My favorite books as a kid always involved a voyage of some sort – usually to a wondrous land full of magic and possibility that desperately needed the main character to save it from encroaching darkness and leave the place better than he or she found it. Of course, the protagonist had to leave the enchanted world at some point and return to his or her home a little smarter, stronger, and kinder.

Books like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe immediately spring to mind, but there’s also my beloved A Wrinkle in Time, Bridge to Terabithia, and the Phantom Tollbooth. Since I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the epic magical land journey, the good versus evil clash, and the triumphant return home. I’ve tried to incorporate this “quest” structure into my own manuscript and once I hit upon it, I’ll know. It’ll feel full and complete, like the stories I read.

To illustrate one of the greatest magical journeys of all time, here’s the synopsis for The Neverending Story:

“Small and insignificant Bastian Balthazar Bux is nobody’s idea of a hero, least of all his own. Then, through the pages of an ancient, mysterious book, he discovers the enchanted world of Fantastica, and only Bastian himself can save the fairy people who live there. Shy, awkward Bastian is amazed to discover that he has become a character in the mysterious book he is reading and that he has an important mission to fulfill…”

(Isn’t that delicious?) It so perfectly encapsulates what makes the novel so great: a “nobody” embarks on a journey through magic to save the new world and becomes stronger in the process.

I particularly like this piece on the 8-point story arc, which distills the quest architecture into meaningful steps, and dissects the process of putting together a story that works.

Meanwhile, for today, let’s experiment with questing. Write a short piece (or poem even) that embodies the quest story arc. And if that sounds way too pompous for a Tuesday morning, just use the word “quest” in your writing today (I mean, use other words too, but “quest” should be in there somewhere.)

• Try to write your entry in 10-15 minutes. This encourages top-of-mind, primal thinking before the ego and judgmental brain kick in. Just set a timer, make your kid count to 600 slowly, whatever. It’s an honor system. And I trust you.
• Aim for 500 words or less.
• Please have fun. Don’t put pressure on yourself. Together, let’s rediscover the simple joy in the writing process.
• Post your submission in the comments OR post in your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments.

If you’re new, read a bit about this weekly writing exercise here.

Or, catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.

Here we go: Tell me a secret. Of course, I’d prefer it be a true secret. And about you. But I know where that can lead, and perhaps you’re not prepared for it. So let me addendum this: If you’d rather, write about someone who has a secret. Maybe a character you’ve concocted. Or someone in your family or a friend has a secret that you tell us all about fiction-style (or not, even better!).

As for me, I’ve got to think about the secret I will share. I’ve already told you how I practiced french kissing on my dog, so that’s out. But I’m sure I’ll come up with something equally as skeevy.

Meanwhile, here’re the rules:

• Try to write your entry in 10 minutes. This encourages top-of-mind, primal thinking before the ego and judgmental brain kick in. Just set a timer, make your kid count to 600 slowly, whatever. It’s an honor system. And I trust you.
• Aim for 250 words or less.
• Please have fun. Don’t put pressure on yourself. Together, let’s rediscover the simple joy in the writing process.
• Post your submission in the comments OR post in your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments.

If you’re new, read a bit about this weekly writing exercise here.

Or, catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.

Now go out there and have fun writing about your deepest darkest!

Relatedly, I’ve got one more appointment this week to go over my blood work and can I just shut up already about my health like I’m some sort of Golden Girl?

That said, it turns out my ovarian cyst is the same size it was a month ago so we’re waiting and seeing. I’m convinced the lack of change is due to this supplement I’ve been taking called serrapeptase that decreases inflammation and is supposed to eliminate cysts. My doctor said it “looked” like the cyst was trying to resolve and so that’s great news. In a side detail, the inside of my arm is an enormous bruise because serrapeptase thins your blood and my blood didn’t take well to being sucked out with a needle.

