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 |   The simplicity of my day to day. |
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This is where I write my thoughts, feelings and my daily trials, tribulations and happy things
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Prompt:4 Do you feel that you are a good communicator? I am an excellent communicator. How did that happen? I wonder that myself because I was dreadfully shy when a child. I suppose being good at communicating was foisted upon me. I simply had to talk to people all day long after my mother became bedridden for over a year. My brother was seventeen and I was fifteen years old when her illness struck. We owned a family grocery store and my brother worked there with Mum. Dad and my other brother worked at the family printing firm. I was still at school, but had to leave to help in the store. From then on I did the ordering, serving and cleaning. I even cooked chickens in our kitchen for customers. That was many years before ready cooked chicken shops were even thought of. I suppose I may have been a forerunner of KFC! I have always been in customer service, speaking, communicating has been my life. Now retired and living in Australia, a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother five times over, I no longer have to communicate to customers. However I still communicate to my family how much they all mean to me. To my friends I let them know I care what happens to them and they say I make them laugh. To my husband of 57 years I hope I communicate my love.  |
Prompt 2: Are you kind to yourself? These days I’m much kinder to myself than in previous years. I give myself a break. I try to tell myself I’m good enough. I’ve always had a guilt complex if I’m not doing something useful. That stems from my very early childhood. My mother was a workaholic, she never seemed to sit down. The house always had to be spik and span. Beds needed to be made as soon as you got out of them. That has stayed with me and even now I couldn’t leave the house leaving unmade beds. If my parents saw me and my brothers seemingly doing nothing, then a job was soon found for us to do. We were raised on a farm and all the chores had to be done before school. After I had my own family I found myself trying to do everything, just like my mother, but eventually I realised something had to give. I dropped my standards as regards housework and although our home is always tidy, I allow the dust to settle. The kindest thing I do for myself is to give myself time to write. While I’m writing I’m not feeling guilty about all the other things I should be doing. I only hope I never made my children feel guilty for just being themselves, for idling away the time, daydreaming perhaps or just sitting doing absolutely nothing. I’ve learned that life is too short to spend it doing chores. Go and have some fun and if you have to climb into an unmade bed, so what? |
Prompt:1 Are you good at problem-solving? The thing is, that by the time you’ve been alive for 78 years like I have and you haven’t learned to problem solve, then you’re probably homeless or in jail. 😂 Problems arise all the time. Some are easily solved, others take some figuring out but problems always get resolved one way or another. The most difficult problems are those involving other people. As the only person you can control is yourself, things can become complicated. You may think you have the answer to a problem but others may want to do things differently. In that case sometimes compromise is called for. About twenty years ago I studied for a diploma of counselling. It helped me so much. Not only did I learn how to help people help themselves, I found I learned how to take the emotions out of tricky situations. Staying calm in a crisis leaves your mind clear to find solutions. Problems which call for power tools or screwdrivers I leave to my husband who is the most practical man in the world. If it’s broken, he’ll have a go at fixing it. So we make a good team. I solve problems with my mind, he solves problems with his dexterity and toolbox. |
| PROMPT 7: Sept 7 – "Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you." -Oprah Winfrey. Write about something that fuels your heart at the moment. I have two things that are fueling my heart at the moment. My singing group and my writing group. I belong to a wonderful community choir called ‘Sing your heart out’ On Saturday this week we are performing at our first festival. We have been practicing for weeks and hope we don’t bomb. But you know we don’t sing because we’re especially talented. In fact I’d go as far to say we have very few strong singers in the choir. Mostly we are people who are older and who just have a need to sing, sometimes loudly and little off key, but it doesn’t matter. We have fun and laugh a lot. My writing group meet every Wednesday morning. We are supportive and gentle in our critiquing. We read together our stories. We have some amazing writers in our group, some published many times. Yet there are other like me who write for the pure joy. Eight of us are writing a combined novel. We each have written a character and we have a plot. We have bodies which have been closeted away for twenty years and a wild fire. It’s getting quite exciting and I can’t wait to see what happens next🤗 So focusing is what I’ve been doing all week. Focusing on singing my heart out and focusing on writing my character’s dilemma when he finds himself trapped in a firestorm. |
