Well, we’re only just over a day and a half into January and Just Jot It January is thriving. I’ve met three or four new bloggers already! In keeping with the first prompt I’d like to say that I’m really enjoying reading everyone’s entries and I hope to be able to keep up. For those of you who are also trying to read everything there is to read, please note that there are a few pingbacks on the prompt page that aren’t on the “rules” post, so don’t forget to check that out too.
This will be a short jot since I was delivered a sick Alex today. He’s been with his dad since Monday – break’s definitely over! It’s a pretty bad cough but I think he’ll be okay – hopefully no hospital stay this time around.
Time moves in a strange sort of way when there are so many holidays clumped together, doesn’t it? So I was surprised at how fast Friday seemed to get here this week – and with it, time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt! It’s been a while since I left the prompt open for many interpretations. I’ve decided to do just that this week.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “t.” Think of a word that starts with it or includes it, and write away! Have fun!
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 the 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!!
Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions
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 you’re going to write.
2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’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 “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”
4. Ping back! It’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. Your link will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.
5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.
6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!
Happy New Year, everyone! This post will be a combination of my very first “Jot” for this year, in combination with being your (our) first prompt of the month. See how easy Just Jot It January is? 😀
Your prompt for January 1st to 10th is: reading.
Some suggestions:
1. Make the title of a post the name of a book and let inspiration take you from there.
2. Write about something you’ve read, whether it’s a newspaper article, a novel, a short story, or even a blog post. Don’t forget to link back to it! I’m sure it would be appreciated.
3. Write about what reading means to you. What would happen if you couldn’t, for some reason?
4. Don’t use the prompt at all! It’s not mandatory – it’s only if you get stuck. Alternatively, use the prompt every day for 10 days. It’s up to you!
Your next prompt will be posted on January 10th, to cover the dates from the 11th to the 20th.
I can’t wait to start reading your JusJoJan posts! Don’t forget the most important part – have fun!!
1. It’s never too late to join in, since the “Jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post) counts as a “Jot.” If it makes it to WordPress that day, great! If it waits a week to get from the sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. If you write a JusJoJan post on your blog, you can ping it back here to make sure everyone participating knows where to find it. To ping back, just copy the URL from this post and paste it anywhere in your post. Check back here occasionally to see other bloggers posts – the more you visit others, the more they’ll visit you! Note: The newest pingbacks will be at the top of the comments section.
3. Tag your post JusJoJan.
4. Write anything!* Any length will do!
5. If you’d like to, use the JusJoJan icon in your post so that others can find your post more easily.
6. Have fun!
*Note: On the 1st, 10th, and 20th of the month I’ll post prompts. Each will last for ten days. You can use them if you get stuck for a subject to write about, or you can just ignore them. To make them easier to find, I’ll copy them here at the bottom of this post after they go live.
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” 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.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
Of all the reasons I went to Japan when I did–because seriously, who goes on vacation just before Christmas when they’re a single parent with kids–this is probably the last thing my readers here can relate to. Yet, it’s an interesting story. An incredible story. So I’d like to share it with you, and perhaps you’ll enjoy it anyway. Perhaps it will inspire you to dream, and dream big.
Ever since I visited Japan nine years ago, I’ve wanted to go back. It’s a wonderful country, with kind, lovely, helpful people. But I wanted to go back in the spring, to see the cherry blossoms. Yet I went in December. Why?
It started out with a friend, Susie, who I met here at WordPress. (I’ll attach a link to her awesome Etsy store at the end of this post. Her jewelery is amazing.) She got tickets to a concert I would have given my right arm to see. But not only did she buy more than she needed, she won them. In a lottery. The band’s fan club does that sort of thing. To give you an idea of how incredible this is, the band in question plays to sold-out shows at Nippon Budokan, which has a seating capacity of 20,000. They played there yesterday. But the venue my friend got the tickets to? 2400 standing on the floor. And my ticket was number 252… almost within the first ten percent of the people to be let in. More about that later.
So the next thing was, whether or not to accept the ticket. Could I find someone to look after my kids? Their dad was busy with work – it’s his busiest time of year. No help there. Except I have a best friend who agreed to look after them. Yes. I could go. The flight was reasonably priced and, when I looked for places to stay I found some excellent deals for far less, in fact, than anywhere I could hope to stay on vacation in my own country. I was going to Japan to see my favourite band. It was now or never. Did I mention it was the final concert of the tour I really wanted to see?
Fast forward to the day before the concert. I was going to meet Susie the day of, but I decided to pop by the venue one day in advance when she planned to pick up our tickets. Good thing I did – she was detained on the day of the concert and I would have waited to see her and not made it to the front of the line where, as it turned out, I met a gal from Portugal who spoke English, who told me I needed 500 yen in cash to get in the door, even with my ticket. Can you imagine? Had I not known, I might have spent thousands of dollars to go to a concert and not gotten in for the sake of $5. So, with my 500 yen at the ready, I had to figure out when my number was being called. It was all in Japanese… except my new Portuguese friend introduced me to a lady who spoke both English and Japanese fluently… who just happened to hold ticket number 251… the one before mine. I followed her in. I’m shaking, writing this.