But this is about health. Let’s change the topic to something that doesn’t make me contemplate my mortality. So, from this point forward, the emphasis on those things I’ve discovered that help me feel better, which is the real goal:

The Dailey Method

I started taking these barre-type classes two months ago. After the first session, I questioned my ability to continue because the targeted muscle work is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Like I thought parts of me would explode, and forget holding a plank position for 30 seconds. But I pressed on, forced myself to continue the classes, and have since found it’s one of my favorite workouts. It’s a combination of yoga, barre, pilates and stretching that makes me feel like I could be a dancer. (I cannot be a dancer. The teachers fix my alignment every class because I have a congenital spaz defect.) I love the stretching especially, and most recently after a hang on the “stall” bar, all my vertebrae popped into a straight line that despite the infernal cracking sound, made me feel straighter and longer. I’m currently part of a challenge that incorporates several workouts a week, healthy, plant-based eating, and mind-body education. I’ll tell you one thing: these classes have definitely improved my posture and stomach strength (I don’t know. I just say stuff sometimes), and we can all do with sitting up straighter. Also, the emphasis is on small movements that builds muscle and I’m definitely feeling it.

Supplements

I thank Maggie for all her input here. She gave me a list of the vitamins and herbs she takes to keep her health issues at bay – especially as they relate to hormones run amok, and I faithfully followed the recommendations. I’ve been taking Omega-3s, a B complex, Vitex (chaste berry) and a mineral supplement. I’m noticing a difference in my energy and wellbeing, for sure. Now, I just need to cure PMS and all will be well.

As for the serrapeptase I mentioned earlier, a Finnish friend lent me a bottle because her mother-in-law swears it drains cysts and gets them out of your body. I started taking two capsules a day and like I said, I believe it’s had a positive impact, other than the bleeding out (in all actuality, I DO notice I bleed longer if I get cut or bruised, but it’s nothing I can’t handle yet). I’ll update the serrapeptase testimonial after I take the whole bottle.

Music

Staying mind healthy (a term my husband would use loosely) completely depends on surrounding myself with the right music. Right now, I’m into Jessie J, who is one of those singers who gets to the heart of it.

I think “being who you are” is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself.

In the end, I’m one of those up and down people who commit to health for awhile and then fall hugely on my butt, only to get up again and go back at it. I’d like some more consistency in my life when it comes to staying healthy, but for now, I guess here is where I am and who.

The Dailey Method invited me to join the 60-Day Challenge free of charge. Maybe they felt sorry for my probable bicuspid aorta.

So in I go for tests to check for high cholesterol, anemia, hormonal imbalance, thyroid dysfunction and all the other crap you probably have when you’re over 40. My original physical was in January and my blood work was scheduled to follow that appointment, so I suppose in April, my doctor made her “I’m a pansy” point.

I just really hate needles. I had two natural childbirths because I avoid needles on sight and on principle. One of those births was induced with pitocin, which makes cramps like 1,000 chainsaws mincing your organs into ground beef meat, but at least I avoided the spinal needles.

And also, the blood work is the least of my problems.

Because I may have to undergo surgery, and if you’re a hypochondriac, when you hear “surgery” all you think is “WHAT IF I DON’T WAKE UP?” “WHAT IF THE ANESTHESIA DOESN”T TAKE AND I FEEL EVERY SLICING OF MY INNARDS WHILE SILENTLY PLEADING FOR YOU TO HEAR ME ?” ” WHAT IF I CHOKE ON MY OWN VOMIT DURING RECOVERY?” “WHAT IF YOU LEAVE STAPLES IN MY GUT AND I BLEED THEM OUT MY BELLY BUTTON?”

I already have a guarantee from my husband, The Rock, that he will monitor my throat after surgery so it doesn’t throw up and kill me.

Which would be a feat given the surgery will take place on my troublesome left ovary.

The ovary that grows cysts like trees grow cherry blossoms in Japan (can someone give me a simile intervention?) and is the bane of my hormonal existence. I mean, I know my endocrine system have been all out of whack for years (I’m never hot and now, the Sahara Desert is like a ski destination) and I told my doctors as much, but no one listened until my ovary sprouted a bowling ball.

