Tongue Tied #Language #SoCS

“Language is your medium and use it to the max.”

—Anne Rice

Stream of Consciousness Saturday

I think about language as I sit in the quiet room of my local library on certain Wednesday nights. I am trying to come up with a bit of story to read out loud at the end of my writing group and I want to use the right sort of words and sentences.

Anne Rice is one who believes in adverbs, even though many so-called writing pros condemn the use of them. Ugh!

How am I supposed to know what is the right way to go?

I’m just glad I’ve managed/mastered the English language this far, when I wish I’d focused harder and done better at learning French when I was in school. I am proud that Canada is a multi-language nation and it can only serve as a benefit.

My family doesn’t all speak Polish or German. I wish we did. My father’s parents didn’t teach him their native European languages, by speaking them at home when he was young. I think they were so focused on learning English, as still fairly new to North America, that they couldn’t be bothered. I hope they didn’t feel any sort of shame surrounding the speak of their birth countries, being recent immigrants to Canada.

My mom learned German, as my grandparents always spoke it, but a certain dialect of the language. My grandpa used to tell me stories of how he didn’t even speak English before going to school. It was always German in his home as a child.

My mom speaks some and understands it. This allows her to speak to my uncle who visits from Germany every few years.

I was recently blown away by the beauty and rhythm of Spanish, as I prepared to travel to Mexico. I tried, for months, to learn some so I wouldn’t be totally lost when I went down there. By the end of my week, I’d gotten better at recognizing what was being said around me, but I would have needed many more weeks there to be able to speak any with much confidence.

Language is hard. It is one of those things that gets harder and harder to learn as you age. I am so set on learning to play the violin, at age 33, that I can’t possibly fit in learning any other language on top of that.

Ah well…there’s always my forties.

TToT: Holy Humour, Creativity, and Family Guy Batman! – Cross Fading, #10Thankful #Panorama

Walking this morning through the old cemetery in Montreal, where the sun shone down, and flowers grew, and insects busied themselves about the grass and shrubbery, the gravestones stood collected and collectively silent. I observed the names carved thereupon, of generations come and gone, resting beside each other now. And I took note. All those names fading on the stones. Names from all number of nations. Names, all shuffled together on the hillside and beneath the trees. Scottish next to Italian, English and Irish next to French and Spanish, Greek side by side with Polish and German. Names of immigrants, each and every one, come here from the European continent to make and live out their short lives. Names all silent now, long gone, indifferent, forevermore in company, lying in the same ground.

Alexi Murdoch on Instagram

What is an electric blue cloud? What is red? What does an orange sky represent?

Orange Sky – Alexi Murdoch

What a crazy world we live in. I usually write about that in a segment I like to call, “In The News and On My Mind.” However, I just can’t today. I know very little about all the bigger than big factors playing all parts concerned.

What’s happening, when British MP Jo Cox is murdered last week? Venezuela is apparently in crisis. And Brexit is all over the news?

Is it really every man/country for itself now? Do we help each other out, or do we tear each other down, only look out for our own best interest? How can the world survive if we all think like that?

On the other hand, as the US has told itself many times, especially in the last fifteen or so years, one country can’t fix/rescue/control all other countries.

I just don’t know. Canada, where I live, honestly feels more and more like an island in a drowning world. We may be one of the more peaceful, quiet players, but that can’t possibly last forever either.

Canada Day is coming up next week. Perhaps I can figure more out about it all by then, to write more of my thoughts on it, but for now, here is my list of thankfuls.

TEN THINGS OF THANKFUL

For the chance to shout, through my words, to the world about the kind of man my own father is, on Father’s Day and every day.

Her Dad Gave Her New Life and Rebirth-Where’s the Father’s Day Card for That? – Good Man Project

Clever title, right?

😉

For my sister and mother and their help.

Update on my email and technology issues is that my sister and mother helped me delete many thousands of emails. I am an email hoarder. I appreciate their patience.

For fresh strawberries/a strawberry moon on the first day of summer.

I am obsessed with moons of all sorts, be they blue or red or super.

Summer solstice and it made me think of the story I wrote about strawberry moons, a few years back. May share that in spoken word format on the new podcast.

For the discovery of electric blue clouds, which I used as an image for my #1000Speak theme for June.

Electric Blue Planet – 1000 Voices Speak For Compassion

For the chance to be a part of an important Kickstarter campaign, on a literary travel magazine start-up that is going to bring attention to all the perspectives of travel writing which exist and, up till now, may not have been heard.

If you love to read about travel, exploration, adventure, and place, check out the amazing work they are doing.

Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel – Kickstarter Campaign

They are working to raise a certain amount, before launching their first issue this coming September. They have a goal they hope to meet, so they can pay their writers and contributors a little something, which many places don’t do.

The debate over paying writers is ongoing and I know, like world issues, is two-sided. I just like what Panorama is trying to do.

Maybe journals like it can help stem further divisiveness between cultures, countries, human beings, in the wake of all that’s happened and is happening. Can’t hurt to try anyway. Could end up making all the difference in the world.

That Brian and I finally got our first podcast episode recorded.

