Challenge Completed!

I feel a great sense of relief to have made it through the entire 30 day writing challenge, but I have to say that I also am a little bit sad about it being over.

Some friends asked me Saturday if I planned to continue blogging every day after the challenge was over, and I quickly (and without any thought) said, “Nope.”  It hasn’t been as easy as it might seem to come up with a worthwhile and coherent post each day, although my days are not without the inspiration to write several different posts.

I have enjoyed the challenge of it most of all because I wasn’t sure I could rise to the occasion, nor was I all that sure I wanted to do it when it began.  I took it five days at a time, as that was all I had originally committed to once it began.  It is easier to commit to something in short increments for me (and most people).

I have enjoyed getting back into the habit of writing daily and making something (I hope) to be of value to others using words.

Writing definitely helps me to stay grounded and no matter where I start when I write, I can almost always find a positive spin by the time I am finished.  If I cannot, then I must not be finished, so I just keep going until it happens.

November has been full of lessons for me.  Each of those lessons has directed me back to the basics and back to being grounded and focused.  Writing each day has certainly helped reframe some of the less pleasant lessons of the month, while truly enhancing the more pleasant ones.

I have enjoyed reading the posts from my fellow Team Peppers and have some new bloggers to follow that I wouldn’t have otherwise found.  I have found beauty and value in situations and individuals that were initially a challenge, and I probably wouldn’t have made such a conscious effort to do so had I not felt the need to create an experiment to look harder for it.

I am grateful for my favorite Dino Rara for leading the charge with the team of tiny peppers and I am grateful for each one of you for cheering me on through the month.  Clicking “Like,” posting a comment, sending a text, or telling me in person definitely goes a long way!

At the end of 30 days, I feel more grateful.  I feel more grounded and more connected to all things in my world—near and far.

Thank you all for playing from the bottom on my heart!  I cannot promise to write for you every day, but I can promise to do better than I have in recent months.  I am confident in my ability to do weekly posts after doing it daily for so long.

Feel free to subscribe your email so that you don’t miss any, particularly if you rely on your Facebook feed to deliver them.  Check out some of my fellow bloggers too!

 

 

Symptom-land Remix

The whole gist of this blog is to share my journey with a chronic, progressive illness.  You will notice that I actually don’t spend a lot of time talking about the illness or my symptoms, however.

I have likened living with a chronic illness to be similar to having an infant that arrives and totally changes the way you have to do everything—only it isn’t a cute.  I do most things differently and have had to rearrange that as different symptoms become worse or better.

While I deal and manage my symptoms on a daily basis, I still don’t spend as much time talking about them as I do managing them.  For me, if I am able to see the lessons in my day-to-day life, and to show up for life with a genuine smile, then I am being successful in the management of my symptoms.

I can hardly see the lessons when I am frustrated or stuck focusing on my symptoms.  Actually, there are times when I can hardly think about much else when I am stuck there.  You have certainly shared many of those moments with me throughout the postings over the last several years.

Today, there was a lot of inquiry about symptoms.  I don’t mind sharing, but sometimes I am just as confused as you are about what I can and am unable to make my legs, feet and such do.

There doesn’t seem to be much of an understanding about why I seem to do well on flat land, but cannot go up an incline without assistance.  Or why propelling myself in a forward motion works well in some instances, but in others I need to push off of something, and why that seems to vary with no real rhyme or reason.

I have unanswered questions that will probably be left unanswered.  I am ok with that at this point because I really would rather spend my energy elsewhere.  It is funny what happens when there are a lot of questions, however.  (Not so much ha ha funny sometimes.)

It is probably one of the reasons I prefer to see doctors only when I really need to see them—I don’t like to focus on my symptoms.  I am more than happy to do whatever I have to do to manage them and figure my energy is better used toward that end.

For the latter part of the afternoon, however, I had a little detour into symptom land.  While I was still productive, I found myself actively having to shift my focus away from them and back to what I was doing.  It isn’t that I am not aware of the symptoms or that I am trying to pretend they aren’t there—I know it’s all there.  I am not trying to minimize it either.

It is what it is, I reckon, for me.  It doesn’t run my life like it did in the early years and most of that is because I stay out of symptom land and stay in symptom management land because it only serves to dampen my quality of life when I don’t.

If you don’t have an illness and think you can’t relate, then think about this example.  Let’s say you didn’t get enough sleep last night and all you can think about is how tired you are.  Are you going to feel any better doing that?  It really isn’t much different!

The Power of Words

I have written several posts lately, but have not posted them.  It is funny to me really.  It isn’t because I think they are bad or because I am not happy with them.  I simply decided not to post them.

Instead, I have decided to share what I learned from writing them and choosing not to post them.

Words have a lot of power.  Words have the power to lift us up, drag us down and all variations in between.  They have the energy and power to heal, and at the same time, I have come to realize, that sometimes words can be a bit empty and have harmful energy too.

With selfish or ill intentions, or no actions behind them, they are simply a bunch of letters strung together into words, put into some order that makes a sentence or three.

For me, words have great meaning and power.  I don’t often say or write something that I don’t mean and don’t often share things that I am doing unless I am doing them.  Stringing words together into meaningful sentences is almost a spiritual practice for me.  I cannot expect that is the case for anyone else.

What I have learned is that this is my personal practice and my belief system about the practice, but not necessarily anyone else’s.  It’s ok that it isn’t.  It’s ok if it is.  What matters to me is what I do with my words.

My goal with my words is to pay forward what I am learning from my experiences with chronic illness and life in general.  Someone out there in cyber land may find my words helpful, inspirational, or relatable.  The intention is to share the lessons in order to help someone else or offer hope.