I have a follow-up ultrasound tomorrow that will tell us if I need to have the mass removed. Pray I don’t. I’m really not good with being opened up and probed. It’s just that I feel it inside me and its foreignness is disconcerting like Dr. Drew at Coachella (did anyone call the simile interventionist?).

It all started when I told my doctor that every few months my left ovary acts like it’s filled with shredded glass threatening to explode its walls. The pain lasts for about 45 minutes and makes me want to puke and cry and fetal roll and then it goes away like it never happened. I mentioned this in passing like you do when you’re convinced you have everything else but the thing you actually DO have.  Given that the shredded-glass-analogy sounded alarming, my doctor scheduled an ultrasound and there it was…a hemorrhagic cyst.

It was big, too. But the last time I had a cyst of that size I visited an acupuncturist and changed my diet and it went away. I didn’t see an acupuncturist this time and I’m convinced that’s the problem. Although I DID lie facedown on the ground several times because I’d read that a man cured his liver cancer by coming into contact with the Earth’s healing ions after he made it a point to lie on the ground every day for a year to let the inner planetary core send up its miracle light rays.

I want to believe in things like that.

Instead, I fear that my hormonal maladies have come home to roost in my ovary and I’ll need to remove it.

Also, I might have a congenital heart defect.

Tomorrow is a big day for a hypochondriac like me.

Stay tuned for soon when I know more about whether I’ll have to worry more about post-surgery vomit asphyxiation.

Today’s writing prompt is inspired by this uplifting story at KirstyTV.

What was the moment when you knew your life had to change?

Please post your response in the comments or write about it on your blog and leave me the link.

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.

We were headed to the mall. The girls had the day off school and I’d given in to their repeated requests to “get a frozen yogurt and window shop,” even when I knew full well we’d end up with greasy food court fare and bags from Justice.

I mean, I’m human. Sometimes I can’t resist treating the girls to a mall trip because they love it so. They are girls, after all.

I remember thinking that very thing when my nine-year-old came down the stairs wearing high heels and blush.

She also carried a purse packed with a wallet, wore dangly earrings and sported skinny jeans.

Although a dozen DON’T GROW UP SO FASTs zapped through along my brain synapses, I didn’t say anything at first because I’d noted a faint touch of uncertainty in her. This was new.

Her “high heels” were sweet low ones set with faux jewels that I’d bought for her to wear to the Father-Daughter Dance last year. Her purse and wallet were my hand-me-downs. Her jeans I’d bought at our last mall trip and then, they looked less mature paired with Converse and a tee.

She didn’t look at me directly because she’s a perceptive child and must have known what I was thinking.

“I’m only wearing makeup for fun,” she offered.

I couldn’t bear for her to feel awkward at trying this new “I’m not a little girl anymore” look. “Did you just feel like getting dressed up?”

She nodded and I caught her taking stock of herself in the hall mirror.

A very slight roller coaster feeling tickled my stomach innards. She’s growing up and I don’t have much time.

I don’t have much time to imbue her with confidence and self-love; a conviction that she’s OK how she is and doesn’t need to do what her friends say just to fit in; and a belief in herself that no one can shake with a cruel comment or apathetic disregard.

I need to raise her with a healthy ego and a kind everything. I want her to know that high heels don’t make the woman and to never look out the corner of her eye to see what people think about what she’s wearing or being.

I want to carry her through middle school and high school to repel all attacks on her self esteem and protect her sense that all is good in the world.

I want to follow her through every first in her life and ensure they’re all happy and right; I need her to know she’s a million little pieces of person and they’re all perfect.

I’ve got to get on with it because those high heels broke my heart.