Phew!

More work than I ever imagined it would be. Lovely feeling of accomplishment when we did finish though.

In the process, he taught me about “cross fades” and so much more.

It’s not only the recording, but it’s the editing too. We hope to make it sound somewhat professional, while holding onto our authentic style. Entertaining and educational at the same time.

We will be releasing it this coming week.

It’s like jumping off a cliff, metaphorically of course, but exhilarating.

For the challenge of writing new lyrics to a song my brother first wrote several years ago and of which has quickly grown very important to me.

This song is not your typical radio hit. It’s made up of several parts which are almost like their own little, individual songs, inside one longer musical framework. It’s a musical/lyrical journey.

🙂

The theme is getting lost for a decade of your life. What does that feel like? Well, I equate it with getting swept up and sent adrift on an ocean of endless uncertainty.

We just had to work to make my lyrics fit the parts of the song. It needed a melody and further arrangement. It had to be structured. I hope it comes together, just like “Don’t Look Back” came together in the end.

For the gift of colours in my life, even for a little while.

What Is Red?

Red is my favourite colour, but how to describe why and what it is to someone who has never seen it? Hmmm.

😦

My brother asked me, during the podcast, and I thought and thought and thought.

I am grateful that I ever saw orange, blue, red. I lose sight of that sometimes, as I’ve now lost colours from my life, but my brother reminds me to be grateful again.

Oh, and thanks going out to Kristi from

Finding Ninee

for having me along as a guest co-host again.

For hot June days. Hot but not humid.

Big contrast from the weather we had at the beginning of the week to the end of it.

Sure, getting into a car after being in somewhere was like entering a sauna, which I am not fond of, but at least it was a dry heat, not a humid, sticky heat.

For the chance to see Finding Dory in a comfortable chair at the movies (which is a bit of an oxymoron) and for getting to see it with family.

It’s a film about the ocean, which I love. It was my first movie theatre experience with my three-year-old nephew. It was comfortable seats and popcorn and other snacks for breakfast, as it was a children’s morning movie showing.

I also must praise the theatre, not just for their foot rests and lounge recliners, but for their excellent audio description services. I’ve had lots of problems other places, for other movies, but this time it all went smoothly.

Finding Dory was moving for me, in a few places, and I am writing a piece on why that was. Not sure where to try submitting it, but I think it’s worth highlighting.

So, I made something this week. I took a chance and went for it. The world had its moments of turmoil, but I choose to remain cautiously optimistic, for now at least.

Mercury Falling – Sting

I explain to my almost totally blind younger brother about colour and he shows me all the music I didn’t know I’d been missing.

I like the tone of “Mercury Falling” and I like the imagery of it, as sometimes it’s not so easy to feel our world is headed in the right direction, but even winter and lower temperatures aren’t all bad.

“I was free with every road as my home. No limitations and no commitments. But then summer passed and winter came and I fell short for safety. I fell for its spell, slowly humming me to sleep, because I was tired and small, too weak to take or handle those opinions and views, attacking me from every angle. Against my art, against my self, against my very way of living. I collected my thoughts, my few possessions and built isolated walls around my values and character. I protected my own definition of beauty and success like a treasure at the bottom of the sea, for no one saw what I saw, or felt the same as I did, and so I wanted to keep to myself.

― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

Just Jot It January: leotards, romance, and snails #JusJoJan

I know I will be just one of many to write on how

elegance

seems to have escaped me, all the years of my life and I don’t anticipate that changing anytime soon.

I predict that will be the overlying opinion, as most wouldn’t admit just how elegant they really may be or have been at one time.

Or maybe they will tell a tale of a time they’ve felt most elegant in their own lives, like for prom, at a fancy party, or wedding of their own or someone else’s.

I wore dresses as a little girl, but hated the leotard. It made me extremely itchy.

I stopped wearing dresses after that, as I was small and then, suddenly, I wasn’t.

I am not necessarily saying a girl needs to wear a dress to be considered elegant, but it helps.

It’s one of those self image/body image things probably, but I realize I am not alone with that.

How do you really feel elegant anyway? What does it take? The proper amount of self image, the perfect dress, or for other people to acknowledge the level of elegance that radiates?

I always loved that song:

Lady In Red,

ever since I was young.

It felt like the most romantic song. Never mind it was about a lady in red, which just so happened to be my favourite colour, but the lady in the song seemed, in my opinion, to be the epitome of elegance.

Everyone wanted to dance with her. All the other guys were jealous. All this added up to the perfect romantic song, like a favourite fairy tale or romance novel.

But now, as we speak of elegance, the song comes back to me. I can’t be that, do not know how to become that, how to transform myself into anything resembling that.

I am more of a plain, regular, average home body kind of a girl. Of all the definitions I’ve read of elegance, that is not me. Even if I could transform into something even remotely close to that, it would be only for a short moment in time, and then it would be back to being plain old me.

Elegant equals fancy and I guess, if it comes to that, I would rather eat a pizza and a salad, instead of fish eggs and snails, but maybe, just once…

The rules for #JusJoJan are here.

