Life in progress

Tag Archives: #atozchallenge


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SoCS – J is for Journalist

Well that worked out well. I don’t think I need to take a picture of my thesaurus this week to prove that “journalist” is in fact the second-last word on the left-hand page that I turned to… you trust me, right?

Honesty in journalism is something that’s apparently hard to come by these days. I don’t often listen to or read the news. I wish I had less going on in my life that I had the luxury to put other people’s and countries’ business closer to the top of my priority list, but it just ain’t happenin’. My mother was recently diagnosed with ‘mixed dementia’ which includes a touch of Alzheimer’s, and though I haven’t even properly researched what that means, I have been led to understand that the difference between dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease is attitude. Let’s just say she hasn’t been easy to deal with these past few years and it seems to be getting worse by the day. While she hasn’t displayed any of the outbursts you sometimes hear about, nor has she gone wandering (thank goodness) but I’m finding myself agreeing to being the stupid one (her term) more often than not to avoid arguments. I really do need to learn more about this disease.

So where was I? Oh yes, journalists. I can’t imagine myself as a journalist. I can’t interview someone to save my life, and I’m afraid that any reporting I did would end up more speculation and fiction than actual true story. I tend toward writing fiction – my imagination is probably one of the most prevalent parts of my personality.

Let’s see what synonyms we have here: hack. Yeah, that’d be me. Chronicler. Sounds painful. Oh Oh OH! Periodicalist! I like that word, though my spell check doesn’t. Let’s try using it in a sentence.

The periodicalist was found guilty of dangling participles. His sentence; to be reviewed…

Ha!

This post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.com/2015/04/10/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-1115/ Join in today!

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

and A-Z April

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

 

 


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I is for Impermanent

Impermanence: what better way to explain life? It’s a wonder that the word impermanent even exists; nothing is permanent. Unless you’re talking about a hairdo of course. Hair spray only goes so far so if you want it to stay that way, you’re gonna need a perm.

But I digress. As I do. One of the synonyms for impermanent is “ephemeral.” It’s a word that’s stuck with me since the summer before I first went to high school. A group of people got together to do a stage production of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, and somehow I got involved. We didn’t have a script, we just adapted the book. Quite brilliant for a bunch of high school kids when I think back.

Anyway, there was a line in the book, and in our play, that went, “That which is in danger of speedy disappearance,” as an explanation of what the word ephemeral means. The line was delivered to (not by) a boy named Charlie who later became a friend. We hung out together all through high school. He was in the foster care system and sometimes moved from place to place – for a while he lived at my house. He was the youngest of, if I remember correctly, four. All of his sisters had left home and had their own lives. His mother was schizophrenic.

After high school, Charlie went out on his own. He moved to Toronto and had several different jobs. Then we heard he’d been living in a tent. It came out later that he was schizophrenic, like his mother. He hung himself to death before his thirty-fifth birthday.

Charlie always struck me as someone who was ephemeral. From his frequent moves between foster parents, and his very upbringing, leaving his home and his sisters who were all unable to care for him, to finally his departure from life.

Elusive, fleeting, unstable, transient, perishable, evanescent… mortal.

The very theme of The Little Prince. If you haven’t read it, I strongly urge you to. There’s a lesson there which needs to be learned.


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H is for High-Spirited

I used to be very much a horse person. I loved horses as a kid – wanted to spend all my time with horses, so I talked my parents into sending me to horse camp where I learned how to ride. I remember being assigned my horse at the beginning of the week – the one I would ride twice a day. Oh how happy I was when I finally graduated to the more high-spirited horses!

I began of course with the ones that just plodded along. The ones that give the rider the illusion that he or she is in control but in fact there is nuthin’ that’s gonna change that beast’s mind about following the horse-bum in front of it. I swear sometimes those kinds of horses are sleep walking.

Years later as an adult I went back to farm where I had formerly gone to camp and got a job taking out trail rides. The number one rule for guiding a trail is to watch the customers, meaning that as a guide, I’d spend three quarters of my time twisted around in the saddle facing forward but looking back. This includes while trotting and galloping. I remember my first trail – my God was I nervous! Nervous as in I didn’t have a single drop of spit in my mouth nervous. Riding backwards while running turned out to be the least of my worries that day.

