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This is a personal Challenge to write 500 words a day. Join me on my Journey. |
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The Challenge: Write 500 words every day for a year.
Can I do it? Join me and find out! |
30 - Day Blogging Challenge (June/Unofficial Month) Prompt by Mitchopolis   - Can you make real friends online? How are online friends better or worse than offline friends? Sound off about online friendships. Now go!I vote yes. My two best friends are both online, and I've never met them in real life. In fact, at the moment both of them are out of the country. Maria lives in Mexico and Ben is on an extended vacation to Guatemala. I've been friends with both for several years now and we do a lot of co-writing together. I met them both though the site: www.rmimagic.com which is a roleplaying/writing site for Harry Potter. We wove together several different characters, and became great friends while we built worlds, killed each other, and brought controlled chaos to the game. Our friendship developed through writing, but we spend a great deal of time just chatting. I can honestly say that they know more about me than any of the 'real' people in my life. At heart, I am an introvert. Really, I'm about two and a half steps away from being a hermit. Now that I work from home, I don't have any friends outside of family. While that might make some people sad, I'm quite satisfied with the arrangement. From a very young age I've always had one or two friends. They changed as I moved around, but in general the number didn't. I've never been the type to have a large number of acquaintances, or friends. I prefer solitary activities like reading and writing. If it wasn't for my husband's ungodly precipitance, I never would have noticed him, let alone married him. If you were to tell the girl I once was that she would marry the boy who kept sitting next to her while she was trying to read and poking her, she would have laughed in your face. In the beginning, I hated him. At school, I used to sit in the hall and read during lunch while everyone else was off socializing. One day, a guy sat down next to me and started poking me. He wouldn't stop, and ignoring him didn't work either. The next day he showed up again. He did that for months before I finally acknowledged his existence. If Paul hadn't kept at it, if he'd left the first day I ignored him, I never would have gotten together with him. So, a lesson to all the boys out there, if you want a woman all you have to do is annoy her to death until she finally gives in and marries you. Works every time. Paul was like a fungus, he just grew on me. So there's my point of view on internet friends. They're the best I ever had, and it doesn't matter that we can't see each other face to face. What matters is that we can talk, and share our lives with each other. I can talk to them about anything, and they can do the same with me. Word count: 507 |
30 - Day Blogging Challenge (June/Unofficial Month) Since there is no prompt up yet for today, I'll go with the prompt I should have done yesterday by ANN Counselor, Lesbian & Happy ' Children learning about sex. My experience learning about sex was rather exasperating. To understand, you have to know that I moved from Nevada to Nebraska when I was 12. Nevada is a bit more aggressive in their teaching, so they had their sex education class when I was in middle school. Then I moved to Nebraska, which is a bit more conservative, and ended up having to take the class all over again. Then we moved again to Lincoln'and you guessed it. I had to take sex ed for a third time. By the time I was fourteen I knew enough about sex to teach the class myself, and have to this day a serious paranoia about having sex with anyone but my husband. Of course, that's a good paranoia to have, but I really don't understand how anyone dares have sex with anyone in this day and age. In all those classes, we saw something that stuck with me. It was the graphic of stick figures. One stick figure turns red, then the red spreads and spreads and spreads until it is something like one in five people has an STD. I don't recall the actual statistics, but that image sticks with me even now. There is no way I would be able to have a one night stand. I can't understand how anyone could go to sleep with someone they know nothing about. It's as bad as playing Russian Roulette. The only person I've ever been with is my husband, and I hope that we both grow old and die together because if he were to die tomorrow I don't think I could handle the stress of trying to go out and find someone new. I'm not religious, and didn't wait until marriage or anything like that. Nope. Paul was my high school sweet heart. We've been together for over a decade now, and got together when we were 17. That's another reason I wouldn't ever want to lose him. I have no idea how adults court each other. Back when I was in the dating game, we'd pass notes, bother each other, or share lunch. Somehow, I don't think it would be so easy to find a new mate. I am kind of terrified about Shane growing up and entering this highly sexualized world. Yes, kids are taught a lot more about sex than they were before, but now there is a much greater risk of teen pregnancy, disease, or any number of other terrible things. I'm not looking forward to his teen years, and I only hope he can make it through them and become a responsible adult. I want him to find someone he can love, and have a nice home, and a great job, and give me wonderful grandchildren. I don't want him to end up with someone who's crazy, or who doesn't even know who she is yet before she ends up being a mother. We'll see what happens. Word count: 524 |