Today’s

Just Jot It January, #JusJoJan

is brought to us by one fantastic blogger I’ve just discovered.

Forty, c’est Fantistique!

She is a pilot, plays the flute, learned French, and she cooks also. She is making her forties great.

This girl, in her thirties is now feeling inspired, with my plan to learn to play violin, starting on my birthday next month.

The Dark Tower, #SoCS

The tower in, what is known as the City of Light, was said to have gone dark.

The City of Love, known for romance was plunged into darkness.

I have not been to Paris, to France, but I’ve wanted to go, for a long time. There’s so much I want to see there.

I do not speak French, but I listened to the recorded sound of the gun shots and the bomb blasts, on the news. I wondered how I was going to describe it later. I’m still not sure things like this can be described, in words, but words are all I’ve got to work with.

All the talk of blood and bodies and I know what “indescribable” truly means. These horrors are in a different city, a new country, on any given nightly news broadcast. I don’t want to be afraid, to wonder how I’m going to describe my fears to others.

I can’t see the images on television, but I hear the distinctive whine of European emergency vehicles, the sound that I woke to, to hear out my window, the first night I spent in Dublin, Ireland. I hear that sound again, but I know why I hear it, what it’s duty is to those in crisis now.

When we say something is indescribable…well, I know it can be described, but I don’t know. Not really. I grasp at the words I love, to make the indescribable describable, but my brain hurts inside my skull.

How does someone, my brother, how does he describe the world to my niece?

She is young still and can be somewhat sheltered from the realities of the world, but for how long?

What would I say? How would I make something so indescribable become clear, when it isn’t even clear to me?

Not just the facts and the details of a senseless night in Paris, but of the state of things. It’s simply indescribable to me, that a human being, as I am a human being, would do harm to another. I don’t know why and I don’t know, even what the issue really is. Religion, one’s beliefs, and the lengths people go to for all these are indescribable.

It’s an indescribable feeling to hear my niece or my nephew’s voices say my name, my siblings/their parent’s names.

It’s indescribable what I smell in the air, on the perfect fall day or in the middle of a still winter night.

It’s indescribable what love really feels like. What heartbreak does to the human soul. What death and the loss of a loved one damages deep down.

I describe a lot of things, but my fading, remaining sight makes it harder and harder, nearly impossible, an indescribable, retreating skill lost, to describe what I once saw so well.

I want light and dark. Love and loss. These are realities. The stuff that really does matter is the stuff that’s always going to be indescribable, but I need to try anyways.

SoCS

Stream of Consciousness Saturday:

http://lindaghill.com/2015/11/13/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-nov-1415/

Granted, not the best Friday the 13th on record.

Superstition, to me, is indescribable. It makes people think strange things, but, oh, how I long for the usual in Friday the 13th superstitious beliefs now.

Jean Louise the Silent: My Review of Go Set a Watchman, Part One

“It’s always easy to look back and see what we were yesterday, ten years ago. It is hard to see what we are. If you can master that trick, you’ll get along.”
–Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

I thought I’d heard it all, as far as negative news since Go Set a Watchman’s release, until I read this of course:

Disappointed by Go Set a Watchman? Sorry, that’s the risk inherent in fiction. – The Guardian

A bookstore actually offered to refund the price of the book, if someone wasn’t happy with its contents.

What?

John Mullan and The Guardian are correct. How many theatres will give me a refund if I don’t like the movie I’ve just seen on their screen? This is a ridiculous thing for a bookstore to do. I don’t care how many complaints they received.

I wanted to start my review off with this story because it illustrated the unique craziness circling around the release of Harper Lee’s first book in over fifty years.

No matter how funny, touching, or smart a book is, there will always be someone who didn’t see those things in its pages.

I saw it all and more.

I am the first to admit I was unnerved and hesitant when I first heard of GSAW’s existence. I worried that this was some greedy scheme and that the aging author might be unaware of its upcoming publication. I thought long and hard about whether or not I could even read it. With so many unanswered questions about the road to this release, I would hate to find out Harper Lee was completely unable to consent to her pre-Mockingbird manuscript being published after so long.

Big News For Harper Lee Fans Everywhere

This would be the only reason I might want my money back for this book.

Then I wondered at so many people’s determination to not take part in this phenomenon. They assumed Lee must be incapable of making this decision, of having any competent ability at all. Her stroke, blindness, deafness are all reasons for contemplation and caution, of course; however, I let my curiosity get the better of those doubts. I would shake her hand and tell her how much this book touched me personally, give her the money directly, if I could.

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”
–Dr. Jack Finch

***

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

I first discovered to Kill a Mockingbird, as required reading, when I was in high school. I read it again last winter, wanting to see if my feelings might be different after more than fifteen years, and in preparation for the summer release, just in case I decided to join the crowd.

It’s a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird

I did not take the book to heart, that first reading, like so many have. For a lot of people, To Kill a Mockingbird is near and dear to their hearts, with the messages it speaks. It is a snapshot of America in the 20th century and before. It was fiction that illustrated what it was like, race in the south.