You see, every once in a while we’d get a real ass (and I’m not talking about a donkey) go out for a ride. It was normally a young guy who wanted to show off to his friends how skilled he was on horseback. Invariably the ass had no idea what he was doing. Normally we could spot them 100 miles off and stick them on one of the aforementioned plodders. No problem, right? I got one of these guys my very first trail ride ever. And somehow he managed to do the one thing that would get a plodder’s attention.

We had on the farm a thing we called “the gallop strip.” It was a stretch of trail facing away from the barn (because if you gallop a horse in the direction of the barn it ain’t gonna stop) that nine times out of ten the more high-spirited horses would behave themselves on, and the plodders would get up to a trot… which was hilarious when we got one of our macho men on one, because he’d be bouncing all over the place totally out of control. Not so much on my first time out.

My macho man managed to hold his horse back through sheer brutality when everyone else started to run. Me, not being experienced, tried but failed to slow everyone else down (a lesson I quickly learned). So when the plodder, freaked out that his horsey friends’ bums had left without him, he finally bolted. The horse passed the trail line, passed me and took off for the barn. There I was screaming at the guy as he’s getting farther and farther away (with not an ounce of spit which was difficult) to pull back on the reins and stop squeezing with his feet which was what was making the horse go faster, I couldn’t chase him because the rest of my trail would chase me…

Needless to say I ended my first trail ride as a guide in tears. But, as they say, you’ve just got to dust yourself off and get right back on, right? I loved that job; I did it for about five years. And I’ve got a million stories to go with it.

So much for my letter of the alphabet today, eh? Oh wait – one of the synonyms for “high-spirited” is “dashing.” That works. 😀

Me at 12 years old

Me, at 12 years old

 

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions


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G is for Glacial

Oooh, brrrr. Here’s a chilly subject. Appropriate considering we’re getting freezing rain here. Tiny little glaciers falling from the sky. The kind of weather that lifts your shoulders to your earlobes.

Speaking of cold shoulders, (what a segue, eh?) the first synonym in my thesaurus for glacial is antagonistic. Along those lines are also inimical (I absolutely cannot pronounce that word. Can you?) and unfriendly. This immediately brings trolls to my mind; the glacial denizens of the internet.

We’re all waiting to cross that bridge, aren’t we? If we haven’t already of course. That icy, slippery causeway to misery – commentary’s dip into a hostile Arctic abyss.

Or.

Just ignore them and they’ll go away.

The word, “glacial” also brings to mind my childhood and my favourite pasttime back then – figure skating. Although I practiced for eight years, I never did perfect the art of the axel. For those of you not too familiar, it’s a jump that involves taking off from a forward facing direction, spinning one and a half rotations (for a single axel) in the air and landing on the opposite foot facing the other direction. I simply didn’t have the guts to really give it 100% of my effort. I did enjoy coaching, though. Figure skating is one of those things that fits well into the adage, “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”

What are you better at teaching than doing?

 

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

 


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F is for Forefather

Up until now, the word “forefather” has always seemed a little redundant to me. Of course after I turned to it in my thesaurus as my word of the day, I looked it up to get a little more insight on what exactly it means, but in the past I was all like, “of course it’s a FOREfather. Can’t really be an AFTERfather, can it? Dad has to come first unless someone’s discovered the secret to time travel – and going down that road is just ewww…” *thinks of that episode of Futurama in which Fry discovers he’s his own grandfather* But now I’ve discovered it means every papa that came before dear ol’ dad it makes a little more sense.

I’ve never been much into family trees. I know I came from somewhere and while it would be nice to know whether or not I descend from royalty (my kids’ behaviour sometimes indicates that I actually may), since it doesn’t much help me one way or another I don’t really care enough to go delving. I understand there are cultures that are way into knowing where they come from and I think that’s very cool. Information like that, passed down through generations and not having to be discovered from scratch would be quite useful at times. Then again, finding out your predecessor was a dirty rotten scoundrel might be equally as disconcerting.