I first sensed something odd Memorial Day weekend. It was Sunday, and The Rock and the kids spent the day at a friend’s picnic while I caught up on work at home. Around five or so, I put the computer away and collapsed on the couch to clear my head. I’m not sure what first caught my attention, but the hallway directly in front of me, the stretch of floor leading to the kitchen, seemed to flutter for a brief second. I lifted my head to look expecting to see — a bird? A fly? Carol Anne? — and instead, shadows threw themselves at the red wall, which was nothing new given the trees waving in the windows behind me. Despite my worst and best imaginings, all looked like it always had this time of early summer evening. The sun shone bright enough that nothing seemed dastardly or even remotely spooky, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that a something lurked in the hall. I caught the proverbial chill with the requisite hair standing on end for milliseconds and then turned my eyes back to whatever meaningless program blared from the TV.

The sense of a weight, or a mass taking up space, or charging ions flitting in the hall continued to occupy me all night until a few hours later when my family arrived home. After hello snuggles and snotty fits exacerbated by too much chlorine and too many hot dogs, The Rock and I put the reluctantly tired girls to bed and afterwards, lounged on the couch to catch up on the day. By then, I’d quite forgotten the shuddering presence in the hall and listened as my husband filled me on our friends’ lives and how towering everyone’s kids had grown in one short year. Probably five minutes went by of spousal small talk when we both heard a loud noise — not really a crash or a clang — but a disconcerting alert that something had fallen on the floor and hard. It sounded to me as if it had come from upstairs but while I looked up, The Rock ran into the kitchen and said to no one specifically, “What are you doing?”

I remember feeling annoyed; bothered that he got the impetus of the noise so wrong when it obviously originated from upstairs and was probably the children screwing around after dark. “It came from upstairs!” I shouted while he continued to search the kitchen and its nooks and crannies.

When he emerged from his investigation, I knew something was off. He looked visibly freaked, and continued to look at the hall spilling into the kitchen as he told me he absolutely, positively saw what he thought was a small child dart into the space by the refrigerator. He believed it was one of our girls, but when I pointed out that we are in full view of the staircase and would surely have seen them come downstairs, he admitted he didn’t know what he’d seen, but it was shadowy, dark, and mobile.

I don’t often see my practical, black-and-white husband stumped. The last time it happened, when a ball mysteriously bounced down our stairs years ago, it took him weeks until he could admit he lacked an explanation for the phenomenon. We still can’t shed light on what happened then, although we certainly tried, even after a string of strange occurrences followed after that ball appeared out of nowhere to plonk slowly from the second to first floor. This time though, he immediately chalked the sighting up to the unexplained, perhaps because this kind of thing had been happening off and on since we’d been together.

I told him what I’d experienced a few hours before and we hemmed and hawed over possible non-ghostly scenarios, which involved a hypothesis of rapid crazy onset, and eventually, we abandoned hope of figuring out the shadow. Not long after, my husband fell asleep on the couch and I, much too scared to sleep at the scene of the paranormal crime, retired to our bedroom. The dreams came quickly. I know because I woke up an hour later to find my daughter in our bed and a bucket-full of nightmares had already appeared behind my eyes. I snuggled up to Toots and fell back asleep to the dreams, the kind where you think you’re awake but you’re not, and where you scream hoping someone will hear you and shake you from the half-sleep land that you can’t escape. Writing this now, the most I can remember from that night are the faces that popped up behind windows and in closets and peeking from halls.

The morning brought more exhaustion. My husband tromped upstairs early and collapsed on the bed. “I had the worst dreams last night,” he told me. “Those horrible ones where you can’t wake up.”

I told him I’d had the same dreams and we again pondered the significance. Maybe bad food? An oncoming flu? A gas leak? We’ve been living in this house since 2009, knew the original owners – no one dead – and hadn’t seen anything strange or untoward in any of the home’s rooms for more than three years. As I’m wont to do, I plumbed my brain for any thing I could have done to invite a spirit into my space. I’d long sworn off Ouija boards, I don’t ghost hunt, and I’ve never been a “sensitive” often despite wishing I could sense my mom’s presence from beyond the grave. That’s just a wish, though, and all it’s ever been. Plus, this energy we’d been sensing doesn’t feel maternal or…warm.

