Yay, Z!
I don’t know why this was a tough month. The challenge was extra challenging.
You would think the alphabet could be easy. It’s not been that hard in the past.
But so had Camp NaNo. You want to know how far I got on that goal? Zero. Zip.
Yep, once again editing, writing, and my podcast and piano goals got nothing but yawns. Yippee!
But… Yarn got a lot of attention. Many socks nearly jumped off the needles. I seem to have a lot of zest for knitting.
Oh, well. Zippity Do Dah!
Just thinking about things can keep you awake at night. Half the time, you justify things done and other times, you go into full-on judgment. Jabberwokies fly or swim with jugglers who jab you in the ribs. All that from the thoughts or books before going to sleep.
At this advanced age, I am learning that I have a bit of control over this potential joyride of the brain. Just as a thought can go all wrong, and that was imagination going negative, jumping the tracks to joyful or boring ideas and letting the imagination make a jolly or juicy bit of fantasy can switch that mindset.
Sometimes, the mind wants to take over, so you must jog it or pull it to a stop with a jerk. A funny dragon, a space voyage, any story to take you away from the current darkness. Something funny or silly joke you tell yourself in the middle of that flow can slow it down. Then, the more you practice this internal journaling, the more you can do it better and better. Write them down if you can. During the day, the darker and come up with ideas to switch it over to something more fun. Sinking into the darkness doesn’t solve the problems. However, using a more positive story can lighten things and bring solutions you might not have reached in the worry world.
That is why I love writing. Imagination is the juice of my mind. By the way, my favorite jolt is to imagine diving into a pool of water and holding my breath, swimming underwater to the other end. I enjoy the quiet of the blue water. I feel the coolness on my skin, the bubbles escaping from my nose or mouth. I swim. I would rather do it in real life, but imagination greatly helps.
Courtesy of my daughter. Thanks! She was going for a walk with Maggie, her dog. They saw a Family of Four Foxes.
Gratefully, I’m making strides on many levels. German is coming along. I’ve added more languages. I think 12 now. I doubt I will ever be conversant in most of them. But with two grandmothers who died from Alzheimer’s, I’m trying to keep my brain learning new things. LOTS OF NEW THINGS.
And I work both sides as much as I can. I have never been a left brained person so I do the Sudoku. I’ve nearly finished a whole book. I play math games.
Music uses both sides, both hands. And that’s moving along, too.
Gradually the diamond paintings are coming along. I think these are mostly right-brained. The beach scene and the lighthouse cause my brain to relax and stay organized.
This one is small. That is the only good thing. The glue is inconsistent, the symbols are hard to decipher. The drills are irregular. Still, both keep my hands busy.
One more thing I’m grateful for is
Per Linda:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “express.” Use it as a noun, verb, adverb, or adjective. Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
Express yourself, they say. But there are rules. Proper etiquette, grammar, clothing, hair. Now it must fit with the current trend or political leaning. Religion, or not. What you eat, or don’t.
Express yourself, in the moment, the you, you are then. Be kind but be you. Not who you think others want you to be. And be kind to you, too.
Chatting cannot be counted as unproductive.
This is going to be my new mantra, as I have a hard time calling people. I want to hear their voices and find out how their lives are going, but I am always afraid I’ll disturb them. I always answer if I can or call them right back, but initiating a call is so hard for me. Is it that way for you?
Per Linda:
Your prompt for JusJoJan, January 22nd, 2024, is “mood.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
This was my prompt. Yay! I wanted a good word that offered lots of ways to go. But nothing came to mind. So I went to a word generator. I dismissed at least a dozen words because I wasn’t in the mood. Then suddenly, MOOD came up. What are the chances?
I’ve wanted to get over here and write this jot all day, but I was in the middle of tinking a sock project and then restarting, messing up then re-tinking the project again. As much as my mood was grumpily redoing the same thing over and over, I found my need to make it look good overcame the grump.
When we were talking about despair the other day, I talked about a game that proved a lazy streak in that the grump shows up when I have to click out of the scene and many scenes back. I decided to play the game and see if I could overcome that tendency. I made myself click in and out of scenes just out of curiosity. It worked. By the time I got to the big clicky one, I was ready to do it without even the slightest feeling of grump. So mind over mood this time.