Before I sign off on this post I really REALLY have to mention one of the synonyms I found for “forefather.” I’m going to start using it any chance I get – it’s so cool. Ready?

PRIMOGENITOR

Seriously! Doesn’t it sound like some sort of awesome Transformer! Imagine, traveling back in time and meeting up with this ginormous dude made of space-aged plastic who bends down, and roars in a heavy, digitally enhanced bass, “I AM YOUR PRIMOGENITOR,” (with emphasis on the OR) and then picks you up and starts bouncing you on his knee.

Here’s a visual:

DSC00335

I’m happy I have primogenitors! Aren’t you?


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E is for Easy

And… this is the hardest word I’ve had to deal with yet. How ironic.

Actually, you know what? If you’re EVER looking for inspiration for something to write on your blog and you have an actual, physical thesaurus (because it’s not going to work with an online one), challenge yourself to write whatever you turn to. Even if you have to close your eyes, open the book and point. Whichever root word your finger lands on, write the first thing that comes into your head. Not good enough? Look at the synonyms! Everything you need to write a post is there.

Like this one – “easy.” The entry for this is full of not only words that mean the same thing, but there are phrases as well. For example: “easy as pie.” How easy is a pie? Have you ever made a pie from scratch? I haven’t. Why? It’s too damned hard! The phrase makes absolutely no sense to me. Or how about “like taking candy from a baby”? That’s not friggin’ easy! It’s cruel! Who the hell wants to take candy from a baby? If nothing else it disturbs the peace!

So what have I learned from this post? From this little exercise? That apparently the easiest thing of all to do today is get me into rant mode. Odd that some of the synonyms further down on the list are serene, tranquil, and untroubled. That’ll teach me to read the whole entry before I start typing next time, won’t it?

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

 


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Blogger Appreciation

As I sit here with my laptop on this relatively lazy Sunday, (lazy in comparison to the chaos that is Blogging A-Z in April) I’m thinking about how much I appreciate the people who visit me here at Life in Progress, and at my fiction blog, Inspiration in Progress. Over the past couple of years my blogs have grown to what amounts sometimes to a thriving metropolis; a place for like minds and kindred spirits to connect. I write to inspire comments and though I don’t always reply promptly, I enjoy them immensely. What can I say – I love the further inspiration I that comes from your feedback!

WordPress is a huge wealth of entertainment, information, commiseration, and friendship. I’ve talked so much in the past about the sense of community here but it never fails to amaze me how so many people, from so many different countries and cultures can have so much in common. Of course what it boils down to is the fact that we are all the same on the inside. Race has never been, in my eyes, a reason to differentiate, nor has sexual orientation, religious beliefs, nor any of those things which divide our populations. What matters to me is how we behave. Again, it’s all part of being one type of creature – human.

But I digress. Blogging brings us all together. Our lives are intertwined by a platform which allows us to express ourselves however we choose – and I’m grateful for all of those who choose to be part of my community.

Thank you to everyone who has participated in my One-Liner Wednesday and SoCS prompts (even though it takes me a while to read your posts – I really try to keep up!), each of you who visit through the A-Z Challenge, and to all of you who keep coming back. This place wouldn’t be the same without you.


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SoCS – D is for Dexterous

I’m doing a little happy dance. There are 26 left-hand pages in my thesaurus; only eleven of them have entries that start with “de.” I chose the eleventh, and so I’m able to combine the two posts (SoCS and A-Z) into one. Was it dexterity that allowed me to pick a good page? Nah. Blind luck.

Nimble-fingered – that’s me of late. With my shoulder problems (it’s now frozen, by the way. I’m waiting to get a call from the hospital to go for a combination ultrasound/steroid shot) I’ve had to learn ambidexterity. I can’t write with my left still, but I’m learning to eat with it. You think you can use your left hand to manoeuvre a fork but if you’re right handed it means you’ve got a knife in your right hand to help your left out. Without the knife, you use your right. Right? Try using your left hand next time you eat something like macaroni. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

I look to try to be dexterous in many aspects of my life. Some of its synonyms are clever, handy, neat and proficient. Proficiency is such a handy skill to have. (Is that redundant?) I attempt always to cut down on the steps it takes to do something. Tidiness depends on it. Never going up the stairs empty-handed is something I strive for.

