perseverance – My World With Words

August 5, 2023January 7, 2024

First, My Hair. Then The Real Stuff.

Augh! My hair is too short!

That’s my great frustration of the moment. Actually, I have many more frustrations, but that’s the one I’m focusing on. My hair is thick and has a lot of natural wave, which sounds good until I get into some humid weather, which I’m swathed in right now.

It’s not a huge problem. My hair will grow. But the other problems in my life overwhelm me at times, and I don’t have simple answers for them. Planning for the future has become paramount in my mind, and I need to take some action to help things go more smoothly when the time comes, for example, to move. But it isn’t easy.

So I focus on my hair. If I could get it under control, I’d feel a lot more control over other things in my life as well. But every step I take backfires on me.

Some problems I have been able to solve. W couldn’t get my mom’s free phone set up, but we did get her (not free) cable tv in place. This done from hundreds of miles away and with the help of a very gracious staff at the assisted living facility my mom is living in. I feel a sense of accomplishment there.

The phone situation remains unresolved. She has a phone she’s paying for, but because she’s on Medicaid, she’s eligible for a free phone through a government program. We got her signed up and the phone was delivered, but she couldn’t figure out how to set it up. There’s a time limit and we actually got an extension on that, but it still didn’t work out.

Caring for an aging parent long distance is a challenge. I’ve written about this before, but it’s constantly a part of my life, so I’m writing about it again.

My mom has frustrations with her hair as well, so we swap stories. Her woes are different than mine–I inherited my hair from my dad. Besides the hair, the other difference between my mom and me is she’s being taken care of, while I’m responsible for what goes on in my life.

So I’m back to fixing my hair–or trying to fix it. Then I’ll try tackling the real problems again.

Image Credits: Bad Hair © nicoletaionescu–stock.adobe.com; telephone © martialred–stock.adobe.com

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.

Image Credits: Typewriter keys © Miguel A Padriñán–stock.adobe.com; Reporter © Sergio J Lievano–stock.adobe.com.

November 24, 2017

Mature Process

So often I’ve compared a given experience to learning to drive a standard. You know, with the clutch.

Today’s new drivers aren’t as likely to learn to drive this way, since most new cars today are automatic (and have been for a long time). But once upon a time, at least in my neighborhood, if you were a teenager and wanted a car, you took your official driving lessons in an automatic (the school provided lessons once you passed Safety Ed.) and a family member took on the task of teaching you to drive a 5-speed.

You learned because a standard cost about 25 percent less than an automatic. That’s a lot of money with that price tag. Besides, there’s more power in shifting gears. More control. More attitude.

However, it’s a frustrating process. You know what you’re supposed to do, you swear you’re doing it and still it doesn’t work. That’s not the only swearing, typically. Your first teacher gives up after sharing a few choice words and passes the task on to the next unsuspecting volunteer.

Then one day, you get it. It works. You no longer are stopped at a green light, praying you won’t stall again. There’s the occasional slip-up, sure, but you now know how to drive a standard.

Other learning experiences mimic that process. For me, it was math. Particularly algebra. I struggled and struggled until miraculously, the light broke through. Lucky for me, my high school math teacher watched my process and understood why I went from Ds to As, virtually overnight.

I wasn’t so lucky in college, but that’s another story for another day.

I’ve seen men and women take on knitting, something that is second nature to me, and talk themselves through every labored stitch. “I’ll never get it,” they might moan, but I assure them, it will happen. Just keep breaking in those new pathways in the brain.

Driving, calculating, knitting. It takes time, but the battle is part of the joy. By the way, I impressed the heck out of a KFC worker a few years back when I pulled up in my 5-speed Corolla. “I’ve never seen a woman drive a standard,” he marveled. Ah, the passing of time. The needs, and therefore the skills, change.

So whatever you’re learning, stay with it until that breakthrough. Actually, I’m not going to say never give up. There is always a time to move on. Just don’t give up before the process is complete, and your frustration has matured and born fruit.

Clutch

Image Credits: (Light Bulbs) © Dmitry Guzhanin – stock.adobe.com; (Frustrated Woman) © ivector — stock.adobe.com; (Woman in Car) courtesy of Pixabay.

June 27, 2017June 27, 2017

The Ideal(istic) Adult

Being thirty was about the best thing that ever happened to me.

I’d set goals and achieved them, and the world seemed like a welcome place, with manifold glorious destinations. My mind was likely at its sharpest (although admittedly, I still had much to learn), I’ve probably never looked better, before or since, and I’d started to make some money. Not a lot, but more than ever before, and it seemed like a fortune.

If I could live forever in that magical world, that’s where I’d be. Has my life gone downhill since? No, not really. I’ve had ups and downs — that’s the way life is — but I’ve never regained that sense of optimism, my belief in the future and my own potential.

That glory must have been more than reaching my goals, because I’ve set goals and achieved them since that time, goals that were further out of reach and potentially more rewarding.

The problem with that sort of idealism is the world is more complex and more ordinary than our dreams. Jobs don’t deliver, people disappoint us, relationships fail. Of course then we find better work, more rewarding and lasting, we discover friends who stand beside us through thick & thin, and new relationships begin, with all the hope they hold at the start. But it’s the first time the world looks good that we’re happiest, because we don’t have the cynicism of experience.

Yet the wisdom we gain over the years benefits us, too. We see that hard times end, and impossible situations are resolved through perseverance and yes, some luck. Pain beats at us persistently, but in the end we overcome it, newly girded with the wisdom of survival.

Looking in the mirror can be discouraging. Our looks fade. It costs more money to maintain a lesser appearance. It’s hard sometimes to remember you’re 55 and not 35, who your peers actually are and what you can & can’t do anymore.

Given the choice, I’d always prefer to be an adult, but can I specify a few things? I’d like to have the physical and physiological benefits of being 30, with the wisdom and maturity that comes from living.

Of course we’re not given any such choice, or anything like it, and I’m aware many have the same thoughts as they get older. Makes me wonder what I need to appreciate about being the age I am now, and what I’ll miss about it 20 or 30 years from now.