So I got in, as up front as I wanted to be, somewhere in the middle where I could see the lead singer – the one I’d come all that way to see.
Here’s my picture, taken by the lead guitarist.
Seriously, how often do you get your picture taken from the stage?
As I watched this awesome concert that I’d been so blessed with being able to attend, that so many stars had fallen into place for me to be in that spot, at that moment in time, I remember thinking to myself how important it was to fully be in that moment. The music, the crowd, the incredible … moment!
I walked back to my hotel that night feeling truly truly blessed.
It was a bittersweet walk. Alone, I felt a little lost. My real reason for being so far away from home was over and I still had a couple of days left to go. I almost felt as though I had nothing left to look forward to. But.
When I got back to the hotel that night I went online to find out the concert had been taped, which is why I’m writing this today. It was played back to me, live on a streaming website, this morning. I had the chance to relive that wonderful moment! How often does that happen?
Here’s a tiny little excerpt of the concert. I know you can’t possibly understand most of what’s being sung, nor may you know who these people are on stage. But I was there. During this song, the lead singer, Atsushi Sakurai, made eye contact with me. This alone means the world to me. He is my muse – the one who has lead me through my novel and kept me going. He is my inspiration, pure and simple.
(Click on the word “Post.” One of those hands in the air is mine.)
You may not understand, but perhaps it will inspire you to hope that one day all your stars may align as mine did two and a half short weeks ago in Tokyo, Japan.
Susie’s jewelery! https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/birdicatt (I didn’t realize her shop was closed up until she gets back – please be sure to visit her after January 9th!)
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 42,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 16 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
The premise of Just Jot It January is simple – jot something down, anywhere you like, every day in January. It was a concept I came up with last year in a fit of desperation, really, to keep up my writing momentum of November’s NaNoWriMo and the now-defunct “Every Damn Day December.”
I’m thinking about perhaps posting actual prompts this year to help everyone along with ideas on what to post, should their jotting for the day be on their blog. At the moment I’m considering three prompts, each lasting 10 days with the final day as a day for us all to just jot out our collective back-patting.
So, with January just three days away, I’m wondering who’s up for joining me this year. Hands up, bloggers! It’ll be fun!
There’s even a neat badge! Rules will be posted January 1st, 2015.
P.S. I’ll still be hosting One-Liner Wednesday and Stream of Consciousness Saturday.
It seems to me that we all must consume things. We eat, for instance, consuming the nutrients we require to survive. But yet, the word “consumed” has so many negative connotations. Being consumed is, at the moment I write this, the most complete thing I can think of. By complete I mean absolute. It goes against the grain of thought for me, because I don’t believe anything is absolute.
The feeling of being consumed is to me almost absolute. Consumed by guilt, consumed by the feeling that I must do something – writing for instance – is so overwhelming that it feels … consuming. The all-consuming feeling that falling in love brings; it permeates every thought, every action.
Of course there is also being consumed, like the pie right down to the last crumb. Is that not absolute?
With one word – with one prompt of my own making – with one blog post I have managed to skew my philosophy on life. How does this happen?
Before I went to Japan I dropped in to my local cell phone provider’s store to inquire about a package deal that would allow me to use my mobile in the event I couldn’t get online while I was away. They were offering a deal that included something like 40 minutes talk time, 150 texts and 20mb of data for $70. I asked what would happen if I wasn’t able to use my phone in Japan and was assured that it wouldn’t be a problem – if I didn’t use the service, the company would refund the $70. What could I possibly lose? So I went for it.
Today I called the company to let them know I hadn’t been able to connect to a wireless provider while I was in Japan and could I please get my money back. No, I was told. There was no way they could refund the money. They don’t do that. So I asked to speak to a manager.
Armed with the fact that I have 6 phones on my plan, and have been with the company for about 20 years, I formulated my response to the next guy I was to talk to while I waited on hold. After five minutes my speech was at the ready. The gentleman who answered was polite – he said he’d check in to the matter, and would I please hold for a moment longer. Eventually he came back and told me that they don’t normally give refunds for travel packages, and the store shouldn’t have told me they do, but he would make an exception for me since I was a long-standing customer and he agreed to remove the $70 charge from my bill.
Now call me suspicious, but I wonder why I had to go through all that. The store told me I could have my money back. Was all the tension-building just a strategy to make me believe that the company is, in fact, wonderful and cause me to tell all my friends to go to them because they are kind and forgiving if you’re loyal?
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