30 - Day Blogging Challenge (June/Unofficial Month) Today is a free write day, so no fun prompts. I've enjoyed the 30 day blogging experience so far, and it's great to see what each person comes up with for their daily prompt. It was equally fun to see how everyone responded to my prompt. Someday, when I get up the ambition, I think I'll do my own competition. It would be fun to see what people would come up with if they were given different lines from Stephen King books to build a story around. Lines like: This inhuman place makes human monsters from The Shining. Or That wasn't an act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery from The Stand. Or Go then, there are other worlds than these from The Gunslinger. There are so many lines to choose from that could be used to breed new stories that they are too numerous to quote. The stories wouldn't have to be exclusively horror. Take this line: Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't. From Hearts in Atlantis. Someday I'll do it, but not any time soon. I've recently joined the Art of Criticism Project and helped judge one of the Symposium topics. That was a lot harder than I thought it would be. We had to judge a sample of writing that each writer felt was the best example of their work. We could only pick 12 and there were a great many submissions. Getting it down to twelve was beyond difficult. We got it done, but it's made doing a contest of my own seem less likely. I just don't like judging other people. There were many great works, and knowing that I had to tell so many people no wasn't fun. The experience gave me a greater appreciation for all the people who run contests and all the judges who sit on the panels. It was a new experience being on the other side of the table. If anyone wants to steal my Stephen King idea, please do. I would love to join the contest. Cute baby moment. Today, Shane was standing on one of our wooden dining room chairs and he patted the back of the chair and said 'I love this chair.' Then he pointed to the other chairs and said 'I love these chairs.' I think that's something we lose as we grow. The ability to love anything and everything. Toddlers love and hate with a single mindedness that we adults have long forgotten. Our feelings are all tangled up with reason and public opinion and everything else involved with being an adult. Young children aren't held back by all that. They don't need logic or reason to feel the way they do, and they feel no need to hide their feelings. That leads to uncomfortable situations for adults, but it also gives us a fresh breath of honesty too. Word Count: 504 |
30 - Day Blogging Challenge (June/Unofficial Month) Prompt by BillieGail memory of Cheyenne -- How do you think your life would be different if you didn't have children? If you don't have children, how do you think it would be different if you did have them?Nearly four years ago, I had my son Shane. He will be 4 July 8th. Two days after my own birthday. I'm glad he didn't decide to come a couple days sooner. He was kind enough to wait until after I had my birthday dinner at Misty's. Even though it's only been a few years, I can hardly remember what it was like to live without him. I wonder if all mothers feel like that? It seems as though he's always been a part of my life. Every day he amazes and aggravates me in turn. I think that without Shane, I would never understand how a person can feel both wild love and absolute despair all at the same time. The first few weeks of sleeplessness could try the sanity of a saint. Even though the trials of infancy and toddlerhood have been rocky, I still find that I love him in a way that nothing could ever shatter. He's so tiny, yet so full of life. I have no idea how I manage to keep up with him as he goes and goes and goes. Still, his delight in the world has returned that simple delight to mine. Where an adult sees a despised weed, a child sees a pretty flower he wants to give to mommy. I'm thankful that Shane is a reasonable little boy. He has his tantrums, but for him, they are like summer storms. They blow in and rage for a few minutes before vanishing, leaving a sunny blue sky behind. I'm more focused on what we eat, so that he gets all the proper food he needs to grow. I worry all the time about how he will grow up, how he will turn out, and I hope that his life is a great one. I think having children forces you to look at more than just yourself. Your life is important, but when placed against the life of your child it seems to pale in comparison. We want to give them everything, yet must restrain ourselves so we don't end up ruining them with our generosity. It is so hard to stand back and let them fall, but we must so that they can learn. What we can do is be there to help pick them up, and brush them off. Then they will know that even if they fall, we will always be there to do what we can to aid them. Being a mother is one of the most rewarding, and most terrifying things I have ever done. There are times when I'm afraid I'm doing it all wrong, and other times when I know that I need help, but he makes it worth the stress and anxiety. I love him more than I've ever loved anything. Word Count: 510 |
