The Clue of the Dancing Puppet

The first lesson of my online writing course was posted today. I achieved a perfect score on the pretest, so I'm off to a good start. Today's lesson was basically reading about the fundamentals of writing articles and how story ideas are everywhere. Truth or cliché? I landed on the side of truth.

The instructor recommended that we write a brief paragraph introducing ourselves to our fellow cyber classmates and as I was thinking about what to write - how do you sum up who you are in a few brief sentences? - I realized that every descriptor I was going to include had stories behind it: wife, stepmom, empty nester, reader, traveler, dog walker, convertible rider, home renovator ... Not that every story is or should be publishable, but what a broad range of topics to draw from.

Another instructor recommendation was to keep a journal where we can write down ideas as they come to us. The good student in me was pleased that I already have one. (This is where The Clue of the Dancing Puppet comes in, in case you were wondering when I was going to reference this post's title.)

My journal was a gift from my brother and fellow bibliophile. It comes from www.bookjournals.com and is a lovely reminder of my favorite set of books from my childhood, even though I don't remember this particular book. I read and re-read my set of Nancy Drews over and over again. I read them while partaking of my typical after-school snack of chocolate milk and graham crackers, in the bathtub, in the car, in the doctor's waiting room. I remember tucking a Nancy Drew inside my Bible and reading it once during church. I never would dared to have tried that with my parents present, but Grandma was staying with us and had taken us to church. I thought I was so slick, but she was on to me.

I thought Nancy was smart, George was courageous and Bess was a bit ditzy. And I couldn't imagine tooling around my neighborhood in a convertible with a boy named Ned or having a housekeeper. (I didn't marry a boy named Ned, have never and will probably never have a housekeeper, but the convertible? Got that.)

My set of Nancy Drews came from my father's business partner's daughter who was at least a good decade older than I was. It was a pretty complete set at the time, but I did add new books when they came out until I aged past Nancy Drew. I still have my set somewhere in the basement or the attic. I should dig them out and see if I can find the clue left by the dancing puppet. Or maybe the dancing puppet is the clue.

Back to the idea journal. Last year about this time I was on one of my "I'm going to write" streaks and starting writing ideas in the journal, which also contained to-do lists and shopping lists. I think I was trying to generate topics for blog posts. And now, thanks to my online class, the idea journal is back out in the daylight and ready to be filled with the plethora of ideas that I know are rambling around somewhere in my subconscious and in my day-to-day life.

Just beware. This blog is called Harriet's Notebook, so I may put on my Harriet glasses and write about you in my idea journal. But only good ideas. Promise.

Focus

It's been a little more than month since I wrapped up my 2013 resolution to write every week for Five Minute Friday. And then the holidays came and went, and voila! Soon January will be half over without a single word written here in my little corner of the Internet.

 

I've been finding every reason, including blatant procrastination, to not write, which is completely ridiculous since I fully enjoy writing and know I need to do more of it, if only as a tool to process my thoughts and stories.

 

I don't make many resolutions because I don't like to set myself up for failure. Last year, I set two goals/resolutions and achieved them both. I learned that, for me, it's much healthier to set reasonable goals, versus more suffocating resolutions that allow no room for grace.(Exercise every day. Read the Bible in a year ... which really shouldn't mean breathlessly zipping through Revelation in the final hours of December 31.)

 

So this year, I've set a few more broad goals for myself. I've centered my goals around the word focus. Too often I allow myself to be distracted, to flit from one thing or another, to follow one rabbit trail on the Internet after another which leads me far away from my original intent and results in much wasted time. Focus. I need more of it.

 

One of the primary areas I'm going to be focusing on this year is my writing. There will still be the writing/editing/proofreading I do for income and on a volunteer basis, but there are also the stories I have inside that need to be written. Thus, my focus on writing this year will be a combination of professional and personal:

• Figure out what to do with blogging. Is this something I want to do more seriously or is it just here for whoever stumbles upon it? If I pursue it, I need to set up a better template with links and tags and other bells and whistles.
• Consider setting up a website. Should its focus be my professional writing services? Examples of essays? A combination? What is the cost/benefit ratio? I have no idea how to do this, so another new horizon to conquer. It's ironic to me to be a writer who doesn't have a website, but I've managed thus far without one. Perhaps it's time.
• Update my LinkedIn page. If nothing else, use this as a mini-website to promote professional services. A good start would be to log on and figure out how to even use the site beyond the basic name, education and occupation information. Oh, and a photo. That would be good. 
• Make a list of topics and write regularly. I have several essay ideas, so I need to make a list and start writing. I know if I write consistently, the procrastination will wane and I'll find my voice and improve my craft.
• Use fewer exclamation points. This is harder than you think (join me in trying to reduce their usage?). Originally, I set out to eliminate them from my writing completely, but that seemed like one of those suffocating, graceless type of goals and sometimes I think exuberance is warranted. But, progress: I believe you'll only find two exclamation points in this post.  
• Take at least one writing course. Woohoo! I can check this off my list. I signed up for a Writing for Magazines online course and it starts tomorrow. I don't know where it will lead, if anywhere, but it's a start. I've always wanted to be published in a magazine. Technically, I have been published in several local/regional publications, but perhaps there's a place for my words in other publications. We'll see how this course goes; I think the next one will be writing for the Internet.
• Write Pam's story. This is the hardest goal I've set for myself, but honestly, it's the most important one I have. I shared this goal with a friend and she affirmed me, but said she thinks it will be an emotional ordeal. She's absolutely right. Just talking about delving into Pam's story scares me and brings me to tears and causes fear of emotional pain to well up inside, but it is time. Now is the time. Every life is a story and I am so blessed to have been part of hers.

So here's to the 11.5 months left in 2014 and my intention to focus. Let's see where the journey goes.

 

 

Reflect

We're down to the last four Fridays of 2013. Only four more Five Minute Fridays before 2014 is upon us. Today's word is reflect.


I've found myself reflecting quite a bit this week. After an overdue and three-hour long visit with a friend's mom, my heart was troubled as I reflected on what is - trouble and tears and strife and broken relationship - versus what was and what ought to be - love and joy and peacemaking and stability. As I left, I felt overwhelmed by the brokenness that seems to be omnipresent right now.

We have another ongoing situation that has yet to reach any sort of reasonable resolution and weariness abounds. The pain and grief and the need to make hard decisions are exacerbated by the holiday season.

Monday was hard, Tuesday wasn't so great, but somewhere in the midst of all of it, I was struck with the realization that Christmas is about joy and peace and hope, and that is what I am going to choose. I am going to choose joy. I am, I am, I am.

We put up our Christmas tree on Monday night. Most of the ornaments we use on the tree have meaning and significance to us. We have an ornament for each year we've been married and many of those are from destinations we've visited. There is an ornament from my sister-in-law's trip to Italy and one from our daughter's mission trip to Mali. There is the set of 12 bride's ornaments we received our first married Christmas, and we played our annual guessing game of what each ornament represents. One would think after playing for 13 years, we'd have it figured out, but no.

The time we spent decorating the tree was a needed time to reflect and remember amidst the craziness. To remember that we love and are loved and that's what this season truly celebrates.


On a completely different note, I discovered the website http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/ today and laughed until I cried. There is some seriously hilarious reflection going on there as people reflect on awkward family photos.

Five Minute Friday Is On Hiatus

Well, Friday is winding down and apparently no Five Minute Friday link-up today. It seems that Five Minute Friday is off for the holiday. But just in case the Accountability Police are checking to make sure I'm keeping my resolution, I feel like I should write a little something for Friday. So let's make up our word prompt, shall we? I know - how about ridiculous?

Every year, the calendar seems to speed up. I don't mean that time seems to be passing more quickly and how have we already reached December? I mean the media and retailers' efforts to rush every.single.holiday. I found candy corn in the store in July, for goodness' sake. Candy for trick-or-treaters followed not long after. And then, whoosh! November 1 - no more candy corn to be found; Christmas candy crowded the shelves.

And Thanksgiving? I've always thought Thanksgiving gets a raw deal. People think roasting a turkey is terribly difficult. It's not. There are very few Thanksgiving hymns in the hymnals. Oh, wait. Does anyone still use a hymnal?

This year, I began to wonder when our country was going to stop acknowledging Thanksgiving completely. "Black Friday" sales started a week (or longer) before Thanksgiving. One retailer opened at 6 a.m. and other stores opened mid-afternoon and in the evening on Thanksgiving Day. No more waiting until midnight. No, sir. Someone even said that Thanksgiving was being referred to as Brown Thursday. Followed by Black Friday. I had the television on as I cleaned my kitchen floor this morning and actually heard a commercial that "Black Friday specials aren't over yet." It wasn't even 8 a.m.! Shouldn't Black Friday specials last until the end of business on Friday? Or at least until noon?