As a white girl living in Canada, at the turn of this new century, I hadn’t encountered a whole lot of the racial issues so many others had. I could relate on the question of equal rights for all, being born with a visible disability, and so that I knew something about.

Admittedly, I found the book to drag in spots. It felt like short stories woven together. I did enjoy the childhood point of view, main character Scout’s toughness, and father Atticus and his admirable attempt at freeing an innocent black man from the injustice that was so much a part of the south at that time.

Dusty Old Books

Those are the things that stuck with me over the years. It was never at the top of my list of favourite books, but it left its mark. When I heard this was happening, I wanted to reread TKAM so I could make that connection a fresh.

GO SET A WATCHMAN

Note: possible spoilers may be ahead, but I try to avoid this in my reviews, as I don’t want to discourage anyone from reading. However, my ultimate goal is to intrigue the reader, just the right amount, to get you to give the book a chance, to sell it to you on its brilliance and poignancy.

“INTEGRITY, HUMOUR, AND patience were the three words for Atticus Finch.”

Would they still be applicable after finishing Go Set a Watchman?

I, too, was nervous at what version of Mr. Atticus Finch I would find in the pages of this newly unearthed manuscript, but I was highly curious and reading on to find out.

There’s a lot going on when this story begins, with all the news articles, the NAACP, and the white supremacists.

Miss Jean Louise (Scout) Finch must decide “if she can’t beat em or join em” either, when her community is held up, south against her new northern place of residence. Her father has been held to impossible standards, ever since he became her world when she was left without a mother, as a small child. Now she sees her perfect role model as a man, someone with faults and weaknesses, but still with the strong conviction he’s always held.

The climactic scene between Jean Louise and Atticus is powerful and a different sort to what any reader may have been used to from To Kill a Mockingbird. She is no longer a child and Atticus is revealing himself to her, while still desperately pleading for his daughter’s understanding and compassion.

***

Surprises on reading:

**I was taken aback by its length. When I got to the end I automatically thought, is that all?

I thought that, not in any “thank goodness that’s over” sort of way. It was the complete opposite of that, actually. I wanted the sageness to continue on, a few pages more.

**I was stunned by some invisible club of the sort I’d heard of with readers of Mockingbird. I have felt it about very few books over the years.

Scout’s Back with a Bang!

Scout is charming and loveable, even though she is now an adult. There’s a glimpse of the strong child she once was, especially with the flashbacks Lee had planted throughout.

“She was a person who, when confronted with an easy way out, always took the hard way.”

She is tough and headstrong, but it’s obvious, adult Jean Louise can still get herself into the craziest predicaments, even when she isn’t trying.

**My main shock comes on hearing about the death of Jem from the same illness which took Atticus’s wife. This, I fully admit, I had not been expecting. I wondered how this might effect my enjoyment of the rest of the book. I wondered why Lee had chosen to kill off one of the Finch children.

Okay, so that counts as a “spoiler”, does it? Oops, but please do read on.

🙂

I will try not to do it again. Promise. But you knew that one already, right?

**I was pleasantly surprised by the frequent passages filled with humour and wit. I actually laughed out loud a few times, which I honestly did not do with TKAM, but Jean Louise (whether as a child or an adult) is always saying the shocking thing, improper southern lady behaviour, or she’s standing out and accused of not holding her tongue.

Whether it’s the incident where she gets herself folded up in the train’s wall-mounted bed, only half clothed. Or else, on her return to Alabama and the play fight between Jean Louise and Henry (her suitor) which resulted in the two of them ending up in the river, fully clothed.

“Right now I’d just as soon push you in as look at you.”

Would the town of Maycomb be able to resist the spreading of rumours and passing along of gossip, which entailed them being naked in that river?

In one flashback, there’s the instance where Scout, still struggling with her perceived farewell to being a tomboy and struggling with being a young woman, walked around for days, believing another girl’s story that being French kissed lead to being impregnated. Or one flashback in particular, of a teenage Scout, where her underwear ended up high on a school billboard, with Henry coming to the rescue in a big way.

Other flashbacks, scattered throughout, brought a little piece of Mockingbird to this new tale and make the absence of Jem a little bit easier to swallow.

These flashbacks, such as a pretend revival and a baptism, resulting in Scout ending up in her neighbour’s fish pond and being caught by real life clergymen, make the perfect melding of past and present.

Well loved characters, mentioned only in passing in Watchman, such as Dill Harris bring To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman together rather nicely when flashbacks are included as they are.

It was wonderful to discover Harper Lee’s humorous side, with Jean Louise as the central component, which is a nice alternative to the more serious sociological writing she shares, with Atticus as the moral barometer for so many.

Will Atticus fall from grace? Does Jean Louise find a way to live harmoniously in Maycomb, Alabama?

“I can take anything anybody calls me so long as it’s not true.”
–Atticus Finch

Stay tuned for Part Two.

SoCS: Dear Grandma

***

Dear Grandma,

I started this blog with an entry on my birthday and in that entry I talked about your diaries.

They are still upstairs, in the perfect chest I found for them, protection against any possible damage.

You wrote in those every night, for so many years. I tried to follow your example, many times, but always lost interest. I guess I didn’t believe I had enough to say.

