The Shift

Humor is a veil and sometimes it gets a little hard to breathe under mine.

It’s also a protective shield that deflects from the intent of going deeper.

I’ve been thinking I’ve given myself a little more leeway than I probably should have with the sarcasm defence.

Having to dig for the spin from tragic to trippy is tiring. There are so many more funny stories waiting in the wings. Excerpts fly at me daily sparked by a song or a smell or a taste or a breeze that ruffles my hair.

I exercise my mind a lot trying to see around my metaphoric road block. I’ve heard enough that it doesn’t go away; as you move along, it dimishes. Every time you turn back to the way from which you came, it’ll be there – just as big and ugly as when it landed in your path.

Of course, you’ll go around it. It might not seem like that now, but you will. You might not notice the shift right away. You’ll spend a lot of time maneuvering in its shadow. Then one day, it will be beside you instead of in front of you.

That’s when the decision has to be made. Stand in the at-best momentary warmth of the sun knowing that it won’t always be that way; clouds will come and go. Retreat to the at-worst constant shadow of coldness where life doesn’t change much, but your back is always reliably covered by what it’s flattened up against.

Eventually, movement: until then timing rules the court. It holds us back or propels us forward. Timing is what drives us from soulless to soulful. For some, passing time is counted by continuing little claw scrapes, love bites.

For others it’s the proverbial bandage ripped from the anchoring erroneously unstable flesh surrounding our shredded hearts.

You can cry, but you  can still laugh, too.

Quote for the Week:

Enjoy this Week’s Discovery Links:

The healing power of:  laughter

Mark Knopfler:  The Last Laugh

Might as well: Laughter Yoga

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Legacy (Intermission 2)

I was pretty sure there wasn’t a name for it, but I went looking, anyway. Because, you know, Google. I’m often a bit too wordy in my searches, which always brings some sketchy results. I hopefully clicked on the search box and full-sentence typed in, “What do you call a biography about 2 people?”

The answer seems to be “Legacy Writing,” according to Dr. Andrew Weil.

‘Legacy’ though, is a multi-layered word, with an extreme spectrum. Summarizing from MacMillan, I’ll skip to the applicable parts:

Something that someone has achieved that continues to exist after they stop working or die.  

The principle that a thing which exists as a result of something that happened in the past can later be used in a different way

If I were to legacy, it would be for my thought. My style isn’t emulation oriented, except in the sense that it may easily be surpassed.

My grammar is not perfect: I allow myself sprawling loose liberties. My notes are not void of typographical errors, run-on sentences or devoid of undocumentable words.

Tuesday night writer’s fatigue often effects my error sharpness. Unlike my unguarded uncanny tendency to immediately zone in on the one menu misspelling at nearly every restaurant I’ve taken a seat in. My own weekly Knabble document review often self-relays what I meant to say and not necessarily how I typed it.

My messages cay be murky. I muddle through them, too.  I think I’m pretty good at casting an issue without aim or allude. This a humbly self-examinatory conclusion drawn on revsited archives. It’s quite clear I always have a point, but I’ve noticed I’m not always sure why I felt compelled to make it. (If I ever get to the end of this story, I’ll amuse us by republishing.)

The truth is the more I muddle, the less I understand. The less I understand, and the more I struggle. There are countless times I’ve heard this command: Be still and know that I am God. When I can stop thrashing, my muddy storm waters eventually settle. Maybe, when my deeper streams clear, I will be able to return and clarify.

I’m pretty sure having a writing obligation to anyone other than myself would not be met with enthusiasm. I don’t know that I could be placidly accepting of rejections intimating I do not have an amazingly wide-reaching professional talent.

I would rather continue to be a familiar folk artist, engaging in wide-open irregular keystrokes, portraying only the patterns in my life which might help you make sense of yours.