30 - Day Blogging Challenge (June/Unofficial Month) Prompt by 30DBC Creator/Founder -- http://earlpablo.addcashnetwork.com/can-will-end-storyThis was a thought provoking blog. The picture shows seven words, the longest is a mere five letters, yet it is the foundation of accomplishment. I can. I will. End of story. What does this mean? It is a mantra that can be used when we feel we've reached the end of our resources. When it looks like there is no where left to go. This is the time when we look deep into ourselves and say, I am going to complete this task I've set myself. It might be hard, it might eve seem impossible, but I will not give up. I won't lay down and die. I can do this thing. I will do it and that's all there is to say. For a lot of people, moments like this never come. Their lives go according to plan and each event flows into the next until death. That isn't the case for everyone. For others, adversity was a part of their existence from the first drawing of breath to the very last exhale. It's amazing to see the insurmountable odds that some people have gone through. Each person is a unique being, and the events that would break one person, will become just another challenge to overcome for another. There's a prayer used for AA members that everyone should know and heed: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference. Some of the people who break do so because they didn't understand the things that couldn't be changed. They continued to dash themselves against rocks that were unmovable, and ended up shattering their hearts and minds on those unforgiving cliffs. When everything we try seems to fail, we need to step back and take a look at what the heart of the problem is. Why is this obstacle in our path, and is it something that can be gotten rid of. If we can't destroy the rock, perhaps we can get around it. If we can't go around, can we go over? In the end, you might find that the only thing that can be done is to turn around and go back. That is one of the hardest things people have to do. If you've put so much of yourself down one path, it can be almost impossible to abandon it for something else. This is the moment when you need to step back and really look at what is going on. Yes, you've put several years into something, and a lot of money, but if it is one of those things that will not change, you might have to find a new path. The only failure is in giving up on life. We might have to change paths, turn away from what we were doing and follow something new, but we should never sit and stare at the bolder in our way, wishing it would move, and doing nothing at all. Word count: 516 |
30 - Day Blogging Challenge (June/Unofficial Month) Prompt from Janine -- June 8 is Send A Postcard Day. The US Congress approved the penny postcard on June 8, 1872. Choose someone and write a postcard message to them. How do you feel about others reading your message? People really do read the postcards on their way to the recipients.Recently, I sent three post cards to my brother. He is serving a 5 year sentence in prison, and I'd never sent a post card before. I got three of them during my annual trip to Vegas. It took me a long time to send them, because of the thought that other people would see what I wrote. So the post cards sat on my counter for almost two months, ignored in favor of not wanting to deal with the awkwardness of trying to figure out what to write on them. Eventually I just sat down and wrote three absurdly random sentences, and sent them out. I was glad they were gone. It was so awkward trying to figure out what to write, and I've found that I really dislike the whole post card situation. To tell the truth, I don't even like handwriting letters. I've been using computers and laptops from middle school onward, and my handwriting shows deep proof of that. My handwriting looks very similar to a twelve year old boy's. That, and my spelling is not so hot. I need spell check to keep me in line. Then there is the fact that I often change my mind about what I'm writing in the middle of what I'm writing, so the backspace key is my best friend ever. When I write letters, they're littered with exed out words, and even whole lines. One of the things that we do in the copywriting course I'm taking is handwrite letters that work. We have to hand write them three times each. I can tell you that is the hardest exercise I've done in a long time. Not only does it take forever to write them out, your wrist starts hurting after about the third paragraph. Some of these letters are three or four pages long. When you look at them, they don't look so bad, but when you start handwriting them out, they suddenly seem to grow to twenty or thirty pages. I know that the information gets set better in your mind when you write things down, but goodness does it hurt. I much prefer typing. In high school, one of my favorite classes ever was the keying class. There I learned how to type properly using both hands and all my fingers. I think out of everything I learned in school, it was the lessons of those classes that I took with me into adulthood. Those are the only lessons that I use every single day and that had a major impact on my existence. I can't imagine how awful it would be to do as much writing as I do with the hunt and peck method. That would be pure torture. Word count: 515 |
