Snow – 1, BBQ – 0
Family members alive – 5, Novels edited – 0
Hairs left attached to my scalp – 100,000, Hairs in my shower drain – 99,999
Hours of sleep – 35, Brain cells remaining – 2
Icicles – 100, Buckets full of water inside the house from ice melting on the roof 20
Bottles of wine consumed – 3, Contentedness quotient – 3
Blog posts conceptualized – 21, Blog posts posted – 7
Hours worked – 133, Earnings – 0
Family members alive – 5, Laughs – countless
In all I’d say I’m doing okay.
Three different shots of the icicles outside my bathroom window:
The first is fixed a little – in actuality I could see the icicles sparkling through the blinds, but they didn’t turn out well, even with some editing.
The second looked like something I might see on the morning after the night before:
And the third is like a bad nightmare gone worse:
Which one do you like best?
Don’t you hate it when you see someone who you think you recognize but you’re not sure?
There are two scenarios that I can think of at the moment: One; you can’t place the person at all, and two; you’re not sure if it’s the person you think it is or if it’s some stranger.
For instance, I’m sitting in the food court of the local mall, watching a guy who I can see in profile as he talks to a little girl beside him, and I could swear it’s Tyler Stewart, drummer for the band, the Bare Naked Ladies. So, do I go over and say hi to him? It wouldn’t be too weird – I went to high school with him. We were in the same music program together. He has much less hair now… But I’m thinking, if it was him, wouldn’t there be mobs of people hanging around him?
Maybe not.
What do you do when this happens? Do you avoid eye contact and hope they don’t notice you? Do you take a chance?
I once had a woman walk up to me in a shopping mall, much like the one I’m in, and she was absolutely positive I was someone else. She called me “Nicky,” asked me how I’d been doing, and I think she was going to hug me until I managed to get a word in edgewise and tell her she had the wrong person. Wow, was she embarrassed.
Since then, (and even before, but more so since then) I’m very careful about who I approach. Actually, I usually run in the other direction, which is what I’ll do today I think. After all, if I want Tyler’s autograph, I can probably wait ’til the next high school reunion.
I write pretty much the same way I speak. Not only do my speech patterns show up in my blogging, but so does my attitude towards life. Positivism is my greatest tool for survival. Okay, yes, I’m guilty of being tempted to get on WordPress and bitch and complain about things. But I don’t do it in real life unless someone specifically asks me my opinion on something (the weather may just be the exception to that rule), and I don’t like doing it here.
Thing is, we can all be different people online than we are in real life. Not only can we appear to be who we’re not, we can put forth a persona for ourselves that masks our true feelings. I reserve the ‘who I’m not’ part of my personality for my fiction – in most cases. There’s a certain part of me that thrills in writing horrible villains, which I’m not in real life.
Is it worth asking you all if who you write on your blog is who you are? Would you admit it if you weren’t? What I’d really like to know though, is whether or not you’ve ever analysed the content of your posts to see if it reflects your true self.
What does your writing say about you?
Most of us have jobs. Some of us have careers. We all have bad days. You know bad days, right? The sort where you stub your toes on anything available that doesn’t move; your hair won’t do what you want it to; you put your shirt on inside out and don’t realize it until you hear the guy in the next cubicle who you hate with a passion, sniggering… One of those days.
I was cruising around Facebook, wondering what in the world I could write about today, and I came across a picture which has no relevance to this post other than that it inspired me to think: would I want to go to the dentist when he’s having a bad day? The answer, still in my head, was a resounding NO. If you’re wondering, yes, it did resound, and yes, just imagining the idea of a sadistic dentist hurt me in ways that my imagination should not be allowed to hurt me.
Then I pondered other professionals with whom I would not want to deal on their baddest days: a mechanic, a chef, a radiologist whose job was to perform a breast x-ray, a journalist doing an interview… the list goes on.
All this led me to wonder if there’s a good job to be doing on a bad day. I suppose if the job is solitary, there’s only oneself to harm. But even as a writer – a job that can’t get any more solitary – I abuse the hell out of my characters.
So, what do you think? Is there a professional you would feel safe with if they’re having a bad day? Can you think of anyone worse than a dentist?
Comment away, lovely people!
Go submit your awesome writings to the Community Storyboard without delay!
Using my mad paint skills, I drew a badge for everyone who joined me in blogging for Just Jot It January this year! Here, again, is the list of participants:
Margaret (Myas) at A Tragic Lady But No TB.
Willow at Willowdot21
Miss Lou at Miss Lou Aquiring Lore
Bill at The Frisco Kid of Texas
Pamela at Poetry by Pamela.
Cindy at Dreamsinalaska.