Quote for the Week:

Enjoy this Week’s Discovery Links:

Love Isn’t Love (Til You Give It Away)

Per Oscar Hammerstein: The Sound of Music: I spent an hour searching for a male version of this song. Frank Sinatra is the voice in my head with the added word ‘baby’ Couldn’t find it, but this is an interesting story of how the lyric made it into the play but not to the soundtrack.  16 Going on 17 (Love isn’t Love Til You Give it Away)

Per Reba McIntyre:  very similar, liberties, perhaps: love isn’t love (Til You Give It Away)

Per Michael W. Smith: different and a great message:  Give It Away

 

Cross Weave (First Intermission)

I write. I’ve always owned the question, “Why?” and avoided the questioning, “Why Not?”

There is a line of fear that I have not crossed and may never cross, either. The line exists solely due to a carefully balanced imaginary scale I believe will undoubtedly tilt my expression toward obligation or enjoyment.

It’s not always enjoyable. It’s easier sometimes than others. Drawing blanks is sometimes an issue. Deciding what comes next, what should come next constantly wars. True time telling lends logic to the story. Topically timely stories in tune with the season or current events bring bits of the past to current focus and perhaps make more of an impact then straight-forward biography. I’ve only recently recognized it’s just not straight-forward.

I can’t call my documentation a hobby because it is not always enjoyable. Always enjoyable seems to me to lack in purpose and nothing is created without an end-user in mind. Artists create for expression – it’s our process for making our thoughts and feelings known. We know how we feel. Our projects convey messages open to interpretation. No one creates to be misunderstood, and we can only hope they get it right.

It’s not an obligation because no one is demanding or commanding I must. I seek self-challenge. On my own terms. Unfortunately, imposing a non-challenge on me is a lot like expecting pudding to cling to a mirror. I’ll slide away. Regrettably, leaving little bits of me behind.

I acknowledge this: My perfection obsession has dwindled. My aim and style and candidness has surely evolved over 485 weeks. I’m no longer writing snippet excerpts. I’m no longer dryly paragraphing, ‘this is what happened.’ I’m imparting values, occasionally offering wisdom, attempting to cross-weave of all our lives.

Quote for the week:

Enjoy This Week’s Discovery Links:

Write: Typos

Write: Legacy

Who is: Dr. Andrew Weil?

Once a Week

As near as I can tell, I began my first on-line blog in February 2008. The only semi-proofs I have are a binder-clipped, wrinkled paper table of contents printed on December 27, 2013, and an entry dated November 10, 2009 that indicates I’d been at it for 89 weeks.

The announcement that the University of Michigan library would be offering a free movable type publishing platform arrived in a daily news email. Known as ‘mblog’ the site hosted my weekly entries until December 2013.

I eased into blogging by rolling away from a previous weekly publishing. What started as a weekly email to 37 people turned into a way to update family, friends and coworkers on a 2007 mission trip.  I called the original email newsletter, “Midweek Encouragement” and it offered just that. The standard header on each weekly Word document read, “One Page, Once A Week for the Promotion of Learning and Love.”

When mblog ended, I had to find a new way to keep sharing. I researched a bit and ended up on WordPress. The reviews indicated it was an easy-to-use site, the yearly fee was reasonable and instead of having to email a link directly to my readers, the link could be auto-sent to any subscriber.

The subscriber thing didn’t exactly take. The direct email list is now 64 participants, and the WordPress subscriber list has stalled at 58. Exposure on Facebook and Twitter is auto-linked and between the two, there are at least 250 potential exposures.

February must be an historically slow month for me because that’s the month I chose to enter the Instagram world in 2016. I’m hovering around 175 followers there.  To be honest my average weekly WP stats show about 25 average views per week.

The most read week I ever had was October 4, 2016 with 131 views, not so coincidentally the near 10^th year anniversary of my husband Jeff’s  passing. This isn’t a pity party. It’s just me contemplating my strange dedication to maybe being heard, at least once a week.

Here’s what I do know, though. 484 weeks in, the answer to the hard and frequent question addressed in that November 2009 passage hasn’t changed much.

Quote for the Week: