What have I been focusing on this week?
Because of my arm/shoulder pain, I am not knitting or crocheting so much. That means lots of games on my tablets, I like the escaping blocks type games. Any suggestions while healing?
Category: Creativity
Remember way back when I mentioned I might start a podcast? I can’t remember what I thought I’d call it, but a new title comes to mind as I started day # 3 of piano reawakening. “Warts and All”
We are so used to seeing the end result of endless practice. That makes sitting in front or with your art impossible. “I’ll never be that good. Why try?” So many negative things we tell ourselves, and because of that, we will never know what enjoyment we might bring ourselves or others while waiting for perfection. Follow your passions. God, muses, whatever you may call it, gets the credit for your curiosity drive. Do we dare let our defeatism lead the way? So I’m taking you on the ride. I took piano lessons since I was 5. I rebelled my way out around 16. After marriage at 21, I had to wait a while to get my old piano. My second son was teething when I got my piano back. I was rusty but could still enjoy the below pieces and much more, nearly totally memorized. I would play so hyperfocused that that piano had teething marks as the poor baby begged for my attention. So, I had to keep the practice to light bits.
When we moved to my first desert, Antelope Valley, the house was so small I had to keep the piano in a chicken coop. It was an old upright grand. It looked quite at home there. I would get up and go out in my heavy coat and gloves, scarf, and cap. As I did the scales and warm-ups, layers were released. I was starting to fall in love with my kidnapper. Stockholm Syndrome? There was a lot of angst from the psychological damage that practicing piano imposed on me.
A few decades later, after letting myself enjoy other music, singing, playing the recorder, and playing the ukulele, I felt like I wanted to try to bring it all back. Three days ago, I figured out a time of the day I could schedule my piano time. My first day was a lot of cleaning my baby. We get a lot of dust out here. And the darned mice. Lots of cleaning. But hey, that old piano in the chicken coop was pretty bad, too. And I love this piano. How I got it is another story. So cleaning it was, is now, a work of love. I did start playing that day for a few minutes. It went well. I kept it to 15 minutes. For some reason, yesterday’s practice made me want to cry. Today I decided to start recording myself and sharing the mess and progress with you. You are not required to listen to these as if they were elevator music. It is merely how it is when you try.
Enough of music. I’ll share the uke and recorder progress later.
Passion is imperfect.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “—amble.” Add letters to the beginning of “-amble” to make another word or use it as is in your post. Enjoy!
Writing my memoirs is like ambling back through my life. 72 years of shambles and rambling through brambles. Ouch! or take a gamble with this choice or that. Though it is fun to revisit with my grandparents and aunts and uncles, revisiting death or car accidents can sometimes feel like it just happened even if it’s been decades since the actual occurrence. Still smelling the cedar of my grandparent’s closets or the ever-present scent of laundry soap can make me feel warm and secure. I have learned new ways to find my center.
Remember that friend you went to Renaissance Faire with? Remember a day of laughing while sitting in a creek on a hot day? So many memories to take that stroll. I do love a good amble!
The decreased crown was accomplished most easily on the KB Flexee fine-gauge loom. This hat is now heading for charity. I know I’ve shared the YouTube before. But just in case, here it is again. Sadly I had to play yarn chicken as I ran out of the orange just when finishing.
During the Embrace Your Weird (Felicia Day) session we were given a prompt. Write a story starting each sentence with the next letter of the alphabet. The first sentence starts with ‘A,’ last sentence ‘Z.’
I changed it up. 😋 my inspiration was Valentine’s Day’s Bitmoji.
Ascending as always
Blessings by ballooning Betsy
Cruises carelessly
Charging chubby cherubs
Darting, dashing, doing,
Ever elusive, enormous emergencies
For forlorn, forgotten favors
Given graciously-
Gritted gifts-gamed
However handled,
HER history
Imagine icicles issued in ignorance,
Jumping jack jealously jerking
Kite kept kisses
Loosed lightning love-lint
Meant mostly mush
Needed nearly, noted necessary
Openly optimistically obtainable
Positively popped prayers
Quietly quenched
Research received respite
Safely settled sheltered sanity
Together this time,
Target tagged.
Unusually ushered, ultimately used
Valentines, virus, violent visions vanquished
With wonder, wishes wafted, wrangled, washed, woes
Xed
You yell YES!
Zapped
Heavens to Betsy
NaNoWriMo is doing another group push. It’s called Now What 2022. It helps to have these things to try to kick me in the butt to get my editing and more writing done. So for my own accountability, I’m keeping track of words as I add my second Haven book back into the newest version of Writer. I wrote this and Haven back when the program was newish. yWriter5. We are now to yWriter7. I am nothing but redundant in my saving my WIP. So I consistently save the day’s writing in that program to RTF. Now decades later, I am glad I did that.
In this case, I can find my book, Haven Above and Beyond, open it in Word, and then use Grammarly to help me weed through and make a better version, if not rewrite the whole thing to make more sense. And as I enter it into a new yWriter7 project, I can count the word as I paste the worked-out bit in. I set my goal to 25,000 words. I have a few of my other books set up with the same goal because I might feel like moving around. I am not good at editing. I love the adventure of imagining a new story. But jumping into the mess and fixing what already played out as a movie in my mind, I miss a lot, and fixing things just doesn’t come easily. So the word count to date is 2,949. There are two scenes within that that are entirely yellow highlighted as I hate how it reads and will have to totally rewrite them. That’s okay. I’m glad I can see the awful within that movie.
So between editing, Diamond Painting, making a new charity hat while watching Sweet Magnolias, Duolingo, finding the moments to walk or play the recorder, and having a high need dog, I can get pretty turned around. I am grateful to be retired, with nothing but time. But there is never enough even without a job hogging it up.