And the morning news report contained the mandatory report on the mobs at various stores in the region. My question is this: Is it worth it? Is it worth the $20 you save to stand in the freezing cold and risk being pushed and shoved (at the very least; trampled to death at the worst) when you likely could get the same deal or close online or tomorrow or some other time before Christmas?

Next up is Small Business Saturday (this one I can actually get behind) and then Cyber Monday. (Cybershopping is the way to go, in my opinion.) I haven't heard a retail-related moniker for Sunday yet. Maybe crazy shoppers still need a day of rest.

What's heartbreaking most of all is the fact that all of this retail insanity is all about getting more stuff that we don't need. Instead of taking one day of respite from the crazy, our culture ramps up the ridiculous.

As for me, I'm going to try hard to focus more every day -- not just on Thanksgiving - on what I've been given, the blessings I have, how well I am provided for, and how to share those blessings with others.

And no, I won't be buying Valentine's candy when it hits the shelves December 26.

Fly

Well, hello, Friday. Nice of you to roll around again once more. It is damp and dreary out, but every Friday can't be balmy and sunny, right? It's time again for Five Minute Friday and this week's word prompt is fly.


Words. They fly so fast out of my mouth sometimes. Sometimes that's a good thing, like when I'm cheering on a nephew at a soccer/football/basketball/baseball game or yelling "STOP!" to a little girl so furious with her father that she's blindly running away from him and directly into the path of an oncoming car in the parking lot.

But too often, when the words fly, it's in anger or judgment. It's me quickly expressing my opinion, offering an unsolicited opinion or giving unnecessary commentary. Controlling what I verbalize will be a lifelong effort for me. I've made some progress, but I'll likely be winging my way to heaven still working on using my words well.

Last night, we sat at the same table having the same discussion about the same challenge. Again. One more time. It probably won't be the last. At the heart of the issue is an individual's words and the corresponding heart attitude from which the words come. And as usual, we were sorting through our words and our heart attitudes and reactions to this situation. Anger, disappointment, frustration, grief.

This time, the words didn't fly as fast as they usually do. They still flew, but at a more measured pace and more succinctly. I think I'm tired of hearing my self say the same words that come from the same heart attitude. I don't have a solution to this challenge and it's something that could last as far into the future as I can imagine.

As I sat there last night, listening us to vent the familiar emotions, I came to the same conclusion that I need to continue working to surrender this situation, along with my words and my reactions to it, once again to the only One who can bring about the change we seek. I need to measure my words that are spoken into the situation and about the situation. I need to shut down the words I think or speak or write when they are not helpful or pleasing or encouraging. I must learn to apply Solomon's words:

Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

- Proverbs 16:24

Tree

It's a brisk Friday morning and today's Five Minute Friday word prompt it tree, which makes me think of climbing trees, but it's far too cold for that  (and I'm also far too old for that). Right now, the trees are shedding their leaves faster than the rakes can keep up with. Palm trees are blowing in Haiti, where two friends are wrapping up a week of service, but another tree comes to mind this morning.


My mother is working on her family tree. It's my family tree, too, but she's the one doing the exploring, the legwork, the climbing. I feel a disconnect from the tree, since I have only vague recollections of my mother's sisters and mother, and I don't remember her father at all as he died when I was an infant. Beyond those generations, the names and faces are just people from another time and place.

My mother's interested in connecting the branches between family members, recording births and deaths, and putting siblings with the right parents. More interesting to me are the story tidbits that sometimes come out when I ask about her progress or when we teach her how to scan another unsmiling face from a 100-year-old photograph. It's the stories that help these ancestors of mine come to life and become more than a photograph. Stories of families not visiting or communicating, husbands keeping their wives sequestered from their families, sons moving back to the farm when their fathers died, losing the farm in the Great Depression, moving families to where the work was ... Some stories are true, some are rumored to be true like the story a great-uncle and his buddy (who later married my great-aunt) who supposedly got two girls pregnant and then shirked their responsibility by vanishing to Nebraska.

While I'm really not interested in who begat who or who is my seventh cousin twice removed, I do enjoy the stories that make the people. I'm always up for a good story and when one emerges from my family tree, all the better.

Siri's Got Game

People have been amused by Siri for years, but I'm an Apple hold-out, so I haven't spent much time chatting with her other than to occasionally query a destination on my husband's phone. On Halloween night, the flow of trick-or-treaters was nothing more than a sluggish trickle, so I amused myself with a little girl talk. Siri was not impressed.