Today's Five W's of Life - or Maybe Six

via random email attachments from the internet

Epilogue to End a Year: Words to Hold On To

And as the minutes of 2015 tick away, I thought I'd borrow from two authors to end the year and leave us with things to ponder:

"My little big friend Samy left me with one final scrap of wisdom. For once she didn't shout-- she tends to shout. She gave me a hug as I sat there, staring at the sea and couting the colors, and whispered very quietly to me: 'Do you know that there's a halfway world between each ending and each new beginning? It's called the hurting time, Jean Perdu. It's a bog; it's where your dreams and worries and forgotten plans gather. Your steps are heavier during that time. Don't underestimate the transition, Jeanno, between farewell and new departure. Give yourself the time you need. Some thresholds are too wide to be taken in one stride.'

Since then I have often thought about what Samy called the hurting time and the halfway world, about the threshold that you have to cross between farewell and new departure. I wonder whether my threshold starts here ... or whether it began twenty years ago.

Have you experienced that hurting time too? ... Do you mind my asking these questions?"

~ The Little Paris Bookshop, by Nina George, p. 301

During this transition time, perhaps these following words will help you. They are helping lots of people who are choosing to be Furiously Happy, no matter what.

from Jenny Lawson's Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, c. 2015

Read this Epilogue.

The Entire Epilogue. 

All of it.

I keep reading it and every time I get something else out of it. Thanks Jenny.

Epilogue: Deep in the Trenches

To all who walk the dark path, and to those who walk in the sunshine but hold out a hand in the darkness to travel beside us:

Brighter days are coming.
Clearer sight will arrive.
And you will arrive too.

No, it might not be forever. The bright moments might be for a few days at a time, but hold on for those days. Those days are worth the dark.

In the dark you find yourself, all bones and exhaustion and helplessness. In the dark you find your basest self. In the dark you find the bottom of watery trenches the rest of the world only see the surface of. You will see things that no normal person will ever see. Terrible things. Mysterious things. Things that try to burrow into your mind like a bad seed. Things that whisper dark and horrid secrets that you want to forget. Things that scream lies. Things that want you dead. Things that will stop at nothing to pull you down further and kill you in the most terrible way of all ... by your own trembling hand. These things are fearsome monsters ... the kind you always knew would sink in their needle-sharp teeth and pull you under the bed if you left a dangling limb out. You know they aren't real, but when you're in that black, watery hole with them they are the realest thing there is. And they want us dead.

And sometimes they succeed.

But not always. And not with you. You are alive. You have fought and battled them. You are scarred and worn and sometimes exhausted and were perhaps even close to giving up, but you did not.

You have won many battles. There are no medals given out for these fights, but you wear your armor and your scars like an invisible skin, and each time you learn a little more. You learn how to fight. You learn which weapons work. You learn who your allies are. You learn that those monsters are exquisite liars who will stop at nothing to get you to surrender. Sometimes you fight valiantly with fists and words and fury. Sometimes you fight by pulling yourself into a tiny ball, blotting out the monsters along with the rest of the world. Sometimes you fight by giving up and turning it over to someone else who can fight for you.

Sometimes you just fall deeper.

And in the deepest, night-blind fathoms you're certain that you're alone. You aren't. I'm there with you. And I'm not alone. Some of the best people are here too ... feeling blindly. Waiting. Crying. Surviving. Painfully stretching their souls so that they can learn to breath underwater ... so that they can do what the monsters say is impossible. so that they can live. And so that they can find their way back to the surface with the knowledge of things that go bump in the night. So that they can dry themselves into the warm light that shines so brightly and easily for those above the surface. So that they can walk with others in the sunlight but with different eyes ... eyes that still see the people underwater, allowing them to reach out into the darkness to pull up fellow fighters, or to simply hold their cold hands and sit beside the water to wait patiently for them to come up for air.

Ground zero is where the normal people live their lives, but not us. We live in the negatives so often that we begin to understand that life when the sun shines should be lived full throttle, soaring. The invisible tether that binds the normal people on their steady course doesn't hold us in the same way. Sometimes we walk in sunlight with everyone else. Sometimes we live underwater and fight and grow.

And sometimes ...

... sometimes we fly.

May we all fly into 2016 and soar.

Quote of the Day: Friendships over Centuries

Phone and emayle and skype allowe us to maintayne friendshippes over many miles. Bookes allow us to maintayne friendshippes over centuryes.

— Chaucer Doth Tweet (@LeVostreGC) June 8, 2015

New Year's Wishes!

courtesy of a Neil Gaiman tumblr

I meant, and mean them all. I wasn't going to write a new one this year. But...

Be kind to yourself in the year ahead. 

Remember to forgive yourself, and to forgive others. It's too easy to be outraged these days, so much harder to change things, to reach out, to understand.

Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.

Meet new people and talk to them. Make new things and show them to people who might enjoy them. 

Hug too much. Smile too much. And, when you can, love.

~ Neil Gaiman

Tweets of the Day

Until I have time to blog, I have these thoughts:

All I want for Christmas is an extra week in the month of December so I can actually get all the Christmas stuff done!

