woman who said to me, “It’s hard being graceful, isn’t it?”
I smiled, feeling an oaf. Had I the quick wit to do so immediately, I would have replied, “Some of us are graceful on the outside; some express grace through our words.”

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Anyone who would like to participate, feel free to use the ā€œOne-Liner Wednesdayā€ title in your post, and if you do,
you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday youā€™re pinging back to is this weekā€™s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If youā€™re self-hosted or are participating from another host, like Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. Itā€™s bound to be short and sweet.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so thereā€™s no need to stick to the same ā€œtheme.ā€

The rules that Iā€™ve made for myself (but donā€™t always follow) for ā€œOne-Liner Wednesdayā€ are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.

4. Add our very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!

5. Have fun!

#1linerWeds badge by nearlywes.com

#1linerWeds badge by nearlywes.com


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3 Things I Learned from Self-Publishing – A Guest Post by Linda G. Hill

I guest-posted over at Harsh Reality. Please come over and have a read! šŸ˜€ Thanks!


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#TuesdayUseItInASentence – Super Moon Zone

When I’m walking down this path, I sometimes get into my writing zone,

img_20161113_165925but when I dragged my three kids out to watch the moon rise, the zone was more about finding the best place for a good view.

Sunday, November 13th, 2016

Sunday, November 13th, 2016

This post is part of Tuesday Use It In A Sentence! Please visit the lovely Stephanie to see how you can join in, too! https://stephaniecolpron.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/tuesdayuseitinasentence-zone/


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#SoCS – Meme + Memory

Sitting at the dinner table yesterday with my 22-year-old son, I mentioned the spider meme ( https://lindaghill.com/2016/10/12/one-liner-wednesday-i-thought-we-were-roommates/ ) I came across months ago that I found very funny, and he laughed at me. When I asked why, he said I was too old to be saying words like “meme.” So today I decided to look up the origin of the word.

Turns out it was first coined by Richard Dawkins in his book, “The Selfish Gene” in 1976, but he shortened it from the Ancient Greek word, mimeme, meaning “imitated thing.” (Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins#Fathering_the_meme ) HA! I can now say to my son. Though if I’m too old to say the word, how old does that make me? Still feeling a little weird about that.

Getting older is weird though. We have memories which give us the wisdom not to repeat our mistakes (with any luck) and yet our memory, or our capacity to remember, decreases with the shrinking of our brains. As much as I don’t like this, it’s inevitable. I either accept it or I fight it – fighting it takes so much more energy.

Having said that, I can fight it to some extent by continuing to learn and challenge myself. I wonder, often, if people who refuse to change their mindsets, form new opinions, or think they already know everything worth knowing lose their memories faster. I had an aunt who was very set in her ways. When she made a decision, she stuck with it no matter what. It might have been that she just hated making decisions so she got them over and done with as quickly as possible. But her decisions also were very predictable, because she never changed her preferences. She was stuck in a certain time, probably her childhood or early adulthood. I’m not sure I was born when she stopped trying new things. I always knew her as completely focused on the way things should be.

And, of course, the memories she shared never changed. The stories we all hear from our older family members are inevitably told as though they’ve never been told before. The polite thing to do is sound surprised, no matter how many times we’ve heard them. I wonder if people who are closed-minded have a narrower memory. Something my ever-learning mind will likely look into one day.

Now that I’ve veered totally off-course from my original intent for this post, I’ll have to go back and change the title. Coming up with titles for posts is hard, isn’t it?

socsbadge2016-17

Stream of Consciousness is for everyone! Click the link to see how you can join in today: https://lindaghill.com/2016/11/11/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-nov-1216/

 


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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS Nov. 12/16

It’s Friday again, and time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. It’s Remembrance Day here in Canada, and in a few countries it is also a day where we take the time to thank those who have and are fighting our wars. Thank you.

In my usual way of prompting, where you may take the obvious or go with something much more your own style, here’s your prompt:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “mem.” Choose a word or words with the letters “mem” in that order and run with it. Enjoy!

After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at this week’s prompt page and check to make sure it’s here in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!

To make your post more visible, use our new SoCS badge! Just paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!

Here are the rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what youā€™re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence ā€“ one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry ā€“ it doesnā€™t matter. Just let the words carry you along until youā€™re ready to stop.

3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say ā€œWrite about dogsā€; the prompt will be more like, ā€œMake your first sentence a question,ā€ ā€œBegin with the word ā€˜Theā€™,” or simply a single word to get your started.

4. Ping back! Itā€™s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours.Ā  Your link will show up in my comments for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If youā€™re self-hosted or are participating from another host, such as Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

5. Read at least one other personā€™s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If youā€™re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, ā€œStream of Consciousness Saturday,ā€ which youā€™ll find right below the ā€œLikeā€ button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if youā€™d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers youā€™ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.

8. Have fun!


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For You, For Us, For Humanity. Please Share

On this, November 11th, the day we remember the people who have given their livesĀ  for their countries, I find the disparity between the ultimate in self-sacrifice and the continuing reports of disrespect and lack of empathy discouraging. I had a discussion on Facebook this morning with a man who told me that his daughter-in-law had been verbally accosted in a store while holding her 18-month-old child; there are so very many reports such as this and even worse coming in, it almost makes me want to hide. But I won’t, because there is something I can do.

For all the people who lack empathy in the world, I believe there are more who understand that we all have our struggles. And whether we deem them bigger than ours or not, a struggle is a struggle. An exhausted single mother washing her own dishes in an effort to control something, a rich man wanting to protect his children from bullying, the only true perspective is in the circumstances of the individual.

Let us show that there are more of us who care. That there are greater numbers of those who would rather give than receive. I challenge you today and every day to show love and kindness to a stranger. Find a way to go out of your way to help. Even a smile could make a difference in someone’s life, but especially now. Especially today, when we face the very real imbalance between selflessness and hate.

Please share this. We may not have the power to fix the world, but we possess the ability to communicate. And with this amazing means, we can help make the world a better place to live. Let this go viral. At this point I don’t even care if you copy and paste these words and pretend you wrote them yourself. What is important is that we can make a difference for the good of humanity.

For you, and for all of us.