Belinda at Idiot Writing.
KG at Books, Music, Photography & Movies
Deborah at Container Chronicles
Susan at Putting in a good word
Randee at A String of Pearls
Congratulations to all! Here’s your badge – let your blog wear it proudly! Just copy it and paste it, like an award, to your page. 🙂
On the final day of Just Jot it January, I’d like to take the opportunity to say a huge thank you everyone who participated. I discovered some fantastic blogs during the course of the month. I was going to design a badge for everyone who joined in, but, life happened and I ran out of time. If I get a chance over the weekend, I’ll send one to each of you.
So here are a list of the amazing people who stood with me in this event, held my hand, and played along in the fun that has been JusJoJan! I strongly suggest you check them out if you haven’t already.
In the seemingly random order of the pingbacks:
Margaret (Myas) at A Tragic Lady But No TB. Her blog is like sitting down over a cup of coffee in a warm and inviting kitchen.
Willow at Willowdot21 for wonderful and adventurous poetry.
Miss Lou at Miss Lou Aquiring Lore for opinions, excitement and fun.
Bill at The Frisco Kid of Texas for great reviews and more.
Pamela at Poetry by Pamela. She’s new to the poetry game, but she’s a natural.
Cindy at Dreamsinalaska. If you love Haiku, you’ll love Cindy.
Belinda at Idiot Writing. Her witty articles and art are a must to see.
KG at Books, Music, Photography & Movies for fabulous photography … and books and music and movies.
Deborah at Container Chronicles for her teaching adventures overseas.
Susan at Putting in a good word for poetry, book reviews, fiction and life in Australia.
Randee at A String of Pearls for an interesting slice of life.
Give yourselves a pat on the back, and let’s all do it again next year!
Today is unofficially my one year blog anniversary!
I joined WordPress in July 2012, wrote one post and promptly forgot about my blog. Then, on January 30th of last year, I began what has grown to what you see here. I had no idea what to expect at first. I remember being both thrilled and confused when I received my first ‘like.’ Who could possibly like me? I thought. How would anyone even know I exist?
The more I explored my reader and found people with similar interests, the more I learned. And then one day I took a chance. I made a joke in a comment on someone else’s blog. He was fairly new at the game as well and, as it turned out, he seemed as amazed as I was at how many people had noticed him. Granted, at the time I only had ten followers (he was one) and he had already 300. It won’t surprise some of you that that fellow blogger was the one and only Opinionated Man. I’m so grateful to him for teaching me so much about blogging, and especially how to form friendships here in our WordPress world. Thank you, Jason, my dear.
In celebration of my anniversary, I’m re-posting my first post. I’m putting it up on my fiction blog, since my foray into blogging started with my semi-fictional series about a boy: a poor boy who survives abuse and rises up to become a star.
Click here to find One Poor Boy
While it’s not fireworks; nor anthems; nor parades, it means something to me. I hope you’ll go today, and each day to read it and to celebrate with me the life of a character I care so much about.
Now pass the champagne!
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Post on your site, and join Just Jot it January. The rules are easy!
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 to the above link to make sure everyone participating knows where to find it.
3. Write anything!
4. Have fun!
When I came across this statement (above) on Facebook it made me think. And then it made me think some more.
My first reaction was to recognize that I say this all the time: Everything happens for a reason. And while I do believe somewhere deep inside that it does, I believe even more the two word statement, everything happens. The other saying I often use is, Shit happens and there’s nothing anybody can do about it, which is probably the more accurate of the two. I don’t say it often to anyone but myself however, since it’s not very consoling.
Saying everything happens for a reason is a way to make me feel like I’m in control of a situation I have no control over. By considering what happened, whatever it is, and going through everything that happened as a result can be comforting, especially if the results were in some way positive. And let’s face it – you can always find something positive in something awful if you look hard enough. While it may not make up for the bad thing that happened, it’s better than nothing.
I have to realize, in the end, that there are things that are beyond my control. Whether I look for the good in them or not, they happen. Am I lying to someone when I console them with the statement above? I don’t think so, not if I can help them to find a glimmer where there would otherwise be a lack of hope.
Whether or not everything happens for a reason, you can decide for yourself. But to me it seems that simply saying “Everything happens,” is freeing. It takes the burden away of trying to control that which is out of my hands.
I’ll still look for silver linings, and I probably still won’t be telling people that shit happens and there’s nothing they can do about it. But I’ll be thinking it, now more than ever.
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Post on your site, and join Just Jot it January. The rules are easy!
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 to the above link to make sure everyone participating knows where to find it.
3. Write anything!
4. Have fun!
lindaghill.com 