My World With Words

February 12, 2023January 28, 2024

A Little Bit of Luck

My dad jokingly told me today not to count on him winning the lottery and making me rich. Not that I had ever considered that, mind you. He stopped buying lottery tickets after getting numerous calls from “helpful” realtors and financial advisors who had learned, because it’s public record, that some of my stepmom’s stuff was going through probate. He figured the number of calls he’d get if he won a billion dollars would be significantly greater, and managing one’s finances would be, well, perhaps a greater pain than they were worth.

I’d actually come to that conclusion myself many years ago. I wouldn’t mind winning a million dollars. That I think I could handle with some good advice. I’d put it all into a retirement account and maybe retire a little early (but not until I got Medicare, so not that early). Yes, I have a plan for winning a million dollars.

However, the plan is somewhat moot, as I don’t buy lottery tickets as a rule. I see it as a waste of money. Now, I might put some money down on one of those football betting boards–I don’t know what they’re called, but they’re the 10×10 ones where you pick what you hope will be the winning score. My odds of winning would be significantly better and it would likely be a friendly wager among friends. Still, I don’t know how much I’d be willing to put down. I’m just not much of a gambler.

There are life-changing events that make it easy to be a better person, and life-changing events that challenge us to a greater degree than perhaps we care to be challenged. Money definitely is one of those things that can change you, whether it’s being a lucky winner (and how you define lucky is up to you) or whether you lose your financial security.

I prefer not to tempt fate with my financial decisions. I’ll stick with my conservative, middle class lifestyle, save money and trust that my investments, such as they are, will pay off. That’s all the gambling I want to do. With a little bit of luck, it’s all I’ll need to do.

Image Credits: Winning Woman © denis vermenko–stock.adobe.com; Million Dollar Winner © lankogal–stock.adobe.com

February 10, 2023February 10, 2023

If you’re climbing out a window, she ain’t your soulmate

I knew our relationship was doomed as soon as he told me he was looking for his soulmate. Something in his intonation, the words he chose, told me, “he’s looking for what can’t be found.”

I was right. He wanted the woman who so innately understood him he didn’t have to explain himself, a single look could do it. The first rush of infatuation wouldn’t fade away, instead, that heady feeling would keep pace with the years.

Problem was, his soulmate would have to have been as immature as he was, and that would have been a disaster.

And as it turned out, years before, he later quietly revealed to me, he’d met her. She was the girlfriend of the lead singer in a local band, a group he greatly admired and got to know over the years. In fact, at one point their lead guitarist quit with no notice and they called him to fill in. The thrill of a lifetime.

So he and Tasha got to know each other, and when her boyfriend was out of town one weekend, she called him. Their illicit romance began. Many a night he would be at her home and Gary, the boyfriend, would stop by, leaving him with two choices: face the music or crawl out the window. He chose the window, every time.

She swore she didn’t love Gary, it was just habit, he was the one she loved. They’d be together soon, she’d make it happen. She promised. Really, she didn’t love Gary.

Then one day she told him it was over. She and Gary were getting married and she couldn’t see him any more. She walked away, crying, and he didn’t expect to ever see her again.

Except a year later he did. Nothing happened, he told me, but she looked so unhappy. She swore she and Gary were fine, but deep in his heart he knew she regretted leaving him.

“Oh come on!” I said. “This was your soulmate? You two deserve each other. Of course it was ‘wonderful’ and ‘romantic.’ It was forbidden. If you’d been up front about the whole thing it all would have ended in six months like every other one of your relationships.”

He told me I didn’t get it. He was sad for me because he knew someday I’d compromise rather than hold out for my soulmate.

“Yea, don’t worry about me,” I assured him. “Just listen to your story a little more closely.”

Today, thirty some years later, Tasha and Gary are still married, and he’s still waiting for his soulmate. The other one, that is. Surely there’s a backup…

Image Credit: triangle © belindao; gondola ©ivector–stock.adobe.com

February 9, 2023February 11, 2023

Game Changers

When I was maybe nine or ten, one night the talk at the dinner table turned to computers. My dad worked for IBM, and I’d known about computers all my life. What I knew, however, was nothing like what we have today. I can still imagine the big green machines churning out pages and pages of paper, much of it blank. My dad would bring home those blank pages for us kids to draw on.

My mom said she thought the computer had been a game changer for society, and of course, she was right. Then she said something that shocked me. In my lifetime, there would be more great inventions, she told me. Things that would once again change the way society operates. I pondered that for awhile, then said, “Like what?” My parents both laughed, because of course, the point was we didn’t know yet. But it would happen.