I don’t feel that way anymore Grandma. In fact, it’s become quite a problem now, now that I have too much to say and I can’t stop myself.

I think what you had to say, all written by hand up in those books, I think that was all important stuff and I wish I could see to read it myself.

I remember how you used to read from your diaries, to me, at your kitchen table sometimes.

You sometimes even stumbled and had trouble reading your own writing, from so many years gone by.

You loved your ritual of writing in your diary at night. I loved that about you.

Now I don’t know if you would think it quite so good an idea, if you were still here, if you knew I wrote my blog for so many to see.

You were from a different time and you didn’t understand the Internet. From the few conversations we had about it, you didn’t seem all that impressed.

I have good reason to believe you would understand though, if you knew what it means to me to have a journal, a blog, a diary.

You knew I couldn’t write by hand anymore.

I would show you my blog, but you wouldn’t buy a computer, so I would have to print out my blogs for you to read.

I know you’d want me to. You’d ask when I saw you, if I had any more journals written since we saw each other last, because you loved reading my words.

I miss the unconditional love and acceptance you gave, that pure pride I heard in your voice when, on those rare occasions, I showed you something I’d written.

I write with you in mind, all the time, Grandma.

I want to keep a journal, a record of all the thoughts and all the experiences I’ve had since you’ve been gone, that I wish I could share with you.

I dedicate today’s stream of consciousness Saturday post to you.

Love,
Your granddaughter.

***

This was my post for this week’s SoCS, with today’s prompt, “Jour”, from:

http://lindaghill.com/2015/04/10/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-1115/

I didn’t feel very French today.

🙂

I thought of journal and immediately thought of my grandmother’s diaries, the ones that are my most treasured belongings, since she died ten years ago.

The Little Stone House That Love Built

The little boy loved to play in the dirt and the tiny stones and gravel of the ball diamonds that filled his family’s summers.

While his parents sat up above him, on the bleachers watching their son or daughter’s baseball games, their youngest child would amuse himself as best he could.

He and his older sister did not play, both unable to really see well enough for such team sports, but she did not enjoy her little brother’s activities either. She did not enjoy playing in the dirt and getting it caught all underneath her fingernails.

She sat up next to her parents, just waiting for someone to suggest a trip to the snack bar, or booth as it was lovingly known as in her family.

It wasn’t all fun and games.

The same rocks that were sharp and hard under the children’s feet, before their other set of grandparents paved the top part of their driveway, those are just the type of rocks he was told to collect. It was always a torturous trip from one side of the stony driveway to the other.

Such as life. This is life sometimes: rocky.

Their grandparents before them knew this well.

***

The man had worked hard in his life, way before his grandchildren came along.

He had to dig ditches during the war, or so I believe I heard was the story. His life is something I often think about, unable to imagine what that would have looked like for him, as such a young Polish man: Polish, French, Polish, a war in Germany and across Europe, and to Canada he eventually came.

His days of hard work did not end there.

Working in the mines in Quebec. I shutter at this thought, being highly claustrophobic myself. What did he have to do? How did he toil just to make some money to support himself and his new wife, in a new country so unfamiliar to the both of them?

He was a brick layer and he moved to Ontario to make a better life for the children they would have. My father was one of those children.

HE would build the little house, for his growing family, on Dover Street, close to the park.

This little house and the one I thought of today, on the anniversary of his death.

We have his houses to remember him by, whether it’s the big one, we still drive by sometimes or the miniature he built, from skill and with love.

For months my little brother brought him bags and bags of stones for the project they were working on together. They were buddies and my opa had a special thing in mind for his grandson.

He took those skills, now scaled down in size, due to all those years of drudgery and a bad back as a result. He would build a little house from the stones the little boy collected and he would build it, special, just for that boy.

Stones, a wooden frame, cardboard shingles for the roof. The little stone house was simple and beautiful. The accompanying garage, along with a chimney, and long-ago-lost plastic Santa on top.

The little house and garage are still with us, down in my parent’s basement. They serve as a memory of love, the simple and sweet love my father’s father had for my brother, and me too.

It is a kind and gentle love that will never be tarnished by age, time, or circumstance. We were young when we lost him, when he was taken from us. This freezes that love, a representation of innocence in childhood. I feel it every time I run my hands over the stones that he sculpted into a work of art.

He made my brother something he could touch with his hands, unable to see, and keep even after he was soon gone.

It will forever be, to me, the house that love built.

***

Last year, only weeks into my blogging journey, I wrote a post,

The Beginning and the End,

for the twentieth year since my first experience with death and loss of a loved one.

I will continue to write about him, every year in March.

Even as memories of him fade, bit by bit, slowly from my mind, I will never let him disappear from my heart.

Writing about him, whether here on my blog or elsewhere, he will never be gone completely.

One Year and Counting: Kind and Generous

Happy Birthday to me and here I am – I made it one year as a blogger.

I didn’t give up, I didn’t give in, and I did not burn out or run out of things to write about. It felt somewhat like a floodgate that was opened, spilling out all the things I’ve ever wanted to write about but didn’t for so long.