And with writing too – less is more. Proficiency or dexterity in grammar makes the difference between something that’s easily readable and text that goes on forever, saying nothing or worse, repeating itself.

How do you strive to be dexterous?

 

This post is part of SoCS:

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Please join in today!! https://lindaghill.com/2015/04/03/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-415/

And the A-Z Challenge:

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

BATZAP by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions


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C is for Commit

As you probably know, my words for this A-Z Challenge are coming at random from my thesaurus. I’m absolutely committed to sticking to the rule I set for myself to take whatever word I open the book to that is the second from the bottom on the left-hand page. This will not, by the way, apply to the letters X and Y and Z- there aren’t enough pages for those letters. But I digress. My main concern today for the letter C was one particular entry that just happens to be the second-last letter in the left hand column on page 104:

CAM00650

Yes, this could have been the word of the day. It was with a grimace and a prayer to the word gods of the planet Thesauri that I gingerly parted the pages of my big red book and believe me, it was with a sigh of relief that I discovered I wouldn’t have to talk about cocks. Luck was on my side; I landed instead on page 108 and the word “commit.”

I think to a certain extent we all have things that we’re compulsive over. One of my biggest compulsions is that I must stick to a commitment. I may even be worse–more determined–with the commitments I make to myself, though I’m pretty fierce when it comes to doing whatever I promised someone else I’d do. Which is why it just about kills me when I can’t keep up with these challenges I set for myself.

One of the synonyms for “commit” is “imprison.” I do, in a way, imprison myself when I dedicate myself to something. I box myself in but that’s really not all that bad. For an unemployed (at least in a 9-5 sense) woman, structure isn’t something my days are filled with. Yes, I have to get up when the rooster crows (see what I did there?) for my kids, and I have to be here when they come home, but what of the space in between when they’re at school? A commitment to something consigns me to a task. In the case of this particular commitment–blogging–you, my friends, are my overseers.

I wouldn’t let us down unless under duress.

What, apart from your family and your job are you committed to? And how far would you go to honour your commitment? I’d love to know.

 


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B is for Bemused

Bemused… not to be confused with amused. I must admit, I used to think they meant the same thing but they don’t.

Bemused is what I am much of the time. As a writer, when I get caught up in something I’m working on, I often become absent-minded, dazed, distracted, and befuddled. (Don’t you just love a good thesaurus?)

Stress can cause a certain amount of bemusement. Once I have something stuck in my noggin that is causing me anxiety it’s like everything else around me ceases to matter. Stuff I’m actually physically doing gets done with the least amount of thought, much to the detriment of dry sleeves, clean floors, healthy toes, and undented fenders. No, I haven’t gone there yet, at least not because I’ve been distracted, but I’ve come close. What driver hasn’t? It’s a real eye-opener when it does almost happen though.

A good end to bemusement.

Being bemused is the cause of walking into a room and having no idea why I’m there. Or losing something I had in my hand only a second ago, making me wonder if I’m losing my mind… which I am, to bemusement.

According to this wonderful book I have sitting beside me, it’s also a synonym for tipsy and half-drunk. There’s something I can relate to, though not as often as I’m simply lost in my thoughts.

And so I try to focus; live in the moment, stay aware of my surroundings and what I’m doing. It’s harder than it seems and takes quite a bit of practice. We live inside our minds as much, if not more, than we live inside our bodies. Take reading, or watching a movie for instance. When we’re really into something, the rest of the world disappears. Ceases to exist. Until someone taps us on the shoulder or spills popcorn in our lap. But then that’s not bemusement. It’s concentration. Isn’t it?

No, I believe bemusement is more introverted. It’s self-absorption that can rise to a most dangerous level.

Which is not amusing in the slightest.