Oh! Did I mention that in our tiny little community that had one gas station/convenience store and a tiny grocery store, both of which are charging twice as much as they used to, and even then, they were high? We just got a Dollar General. My son and brother went the other day. They came home and told me that it was a TARDIS of a shop, bigger on the inside. My husband and I plan to check it out tomorrow. Who knew, back in my big city days that I would be this excited to go into a Dollar General?
I’ll try to get my own pics tomorrow. As if most of you haven’t seen a Dollar General! 😂
I didn’t feel the blues because it was either Monday or sort of rainy. But with my cataracts, my wonderful husband agreed to help me find my medical insurance today.
We started with this book:
Our tiny hamlet doesn’t have anything for older people. No flu shots without albumin, no vaccines. To get those, we need to spend $50 for something free. And indeed, finding helpful insurance has been stressful and sad. We finally settled on something… I think. Meanwhile, I need only green spray paint to recycle/reuse this piece of *&#$+*for the trees wasted.
Per Linda G. Hill
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “lid.” Use it in the literal sense, use it in the metaphorical sense, use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
I decided to combine #SOCS’s ‘lid’ with #Intober2021 where the prompt of the day is ‘pressure’.
Here’s the story’s continuation:
Trying to keep the lid on seemed to increase the pressure. The watchman clicked on his watch and scrolled to Crystal’s name and hit send. When her face came on the screen it was full of understanding. Her crystals were growing nearly taking over her irises. It made her look blind, but he knew it was the opposite. He warned her to get out while she could.
Crystal looked around at her fans. She felt the one who had whispered before, tugging at her arm. She whispered again, “Let’s get out of here, this way!”
Crystal let herself be pulled while bowing and thanking the enclosing crowd.
~~~
Shoot! Another cliffhanger! What is going to happen? I wish I knew! Anyway, here’s the #Intober2021 ink.
First of all, I like drawing with a pencil. I’m not doing well with the finality of ink when I am not at all versed in how. So sorry, not sorry. Besides, this is to encourage my writing. Having multiple words yesterday in trying to catch up was easier to pull out the story. But this is going more slowly. First the pic and then the bit I’ve written.
Maybe I should use markers to color in. I can’t seem to leave the sketch in black and white. And that bit at the upper left is the watch on the guard’s arm, not a pill bottle. Okay, the story installment:
The watchman looked at his watch. Panic set in his bones. He noticed the crowd closing in on Crystal.
How was he to rescue her while obeying her command to let her enjoy her fans? But midnight approaches, and he now what that means!
#Inktober2021/#Inktober
My friend was telling me how much fun she was having with Inktober. She is not only inking illustrations but also inking a journal or story to go with the picture prompt. That sounded like fun so I’m joining seven days late.
Here’s my days 1-7 #Inktober2021 submission and then the story that goes with it. Since I wrote the story long handed I felt it too personal to take a picture of my handwriting.
Arriving proudly at the ball, Crystal, dressed in a formfitting suit, grabbed the mic. “I refuse to be a vessel for another man!” She loosened the knot at her neck, as she continued, “No wonder guys are so cross! Ties are the worst thing since high heels!” At which point she kicked those glass slippers off the stage.
The belt was next, then Crystal squirmed out of the skin-tight pants. Her jacket was long enough to cover the goods or the raven-black panties covering said goods.
The crowd was cheering her on. This wasn’t on the itinerary but none would object. Still, the spirit wasn’t in her to continue. She bowed to wild applause and then descended into the audience.
“Excuse me, Crystal,” a voice whispered behind her, “I’m you’re biggest fan.”
~~~~
In my #Inktober sketch above I made a close of Crystal’s eye a sneak peak, I think, is that she was born with a crystal in her eye and since then has developed several each gives her powers. The list of prompts is on the Inktober 2021 website. I’m hoping the writing part will spark something for NaNoWriMo some people call October Preptober. That last link was a Google search and there are so many there to help a person get ready I think I’ll keep it open and wade through them all later.
How many want to join me in either Inktober or NaNoPrep?
Per Linda:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “pin.” Use it as a noun, use it as a verb, use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
Pinterest is a history lesson of my passion over the last few years. Ah, but then so is this blog.
Writing starts and continues as the place I put a lot of energy. But I used to sew. I found the race of pulling the pins before the needle hit them too stressful. Not to mention the ripping what I sewed. Ugh! And sitting in the position of leaning over the machine hurt my back. Sewing fell as a passion.
Crochet became my next passion. I could make hats for charities and spend time creating. But my hands didn’t like the constant positioning.
Then I learned to loom knit. Even ripping, frogging, or tinking projects was fun. More yarn, more chances to improve.
I tried to dry felt but found the constant hand movement hurt so another craft bit the dust.
Now I’m having fun playing my recorders. It hurts my hands sometimes but it seems, if I’m inconsistent (skipping a day here and there) that my hands get more proficient and hurt less. It doesn’t carry with it the fulfillment the loom knitting does. I’m not helping anyone else. But maybe that’ll be something to come?
Drawing has the same feeling. I can get lost, as lost as when writing, in a project. True, I don’t feel the giving feeling there like I do with the knitting but I don’t feel wasteful of my time and energy. I wonder what that is? Should I see how I can expand somehow into something more charitable?
Music is coming alive in me again. What can I do with it? Is it okay to just enjoy the journey? Does it, too need me to pin it to the social magazine (how I think of Pinterest)? I really want to pinpoint my passions to understand how best to approach the ‘work’s of the fun.
And now with health improving, I wonder where that will lead. Hiking, camping? Let’s just put a pin in that.
Darswords 
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