I liked the idea of pairing my actual birthday and what would become my blogging anniversary and that is just what I’ve done.

I never could have imagined, when I wrote my

very first post – Bucket List,

that I would have come so much farther than I dared believe I could and that I would have so much to show for it.

I thought a lot about how I wanted to mark this occasion and I decided to take this opportunity to thank all those who have made this, creatively, one of the best years of my life.

🙂

***

CANDACE JOHNSON

One of my biggest supporters, almost from the very beginning, has been Candace at:

Change It Up Editing and Writing Services

She gets the first spot in my list of thank you mentions – well deserved. The tagline from her website reads: “I love words. Especially yours.” This clearly shows her dedication to helping others.

When I was only debating and throwing around the idea of starting a blog in the first place I discovered her

Facebook page.

You can tell, or I soon learned how to, when someone genuinely wants to help you and to give you a moment of their time. I recognized, right away, that she was and is someone who is happy to help whenever, wherever, and however she possibly can.

Not everyone is willing to listen and do what they can, but when I reached out to Candace because I was, with my iPhone and its VoiceOver, unable to click on her Facebook links, she made a point of listening to what my issue was and doing what she could for me.

Ever since then, she has repeatedly put an extra copy of each link in the comments, where my VoiceOver recognizes it and allows me to read all the interesting articles and blog posts she shares on writing and editing.

I have learned so much from her. She granted me an interview, my first on Her Headache, and generously gave me the exposure, allowing me to write a guest post to explain to her readers some of the particular issues with technology that I face.

Since then she has continued to read and share my blog posts whenever she can. I will never forget her kindness and her support, the belief she has shown in my writing ever since.

I guess you could say that the bloggers and writers I have discovered and who have come to mean something to me, showing me kindness and assistance along the way, fall into a handful of different categories.

MAXWELL IVEY JR.

There’s the first blind seller of carnival rides I’ve ever met, who started a website to help advertise his business:

The Midway Marketplace

He is the friendliest person I have ever come across and he has done so much to show me how to open up, online and off.

He has introduced me to places for my blog and my writing to fit in, all while introducing me to other bloggers and writers, always there to answer any blogging or social media questions I might have.

Since I’ve begun talking with him he has started a second site (The Blind Blogger) and published his first ebook (Leading You Out of the Darkness Into the Light), which can be found here:

http://theblindblogger.net/ebooks/leading-you-out-of-the-darkness-into-the-light

STEPHANAE MCCOY

Then there’s the lady who has lost a lot of sight later in life, but who has not let that stop her. Instead, she has come out with this incredible resource for all women who are visually impaired and blind, but who still wish to be fashionable and stylish:

Bold Blind Beauty

Stephanae has again been someone willing to offer me support and an exchange of interviews. She has a site where she discusses things like makeup, shoes, and other accessories all girls like to indulge in from time to time. She includes not only photographs of these items, but the descriptions necessary for all women, even those who can not see, to be able to enjoy the things she recommends.

Sure, I may not wear makeup, but I still love to visit her website and especially I love to read about the interesting women she highlights on her Fierce Friday posts.

😉

She draws me in with the alliteration her blog name possesses.

🙂

I have met some wonderful authors and writers along the way too:

Alana Saltz,

Jordan Rosenfeld,

and writer, activist, and feminist:

Julie Zeilinger, from The FBomb.

The blogosphere is an amazing place; however, I sometimes feel like I stand out or I don’t quite fit into any particular niche. I guess this isn’t the worst thing in the world because I enjoy a number of areas of the blogging world and its many varied subjects.

I am in my early thirties, for those unfamiliar with me and my blog, but I am not a mother.

Parenting blogs are one of the most commonly found on the internet.

I have grown quite comfortable sandwiched between two groups in the blogging universe, all of which I do read for the array of different perspectives offered.

The second group are those twenty-something writers and bloggers, writing about the decade of exploration and self-discovery that the twenties has become. I guess I continue to return to blogs like these because, in some ways, I feel I am living some part of my twenties over again in my thirties, learning and growing and still so easily able to relate to the struggles these ladies are experiencing.

These bloggers include brilliant and insightful young women such as:

Young and Twenty,

Scarlet Wonderland,

Flowers and Wanderlust,

and

Single Strides.

Other blogs I love to follow include a Canadian writer and mother, a French blogger now living in the US, an Australian visually impaired travel blogger, a wizard with words, and a guy who lives with his illness and disability as best he can and who is a tireless activist for others with rare and debilitating conditions:

Carrie the Obscure CanLit Mama,

French writer and life coach Sylviane Nuccio,

Maribel of Touching Landscapes,

Lorraine of Wording Well,

and

Michael at Migraine Discussions.

What have I learned from one year of blogging and what advice would I give to those just starting out, who are where I was one year ago at this time? Hmmm.

I think this post from Scarlet Wonderland says it better than I ever could:

Advice For New Bloggers,

The best and only thing I have learned, think I knew all along, and would advise would be to remain authentic. I only know how to be me and that is all. If I ever did have those moments of watching what another blogger was doing, and the thought to emulate them crossed my mind, I soon realized that I have to stick on my own path and do things my own way.

