Category: positive thoughts

Temporary Temporals

How fleeting life can be. A string of moments, all connected with something called a lifespan. I recently got news about a friend who is fighting cancer. It hit harder than I ever could have expected any news to hit. She is younger than me. And it feels damned unfair. Now mind you, as usual, she has it under control. She has always had it under control.

It seems like it is easy to react from outside of a situation with righteous indignation, and fear. Those two emotions cause us to fail to see the weight we put on the one inside with each question. Sometimes, it would be kinder to just be an ear.

It’s hard to be just an ear when we want to scream frustration. It will pass but what damage do you do to those around you as you fight to calm yourself down?

That is the stage I am in. I am fighting to remind myself that this too shall pass. It is not about me, and I have to learn how to be there for her. I have to not let my own fears come between me and supporting her. It is Damned Unfair, but life is not about what is fair. It is about learning, loving, and creating. So I wish for all of you…

May you love deeply,

May you learn happily,

And may you always

be able to create beauty!

Ciúnas

Words have power… Sometimes more than we realize. Take the title of this post for an example. It is a Gaelic word for silence. Yet, when spoken silence is broken.

Too many times we speak with no regard for those who hear. We react to our own version of things. It is a flaw in how human beings are made. We are tender underneath. We react when we are in pain, and we are not always nice. I, myself, have been guilty of this. If I were honest, the only regrets I have in life were just that. Speaking from a place of my own pain, without consideration for who I may have hurt in the process.

This quote has been popping up in my life a lot lately. Though I don’t know who said it. It has made me think. Yes, I am crazy. The muddled mind of a half mad poet and all…. But I don’t try to be cruel. I make mistakes. I apologize. But I also try to learn. I am trying to practice ciunas. The silence. The pause.

Some days I need to practice it so I don’t hurt me. Your inner voice is just as easily able to harm as your outer voice can. Only there it just adds to the bleeding. I think that is the hard part… Silencing that damn inner voice.

I struggle with mine. I know that my friends see me as better than I see myself. I asked for a gift for my birthday this year. It will be in two weeks on the thirteenth. I asked for my friends and family to tell me what they liked about me and what irked them. I got five comments. One was a joke (I think, with the guy in question it may have been serious) about more “nekkid pics.” Two couldn’t think of an irksome quality. The other two… Well both of them said the only thing that irked them about me was my self doubt. Self doubt is one of any artist’s sharpest blades.

I think that I am going to try to pack mine in the back of the drawer. It is time to be the artist who I was meant to be. I will today tell the inner voice “Ciúnas! ” and I suggest that you do the same.

Wednesday wacko

*image acquired from Google all rights to its owner.

I apologize for missing yesterday… Life hit a little harder than I expected yesterday. Nothing major, just a whole lot of little stuff that knocked me into overload. It happens, probably far more often than it should.

So I wanted to go lighter with my blog today to lighten my own mood. Monday night my boyfriend surprised me with a dozen lovely white roses.

It was just for the smile he knew it would ellict in me. He could have gotten red, but I prefer the more unusual. Yeah, I know white isn’t that unusual but it is not what everyone else would want.

I posted that picture on my Instagram with a poem inspired by it. (go look.) Now I can sit in my dining room enjoying the beautiful smell. I think that I will press one of the flowers.

The winner of the drawing I do with my newsletter gave me an interesting challenge. I have a games section in my Tea party that goes out every Friday. If you at least attempt to play with me via email you get entered in a monthly raffle. The winner is given an option, a handwritten poem or a drawing or a digital art personally done by me. (So if you have a favorite poem by me or want me to draw something specific for you… Join my Tea party and play with me.) You can get up to three entries a month. Anywho, the winner for February asked me for something that I am looking forward to drawing. January also chose a drawing.

I am nervous about an event I am doing on the second. I will be setting up a table at a local community fundraiser to sell my resin and jewelry pieces. The event happens on the first Saturday of each month. People gather and set up tables of wares to sell. The community center sells hot dogs to raise funds to stay open. My nerves were already bad, but the co-ordinator did not help. She told me that there was already two selling jewelry supposed to be there. If this actually pulls off I have been thinking about going to a local flea market and doing a table. I have to convince my nerves not to bolt. Wish me luck.

Well, now that I have been all over the map, what do we do? Oh… Well I guess we can make paper hats…. directions here

And off we go again. Cya tomorrow.

Wordless Wednesday

Links!