— Shell Things (@shellthings) December 9, 2014

Have you ever had so much work ahead of you that you just lie down and stare at the ceiling? pic.twitter.com/p8A0Hi0Evm
— Bim Adewunmi (@bimadew) December 9, 2014

More yarn, please! pic.twitter.com/3VCDaKywDv

— Lion Brand Studio (@lbystudio) December 10, 2014

Quote of the Day: Unexpected Memories Lingered Beneath Words

As I work my way back to semi-regular blogging, I'm going to share some of the quotes from books I've been reading ... some of the random things that have perked my interest, and persuaded me to keep using this forum to share things, family history, etc.

"Over the years, Aunt Ailis had tried to lure Finnegan into the world of computers, the lines of software code that she studied as if they would give her a key to the inner workings of the human brain, if not heart. Finnegan understood the satisfaction she derived from the act of coding, her ability to aim for and achieve something she already she knew she wanted -- but for Finnegan, his interest in people's stories was always the unexpected memories that lingered beneath the words, waiting to come out. As far as Finnegan could understand, the purpose of coding was to create a form of stable perfection, a series of commands that could reproduce every time exactly what was intended. The opposite of humans, who were interesting to Finnegan precisely because of the way their narrative changed, hid other meanings, shifted with time and perspective.

 So he reached out and took the stories in, knowing that they had nowhere else to go, unable to refuse safe haven to memories that otherwise would disappear unnoticed. And yet, at times, he was overwhelmed by the weight of other people's lives, the stack of notebooks that surrounded his bed.

"You could publish them," Aunt Ailis suggested. But Finnegan knew, somehow, that wasn't the answer. What he had experienced in the transfer of these stories was as intimate as touch, a table for two in a crowded restaurant. Still, he didn't know what to do with them, didn't know who he was without them.

...

And so he sat in his room, surrounded. ... He sat on his bed and picked up one notebook after another, reading."

~ From Erica Bauermeister's The Lost Art of Mixing, pages 231-232

Emphasis throughout my own.

I feel the need .. the need to read

graphics via the Twitters and Someecards

With apologies to the writers of Top Gun

Editor's note: as of 6/11/2014, there is a stack of 5 books on my bedside table, 10 stacked up on my credenza, and a note from the library saying they have 6 more that ordered. Why did I think I was going to catch up with 6 months of reading RIGHT BEFORE FESTIVAL?

Quote of the Day: Draw your lines in the sand

Dream about it 

Draw your lines in the sand 

Sometimes the way things happen 

We don’t need to understand

 

I get oceans of time 

Now I don't look for it 

I get to walk a blurry line 

Into the heart of it

~ Morten Harket

Lyrics from two tracks on new album, Brother.

 

Please pardon this introvert's interruption ...

 Also

via the Twitters

More later.

Quote of the Day: Nelson Mandela

via the Twitters

Nelson Mandela

RIP

1918-2013 

"Death is...inevitable. 

When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, 

he can rest in peace."

I Get By with a Little Advice from My Friend

"When you paint success pictures in your mind, you initiate an inner process whereby your attitudes, hopes, aspirations, and enthusiasm are elevated in response to an image of a more promising future. Every person who aspires must first sell themselves hope, the promise of a better life."

- U.S. Andersen - 1917-1986, Author of The Magic In Your Mind

"You must constantly ask yourself these questions: Who am I around? What are they doing to me? What have they got me reading? What have they got me saying? Where do they have me going? What do they have me thinking? And most important, what do they have me becoming? Then ask yourself the big question: Is that okay? Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change." 

- Jim Rohn

Thanks lovey.

Quote of the Day: Forest for the Trees

~ from Looking for Me by Beth Hoffman ~

My grandmother taught us to honor the woods, to enter its wonders with respect. She told us to never intrude or cause any harm, saying we were Mother Nature’s guests and to mind our manners. One afternoon the three of us were hiking and came to an ancient black walnut tree. My grandmother stopped and patted its rough bark. “A powerful healing force lives deep within these woods. Whenever you children are hurting or can’t make sense of things, just come out here and spend some time with the trees. Give their trunks a good strong pat. When you go home, you’ll feel better.”

I pressed my small hand against the tree, looked up at the sunlight filtering through the leaves, and absolutely believed her.

I believe her still.

And tonight, as I gazed into the dense woods, I took in a slow breath and gratefully accepted whatever offering might come my way. I thought about that old saying, how we can never go home again. But I think it’s more like a piece of us stays behind when we leave – a piece we can never reclaim, one that awaits our next visit and demands that we remember.

all photos, mine
Caramoor, Katonah, NY

Quotes of the Day

 via @CSLewisDaily

via @LDSchurch

Quote of the Day

via here

I will love the light for it shows me the way. Yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.

- Og Mandino

Instructions from the Introvert

I used to think I was just shy and awkward. Now I know I'm shy, awkward, but really an introvert and that's okay. I'm not "wrong," or antisocial, or stupid, or b**tchy, so please don't try to fix me.

Here's some operating instructions.

via the Twitters

I totally want to put the top graph up at work and share it with some managers who need to recognize that more than half their staff are struggling because of the office design and "leadership"/"communication" differences.