| Bastion Photo 1. War in Ukraine  Photo 1 prompt blog week [#2278962] Sept 1-7, 2022Sept 1-7, 2022 Photo 2. Climate Change  Photo 2 prompt blog week [#2278961] Sept 1-7, 2022Sept 1-7, 2022 Photo 3. Covid-19  Photo 3 prompt blog week [#2278960] Sept 1-7, 2022Sept 1-7, 2022 Photo 4. Birthday Party  Photo 4 prompt blog week [#2278963] Sept 1-7, 2022Sept 1-7, 2022 The prompt is to view images of war, climate change, and pandemic and to comment. These images are ones we have become accustomed to seeing over the last few years. They are pictures with which we are familiar and yet gradually they are losing their initial impact. The Ukrainian war was almost unimaginable at first, as it was too near to home. These are people like us, cities like ours. How could it be that one man has the audacity to send in his forces to takeover and destroy the lives and property of innocent people, simply for his own greed and desires? Now, although only six months since it all began, I feel the shock and horror is fading. Because it is impacting the rest of the world through higher prices, the feelings of horror are tempered with annoyance at being inconvenienced financially as people pay more at the petrol bowser. It’s pretty much the same with Covid. Short memories. Have people forgotten the terrible impact it had on the world before the vaccines? Millions died, no one really knows the true figure, and yet people complain about restrictions, mask wearing and civil liberties. As for climate change, what a subject. There are still sceptics and they are of course entitled to not believe the science. All the countries of the world are being asked to mitigate any further impact on our fragile world. This cannot help but be a good thing, even if the claims are overstated. Yet anything that personally impacts us makes us feel as if we’re being punished for something that’s not of our making. Good can come from adversity. Although we’ve seen the selfishness of the human race, so also we’ve seen the humanity and willingness to help our fellow man. Let’s us hope we can continue to find the cures for all that ails this wonderful place we call Earth. Now for a joyous occasion. A party to celebrate the 22nd birthday of WdC. May it continue for a least another 22 years. Congratulations to all involved. |
| PROMPT 3: Sept 3 –What is most peculiar about your character, any hidden quirks? (From Crafting the Personal Essay by Dinty W. Moore (2010). There are approximately 9 billion human beings on the earth as I write this personal essay. It is said we’re all unique. Not one other person has the same fingerprints as mine. How incredible is that? It’s a little difficult to believe. So that’s the first thing that’s peculiar only to myself. My brain has all the same attributes as everyone else. It lights up on a brain scan in all the same areas when exposed to certain stimuli and yet my thoughts and dreams are my own, unique. We have all had different life experiences which form the people we become. Myself, I was the youngest in a family of five. Born at the end of the Second World War. Having a mother who was raising a family alone while her husband was fighting in a war must have had an effect on my psyche. So I was a fearful child who grew to be a fearful adult. That is until my husband and I left our country of birth, England, and travelled across the globe to a land of sunshine and oranges, Australia. Being away from my family made me the person I am today. Self assured and confident. As for quirks. The question asks if I have any. Quirks are a little like tweaks. Just that tiny bit of tweaking is what sets us all apart. A particular sense of humour, or a sense of what’s right and wrong. I always say my grandson is quirky, because of his refusal to eat anything that comes from an animal, even to the extent of refusing to wear leather shoes or eat honey from exploited bees. Although how you exploit a bee is beyond me! If I had to come up with a personal quirk, it would probably my annoying, to some, way of always looking on the bright side of life. I’m a true Pollyanna. I always see the humour in bizarre situations. Life is amazing. The world is a beautiful place. And life is too short. Words 363 |
| PROMPT 2: Sept 2 – () Comment on this 20-minutes video. The idea we must have or need a muse, is one that is prescribed only to writers, sculptors or painters. After all, do other professions need someone or something to urge them to go to work, other than their need to earn a wage? All writers, either professionals or what I call Sunday writers, have experienced people asking “what have you published?” It’s as if whatever you’ve written is bad or useless if you are not earning a monetary reward. Yet would you ask a golfer why they play golf? Or your grandmother why she knits? They do it because it’s something they enjoy doing. Yes, it’s sometimes frustrating. The golfer loses his ball in the lake, the knitter drops stitches or reads the pattern incorrectly and has to unravel her work, and the writer is often at a loss for words. Yet we continue to do