As promised, I’m catching up on the #JusJoJan posts. The prompt for this post was brought to you by Just Jot it January in February and Indieshe! Check out Indieshe’s blog here!
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I’m generally a joyful person.
I tend to find the silver lining in things.
Or at least the platinum lining.
The nickel lining?
Okay, sometimes it’s plastic. But it’s happy plastic.
I drank some wine the other night. That made me joyful.
Until it made me tired.
It was the last bottle of the batch of 30 I made, like, more than two years ago, before Christmas of 2019.
I used to drink enough wine to make batches of it worthwhile.
But now?
Not so much.
I find not a lot of joy in a bottle. Just sleepiness.
But you see? Wine comes in glass bottles.
Not happy plastic.
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Watch out for Just Jot it January next year. It’s fun!
Two full-time jobs (which I’m blessed to be able to do from home).
An only child whose mother is in a long term care home, who I don’t see nearly enough (her home has been in outbreak status since before Christmas, though none of the residents are sick—staff in the home tested positive).
But with all this and more (did I mention housework? It’s the bane of my existence I tell you!)…
My life is freckled with moments of joy.
It finds spots in my day through the laughter of my children,
the occasional sale of a book,
something online that makes me smile,
the coming together of this blogging community …
These things (and more) make everything worth getting up in the morning.
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This day-late (sorry, Maggie!) stream of consciousness post is brought to you by Just Jot it January and Maggie, with the prompt, “freckled.” Check out Maggie’s post here. Thank you so much for the prompt, Maggie!
I’ve spent most of the day contemplating, trying to figure out what I do that is cathartic. What helps me purge my negative emotions. And really, I could come up with nothing.
So my next question for myself was how am I coping? Why am I not going off the deep end?
And my answer was that I am generally happy. Content, despite all the stressors in my life. It’s testament to the fact that I don’t set the bar very high when I consider myself happy that my kids are alive and safe. Are they all healthy? Not by a long shot. Do they have everything they want? No. But they generally have a lot to smile about nonetheless.
There’s still all the stress to deal with, but that I do with my little escapes. Writing fiction, plunging headfirst into my editing jobs, taking a walk, and colouring easily help at least give me a break from my worries.
And I suppose when it’s all at its worst, my writing, even when I’m not writing about myself, can indirectly help me to spit out on a page what I’m feeling inside. We can’t, as writers, effectively express emotions we haven’t felt, whether they be joy or grief, well-being or pain.
On the other hand, maybe I’m just lying to myself and I’ll explode when I turn 60.
But at this very moment, I honestly believe I have it pretty good. All things considered.
The prompt word, “cathartic,” for today’s post is brought to you by Enthralling Journey! Thanks, Enthralling Journey! To find her “cathartic” post, click here. And say hi while you’re there!
Worry. What good does it do us? And yet we all do it. It’s what keeps us up at night, and makes us walk into rooms with no idea what we are there for. Because it causes us stress – the kind that separates our minds from what we should be focusing on.
From Pinterest
I believe happiness can be found in the lack of seeking it. So I strive to be content with what I have. But I think true contentedness can only be found through the ability to transcend worry. To worry is to imagine the worst for the future. If this is true, then the answer is to live in the present. Not only to fully appreciate what I have right here and now — relatively clean air to breathe, simply that I am alive — but to fully concentrate on what I am doing at any given moment. In that moment, there can be no worry.
I have to strive to stop looking ahead to what might be. And love what is now.
I really needed this today – been feeling a bit sorry for myself lately. I thought I’d share it with you all, in case you’re in need of it too.
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Don’t you just wish that my title summed up life?
I know I do and more often than I care to admit.
Yet if there is one thing that I have learned over the past months and weeks is that any ‘happily ever after’ is entirely up to me!
That’s right.
Me!!!!!
Kinda puts a lot of responsibility on a gal you know?
Having the sole responsibility for my own happiness is a big deal.
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:
It’s the question I am most asked about my thirteen year old son. At 60 pounds and 4’3″, with the amount of enthusiasm he has for everything, he can easily pass for an eight year old.
Born Deaf, his lungs are compressed by his large, deformed heart. He’s barrel-chested and is covered in scars, least of which is the tube in his stomach from whence he receives 99% of his nutrition. He is hooked up to a feeding machine about five hours a day. I’m sure he experiences pain – more than likely he’s been through more than most of us in his short life.
But I marvel at his little body. That he keeps going without complaint – he’s never known any different. I’m sure he’s realized by now that he’s not the same as most kids. One of his major goals in life is to eat in the cafeteria with the other kids at school, instead of being sent to the infirmary for lunch every day.
It amazes me what the human body can endure and still keep going. We think of ourselves as fragile. We grieve when something stops working. Our eyesight fades, our hearing goes, our muscles tire more easily – but imagine if you had always been this way.
My son is a constant inspiration to me. Everywhere he goes he makes people smile with his joy in life.
Life is all about focus. Some of us focus mostly on how we feel within ourselves. If we are unwell, it’s the only thing on our minds, unless there is something more important going on outside our illness. When we are well, some of us focus on what is closest in our lives – our family and friends, our homes – and some of us set our focus to our jobs, the weather, and even what is happening in the world. We’re all different that way.
We focus on what makes us happy, and depending on our circumstances, what makes us sad.
In other words, we tend to focus on things that stir our feelings. But what if we could focus on contentment? Balance: that which makes us feel nothing at all. That fine line in which everything is perfect. Nothing is particularly wrong, or right. Everything just… is. The middle ground.
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