Category: Daily Prompt

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A Lifetime Search

Always the question with job hunting, “what am I capable of doing, and what will I enjoy doing?” We’re told to pursue our passion, to do what we love, but there are times when we must simply seek a job we can do well and be content with for a time, maybe a long time, and perhaps find the greater satisfaction elsewhere.

If I had my choice, I’d write for a living. I’d find someone AdobeStock_109760634 [Converted]who needs a blog writer and work my heart out making theirs the finest blog of its kind. In fact, I’ve been seeking such work, and no doubt it exists, but finding it is another issue.

Still, there are other things I enjoy doing, and I do them well. I’m good at customer service, providing a pleasant experience for others, and I find satisfaction with that work. Again, finding the right job isn’t always easy. I’ve applied for a few positions I think I would enjoy with companies for whom I believe I’d be a good fit, and haven’t heard word boo from them after dropping off my application, even following up with a phone call.

There’s a danger with turning what we love into a career. If we find solace in that work, that peace of mind can be taken away by professional demands. I’ve had countless people over the years tell me I should turn my knitting hobby into a money-making venture, and while that sounds appealing, the reality is, I need my knitting to relax. I don’t need the pressures of customer expectations, marketing, budgeting and all the rest. I need the freedom that comes with a hobby.

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Are you sure this price tag is right?

The other reality is, knitting doesn’t lend itself well to making money. If I charged someone for the time and expertise it takes me to complete a project, they’d be a fool to pay it. A simple pair of slippers might be close to $100.

Most of us, however, have multiple skills, capabilities that can bring us pleasure and yes, profit.  We also have personality traits that both expand what we can do best and limit it. It can be a lifteime challenge finding all the possibilities, or even a good mix of some of them.

As we grow older, we change and learn new things about ourselves, we move to areas with different opportunities, we seek new challenges. It’s a search with multiple discoveries.

If you know of anyone looking for a blog writer…but look who I’m talking to! A group of capable writers. Still, it never hurts to put it out there….

Images © geosap — Fotolia

Capable

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Choose Order

“If an infinite number of monkeys had an infinite number of typewriters, would one of them type ‘Hamlet’?”

Probably not. Getting monkeys to sit at a typewriter isn’t easy, and an infinite number of them would provide a proportionate number of distractions.

I found that question intriguing when it was first posed to me in high school, and now, I’m not sure of its significance. Are we being asked if everything in existence is that random? If so, I don’t believe it. That would be believing in chaos as the dominant force, and it’s clear to me there is order in the universe.

Order is natural, chaos, so often, is a choice. When there is no order, no reason, when we are left to the mercy of the whims of others, that is chaos, that is a hellish existence. War is like that, and prison can be, too. When humanity is removed from our lives, when the law of the day is different from sunrise to sunset, we cease to live in a reasoned world, where consequences match actions, where equality is valued, where lives matter.

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We expect certain behaviors from certain people, and when people whose behavior has been selfish and uncharitable are put in positions in which they are expected to be wise and compassionate, chaos is certain to reign.

I pray for order in my world, for kindness and charity, for reason and safety.

I pray the monkeys aren’t in charge.

Image © Nito — Adobe Stock

Infinite

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The Perfect Time, the Perfect Space

In my last apartment, I longed for a second bedroom, an office and sewing room, with some space set aside for storage. Now I have just that, and I’m hardly using it.

My living room has the perfect corner for one of my desks, so my laptop sits here most of the time. Downstairs (my new townhome is built on the side of a hill, so you enter on the second floor) are both the bedrooms. One, of course, is where I sleep, and the other is on its way to becoming the office/sewing room I imagined. On its very long way to that goal. Right now it’s a percolating mess.

living-room
The corner with the desk, not the percolating mess

How is it that the reality never meets the expectations of the dreams? This room is a wisp of a problem, barely worth mentioning, but larger things loom. The new job, the new home, the new spouse, all bring with them (whether they intend to or not) a belief that now things will be better, now my idle thoughts will become golden reality.

Sometimes, the failure of the new to bring fantasy to life dims any good it may bring into our lives. Over time we realize the limitations of others and other things, and hopefully come to appreciate and value the times when good outweighs bad.

Life is never perfect, and many of us are wary in those fleeting moments when it seems it could be so. It’s not a matter of being cynical or negative, of seeing the glass half-empty or any such thing. Rather, it’s an awareness of the reality of this world, and a sense of gratitude for what good we’ve been given and the grace to manage to bad.

As I write this, I feel a bit foolish for seeing any bad in my life, given the horrors so many are experiencing. I’m grateful for a comfortable home, friends I can trust, food on my table. I feel no fear when I leave my front door that danger is imminent.

I pray that certainty doesn’t leave my life.

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My sweet babies think the outside world holds wonder for them…but really, it’s just cold, wet and devoid of easy living.

Interior

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Any Good Book

When I was young, I would hurt sometimes so badly I would panic, then hide in my room, wrapped up tight in protective clothing, deep beneath the covers. I fled the pain I could not bear by burying myself in the stories told in multitudes of books.

Some stories so deeply resonated with me I read them over and over, and I realize now these tales provided a solution to the same loneliness and isolation I was feeling. It was fiction, of course, and I couldn’t follow the same path my erstwhile heroine would, so I lost myself in fantasy.

It was a lonely life, but a safe one.

Today I still like to lose myself in novels, but it isn’t the same. Life has taught me certain realities, and one of them is that rarely do events follow in a logical progression as they do in storytelling. Nor do problems resolve them in a straightforward manner.

Yet if the books don’t provide some sort of conclusion, I’m frustrated.  I still want to end with resolution. It doesn’t have to be a happy ending, but it should be a logical one. The story should be told.

I cannot flee my pain, but I can find respite from it in certain escapes, and I look for particular qualities in those methods of safety.

Read any good books lately?

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Flee

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The Threads of You

I finished unpacking last night. My house is a home, but the one thing missing is you. I hear your laugh, see your smile, admire your new haircut in the faces of strangers. I can’t stop for a gallon of milk without recognizing your loping walk in another. The weight of my loss holds me in place, and I silently protest the need to make dinner, open the mail, prepare for bed.

The phone rings, and my heart leaps. It isn’t you, and I let the call go. I don’t have the strength for a  conversation. I can’t explain one more time why. I might have to scream I don’t know.

You were woven so tightly throughout my life, and the threads of you reach farther than I imagined. I’m trying to patch the holes, but the pain stops me short.

I know you’re not coming back. I know it’s better for you now. I want the good times back and all the love those moments carried.

I’m missing you.

Multicolored Thread On A Weaving Loom Taken Closeup.

Image Credit: © Bigstock

Missing