30 - Day Blogging Challenge (June/Unofficial Month) Prompt from 💙 Carly  -- What book would you like to see made into a movie or miniseries? Who would you like to see play the main characters in that movie/miniseries?I would love to see the Anita Blake novels by Laurell K Hamilton made into an HBO series. I think it would have to be done by HBO because the books are pretty dark and have a lot of sex and violence in them. A movie wouldn't be able to pull it off because the series is pretty long. There are twenty two books out so far for the Anita Blake series. One of the reasons I would chose HBO is because they took on the True Blood series and did a fairly good job with it. These books are in the same genre. One of the reservations I would have is them going off and doing their own thing instead of following the plot of the books. HBO has a bad habit of doing that. It's one of the reasons I never finished True Blood. They got so far from the plot that I became annoyed and stopped watching. I think that this series would draw a lot of followers and it combines a lot of things that are popular today. There are vampires, and weres and other mythological creatures come in from time to time. In one of the books, there's a giant snake that goes mad in a circus performance and has to be killed. I think that could be done well with special effects. Anita would also bring something new to the same old same old of vampires on TV. She is an animator. In essence she raises Zombies. That would be an angle that can take advantage of both the current fascination with zombies, and the ongoing interest in vampires. It even pulls in flavors of Buffy because along with raising the dead, she's a legal executioner for the undead. I think that a great actress for Anita would be Keira Knightley. She has the dark eyes and pale skin Anita is known for. All that is needed is a dark, curly hair style. Another thing Keira has is that she is dainty looking. One of the fun things about Anita is she's this tiny woman who is feared by some of the most powerful vampires around. She has a higher kill count than many of the men, but because she looks like a tiny china doll, she has to forever prove herself to the police and other vampire hunters. One interesting thing about her shapeshifters is that the more powerful ones have three forms. Full human, full animal, or half and half. Another is how they shift. They have to change during the full moon, but they can change whenever they want if they are powerful enough. Unlike an easy clean shift that most movies show, hers end up giving off a lot of clear goop during the change. If the change is violent enough, the whole body seems to explode sending off chunks of the person. It can get pretty gross. Word Count: 525 |
30 - Day Blogging Challenge (June/Unofficial Month) Today's prompt from Noyoki  -- What if calories cost money? That is, what if one calorie cost one cent, adding up to your entire meal? For example, a large Big Mac meal at McDonald's would cost $13.20. Do you think charging per calorie would change people's eating habits? Why or why not?I think that this plan looks great on paper. There are serious problems with the cost of food in the US and more importantly, the way the prices work vs. the health value of the food. One of the reasons many poor people are obese is because the cheapest food is generally the worst for you. We've all seen how high the prices are for pure organic food. Grass fed beef is more expensive than grain or corn fed beef. The same is true of crated chickens/eggs vs. free range. If the price were based off the health value of the food, I think this would have a greater impact on the health of the nation. In theory. However, in practice, I can see a number of road blocks that would make this idea difficult if not impossible. The first would be that anyone making food or drinks that have 0 calories would go instantly out of business because their products would be free. As a result, business would work to pack more calories into their food and drinks to raise their prices. Another difficulty would be seen in the different types of restaurants. We know that there are really fancy restaurants that charge a lot to go there. If the prices were based on the caloric intake of the food, they would have to find another way to charge their customers. I could see a restaurant fee being tacked onto the bill. Perhaps they would begin charging a fee for being served, or even for lighting and music. A law like this would have the biggest impact on those higher end restaurants where people pay for the experience as well as the food. I believe we do need to find a way to make healthy and tasty food available and reasonably priced for everyone. Adding information like how many calories are in the food to restaurant menus doesn't mean much to people who don't have enough money to go to places that provide higher quality food. When you don't have a lot of money, it becomes a question of quantity not quality. The hard truth is, if you have three kids and are a single mom, you need to buy enough food so that everyone can eat for the month. If she bought the healthiest food there probably would be enough for everyone to eat before the next pay check came in. I don't know what the best cure to this problem is. There are politicians who want to regulate fats, or sugar, or candy and soft drinks, but I don't think that's the right approach. Perhaps instead of making bad things harder to get, we should work towards making good things easer to obtain. Word Count: 515 |
30 - Day Blogging Challenge (June/Unofficial Month) Today's prompt from PandaPaws Licensed VetTech -- Is there a moment in history where you felt the same way, or did your parents (grandparents) share their thoughts on pivotal historic events?One event that I lived through that changed the world was 9/11. I'm sure most people remember exactly where they were, and what they were doing when the planes hit (if they're old enough). I'm no different. I was 15 years old and still in high school. We were in our government class when the attack happened. I don't recall how our teacher found out, but I distinctly remember that we spent the whole rest of the class watching the news and not doing our lesson. A lot has changed since then. America struck back and now, over a decade later, we are still marred in wars that found their beginnings on 9/11. Others have tried their hands at taking planes or blowing them up, and