what we love. I actually have a muse, it’s my husband. When I get stuck I ask him to help with an idea. I actually rarely use his ideas but simply by bouncing ideas around with him reignites enthusiasm. Writing can be dispiriting, I admit. Sometimes I feel the well is dry, that I’ve written (painted) myself into a corner, nowhere to go but to sit there and wait until the virtual floor is dry enough to walk on again. The only thing to do when all inspiration has fled is to write anything. Abandon the project which is giving you grief and write in your diary, or blog. Write about how frustrated you feel or write about the dog, the weather, the woman who did that crazy thing at the shops. Write about the things you’re afraid of, like the author in the TED talk says she’s afraid of seaweed. Actually when she spoke of her dislike, or mistrust of seaweed, I felt a urge to write a story about seaweed having an evil intent. Has anyone ever written that story? |
| PROMPT 1: Sept 1 – “May the joy that you have spread in the past come back to you on this day. Wishing you a very happy birthday WdC!” A few.years ago, 2018 in fact, I stumbled across WdC. That day literally changed my life for the better. I took the plunge and joined but at age 74 and hardly literate in computer usage I found the site utterly confusing. What were all those codes and brackets etc. about? I had no idea. But a wonderful member, Rachel, of the Rockin’ Reviewers or The Paper Doll Gang, I think they’re one and the same, reached out to me and taught me everything I needed to know to to be able to navigate my way through the maze. After my ‘training’ I had the confidence to enter contests and have done reasonably well since then. I continue to learn my craft, helped in no small part by another member who is no longer here. No he’s not dead! He’s resting. Blimprider had endless patience with me as I failed him many times by not separating my paragraphs or indenting when necessary. Comma usage still fails me at times, let’s be honest most of the time. However, I soon began to realise I was addicted to WdC and probably still am. I have ‘met’ people from all over the world, had lots of lovely emails and feel as if I know much more about different country’s cultures than I did before. Another benefit from logging in each day is the stimulation I receive for my ageing brain. My aim is to avoid dementia at all costs and WdC you are doing your bit in that regard. For twenty two years you have kept this site going. From what I gather the Word Mistress and Master are a couple with a family to raise. In the on line world, with all the other options for writers to join, you must be doing something the others aren’t. I believe it’s the sense of family and inclusion which keeps us all here, year after year. There are hard core of members who put in more than their fair share of hard work to keep the site interesting and relevant. I thank and appreciate them all. So I’ll keep on turning up each day, checking out the Community Newsfeed, entering the odd contest and challenge and try my best to keep by brain cells firing. Thank you WdC and I wish you a “Very Happy Birthday. “ |
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RippedFromTheHeadlines Written for
Long gone are the days when young boys used to stand on street corners shouting, “ Read all about it!” The headlines would be printed on a board next to him in large print just to emphasise the Earth-shattering news event of the day. It was exciting and colourful. That was then. Now we have news, morning, noon and night from all over the world, not just locally anymore. It’s tedious and sometimes frightening as it makes the world appear to be a threatening place. It gives the impression we’re all unsafe, everyone is out to scam us, kill us, or rob us. Women’s magazines are the worst for their outrageous headlines. They are untrue, made up, manufactured from, at best, a sliver of truth. Photographs of celebrities are deliberately photoshopped either to make them appear, sad, bad or angry. Or the reverse, more beautiful than they really are or could possibly be. This is all for a story. Whether it is true is immaterial, the story is the most important. Whoever may be hurt or scandalised doesn’t matter so long as people are sucked in enough to buy the magazine. The story is everything. |
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrokenAce Written for
They say: “He’s a lovely guy, so nice to his wife and kids.” The guy you just can’t trust in movies and in books. The hero, someone who helps us all, but at home, forbids. Always smiles, even featured, everyone likes his looks. Outside the home, upon the streets, Old ladies he assists. He smiles at everyone he meets His personality, he twists. His wife, not allowed to live the life she had envisioned. Protects herself, disallows her feelings. In her home she is imprisoned, Waiting for signs of bruises healing. He’s the baddie, in disguise In every film and play. He is the one that brings surprise Antagonist? “You’d never have guessed,” they say. You wait for his discovery, You turn the pages much faster. And pray that his skullduggery’s Revealed for ever after. |
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Though I hear there are amazing waterfalls in Australia. 