The day went on without reasons. Our house remained lit during the day with sunshine pouring into our vast network of windows, the kids frolicked and gallivanted, and our normal routine unfurled. There is nothing wrong here. Nothing wrong here. I kept repeating it like the “I love Gods” I’d always said in my head to repel horribleness, or the myriad of crosses I’d etch in shower steam as a child to scare the vampires I believed lurked outside the door. It certainly seemed true; there was nothing sinister in my home. Other than an isolated incident or two, I didn’t feel prickly or tingly or subject to attic thunks and dogs barking at nothing. Everything was fine, everything was fine.

The day proceeded, and I went to bed early. Again, I woke amidst dreams. I looked toward the mirrored closet doors in front of me and for the second time, saw a flutter, a movement, a ripple. There was nothing specific, not a manifestation or a figure, just a conviction that something over there, in front of me; was claiming space, and existed. In truth, it felt like a lot of somethings, dark matter splintered into writhing shadow, and so I did what I’d seen done on Ghost Hunters countless times before: I screamed in my head, “Get out! You’re not welcome here! GET OUT!” Even with all my energy behind those words, I couldn’t tell if it worked. The feeling of heaviness didn’t leave, but the shadows did.

For the rest of the night, I kept my glasses on, just in case. I dreaded the kids going to school, my husband leaving for work, my going to take a shower, alone, just steps from that mirror and the somethings. I’d never felt that way in this house. It’d always seemed friendly and welcoming, and I loathed these new invaders; unless of course I was crazy? My imagination is legend and I’d been extra tired lately, so maybe that combination brewed paranoia? I certainly hoped so.

After breakfast, I packed up my laptop and vowed to stay out of the house until someone was in it with me. Even with the sunshine streaming through the windows in every room, and every door open, and the sound of a lawn mower next door, I couldn’t bear to be in my own home. It no longer felt right, light, and unencumbered. I considered a cleansing or a prayer service, or a psychic discovery. However, this was all in my head, right? Of course it was. I never saw anything substantial – just vague movement; didn’t hear anything other than a few night crashes and attic thunks, and didn’t feel threatened per se, just…pressed upon.

Fortunately, my words and explanations worked. After those miasmic two nights, the whatever (free-floating anxiety made manifest?) vacated the premises. I remained home alone during the day again, I didn’t see mirror will-o-wisps, the kitchen hall stayed free and clear. Other than a morning when my husband recounted another dream where he felt as if his spirit were being sucked from his body, only to return with an audible snap!, there was nothing. It seemed plausible when we discovered that my husband’s friend had succumbed to cancer that same evening and might have stopped by to say goodbye. Certainly plausible. This was the mind space in which we found ourselves – in which visiting friendly spirits seemed preferable to the alternative.

Like I said, everything returned to normal.

I know you know there’s a “but.” So there is, because exactly one month after the first hallway sighting, I again heard a clanging night crash. This time, my husband didn’t react as he usually did, no getting up to investigate, no baffled expression, no acknowledgment of the sound whatsoever. I made a passing remark that it was one month to the day of the last unexplained noise, and he responded simply, “This has been going on all month,” and then, “It never stopped.”

I gaped. “Where was I?” A question not so easily answered I suppose, as my children have never heard these noises either, despite crashes loud enough to be heard from the outside. Yet I, the person who first felt the disturbance in the domestic force, was spared from its paranormality just like them, and for a month. Was it my plea to stop? Did I shut down my internal spirit sensor? What does it mean that my husband is privy to the anomalies and I’m not?

I continue to feel unencumbered in the house, but needed to download the Ghost Radar* app to be sure. If there were spirits flitting about, I needed to know they were there because nothing is worse than carrying ghosts around and not knowing it. I brought my phone upstairs to test the ghost-sensing functionality, positioning myself in front of the very same mirror where I’d seen…what I had or hadn’t seen. The radar spun, and the numbers fluctuated, and the first word that appeared on the EVP screen was “death.”

This is where we find ourselves today.

(*I must tell you that I put nearly zero stock in the Ghost Radar. Its findings seem too random and made to play on want-to-believers, but for now, it’s all I got.)

