TToT: Woman In Black Blouse Holding Black Bow – Shadow Bowing, #10Thankful

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself on all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”

–Sylvia Plath, “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”

Caption: Woman in black shirt smiling and standing.)

There is an App for the visually impaired where you can take a photo of anything you are in need of describing and send it away and, within seconds, an answer is given by someone somewhere who has viewed it and explained it to the best of their ability. Well, that’s the first reply given when I asked what the above photo showed. The second I used for the title of this week’s TToT because I thought it strangely eerie.

🙂

Have you heard of “shadow bowing”?

That is what I am doing. Supposedly, (as YouTube is a totally reliable source on this), I’m quite sure – if you want to practice moving your violin’s bow in a perfectly straight line, you take an empty toilet paper roll and work at moving the bow through it, over and over again. Well, let’s just say, I thought it worth a try, yet highly amusing at the same time.

The week started out badly. It wasn’t a great week at all, to be frank, but I still think I can come up with 10 things to be thankful for. Come along with me and let’s see if I can.

🙂

I made a decision, as February and its extra day came and went and March began, that I will cut back from the daily blogging I’ve been doing since the start of 2016, and will cut back to only weekends and these blogging hops and link ups I so enjoy.

I will use my weekdays to focus on my violin and writing for other places, specifically the memoir I’ve wanted to write since I was fourteen years old.

TEN THINGS OF THANKFUL

For rare disease awareness.

I shared, back when it first came out, an article I wrote which was published on The Mighty:

Rare Disease Day, 2016: Even Rarer Than A Leap Year

Well, the official day of recognition was on a leap year this time round, making it extra special.

For a song that inspires me.

Scars – Emmanuel Jal Feat. Nelly Furtado

I was shown this one by a friend, but although I could tell just by listening that there was depth and significance in the words, the music, and in the visuals, I could not see what was taking place in the video for the song.

Well, my friend explained what happens throughout. I could tell it was important, with the sound of the train at the beginning, but I now listen to this every night before I go to bed. It reminds me that we all have our struggles and our burdens to shoulder. I want to write my story, to tell of my particular tale, while this song plays on repeat in the background in my head.

Check it out if you have a moment. It’s beautiful.

For books and their creators.

As the quote at the start of this post shows, I love books for so many things. I will never be all the things I want to be, but books get me a lot closer.

This week was World Book Day.

I found myself in my nephew’s room, one day in the middle of the week, and my mom began reading “What Pet Should I Get?”, unaware that its author was celebrating a birthday on that exact same day. I celebrate Dr. Seuss and the genus he was with words.

He was highly skilled with them, words that is. He was able to stand out, reach children, and as I would love to write a children’s book someday, I try to study his brilliance, hoping always that something of it may rub off on me.

For a much needed laugh or two to brighten up a rough week. I love the coming together of a child’s imagination and the acting talents to bring it to my screen.

I did not watch anything surrounding Academy Awards mania, but I think this is better than any of the movies that actually got nominated for a trophy.

🙂

I was riveted by both these performances.

Kid Theater with Tom Hanks (Bridge of Spies)

Hanks deserves the award for that, don’t you agree? Possibly even Jimmy. If you need to smile, watch only this one Oscar performance.

For a hot shower to help with head and limb pain.

For another chance to share my writing, as part of a wonderfully important blogger series:

#BeReal – KERRY KIJEWSKI

I was glad to get some of my feelings out and on the page in a supportive environment like Hasty’s blog.

For new car smell.

I don’t know exactly what that fragrance consists of, so feel free to enlighten me, but I know it is in the materials of a newish car and it doesn’t last forever – just like most things in life.

🙂

Whatever it emanates from, it brings back nostalgic feelings that are indefinable, but warmly welcome.

For my first actual violin recital.

Not playing. Oh hell no!

🙂

Just attending, but it was highly inspiring and motivating.

I write about the experience here:

Flower of the Night

For the chance to work creatively with my musically talented brother.

Caption: Smiling man playing violin.

🙂

This was the explanation we received for the photo of my brother holding my violin.

He is a guitar player mainly. He and I decided we would try to write a song together. He has written the music and now I am faced with the new challenge of listening to it, letting the music move through me, and feeling the words and letting them come to me.

I try to lighten the mood because I have written lots of things, but never song lyrics. It’s a bit like poetry and I always doubted my skill with that. I hope it is something I can do. The challenge to myself is a tough one. I just think it would be neat to do that with him.

For beautiful pieces of writing, from such creative and talented bloggers and writers. This lovely memoir post I just had to share.

Where Is Home – Yvonne Spence

Several months back I came across multiple beautifully written blog posts and shared them here, stating my intention to share a couple that were particularly influential on me, here on the TToT every week.