I know that happens with my knitting. I can remember long ago nearly feeling the need for suicide if I had to tear out my work. Maybe it is because I am retired, and I have all the time in the world to get it right, but I don’t go dark. In fact, I kind of love that flutter sound of frogging, tearing the whole project up, and starting over. I tell myself now I start new, and I have all this yarn to play with that was in the project before. Tinking (knitting backward) isn’t quite as much fun, especially the finer sock yarns on the thin needles, my eyes get crossed and feel like they might stay that way. But when I overcome the grump, I am always happy I spent the day figuring out the problem.
This may not seem such a revelation to some. But for me, it has been a lifelong issue. How do I motivate myself on the bigger projects? I am still looking at a box of stuff to go through. I know that I will be happier when that ‘real estate’ of the house is open for something other than the box of stuff. But I need a better psychological mood fix to get the job done. My inner child is causing so much grump. How do I find the right mood?
~~~
Thank you all for your many ways of using this word. There were several that were really fun. Did you see Ghostmmnc‘s take with the mood ring and the mood ears? I started my day reading that and laughing at the ears.
My friend, Yvensong, gave an idea of where the mood magic goes.
I would put more of them here but the clock tells me I need to post NOW!
Per Linda:
Your prompt for #JusJoJan the 20th and Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “in a nutshell.” Use it as an idiom, or use it literally. Enjoy!
In a nutshell is the best way to eat nuts, not salted, not cooked. And hard to eat a lot at a time, which can be my way if I don’t have to work at it! Maybe that is something to look at in life. I could go out and buy a lot of socks. But my body won’t be as happy as the ones I make myself. I thought it was just me, but my son and brother both told me they love the way the sock feels like it’s hugging their foot, like a little massage. I feel that way, too.
I do seem to be a paradox, though, as I look at this line of thinking. Though I love the process of learning music as opposed to buying and listening to it, and I love diamond painting instead of looking at magazine pictures, why do I find such laziness within? Shouldn’t I be happy with a process no matter what?
A friend and I were talking about how some things seem too much work. The first and silliest example is when I am playing a game, and I have to leave the scene and click five times to find myself in a totally different scene. I sigh like it is a lot of work. I find myself complaining: why do I have to go all the way out there? In this case, the game is Mystery Case Files®: Return to Ravenhearst™ Collector’s Edition. If you play it, you know there is a place where you need to leave the children’s town to go back to the well to get the knife. FIVE clicks. Yet it seems like so much work! It definitely says more about me than it does the game. I love the game, though I have played it so often. It is mostly boring and just something to do when I need to waste time. If you’re curious, here is what it looks like:
But I lost my stream. It is that often I feel something is too much work. Even though when I do the work of most tasks I am satisfied that I did it. I rarely am unhappy when I put in the time and effort.
Some things feel unproductive. Knitting, there’s an item when done. Riding the stationary bike? I go nowhere. But I have seen proof it is working just in my energy levels, and my abilities to do certain things have improved. But that box of things I need to go through… Seems like five clicks too many! I need to work on my brain! That’s it! In a nutshell!
This post is part of Linda’s Just Jot it January, and today’s prompt, tenaciousness, is courtesy of Cheryl. Check out her blog here!
Oxford Dictionary says of ‘Tenacious’:
“ending to keep a firm hold of something; clinging or adhering closely.
“tenacious grip”
or
not readily relinquishing a position, principle, or course of action; determined.
“you’re tenacious and you get at the truth”
or
persisting in existence; not easily dispelled.
“a tenacious local legend”
When I am working on something I can seem stubborn. But I would rather think of it as tenacious. Sticking to it until I become better, sticking to it until I have a product to wear, or give to someone else to enjoy. The following are my newest slippers and socks.
But I can’t leave this prompt without this tribute:
Congrats! You have completed your goal of reading 100 books for the 2013 Reading Challenge! 115 of 100 (115%)
Congrats! You have completed your goal of reading 225 books for the 2012 Reading Challenge! 225 of 225 (100%)
Congrats! You have completed your goal of reading 200 books for the 2011 Reading Challenge! 204 of 200 (102%)
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