Welcome Home, Me

    


     Well, clearly the best laid plans of mice and men... and me.....
     I had hoped, back on the first of the year, that I might start blogging again, since I have missed the writing and the contacts with the blogging world, my virtual friends. But, I guess it's taken me this long to realize that blogging really is the best format choice for me. Since January, this year, I have been writing, but I went back to trying to use a journal, several journals, and have been writing, or trying to, to prompts, which I do love, but have not had much success. I guess I find I do best when I'm just documenting my life, for no other real purpose than the love of words, and to leave a record of my days. For what real purpose, I don't know. Maybe for my kids, or grand-kids? Maybe for no one. But the ease of a computer keyboard, over the slowness of pen to paper, no matter how much I love my journals and my pens (I have a minor pen "thievery" issue - if a grocery store or doctor's office has a beautifully smooth writing pen, especially with a fine tip, I tend to "acquire" that pen. Somehow, I just seem to forget to lay it back down after writing my check, or my next appointment date...I also have a SUPER thing for journals; I adore a new notebook!!!) is just going to generate more consistent writing, and more writing, quantity-wise, I guess.  So, here I am. Hello, me.
     While last year's goal was to take better care of me, physically, and I can successfully say I did that, and continue to do that, this year's goal was/is writing. Write, write, and write some more. And do something with it. To what end, I'm not sure, but I have applied, and am still waiting (more and more anxiously with every day that passes) to hear from UAA about their MFA in Creative Writing. I applied for their low residency program in literary nonfiction, but have not heard yet. It's frustrating, because if that isn't going to happen, then I need to find a new goal for myself to get me writing, to SOME end, whatever it might end up being. I'm not worried - just focused.
     So, with the realization that this is the best location for me to tumble out the day's thoughts, or worries, or joys, even though it was a year between visits from Jan to Jan, and now nearly 3 months between the last I wrote and this, I know it's ok. I'm back. This is my home, of sorts, for many of my words, and home is not just a place to visit, it's a place to return to. I've been away for a year and a few months, but I'm home again, and, I think I'll stay for awhile. In fact, I think I might even go make a cup of tea, and come back again all in the same day. I've missed you, pages, and I'm GLAD to be home. Robert Frost said, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."  Well, my lovely little page in bloggerworld, you are my home to my thoughts and words and heart, so you must take me back!  Thank goodness. There's no place like home. <3 br="">

Welcome 2014

Funny that this is a different version of the last picture I posted ... exactly one year ago. It still compels me, but for a different reason this year. AND I have taken a year off from blogging, only to realize that I really have missed it. I think I will try it again. I think more time here, less time on Facebook, will make me a better person!  And if not, at least writing is a more satisfying activity.
Looking forward to the new year, again.

This Year Was Good - Next Year Will be Better

      It is New Year's Eve, and although I have never been a fan of celebrating this night, preferring always to stay in, to just be with family, and even, in the past few years when the kids were off to other places, going to bed long before midnight, tonight, this year, will be different.  This year is the beginning of the 50th year of my life. I don't actually turn 50 until early February, and it seems as though, if I were being technical, I'd wait UNTIL my birthday, and plot the year from February to February, birthday 50 to birthday 51. But, I like the idea of this new YEAR being my birthday YEAR, so I'm choosing, instead, to begin tonight/tomorrow. Tomorrow is a new beginning. A trite and traditional one, to be sure, but in some ways,  I like that. If my birthday weren't until later in the year, I probably would wait, but since it is close enough to January anyway, I'm choosingto begin celebrating having lived on this awesome planet for nearly 50 years,  now.
     I have big plans for this year. 50 of them, to be exact. Well, ok, so that's a bit of a lie. I don't actually have all 50 plans yet, but this is going to be the year of  "50 Things to do the Year I Turn 50," so I'm working on the list. It's not a monumental list. It doesn't have things like "Vacation in  Peru"  or "Build a School in Nepal" or "Stop Global Warming."  A lot of them are pretty mundane. But they are important goals to ME, and that's all that matters. This year, I'm focusing on me. That's not to say I plan to be selfish, or that I feel I am some sort of princess or that other people aren't important, even far more important. But, I'm important too, a fact that I seldom, if ever, give voice or creedence to, and I intend to, this year. And since the number one thing on my list is something to the effect of "Be alive - be alert to as many moments of life as you can, don't waste any more moments than you have to feeling sad, mad, angry, frustrated, irritated, etc. and instead, make it a point to just be open to life, to not take a single minute of this year for granted..."  well, I decided I'd best start with TONIGHT. I wouldn't want to sleep through the beginning of something this big. That would be a very inauspicious beginning to this most awesome year of my life.
     So, we've a bottle of champagne for later, I'm making some really delicious homemade caramel popcorn (because I love it, because it's kind of a pain to make and I don't make it often  just because it takes "too long" but now, that excuse is just not going to be a valid one), and we are having a fire in the fireplace. I intend to read, maybe do a little embroidery, a little crocheting, possibly even doze a little on my really comfy couch in this super quiet house as I wait for midnight to toll. The kids are all celebrating elsewhere with friends. At midnight, I'll toast to another year past, but more importantly, I'll toast to 2013 - the most awesome and meaningful year of my life to come, because I intend to make it so, to live with purpose, and clarity and intent. Of course, I know full well not every minute will be like that. There will be plenty of not-so-memorable moments, hours, even days this coming year. I'm sure of it. Because that is life, no matter how we plan and hope for that not to be so. But in choosing to TRY to live a meaningful year, a year full of purpose and enthusiasm and a year of motivated, authentic living, I am already ahead of more than half the people on this planet who simply exist, drifting from day to day like their life is full of an endless supply of them that they will appreciate later. Later is now for me. This year will be the best of my life. I choose to make it so.

