Think carefully...or just blurt it out!

A question recently posed to me: If you could distill your greatest desire down to one word, what would it be?

I Love To Tell the Story

A friend and I have discovered that we both enjoy being read to, and reading to others. For me it’s a throw back to my childhood. Both my parents read to my sister and me, although my dad took the lion’s share. He was marvelous at it. Each character had its own voice and leaped of the page. My imagination leaped with them and I firmly wrapped myself in the tale, even it was safely watching the action from behind my invisible shield.

As I grew older, Dad’s nightly readings were replaced by serialized radio drama. I couldn’t get enough of them to be honest. I’m also an avid movie fan. However, movies give me the director’s interpretation of events. Radio dramas allow me to paint the scenes, design the costumes. Actors become the characters in the plot. It's interesting that taking away one of our senses can add such depth and layers. Radio dramas aren't always easy to find in the States these days. NPR occasionally has some. Thankfully, there’s the BBC’sRadio 4 Extra on the Internet to satisfy my craving. And now I've found a friend who enjoys it also. My cup runneth over!

And finally, a random thought: I do hope that all parents read to or spin yarns for their children – although if done just at bedtime, the child might develop a nasty habit of falling asleep when confronted with any reading material! But just as important, I hope that parents encourage offspring to tell their own stories. What freedom, what a stirring of young imaginations. What a great beginning to set the creative juices flowing! When my younger niece was around 3, she would begin a story at breakfast and continue its creation and telling throughout the day. Anything she encountered in her journey may have been included and we, the “hearers of the word” need not comment but simply enjoy the commentary. What a delight! And to this day, she writes beautifully.

I'm back!

My niece has inspired me: the happy ranting must continue! Not voicing my opinion hasn't landed me the perfect job and I need to remain true to myself. Besides, I hardly think this is being read by a huge amount of the populace. So to "borrow" a quote from my niece's blog: Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. - Cyril Connolly. So I'm back.

Random thoughts about the past in the future

Having a little time on my hands, I've been sorting through and cleaning out years of stored personal papers. I've just completed shredding 15 years worth of bank statements and cancelled checks (yes, SK, it's finally finished, phew!). While the blades whirled, my mind wandered to a university project a few years ago in which students and their professor dug through and uncovered decades of landfill. The experiment was designed to discover the rate of decay of various materials. What they found was that tightly packed paper devoid of sunlight and unexposed to the atmosphere remained pretty much intact. In an age when identify theft had yet to take place, check stubs and registers weren't destroyed. And this gave the students a whole other layer to their study - a bonus, if you will. For there in the depths of landfills was a perfectly preserved microcosm of the everyday life of ordinary people; a slice of society of the day.

So what's going to happen a couple of hundred years from now, with everything now shredded, recycled or deleted? Just a random thought.

Balancing act

According to an article I read awhile back, undertaking a new venture needs to have a healthy balance of excitement and anxiety. These two emotions serve as a check and balance to motivate us yet provide a necessary degree of caution. When the balance is right, life changes can take place. It's not a guarantee of success mind you, but it spurs us on and, when necessary, to accept disappointment for what it is, a learning experience, a bump in the road.

True failure only occurs when these emotions are out of balance. When excitement rules, we are often careless or ill prepared. Success - however, we measure it - can be short lived. When anxiety weighs down the scale, we usually remain stuck in place. The trying never begins.

So how do we keep the balance?

JRB

Survival 101

Our shoreline is cursed with rip currents (sometimes called riptides or undertow). Roughly, for those who don't know, rip currents are caused when waves are prevented from returning to the ocean by something such as a sandbar. The current moves along the obstruction until if finds a spot where it can break through. The water is literally ripped out to sea. They are strong and dangerous to swimmers, who are often blindsided. The good news is that they don't go on for ever, either in time or distance. So if caught up in one, how do we survive these too often deadly phenomena?

• Relax - don't struggle, you'll only wear yourself out
• Don't try to swim back to shore while you're caught in the current, you'll only wear yourself out
• Swim with the current, parallel to the shore, the average rip current is about 30 ft. Once you're out of the rip current, head for shore
• If swimming parallel is too difficult, then go with the flow, it will take you out into calmer water, from where you can signal someone on the shore for help and also find it easier to follow the previous step (or rather, stroke)

When you think about it, this is also good advice for life in general. Let's face it, most of us at some point have been or will be blindsided by a personal rip current, which brings with it a real fear of emotional if not actual drowning. So when it happens, remember the rules of survival:

Relax...go with the flow...ask for help.

Food for thought

Fear and I have been periodically acquainted over the years. In fact, we're probably better acquainted that I care to admit. Fear is one of those bad-ass people that you know you shouldn't hang with but are just not that easy to give up. You know the kind, gives you really bad advice and encourages you to eat all the wrong food that simply feeds your insecurities but sure tastes good. So how do we cut these ties that bind?

I found this article on Care2 helpful.