Oh Target, where would I be without ye?

What’s the last thing you bought for your home or apartment?

Was it a picture? A pillow? What prompted the purchase? Were you having a CAbi party and didn’t want to be embarrassed by your dead and dying plants?

Please post your response in the comments or write about it on your blog and leave me the link.

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.

I’ve found it hard to write here lately, or actually, write and publish. People haven’t noticed, or perhaps they have, as when I visited a psychic several months ago, she seemed to pick up”creative” silence, telling me that I’ve shut down my voice and desperately needed to open it again, suggesting I wear a blue stone necklace to unblock that chakra.

But the real answer I know only as I type it now – is I don’t trust who’s behind the screen anymore. If I say why, I’ll move on and so this is me opening my chakra:

When I began blogging twelve years ago, I kept to myself. Of course, the ecosystem was vastly smaller then, and most bloggers at the time knit themselves into small groups I couldn’t hope to breach, nor did I want to because I rather liked writing in a vacuum where I crafted posts to please me, and not to attract readers or praise (or for that matter, criticism).

I abandoned that old blog in 2007 and began San Diego Momma to write, yes (and always), but to connect also. I wanted to reach out and talk and listen and be a part of the online space I saw unfolding before me. I recall coming up with the name of the blog, taking little to no time to create a URL, rather uninventively I might add, because my only thought process was “I’m from San Diego” and “I’m a mom.” After typing several iterations into Net Solutions, I discovered that only the “momma” spelling was available in combination with my city, and so my blogging persona began – on a whim and a notion.

I forced myself to write every day back then because I’d spent $1,500 on the design and I wanted to make my mark in this space. Not to rise to fame, not to be a name, but to be heard. I wanted to be known (as in “I see you, I really see you”), and connect with people I hoped were like me with the same hearts and minds.

I did. I met so many soul people I can’t number them all. It’s amazing how many bloggers love to read, dig music, and live inside their heads. I’d found my tribe. Several of them are still my friends, thank God, and I credit that to reaching out, allowing myself to be heard – and listening back. Those camaraderie days lasted a while, a few years, and then small shifts signaled that things were changing. One dear friend stopped blogging to pursue an online business, which is very successful today. Another grew tired of the narcissism and external living, and so blogs intermittently, if at all anymore. Another’s husband felt he was losing her to a virtual world and she gave up her space to save her marriage.

Then there were signs that blogging as I’d hoped it could be was morphing away from the personal relationships and stories. People asked me if I “monetized.” Others acted shocked when they discovered I wasn’t a proper “San Diego Mom” blogger who wrote about local events and such because it was a misuse of good SEO. Then, public relations companies began pitching, companies asked to run ads on my site, and meet-ups became hashtags. Blogging was discovered by the opportunists, and there were plenty of times I was – and am – one, too.

I rode the changes out with reactions ranging from bemusement to bitterness. I’m no better than anyone else, but this world was becoming too bright, too loud, and too phony for me. Blogging appeared to become a means to an end and a conduit for people’s fantasies and motivations to be BIG, BIG baby! It wasn’t and isn’t my thing to live outside of myself for so long. I grew to dislike the meet-ups where you had to broadcast your presence on Twitter, to shrink from the link-ups employed solely to increase readership, and to avoid the people who had agendas, which seemed to range from “I want to be a popular blogger” to “I think you can do something to get me ahead in this game.” Everything seemed so contrived.

The erosion of my blogging enjoyment came slowly as chipping away usually does. I had a horribly hard time accepting that people use each other for personal gain, that public faces were so different from private ones, and that it doesn’t always matter who you are, it matters WHO you are. This isn’t special to blogging to be sure, but it was my first concentrated exposure to this behavior, having successfully circled around ladder climbers and agenda havers most of my life. I couldn’t assimilate the fact that people I thought I knew were not at all how I wanted them to be (when people show you who they are, believe them the first time) and that recognition and popularity were so highly sought after with phoniness and insincerity. The emphasis on numbers and stats and social currency can strip people down to their barest essence. (Who are you really? What’s your price? Will you live your life for you or for what people think of you?)