Thank you to every one of my loyal family who read this blog and any friends and family, those who I know are reading, even if I sometimes don’t realize it.

Also, I want to take this time to thank everyone else. If I forgot you, I apologize. Just know I am grateful for your collective presence here and for each and every time you return to read one of my posts.

Whether it’s 100 or 1000 followers – I’m lucky to have you reading this. I appreciate every comment made, good or bad, because they’ve all taught me some powerful lessons, being able to hear other’s thoughts on what I write helps me to grow my voice.

This blog has sustained me through the hard times of the past year, gotten me through multiple rejections in love and in writing, and captured some new experiences and some lasting memories.

Half-way through this past year I got the crazy notion of starting a second one.

What was I thinking, right?

🙂

Kidding. I may have come a long way since I published my first post here, but I still have a long ways to go when it comes to the blogging side of things.

Now it’s each year of this blog that marks my life, more than New Year’s Eve does for most people.

I have goals I’d like to have reached this time next year.

I have a stubborn streak with the publications I was turned down from this past year. Maybe those serve to make me work even harder or, perhaps they are meant to be lessons, serving to teach me that not everything is meant to be.

I have a few exciting things in the works at this very moment. I hesitate to say anymore than that.

I know, I know – don’t you hate when people do that?

🙂

I will say as much as I believe I can, without jinxing myself completely. Yes, it’s happened before.

I hope to continue to write about new, different, and interesting subjects here and share even more fascinating people with you through the interviews I love so much to do.

Currently, what I can say is that I am in the midst of participating in two things, specifically:

The Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge

and

1000 Voices Speak For Compassion

Both are causes I believe deeply in.

Finally, I couldn’t end this post without thanking the one who first got this blog up and running for me and who encouraged me, helping me get passed the tricky and the technical.

Thanks BSK.

***

Now then…

*Clears throat*
Now that I’ve come full circle.

Love and life are scary sometimes. I am scared a lot of the time frankly, but this blog is one of the greatest rewards for all that fear.

Jennifer from Young and Twenty sums up fear best in this way:

The Power of Being Scared

**I truly believe that where I am right now, at this moment in time, is where I was always supposed to be.**

This line from my very first post (February, 2014) was true then and, hey – it’s just as true today.

What do you know?

🙂

Through all the hard times and the struggles – I still believe it and I can’t tell you how comforting that thought is.

An so – one year and counting and here’s to many more.

Natalie Merchant, Kind and Generous, on YouTube

I want to dedicate this anniversary post and this song to you all.

My Voice Amongst the Thousands

A week after the attack on the French Charlie Hebdo I woke up to find a movement beginning and spreading across my social media and the blogosphere: 1000 Voices Speak For Compassion.

I have been watching the news every night, feeling helpless, and then I read about this campain,which started small only the other day, aiming hopefully for 1000 participants; now growing.

On February 20th the movement hopes to post as one on blogs everywhere, all over the world. I thought…hey, this is something I could do. I can write about compassion.

It may not seem like it, in a world so big, but even a movement such as this one can be a powerful tool. It feels good to band together, in any way possible, to say something and speak about the good we want to spread. This, in a world where so much hatred and ignorance seems to spread like wildfire every single day.

I know issues like censorship and freedom of speech and of the press are hot button issues in the world today. Again, apparently I can’t seem to just choose a side and stick with it.

Should cartoons such as the ones in this case even be created, if it is at all disrespectful? Should freedom of speech, no matter who it insults, be what’s most important? Should we think before we act?

I am writing this because I have the freedom to do so. I may not be writing anything particularly inflammatory or I might. It all would depend on who you’d ask I suppose. I don’t take this freedom for granted. As a writer, I know the power of the “pen” or, in my case and as is so often the case these days, the keyboard.

There has been great support for the Paris newspaper that was attacked. Last weekend there was a march in France for Charlie Hebdo. News media outlets all across the world have come out condemning the attack and I agree it was a seriously cowardly act.

Now, I know about writing and words and how the written word is clearly powerful.

“Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you.”

This is bunk!

As for these cartoons:

I have enjoyed art as a child, but I can no longer see it. I have not seen these cartoons at the centre of this story.

I know there is not enough sense of humour around the world and different cultures take offence to things, widespread degrees of sensitivity.

I don’t know and can’t really speak on the issue. I don’t know what the need was, so strong of satire and freedom of the press.

Perhaps I wish every culture of the world could be on the same level to understand why one is so offended by something the other does.

I wanted to participate in 1000 Speak (which is now the official hashtag) because I believe compassion and understanding of others is the key.

Also in the news lately, at home here in my own country of Canada is another very disturbing story that has been on my mind.

It’s the issue of the lack of respect for females in our culture and in youth, on college campuses and it’s something I fear nobody, not students or grown adults who should know better, takes seriously enough.

It’s been in the news, for weeks it seems, but maybe it takes precisely the news media to make a dent in the problem.