I am the Queen of Unfinished Projects...

...so why should a plan to blog, or at least post a photo with a few words for the Instagram Challenge, daily, for an entire month,  which got derailed after only two posts, surprise me?  It doesn't!  It's me. It's who I am, completely. I have the BEST IDEAS EVER, and often even get all the materials (or thoughts...) needed for them, only to have them sit... and sit... and sit some more. SOME of them get finished, some never do. But, at least I know it's me, totally and completely  me, and can kind of chuckle at it. If I can't laugh at myself, at least at knowing myself so well that this doesn't even surprise me, even thought I REALLY wanted to do it, and really MEANT to do it, then I guess I'm just taking life far too seriously.
     Too bad. I had a GREAT one for purple!

Grateful Challenge: Nov 2, Sunset

Big Lake, Alaska   May, 2012 ,  10:30 pm

 

    There was never a question in my mind about what sunset picture I am most grateful for.  The sunsets last spring in Big Lake were phenomenal.  I know I have some that show the sun better, some that are more typically golden as the sun sinks in the west behind the trees at 11, or 11:30ish at night. Those are beautiful.  But looking at this one, I remember just being STUNNED at the colors on the mountains to the east of the sunset as they reflected back the light. The pink is not as vivid in the photo as it was in real life, simply because I lack a lot in both camera equipment and photography skills. I stood behind the house, outside the kitchen window near the Birch tree, with my heart in my throat, not from fear, but from simple awe.  The sun was dropping, slowly, oh-so-slowly out front, golden, fire-orange, blazing reds, but in the back, across the valley, the mountains were turning pink on their snowtopped caps. It was beyond beautiful, so beautiful. I had never noticed this before, and I will always be thankful that I was there, at that time, at that place, to see and appreciate. I am forever changed by having watched the pink on the mountains sink into a slightly darker, less vibrant but still beautiful, twilight.  I am, by nature, a sunset watcher, and appreciater, but this one made an impact like no other. For that, I am grateful.

Grateful Challenge: Nov 1, Leaves

A year ago, October, somewhere in Massachusetts along the turnpike.  Youngest daughter and I took a 4 day trip from NY to Maine to visit a potential college, and it was just one of the best trips ever. I spent four deliriously happy days, soaking in the changing leaves, the colors and feel of fall, traveling with my girl, seeing new sights, revisiting familiar places, everything. It was just a perfectly wonderful four days of traveling, and the palette of leaves throughout Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts was in full color.  When I came across this picture, it was an instant, visual reminder of that short trip, and how full my heart was those four days. I'm grateful for that time, that exeperience, shared with my beautiful girl, who is now attending that same college we went  to visit last October.

November is a lot of Things

 

 

     November. Month of Thanksgiving, above all else. At least, that is the first and most important thing that comes to mind for me. It is also Veterans' Day.  And it's some NaNoMo thing - I don't know the correct acronym, but it is National Write a Novel Month, with a 50,000 word goal, I think.  All of these things coelesce into some sort of perfect "thankfulness" storm. 
     I'm thankful for Thanksgiving, because, for me, it is all about being with my family, whatever family is able to gather that day.  The food is the centerpiece around which the people I love gather, and talk, and laugh, and inevitably argue. But just a little bit. Not enough to ruin the day.  And I miss family that day, too, but I'm still thankful I had them, or still have them but they just can't be at MY table that day. 
     Veterans' Day, while I am definitely grateful for the day off from school it gives me, has come to mean a great deal more than that to me, with friends and family who've sacrificed their lives, or years of their lives at least, to serve our country so that I don't have to. So that I can do all the things I do, all the things I take for granted.  I will never find the words to express my deepest and most sincere gratitude to our country's veterans, both past and present. And even future - my next door neighbor just signed her papers to join the Navy after this year of college is done, and one of my favorite guys from this year's Senior Class long ago signed up for the Marines, leaving right after graduation.   
     Lastly is that writing thing. I don't intend to write a novel this month. Even if I wanted to, and had the time (I don't), I don't have a novel in me right now. I DO, however, have some very specific writing targets for the future, bigger ones than I've tackled ever before, and those excite, challenge and scare me, just a litte bit. But I've decided I'll use November to work on accomplishing the steps to those goals that I can, so that they become slightly more tangible by the end of this month. 
     SO...what does all of that have to do with the Instagram 30 Day Challenge I posted for November?  I've decided to use those photography prompts and tie them in with the month's theme of Thankfulness. So, Day 1, (which was today by the way - yeah, not exactly starting out on the right foot, I know, since I didn't even remember to look for that challenge until tonight), for example,  asks for a photo of "Leaves."  I'm going to challenge myself to photograph leaves in such a way that they remind me of something to be thankful for, and to write a few words about it when I post it. I'm going to try to look at EVERY prompt for a photo as an opportunity to think of a reason to be thankful. I guess what I mean is, I'm going to try to be "creatively grateful" and to show that creativity and gratefulness through pictures and words this month. 30 days of them.  Day 13 has me a little worried...but hey, that's the point, right? To be grateful for things you don't necessarily FEEL grateful for right now? We'll see how I do!  Starting tomorrow, with "leaves" AND "sunset" to make up for today and get back on track for the month.