This inauthenticity seemed everywhere. I once sat next to a woman who was compiling a list of bloggers she would “befriend” because they were influential and she wanted on their radar. She had her plan and over the next few months I watched as she reached out to these names on Twitter with fake praise and pandering, to, to – what? To be a name in the blogosphere? To grow her own influence (and for what)? For ego? I couldn’t hack it. Lack of transparency frightens me.

That’s what happened. I began to distrust. A rose is not a rose is a carnation. I wondered if people who reached out to me wanted something, because that’s what it seemed blogging and social media had become, in my world anyway. It didn’t seem like blogging and bloggers were doing it for the love, which is incredibly naive of me to write, I get that, and that’s the problem: my naiveté that ALL people and the ENTIRE world were real and good and what you say is what you mean was busted. It had to happen sometime.

My enthusiasm for blogging waned, mainly because I couldn’t picture my tribe anymore. In this online space, I’ve seen behavior that upsets me best case, and devastates me worse. Maybe not all people are good on the inside? I haven’t been able to get a handle on that and so I don’t trust. I need to imagine good behind the screen and I’ve been unable to conjure that image anymore.

I thought it was just this way now.

But with all things big and small, there’s many stories and a million sides. Sure, blogging has become more commercial and commoditized, drawing more people who will use it the way they used whatever came before to get ahead, or capitalize on building empires where they are kings and queens for the sole sake of saying they’re royalty, but it’s also the same as it always was. The bedrock is still there. It’s up to me to dig down and throw the dirt aside.

I’ve spent so much time in the disappointment and looking outward that I’ve missed the inward, which is my starting place for all things lovely. This online ecosystem is not bad – I’ve just been noticing the bad parts. The people who aren’t who they presented themselves to be? Let them fraternize with the other phonies! I’ve learned a lot of lessons, and this one was hard, but here it is: MOVE ON, with a side of PEOPLE AREN’T ALWAYS WHO YOU WANT THEM TO BE. I simply need to focus on the parts that are good (for me) and the people who are good (for me), as with everything, and there’s been plenty of both. I’m a child at heart and life lessons come hard and anything can be extrapolated into heartbreak when it isn’t to my liking.

Most of all, I’ve learned that the desire to create is still kicking in my gut and if I want to use this space in that way, I can. Meanwhile, I must detach and let other people use it for what they need, even if it’s not how I want them to use it.

I mean, the world is not my utopia.

Dammit.

#ChakraOpened

 

The question caught me by surprise. “Mom? When are you going to finish your book?”

I deflected. “Soon.” My brain raced through the reasons for my answer: too much work, health issues, rapid time slippage, not enough days.

“Have you written anything in it this year?”

I calculated the month – April, and realized we were nearly four months into 2013. I wasn’t used to being sheepish around my daughter. “No.”

She waited a second, one just long enough to let my answer settle and heave its weight. “OK.” She picked up her notebook and newly sharpened pencil. “I’m going upstairs to write.”

I watched her back and remembered several months ago when I opened my laptop and invited my daughter to read my work in progress. She read with intense concentration for a few moments and handed the computer back to me. “That’s enough.”

“You didn’t like it?” She was eight, but her opinion would shatter or sustain me.

“No.”

I held my breath. Where was my breath?

She continued, “It’s inspiring,” and then added the phrase that brought my memory: “I’m going upstairs to write.”

I stared at the white screen in front of me. I read the words. I heard my daughter root around her bedroom for her notebook, her pencil. She shouted down the stairs: “I’m calling it “The Elegance of Blood!”

She loved words like I did, and spent time arranging them in patterns that pleased her or surprised us.

I don’t know if I smiled or frowned when I looked again at my words in front of me. Either way, I said what was true, “It’s perfect.”

Then it was April again.

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Today’s creative writing prompt: What one thing do you want to finish before your time is up?

Please post your response in the comments or write about it on your blog and leave me the link.

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.