It took place at the dentistry school, at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

A group of male students was caught posting horrible things on Facebook about female classmates. Such nonchalant discussion about drugging and hate sex are probably more common than I want to believe. I really do not know what makes anyone, at any age, think that is okay to think, let alone say about another human being.

Red tape. Channels. What is the appropriate way to deal with this and why has it been handled the way it has to this point?

It seems like this story has been going on for a while and just today I heard on the news that the cops finally received the information they requested to aid in their investigation. What would take the school administration this long? Were they dragging their feet?

Surely they have daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers. What is this pervasiveness in our society to downplay something so important?

I don’t know that writing can have any effect on these moral questions and serious events whatsoever. Perhaps, the extra news coverage on the problem at Dalhousie is just the thing, public pressure, to bring about just the necessary punishment for those involved.

As for the deeper questions of freedom of speech and expression I don’t know what will happen. France is in the spotlight right now, but it’s just the latest in a never-ending parade of headlines. Why can’t we all just get along? Ha!

I don’t always articulate my feelings so well here, but I wanted to jot down these two examples as I announce my intention of being one of those bloggers who plans to write about compassion on February 20th. I want to speak up along with others who intend on speaking.

There’s a lot being discussed back and forth over my social media today about how to best get the message across. I can’t promise I will keep up with all the social media avenues of awareness for this thing, but I can do what I do best: I can share my own unique perspective, on my blog, for the sort of compassionate world I never lose hope of waking up to find one day.

As I said in an interview I did on a blog just yesterday, I wish I could shake the world into seeing reason. I will continue to set my own small example of what it means to find compassion for all human beings and empathy for what they might be feeling or what has brought them to where they are today.

I will be one of thousands and that’s a start.

From a Distance – Bette Midler on YouTube

Spotlight Saturday, Holiday Addition: Down but Definitely Not Out

It’s almost winter and do you know what that means?

Yes, Christmas and New Year’s Eve, of course.

But it also means the dreaded body aches, chills, headaches, stuffy noses, and sore throats.

The jolly merry old illnesses and colds of the season.

Other than the movie review I posted the other day, I have taken a few blogging sick days, after being pulled down this past week with a pretty nasty cold, first of the season.

What are the odds I will be able to knock the number of these down from last year, from three to just one?

Happy Holidays to me. At least I should be back to my old self by Christmas.

Anyway…it has been quite the week for me, on a more positive note, with a list of the blogs I have been featured on lately. Also, my chosen story in a holiday short essay contest, and an interview I recently did with a fellow blind travel blogger/writer.

I hope you enjoy and feel free to check out any or all of the blogs and websites I list below, both for the work I’ve done and for those who have hosted or been interviewed by me.

***

I have met a lot of interesting people, bloggers, writers over this past year or so. One in particular is a visually impaired writer and traveler from Australia who was kind enough to feature me on her travel site back in the summer. Glad to be returning the favour I asked her if, I could interview her on my new travel website and here it is:

Interview with Maribel of Touching Landscapes

Next, sticking with the travel theme, I received my second chance to showcase my travel writing skills, with a guest post I wrote for a blogger, writer, and traveler who has just recently updated and consolidated three or so separate blogs into one. I thought the highly personal reason for why I hope to one day travel to the birthplace and the French village of Louis Braille and check off an important item on my WanderList would be the perfect fit for her newly put-together website:

Louis Braille – The French Inventor That Changed Blind People’s Life

To cap off that Friday full of guest posts and coming up on the end of the year, I was once again mentioned in a end-of-the-year round-up of a fellow blogger. She runs a style website for blind and visually impaired women and I contacted her earlier in the year. We spoke and from there she featured me on her Fierce Friday series, followed by me interviewing her for my blog a short time later. Well, now she has included me in the midst of two extremely talented visually impaired women of whom I look up to, a writer whose book I reviewed a few months ago and the talented writer and traveler whom I mentioned above:

Fierce Fridays – The Year in Review #1

I woke up feeling like crap a few days later, to a message that my holiday themed essay had been chosen. I still felt like crap, but this announcement made me smile in spite of that crap. A blog all about brevity, called Brevity and I didn’t think I could be that brief. Check it out here:

Sweet Sounds of the Season

And finally. I was thrilled when I discovered I was listed as #24 on a list of Bloggers to watch for in 2015:

42 Bloggers You Want to Meet in 2015

***

Thank you Sylviane, first for the guest post opportunity and to showcase what I am all about over on my new travel blog, and now this. What a pleasant surprise.

Thank you Brevity Magazine for picking my essay to be included in your Holiday Smiles contest and on your blog.

Thanks Stephanae for remembering me in your end-of-the-year review and for all the support you’ve given this past year.

And thank you Maribel for also giving me and my dream to write about travel a chance and for agreeing to be included in my Fellow Wanderer interview series on my new blog.

I hope for more blogging success both here and on that new site in the coming year and I wish for only good things to come to all these women who have given of their time and their talents.

This holiday season I have much gratitude for the opportunities shown to me by the generous bloggers and others who have shown me love on their own blogs and websites lately.

Happy Holidays to all who I may be blessed to have reading this, here and now.