Well, I didn’t follow through, but better to do it when inspiration strikes.

Home – Phillip Phillips

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the one who’ll decide where to go.”

–Dr. Seuss, “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!”

TToT: An Air of Mighty February Freshness – Can you smell it? #10Thankful

Wow! Okay, so I usually begin my TToT with some sage words, but upon searching quotes for February I came across nothing but doom, despair, and dying. These were all words used in the quotes that my Google search came up with

Is February really that bad? Does it stink that much or what?

So instead, me and my birth month might not get some wise literary or philosophical musings, but I do have my very own February song.

February Air – Lights

It feels more like fall or even spring out there, as the final hours of January fade away into a new month.

I was going to try my hand at

The April A-to-Z Challenge,

but I got so frustrated by the sign-up process that I gave up.

What is it, first National Novel Writing Month and now this?

I can go ahead with it anyway, do my own A to Z in April or whenever I want, but likely I would have to do without all the new readers I would find and be found by.

For February I will stick with the romance theme here, as February means Valentine’s Day, and devote the entire month to come for

the subject of love,

but I will still be here once a week because I love it so much.

TEN THINGS OF THANKFUL

For an email that arrived at the perfect moment.

Last week I spoke of being rejected for a publication I love and really wanted to have my writing in. Well, less than one week after that devastating email I received one of acceptance.

For the chance to spread my message.

To the People Who’ve Never Heard of My Rare Disease – The Mighty

The last day of February is the day set aside for the awareness of rare diseases and I really wanted to speak up about mine. These are no more serious or worth fighting than cancer, diabetes, or MS, but just a lot less spoken about. So many diseases so little time.

🙂

I want to thank website “The Mighty” and all the family and friends who took the time to share and help me spread my message just a little bit farther.

So, supposedly now I am a contributor and have an in road with the site. Guess this means I can continue to write for them, after they’ve approved of whatever that is. Guess this is how these sites work? I am still new to all this.

For a lot of talk, with the one-and-only man himself. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared on television, for an hour talking about an important subject.

#BellLetsTalk

Not sure if this is more than a Canadian event, as it’s represented by Bell, the phone company.

Of course there is also a lot of talk about how a huge corporation is in it to look good and is getting something more out of it, but I focused on the fact that depression deserves the air time and attention and Trudeau spoke with sensitivity and commanding poise about the struggles with depression in his own family and what he, as the leader of Canada, hopes for those who live with mental illness.

For the notification that I’ve reached five hundred WordPress followers.

This comes just short of my two-year blogging anniversary next week.

I have more on top of that five hundred, but that little sound on my phone to inform me of the milestone made my day.

For the invitation to join as a blogging co-host for the week.

What I Learned In 2015

This was my second week participating and I particularly loved this prompt.

For another “successful” vidchat with friends.

It’s amazing that so many come together like that, through Google Hangouts.

I lost them there near the end, but that’s technology for you: nothing’s perfect.

For the fact that I figured out how to correctly hold my phone so this week I wasn’t just a dark spot on everyone’s screens, while the rest were visually themselves for everyone else to see.

For jokes.

Well, the thing I almost love more than the joke would have to be how people individually and uniquely react to hearing it.

Some laugh hysterically, while others do not. It can’t be explained, but even if I am in that second group, seeing the mirth of the first group is always enough to get me to crack a smile.

For the end of one month and for the arrival of another, but not just any month.

For the completion of last month’s daily prompt writing challenge (jotting challenge technically

January definitely had its highlights,

(like the writing adventure I attended

or

Just Jot It January 2016),

but I’m actually looking forward to February and the arrival of the day I was born.

I hope for lots of good things as I usher in the second month of 2016: from movies I’m really looking forward to coming out, to my favourite television series starting a new season, to the challenge of learning a new skill and working on another.

More of all that in the days and weeks to come.

Dobby and I are glad to welcome February. How about you?

Just Jot It January: Don’t Stand By, Let’s Talk, and the Obscure #JusJoJan #BellLetsTalk

Just Jot It January, #JusJoJan

If I had remembered that yesterday was Tuesday, that Linda would be looking for a prompt word from someone and I had earned the honour, I can guarantee

mendaciloquent

would not have been my choice. This should be interesting.

🙂

        This word didn’t appear on any of the usual dictionary sites in the Google search I did. Most times, when I look up a word for its meaning, there’s Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster. Not this time.

There was also someone with a Twitter name that included the word in it. Really?

This prompt word is so obscure that my dictionary app on my phone didn’t even have a definition.

It reminds me of Maleficent.

