TToT: Peaks and Valleys, #10Thankful

“She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.”

–Beverly Cleary

Dreams – The Cranberries

Life is full of them…those mostly metaphorical peaks and valleys.

I must keep this brief. My laptop appears to be in full-blown destruct mode, but at least I’ve still got my phone.

TEN THINGS OF THANKFUL

For another share of my song to a fresh group of blog readers, thanks to Steph from:

Don’t Look Back A Song – Bold Blind Beauty

For another successful lesson. Having two in a row is a definite improvement, to start with.

I’ve learned all of “Twinkle Twinkle” now and I am particularly thankful for the patience of my teacher.

She sits with me and repeatedly corrects and informs and instructs. I needed to work on wrist movement, in particular, and she tried to help me with what she called the “peaks and valleys” action of the wrist. It has to do with the amount of pressure put on the bow as it slides back and forth across the strings.

I don’t do as well at practicing all that on my own, at home, without her being right there to correct me when I am losing the flow and moving off the mark, and I start to forget proper technique, by the time another week rolls around, which leaves me feeling as if I am right back where I started from. I suppose that’s not the case, but clearly, at this early point, I need her instruction to keep me on track.

To whom all of this comes second nature to, I imagine she has to have a certain something to be able to teach what she, herself, has known since she was much younger.

For children’s stories that I grew up on, like so many story lovers.

Beverly Cleary turned 100 this week and she is still going strong. Just such a landmark milestone deserves recognition.

100 amazing facts for Beverly Cleary’s 100th birthday

My brother and I grew up reading her books. Children’s fiction IS Beverly Cleary.

For my own personal, neighbourhood clothing boutique – soon to open.

🙂

Shopping, for clothes for me, it’s not easy. I can’t see the merchandise and I don’t know what looks good on my body shape.

Sure, I know things I like, am not lacking when it comes to opinions, trust me. It’s just difficult to know where to start when you can’t see what you’re doing.

I have my sister, who is really one of the only people I trust. She is only two years older than me and we have always shared clothes, even after we no longer lived together, but she has a family and a life and I hate to always depend all on her.

I could go the online shopping path, but still I can’t see the items on the screen, and they don’t always have enough information to base decisions on.

Yes, a small issue, but we all have issues when it comes to shopping for something to wear, but now I have a personal connection, right in my town. Hope to find out more in the weeks and months to come.

For a guest post on a blog I’ve long admired.

How I Found The Courage To Break It Off & Take A Chance On Myself – Single Strides

It’s strange I talk about remembering where I was when the earthquake in Japan of 2011 happened, and then they have another one, five years later, to the exact day that I am featured on this blog.

For a day with my nephew. He begins school in the fall )boy does time fly) and there won’t be any more of these days left.

I complain a lot that my life, my days aren’t filled the way others/ are, how I’d like, but at least I have that flexibility to be with him while I still can.

For brief flashes of time.

My laptop began to self-destruct, it’s true, but I still had 5-10 seconds where my voice software would speak, in which to read or write, before the whole thing would go silent.

The machine I’ve been loaned, after my mishap last year, is something like ten years old. It has started making this revving noise. Not good.

But at least I could publish smaller blog posts, very brief, but still something.

For the strong women of past and present.

This week, both on the same day, was also a birthday for Anne Sullivan and Emma Watson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Sullivan

These are both women I admire. Anne was the famous teacher for Helen Keller and Emma Watson IS Hermione Granger, in the “Harry Potter” films.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Watson

She is now doing great things for women and all of equal rights and humanity, if I may be so bold.

Both these women are feminists in my opinion. They both worked/work hard to show that female does not have to equal less than or incapable of bringing about a change in the world.

For the chance to cheer up a friend who was having a particularly bad day, when I shared my song with him.

This friend is currently going through some hard times, and they could relate to my lyrics.

I wrote this song for the same reason I love to listen to music by other people. It soothes me and I wrote

Don’t Look Back

in the hopes of offering a few minutes of comfort to another.

For the brief flashes of time that VoiceOver works, which now seems to be back to longer periods, just so very suddenly, as I write this.