I found a sidebar option for my links. I will be updating the widget over the next week. I may have to change my theme for you to see it right. So happy new year! Expect changes here. 💜

Last poetry

This is the last poetry I will be able to list as ©2018. It is always humbling and slightly confusing as each year passes. I think that 2019 has the potential for a lot of good. There is definitely going to be more activity from me on my patreon and here. I have so much to look forward to. What are you looking forward to in 2019?

My thoughts, and other imaginary things

Fighting the mental gremlins mean that even though I feel inadequate, I keep going. For me this often means writing, even if I feel like it is not something anyone wants to read. I have been sharing my poetry more lately on my Instagram. My reason? I am getting the reactions there. It makes me feel like I am pimping out my soul to ask for reactions, but I end up using the positive feedback to boost myself in the fight against the voice in the back of my head… You know that voice… The one that tells me how awful I am, how awful my writing and art is.

I have been avoiding any posting of opinions lately, mostly because I have been feeling less than qualified to have opinions. Much less speak them. What that means is that I have been hiding behind my poetry a lot more lately. I finished and published Music For The Soul. I am about thirty poems into the next volume (Poetry Kisses). I am also looking into helping to promote other authors through my blog. (Which would give me more to post here as well as help with promoting my fellow writers.)

See, I firmly believe that as a writer, I should be helping other writers. I am not in competition with anyone, and the world can only benefit from others who are writing. Lately, I have been seeing controversy over trademarks in the writing world (specifically the romance genre…) I watched horrified that it was even a consideration. How is a single word causing so much trouble.

So I have been watching that and keeping my opinions to myself.

I will be trying to post more information as I receive it about the promoting.

It’s all about perspective

I’m sick. And when I get sick, I get maudlin. I got a notice that I was getting a deposit from Amazon for the books that I have available. It is the biggest deposit yet, a whole $2.77. That amazes me. It is a sign that people are buying the books that I have written… Mostly poetry, but I have some children’s books and a novella (as Serena).

When I told my mother that I was published her first question was if I had made any money. At the time I stumbled with my answer because I had only made thirty some cents. The fact that I had made anything was a miracle to me, but I knew that would not be what she wanted to hear.

For me, publishing is only a way of being heard. Still, making enough from my writing to buy a drink…. Well it humbles me. Would I like to be able to pay the bills through it? Well of course. I am not stupid. I just choose to be thankful for the small things. How often does changing the perspective change the way something feels?

Small miracles lift up the downtrodden. I choose to see this as a small miracle, so that I am uplifted. What perspective can you change to adjust your view?

Faery Playtime

dreams-300x300_300

So my Sister Redbird and I are doing a secondary Blog, We attempted this before…but it fell apart due to various factors. So we fixed those and are trying again. It is a blog to discuss ways of improving one’s outlook on life. Faeries, recipes, DIY and more… go check us out.

https://mindfulfaespiritualgardening.wordpress.com/

Kindness and cruelty

I struggle to see myself as others do. I can list my flaws innumerable. I logically know that I am not what my mental gremlins say. I am not selfish, nor cruel…not intentionally anyway. Still there are those days where I expect more out of people simply because it is something that I can do. I am a poor uneducated woman who is more than a little crazy. I am in constant pain due to physical issues. Still I show up, I do what needs done, and I move on. So on the occasion that I need to remind myself that I am not normal….well I find myself also reminding myself to be kind.

Kindness is not just for the rest of humanity. Sometimes the person who needs your kindness most is yourself. My writing coach, the Amazing Debbie Burns, gave me a couple of methods of dealing with the negative thoughts. One involves listing 100 words about yourself. You then relace negative words with positive ones. This is meant to try to get the brain to replace them when you think about self. We have to try and train ourselves to keep the mental gremlins at bay. Still after a lifetime of self abuse, it is not terribly easy to see the good that everyone else does.

So I will continue to do my word lists to help me see the bright light shining. I will start with the words I did above. “poor uneducated crazy” are all three replaceable. Yes, I have money woes but I have food, I have clothes, I have shelter. So I am content. There see one word replaced. Uneducated is not true. I have my high school diploma. I have taught myself computer programming in c#. I have studied several other things independently. So I can replace that with self educated. Now only one word remains. Crazy. Ugh it is the hardest. After all, I am struggling with mental illness. I am aware of the stigmas. I think perhaps for that I should use the word Unique.

So what words do you say about yourself that perhaps you need to change? I would encourage everyone to examine the labels we use to define ourselves, and in turn the labels we call others.