I appreciate being introduced to just such a word, but instead I will just jot down a few thoughts I’ve been having today. Maybe, somehow, a line can be drawn to connect these thoughts to “mendaciloquent”. See if you can find it.

I bailed out of a group for writers on Facebook today. I couldn’t keep up. I need to find writers and blogs more organically than a list I am given and told to like and share. I have met writers through Facebook groups, but I feel like I can’t compete with some of them and the speed in which they are writing, sharing, and being published. This is art, creativity, the world of writing.

Okay, well it’s just January and I was published on The Mighty already. I can’t be doing so bad, but then why does the doubt still nag at me?

Then a conversation was had about writers and how they are generally so desperate for validation, to be read by others, that they are willing to give their work away, for less then they deserve. Some feel this isn’t right. I can’t say I disagree.

When do you decide your work and time are worth more? I’m kind of already used to not feeling good enough.

Also, today is Bell Let’s Talk Day, talking about mental health and it’s Holocaust Remembrance Day as well.

Both things are distressing to me. However, someone just pointed out that today is also Chocolate Cake Day and that stressed is desserts spelled backward.

🙂

I don’t have true mental illness. My depression, if you can call it that, is episodic and depends on how I am dealing with my blindness or my chronic pain or whatever.

I still know the pain and the suffering and the isolation and the hopelessness. I know that when something goes on and on and on it takes over and is harder to fight. I just don’t know about these big corporations who are being so generous as to donate such-and-such for every text, tweet, or share of the #BellLetsTalk hash tag. I guess I am often suspicious of big corporations and companies.

I am currently watching an interview. The man being interviewed is a bit of a boring intellectual sort, but the discussion is over Hitler’s book. (I won’t say its name.)

It’s selling again, upon a new release. I know these texts must be studied, as I said when a well-known Canadian killer wrote a book recently, but it won’t be by me. I wish it had never been written by a maniac in a jail cell in the 1920s, but it was. What happened happened.

Oh wait…would you say Hitler was mendaciloquent? From the way the word is being used in a few other blogs, I think I am correct to say that. Okay, well there you go. I used the word. Pheeeewwww.

I wrote posts devoted to Bell Let’s Talk Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day on my blog last year. It was my attempt to sort through my experiences being in a relationship with someone with depression and then 2015 was seventy-five years since the freeing of Auschwitz concentration camp near the end of World War II.

Both of these are difficult topics for me to think about let alone write about and share, but I couldn’t not.

However, I was weighed heavily by both.

It was hard for me to see someone I cared about struggle, but so many people do.

As for the post I did on the Holocaust, I was under a dark cloud all day last Holocaust Remembrance Day. I was glad it wasn’t the same day as Bell Let’s Talk last year, but this year it is and I am full of thoughts on both subjects.

I don’t know what to say about obscure words, but I don’t quite know what to say about anything when my mind is this bogged down.

I want to heal those who are suffering, from whatever it may be, but I know I can’t. It keeps pulling down on my spirit, so I need to do things that make me happy, and keep moving forward.

I am looking forward to February, but until then…

Just What is Just Jot It January?

And here is the writer who supplied this most difficult word for a prompt:

The only writer with the word “mendaciloquent” right in her blog name.”

Just Jot It January: Becoming One with the Waves, #JusJoJan #TuesdayShare

I am afraid of the water, that it will sweep me out into the expansive openness. I don’t like the gritty, dirty feel of sand on my skin. So why do I feel a wild oneness with the ocean?

I love the sound of the waves and the gulls crying. I love the soft sand under my feet and the cool, damp shoreline.

I love the idea of nature, the way it touches my four remaining senses, more and more…and less visually over the years, but I still say I prefer the safety, security, comfort of being indoors.

What is that oneness that still exists then?

It’s a connective cord I can’t break, couldn’t if I wanted to, even if I tried.

It’s what writing is. Writing is oneness.

I just wrote a piece of writing that was published on The Mighty, about Rare Disease Day, which is coming up next month.

I wrote it and it was accepted, after a few rejections before it. Now I don’t know what I wanted, expected when I wrote it.

I look for oneness, being one with someone through my words and thoughts and feelings.

The One – Elton John

I would spend my whole life there, feet in the sand, as the waves wash over my toes. I would never leave that place, that oneness and connection I have there, but this can’t be. And so I go there in my mind and instead…I write.

Just Jot It January, #JusJoJan

If you are curious what that means, check out the rules:

They can be found right here.

Linda’s contribution to the

oneness prompt

is beautiful, and this coming from someone who does not exactly consider herself much of a fan of horses.

Though, it would be a little tricky to have a whale take me home while I slept on its back.

🙂

Thanks to WritersDream9 for your “oneness” prompt.