It has happened, many times over. But so much of it goes back to the computer. Greater efficiency, more precision. Now, however, I have to wonder if we’ve gone a step too far. AI frightens me. Talk about efficiency and precision. I was curious about the AI writing apps and was alarmed to see how many there are.

Writing defines me. In my About page for this blog, I wrote “I believe in the power of words, written, spoken and unspoken. I believe what we write and what we create unleashes who we are, even to our own surprise.” That’s the magic of creativity.

I’m wary that eventually AI will blend into the framework of our society and we’ll stop asking these questions. I have friends who remember saying similar things about Adobe Photoshop, and for most of us now, it’s just a tool for creativity. Can AI become the same sort of thing? Should it?

I don’t want to lose the connections I’ve made through this blog with other creative people, many of them writers and a few photographers. But if a computer is churning out words that I claim but that don’t belong to me, those connections will be lost. And part of me will be, too.

Image Credits: technology concept ©peshkova–stock.adobe.com; computer room © everettovrk–stock.adobe,com

February 7, 2023February 7, 2023

Secrets in the Forest

Today when talking to my Mom, she commented that she’d been thinking about her late husband, my stepdad, all day. It bothered her, because what she was remembering were the tens of thousands of dollars he embezzled from the company he and a good friend had founded. She also mentioned tens of thousands of dollars she’d had herself that went missing. It all added up to one thing: she didn’t really know the man.

We all have secrets we take to the grave, and some will be revealed once we’re gone, whether we try to hide them or not. Some are amusing. My former roommate told me about a woman we both knew from church who’d tragically died in a bungled bungee jump. This woman was athletic, with a short, kind of manly haircut. We all thought she was gay, and perhaps she was. But under her bed and deep in her closet her roommate found dozens of romance novels of the bodice-ripping genre.

Other secrets are heart-wrenching. A good friend of mine found clues her brother left for her before he died of cancer, revealing that he was gay. This was a man who was conservative in his faith and his politics, which may have been why he stayed in the closet. He came out to a few gay colleagues, who comforted my friend after her loss. The thing that got to me when was she said she wondered if he’d loved someone and couldn’t–or wouldn’t–do anything about it. That broke my heart.

I have my secrets, but I don’t think any of them are bombshells that would shock friends and family after I’m gone. At least I hope not. I don’t want anybody close to me saying they didn’t really know me, at least, not in a negative way.

I think of secrets as something we keep hidden in the forest of our lives. Some are delightful, some are devious. Only we know the path to many of them. I have no words of wisdom here, only to say, your secrets are safe with me.

February 4, 2023February 4, 2023

A Writer Writes

When I was thirteen, my dad brought home the family’s first typewriter, an IBM correcting Selectric II. I was fascinated, and spent hours writing back-cover blurbs to books that stood no chance of being written. They typically went something like this:

“Brittany is torn between her love for two men–the boy-next-door Jake and the dashing stranger Xavier. Knowing that fully loving one would mean giving up the other makes for an impossible choice…until someone new enters her life and gives her the courage to see things clearly.”

Nothing like a cheap romance. I could never write a book like that today (well, never say never, I suppose), but there was a time in my life when I contemplated writing Harlequin romances to make some money. I’d never read one, but I figured, how hard can it be? Then I read one, and thought, I’d be selling my soul. So much for that writing career.

I turned to my next writing venture, the one I’d studied for–newspaper reporting. For two years I covered city council meetings for a weekly newspaper. I loved it. I especially loved the fact that my coverage of some controversial issues garnered criticism from some city council members. This was to a point where one city took to having their “real” meetings before the scheduled time, only to put on a show of solidarity for me. They got in big trouble for that one.

I didn’t see a future in journalism, however, and got a series of jobs in communications. Still, they couldn’t (and still can’t) completely take the journalist out of me. My strength was in media relations, pitching stories to newspapers and television newsrooms. I was, if I do say so myself, pretty good at it.

Today my writing is solely for personal, and not professional, satisfaction. I’m working on a novel, although I struggle with it mightily. I belong to a writer’s group that provides critiques and encouragement for my efforts. So far, the first few chapters are going well. I just don’t really know where the book is going. Hence my struggle.

To all you writers out there (and I know there a many in the blogasphere), I say, keep on writing. Find others who are doing the same and share stories and ideas with each other. You may never make a profit with your writing, but that’s not the point. The point is your soul needs it. And that’s enough to hit those ol’ typewriter, I mean laptop, keys again and again.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: