Posts Tagged "perspective"
Perspective
I’m laughing this morning. I’m laughing cause I can’t bloody walk. HAHAHA! Funny, right?
No really, it is. Haven’t you heard the joke? I don’t remember it exactly but it’s something like, how do you cure toothache. Why, chop your leg off, of course! Doubt you’ll be thinking about your teeth then!
Ha! Haha!
Ok, I’ll stop with the manic laughter. Because nobody has chopped my leg off, I’m just having the biggest Fibromyalgia flare-up that I’ve had in a long time. Maybe since before Kai was born actually. It’s hard to qualify sometimes, although it doesn’t really matter anyway. It hurts, a lot. That’s all you need to know really. Pain killers aren’t touching it, but then they rarely did.
In any case, I AM laughing. Because there’s nothing like a good dose of physical pain to get things in perspective, is there? And I mean that both ways round. I mean it in the sense that me moping around clutching my sore heart and bruised ego has come quite clearly into focus, given the reminder of what life was like just a few years ago, when EVERY day was like this, and instead of striding through the countryside, feeling sorry for myself and taking photographs like I did last week, I would have been pushed in the wheelchair that I lived in for such a long time.
Read MoreWriting Workshop #8 – Addictions and Epiphanies
Morning all. First of all, I need to say a huge thank you to everyone that took part last week. I was overwhelmed with how many of you took part and so touched and humbled by the beautiful letters that so many of you wrote. Thank you for sharing such personal and moving moments with me – I feel honoured to have shared them with you, and your bravery in facing difficult memories gave me the strength to revisit a few myself.
So, it’s a new week, and one that I hope will be just as creatively inspiring and challenging.
For all your newbies (and it’s never to late to join in), here’s how it works… I’m going to give you 5 writing/blogging prompts. Pick one, pick two, or do them all if you’re really keen – it’s up to you. How you respond is your choice. You could share a real-life story, or make one up. You could write a poem or just free-write without thinking too hard and see what happens. It can be funny; it can be serious; it can be emotional. It can be whatever you want it to be. The only rule is to have fun with it!
Prompts each week will take their inspiration from blogs, current affairs, daily life, or just whatever everyone happened to be talking about that week. If you’d like to suggest a prompt then send me an email or catch me on Twitter – I would love to hear your ideas.
So here they are:
1. What are you addicted to?
- Inspired by Kat at Slugs on the Refrigerator and her yarnaholism.
2. Tell me of your proudest moment.
- Inspired by Tara at Sticky Finger’s beautiful post ‘Jumpers for Goalposts’
3. “Have you ever had an epiphany, when you realized that something you’d long believed wasn’t really true?”
- Inspired by Amber Strocel’s recent post that asked this question and made me think.
4. Put yourself in the mindset of someone else, someone you see on the news, or read about in a book, or see a photo of in a magazine, or pass in the street. Perhaps even someone you know. Write about the world from their perspective, imagine how they must feel.
- Inspired by Heather from Notes from Lapland’s moving piece of writing based on her empathy for the victims of the Cumbrian Floods.
5. Have a good rant. Go on! You know you want to… get whatever has been bugging you off your chest. But you must be honest and not afraid to go against the grain!
- Inspired by ME! and my Christmas rant this week.
Now here’s what you have to do. Write your post and publish it on your blog between now and Wednesday. On Wednesday come back and use the widget that will be up to paste in the URL of your post to share. Then take some time to read some of the other entries and leave some comment love! We’re not here to critique – just to have fun and support each other in our writing experiments. So be kind please.
Anyone who would like to submit something via email, or even anonymously will be more than welcome to do so. I’ll post them on the site here and include the link in Wednesday’s round-up.
Feel free to use the Workshop badge on your blog or as part of your post if you like. Code is here:
Note: I’m told Blogger does something a bit funny with the code so you’ll need to copy and paste it and then retype the quotation marks (“) as Blogger changes them for some reason.
See you Wednesday then!
P.S. And if you fancy plugging this workshop on the social network of your choice? Then that would be fan-frigging-tastic.
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This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.
Read MoreIt is hard not to want
It is hard not to want a bigger kitchen when you only have one work surface, two drawers, three cupboards and a cooker that only works if the planets are in correct alignment.
It is hard not to want proper plumbing when a hot shower is rarely guaranteed and seemingly dependent on the washing habits of an entire street.
It is hard not to want some new clothes when the jumper you are wearing is on it’s third owner.
It is hard not to want to see the world when it is so beautiful.
It is hard not to want to be successful at something you love so much and think you maybe, MAYBE could be quite good at.
It is hard not to want that thing you love so much to make you some money when you live so close to the wire.
It is hard not to want your baby to sleep better when you are so unbelievably tired.
It is hard not to want to be more self-sufficient when you rely so much on the generosity of others.
It is hard not to want an extra couple of free hours in the day when there is so much to do.
It is hard not to want to be pain-free when you have an army of tiny microscopic beavers gnawing at your joints, crapping in the resulting orifice and then lighting that crap on fire.
It is hard not to want a peaceful neighbourhood when the soundtrack to your life is a dog’s incessant barking, idiots arguing, car stereos blaring and doors slamming.
It is hard not to want to swap the view from your son’s window from this:
to 
… or to change the first thing he sees when he steps out the front door from this:
to 
It is hard not to want
BUT
I have.
SO much.
A home, food, warmth.
More love and friendship than I know what to do with and hardly deserve.
The companionship and unconditional love of the world’s most patient man.
The soft and perfect form of my boy with his head on my lap as I type.
A bright future ahead of me, full of promise and potential, and the exhilarating feeling that the best thing about being at the bottom of the pile is that the only way is up.
My words.
These things make the universe stop spinning for one second, and the bills stop worrying, and the housework seem so unimportant.
They make me stop wanting. And just be.
For a while.
Until I find myself wanting once more.
It is hard not to want.
I wish I knew how.
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What do you find it hard not to want?
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