I started out this post, thinking it might take me all night to put together, as I could only do a few seconds at a time and then had to let the laptop rest before attempting it again.

Oh how tedious.

😦

Well, suddenly now it is letting me write for an extended amount of time, just like it did on Thursday night, but by Friday it was back to its destructive behaviour.

Not sure how long this most recent improvement will last, but I am taking full advantage while the good times roll.

🙂

Now, I may just write long into the night, as who knows what fun this trusty old laptop has in store for me when I wake.

Everywhere – Bran Van 3000

“Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose – not thee one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.”

–Anne Sullivan

Misinterpreting Laughter, #SoCS

HadaHada

That’s what my sister used to hear from my JAWS voice software, when it was really me laughing at something someone had said on MSN. Seems like so long ago now that I talked to someone I was in a long distance relationship with, back when I still talked to people on that program. Now I’ve moved on. Texting is how it’s done nowadays.

Well, most people hear the voice software built in on a Mac, which is called VoiceOver, and are baffled by the racket it’s creating.

“Is that speaking another language?” This was the latest question I received concerning the sound it makes.

My computer talks and I understand it, almost like another language. You’d likely have to train your ear to comprehend, but that’s how I do it.

A lot of misinterpretation occurs when other people overhear my computer talking to me, reading what’s on the screen. Sometimes I use headphones, so only I hear it, otherwise it can become irritating. Other times, even I get sick and tired of the electronic sounding voice babbling away.

I could hook up a braille display, to read with my fingers instead of having to listen. I haven’t found that quite as easy to do, so the voice continues.

Lots of people wonder how I use a computer. I am a pretty speedy typist, but I do better if I hear what letters I am typing, just to be sure.

🙂

If you have a Mac, try pressing Command F5 and see what happens. Even my iPhone has it.

But still my sister and I recall those days when she would hear “Hadahada”, from the next room, back when we were roommates. It did sound funny, was meant to represent my laughter, and we “hadahada” about it to this day.

Hahahaha.

Another A to Z Challenge for

They are up to “H” on this second

Stream of Consciousness Saturday

of April.

One Year, Two Blogs – #tbt

One year ago, with the help of

Fresh Idea Websites,

I launched a website of my own.

Not only did I have this blog, where I wrote more from a literary perspective, but I wanted a separate place to focus on my love of travel. I thought a lot about persona and branding and I guess Her Headache wasn’t enough, wasn’t quite expressing all I had to say.

The idea came to me that previous summer. My parents were away on a whirlwind road trip out west, through Canada and the US, I had travel on the brain, and I was trying to reinvent myself.

I was sending out my writing more and more, starting to learn how to handle rejections, and trying to figure out what I was truly passionate about.

Within a few months,

The Insightful Wanderer

was borne.

So, though I think I was ahead of most when I came up with the name, I had no idea if I could handle two sites. I decided to jump in and go for it, but it’s been a year and I admit, I haven’t accomplished as much as I’d liked to.

I came across this article this morning:

Why Travel Blogging Needs More Storytelling

This is what I wanted to do. I wanted to combine my love of writing and stories with my travel obsession.

I had begun checking out all the travel blogs the Internet has to offer. I read dozens and dozens of these things. I saw the serge of these sites. I wanted to be one of them, but yet I didn’t.

I could easily have become caught up in the hype.

How do you make money as a travel blogger? How to work with brands and travel companies?

I focused on my own bucket list. I found the travel blogs, same as my more literary ones, that really spoke to me.

I ate up all they had to say about their travels. I admired their adventurous spirits. I thought

Annette White

and

Amanda Williams

were super women and I wanted to follow in their footsteps.

I didn’t want to use my blindness, but yet I saw it as the best way to express myself and capture a reader’s attention, in the travel world.

I liked my idea. The Insightful Wanderer just seemed to shape itself. I know many struggle to decide on a name for their travel blog, but the name was the easy part for me.

Then, I feared I had made a mistake. If I couldn’t be completely comfortable using my blindness as a hook, why did I think Insightful Wanderer was a good idea after all?