The lesson for me in the not posting was somewhat liberating.  I am only responsible for what I say, what I do, and how I choose to be in this life.  While I may have known that already on some level, sometimes in my efforts to help others, I accidentally make myself responsible for them too. Fortunately, I am not!  Shew!  I feel like I have my hands full already with just my own!

Censored!

I sat with an open laptop on several occasions yesterday, but there were no words coming up on my screen.  I certainly feel like I have a lot to say, and have a lot of words roaming around inside my head, but there were no words to put on the page.

I looked at the Daily Prompt and the Weekly Writing Challenge, but those didn’t seem to inspire me.

Instead of forcing it, I opted not to post anything yesterday.

Later in the evening, as thoughts were swirling around in my head, I understood why there were no words on the page.

There simply are things that I am unable to share.  Not because I don’t want to, but because it isn’t all about me.  I am censoring, and when I censor, I may as well put all writing aside until I don’t have to censor anymore because the words won’t come freely.

It is interesting to reflect on my writing processes over the years.  It is exactly when the censoring starts in any area of my life, that I am sapped of my inspiration.  It is as if the censoring itself zaps my energy, and I have no words.  Even my journaling stopped during those times.

That, in and of itself, sends me a message about the nature of my censoring.  If I am unable to write about it or anything else because of it, then I guess that tells me something.

Most bloggers censor.  I probably censor some without really being aware of it, although my goal is to be as transparent as possible.  I think when I am censoring on purpose because it is not appropriate to share my thoughts and feelings about something, I should probably take a look at that.

How much censoring does it take before you zap your creative energy?  How much do you censor your words when you write?  Do you force write anyway when the words don’t flow freely?

Switching It Up: DP Weekly Challenge

A line had developed for early voting, so there were twenty or more people in a staggered line down the hallway at the courthouse.  Emergency people were responding to a medical crisis inside the polling area, so everyone else who was waiting to vote had to stay in the main hall.

I spotted a young woman about half-way back in the line.  She was no ordinary woman as she seemed to have drawn a crowd around her in the line.  She was sitting in one of those motorized wheelchairs with the words Jazzy on the side.

I couldn’t imagine what could be wrong with her that she needed that chair as I watched her almost develop her own following with people who were initially strangers.

Her dark hair kept getting pushed back from her face by her hands as she talked.  I could see her eyes sparkling in the dimly lit hall and she seemed to be talking about something very interesting to the others.   I stood watching her in awe for several minutes.

Her new fans were completely focused on her words and I wondered how she was able to have such social confidence, especially considering she was in a wheelchair.

As a poll volunteer, I am really just supposed to stand at my post at the entrance to the polling area, and hand out information if asked.  I was intrigued by this woman and needed some excuse to go over there to the line.

Considering it made my heart start beating out of my chest.  The sweat began to bead on my forehead.  I am not social.  Thinking about it can make me have a panic attack, but there is something about this woman that makes me want to do it anyway.

I decided to leave my post, and offer her some information about the amendments on the ballot as my excuse.

As I approach her, the crowd around her seems to part noticing that I am there.  I think I might have stopped breathing as I got closer.  She noticed me too and stopped talking when I excused my interruption.  My throat was so dry all the sudden, so my words came out like a sputter—slowly and almost loudly, I spoke, using all my effort just to get them said.

“Would you like…information on, er, uh, the…amendments on…the ballot?”  I finally get out.

She was gracious when she thanked me and turned me down.  She said she had already researched them before coming out to vote.  Of course she had, I thought.  She was even more beautiful up close than she was from afar, and I lingered with the crowd around her for just a moment.  My knees were shaking and I needed a drink of water, so I returned to my post.

 ——————

This week’s Daily Post writing challenge (hosted by the lovely WordPress Dino Rara) asked us to write something from someone else’s perspective.

I was the woman in the wheelchair in real life.  My perception of that man was that he was being patronizing by singling me out from the line of voters—this was my fellow voters’ perception as well.  He spoke slowly and loudly to me as if sitting in a wheelchair meant that I had diminished cognitive capacities.

It was a rather horrible experience for me, but one that I turned into a teaching moment for the folks standing around me.  I shared with them I was living at the local homeless program, about my illness, about stem cell research, about the amendments on the ballot, etc.

They spent the rest of the time looking out for how I was treated through the voting line.  When they were taking walking people ahead of me, they charged right in to right the wrong to make sure I was treated with respect.  I didn’t need them to do that, but they needed to do it.

I like the shift in perspective for this event in my life.  It is certainly an alternative to how I experienced it.  This was the first scenario that popped into my mind when considering this challenge, although there are certainly many others.

 

 

 

26 Little Things

Have you ever wondered if something was so insignificant that it would suddenly start to hold significance?

Seriously, there are a million relatively insignificant things that happen to us, around us, through us, or with us every single day of our lives.  How do you know when something so trivial to you one moment might not be the most important thing in your world tomorrow or next week?

How do you know that the stranger you said hi to when you were walking your dogs won’t end up being your boss next year?  Or the car you let go in front of you at that stop light won’t be the car that averts a major accident?

We do things all day long—little things, sometimes big things, nice things and sometimes not so nice.  But do we appreciate the potential significance of each of them?

If I told you that 26 of the things you did yesterday made some difference, would you be able to pick out those 26 things or even remember having done them?

On any given day, there are likely at least 26 things you saw, heard, read, did, didn’t do, said, didn’t say, etc. that are significant.

What if we saw all of them as significant?  What if we knew that there would be 26 significant things to do today?  Would we pay more attention?  Would we be more present?  Would we be kinder or more compassionate?  Would we be more patient?

Want to try it with me?  Number a sheet of scratch paper from 1 to 26 and fill it in as you go through the day and let’s see what happens!

Today’s Daily Prompt was to write a post where the number 26 plays a role.