after each attempt the security was upped a notch at the airports. Did you know that you only have to take your shoes off and have them scanned in the USA? When we got married and went to Cancun; we were in a Mexican airport and started taking off our shoes. The guards gave us a disgusted look and told us to put our shoes back on. It seems to me the whole shoe policy doesn't really work if USA is the only one doing it. Still, the rules and regulations continue to mount. Fear was another result of this attack. I don't know about any of you, but I always feel a small lick of fear down my spine when I see a low flying plane. There's always that momentary thought that maybe it's too low, that perhaps this plane had been turned into a flying weapon. Even after all this time, that thought remains in the back of my mind. 9/11 has been used to strip away more of our rights. Programs like the one that lets the government track everything in our cell phones have sprung up. They say that the information is just being stored, and that it won't be looked at, but you never know, do you? It may turn out to be a case of the right hand knows not what the left hand does. Fear is a powerful tool, and can be used to strip a people of every freedom if they aren't careful. 'We're just trying to keep you safe. Why are you worried, you don't have anything to hide do you? Just let us listen to your phone calls, read your e-mails, search your cars and teach your children what we think they need to know. Let us be your parents, your guardians. Let us make all your choices and tell you how to live, what to eat, and what to drive. Give over your lives into our hands and we'll take care of you. You'll be safe with us.' These are the promises we've been told, but the thing that is often forgotten is that the government is made up of men and women. Just that. Not divine beings who know and see all. Just people. And people make mistakes. After all, the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions. Word Count: 555 |
30 - Day Blogging Challenge (June/Unofficial Month) Today's prompt from Charlie ~ -- Do you think playing violent video games and watching violent movies makes people more violent in real life? Were you allowed to partake in these activities as a child? If you have children, did/do you let them have violent media? When it comes to violent video games, movies, media, and books, I look at it like I do Ouija boards. They are a doorway. 99.9% of people who play with Ouija boards will get nothing more than silly messages guided by the hands of their friends or their own subconscious. But, every now and then, the door cracks open. Whether you believe what comes through is supernatural or psychological in nature, the affects are the same. The person generally loses all sense of reality and can turn to violence. Violent video games and the rest are exactly the same. In most cases, it is just an amusement. But, every now and then the one who plays them gets more than they bargained for. They become obsessed, and eventually turn violent, killing others, or themselves. Here's a perfect example: http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/03/justice/wisconsin-girl-stabbed/ Two twelve year old girls got into a make believe character on the internet known as Slender Man. They became so obsessed with the myth that they could no longer differentiate between reality and fantasy. Because of that, they plotted and attempted to murder one of their playmates in the mistaken belief that if they did so Slender Man would appear and take them away to live with him in his castle. Many people would look at stories like this and assume that the only way to fix the problem is through banning and censorship. I don't think so. I don't think there is a way to fix the underlying issue. In truth, every person has fault lines in their mind. Most of us have sound fault lines. They are there, but it would take something catastrophic to break them open and send us into madness or turn us into mass killers. Then, there are people who have active fault lines. After they fully break down and are caught, the people who knew them best can look back and see the mild tremors preceding the break. The problem is that we can only see those small indicators after everything has gone wrong. Even if we ban everything that might be violent, these individuals will still have active fault lines. If it isn't violent video games, it will be violent books. If it isn't violent books, it will be abusive parents. If it isn't abusive parents it will be not having any friends. There will always be something. It all comes down to the fact that every person is a unique individual, and there is no way to know how much or how little it will take to break those fault lines wide open and send them plunging into darkness. The good thing is that most people are mentally sound. For every story like the one above, there are billions of people who were not affected by the violence they see every day in the media. I've never played violent video games, mostly because I have terrible hand eye coordination and can't even get through Nintendo games without dying every other level. However, I was the youngest child by several years and the only girl. Because of this, I was watching violent horror movies at an early age. I still like them, and I've never felt the urge to go out and kill people for having been exposed to them. My son is only 3 so I don't let him watch scary stuff and he's too young for video games. When he grows, I'll let him play, but I won't let him play all day every day. All things in moderation and all that. Word Count: 645 |
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