I’d gotten the ball rolling by then and I feared I wouldn’t be able to make something of it, but something still propelled me forward.

I had become comfortable with this blog. I had my MacJournal program, for writing my posts, and I knew how to transfer them over to WordPress.

The new site would require a whole new process. It did not seem to connect to MacJournal.

How would I do this? I barely knew how to do anything. Okay, so I was improving, but it always seemed to happen at a snail’s pace, in my own time. I haven’t had help to learn in a while, and the help I do receive is sporadic at best.

I needed a teacher, but where would I find one who knew VoiceOver?

I have had all the website work done for me. That’s why I found Fresh Idea Websites, but since then I have found it difficult to communicate with them just what I need.

I have written a handful of posts. I don’t know why I haven’t written more. I have a whole thirty years of travel I can write about. It’s all in my head and I know I could write, do what the article said, and bring the art of storytelling into the travel blogging world.

I know these things take time. I know that.

On this Throwback Thursday I needed to look back on all this, to see where I hope to be in one year from now.

I have no idea how I’m going to get there. I’d planned to work on the other site for a few months and then have this big reveal here, to connect my two sites, but this revelation has not happened.

Instead, on this one year mark and approaching two years with this here blog, I needed to say something.

I feel anxious a lot because I want to say so much, write so much, share so much. I can’t get it all out. So much was rushing to come out that there seems to be a clog somewhere, a bunch of it seems to have plugged up the line and now I hardly say any of it.

I don’t believe travel needs to be big, grand trips all the time. I’ve been to Niagara Falls and Ottawa this past year. I haven’t published about that on the website.

I still don’t feel comfortable posting over there. I have no help, as even though I say it’s not about the visual aspects, I sometimes have pictures I’d like to include.

People like Amanda travel, independently most of the time. People like Annette travel with her husband, I believe.

I have no partner who wants to experience the world with me. I know the real risk of traveling solo, as a woman who is also visually impaired.

I wanted to be this brave, tough, independent woman and do it anyway, but I continue to hesitate.

I saw how relationships were made and I wanted to form these cool friendships with other female travel bloggers, to connect and travel along with them, but my lack of independent travel made this an unrealistic dream.

I know female travel bloggers are out there, that it’s not all fun and games, but that they’re making it happen. I wanted to make something happen, but I was trapped between wanting to have that life and to write about something more.

I know there is no rush and that I am on no clock, but I feel like I am. I want to write, to make a difference, to do something great with my writing, but I know I have a lot to learn.

If I’m not totally decided on what I want to do, travel or write, or both, how will I combine the two?

I know I am interested in insight. That’s why I write in the first place.

I also feel like I am wandering and how that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. That’s just where I am with my life at this time.

On the Internet radio show interview I did a few weeks back, I said that I hoped my thirties would be this whole decade of discovery, when I would get back into the world, to find what I was looking for. I hope having both these sites will be a part of that. I hope, in the next year and the years after that, I can figure all this out.

I don’t have The Insightful Wanderer as I’d like it to be, not yet. It’s hard to completely lay out how I’d like it to look, when I can’t even see it. I hear it through audio voice, reading it to me, but I don’t know how to explain my vision for it.

I still know nothing about CO and stats. I don’t write top ten articles that get travel bloggers on the map. I don’t have a mailing list. I hardly know how to handle the comments for my posts. Relaying what I’d like hasn’t been easy and it’s down to me to get that all straightened out.

I’ve met travellers who are taking a more literary approach and I would like to see if that’s where I belong, but I’m still unsure.

Maybe I’ll carve out an entirely new path for myself, doing something nobody before me has really done, and that’s why I haven’t been able to decide. I try not to focus too much on the destination, and just enjoy the journey as is said, but that’s really hard sometimes.

I like to know what’s going to happen, how things are going to turn out, but I also want to enjoy the learning process. I know that’s the only way, with writing, and that’s what I am all about, in the end.

Happy One Year Anniversary to TheIWanderer.

Sorry I’ve let you down, let myself down, but I believe in you, in us, in possibility.

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.