Writing Prompt

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If you decide to use this prompt and want to share what you’ve written with others, put your posted link in the comments. If you’re an artist and use this prompt, please share that as well. We’d all love to see the creativity around us, and that can inspire us too!

Hot Water

Yom Kippur

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I kind of failed Rosh Hashanah this year. I mean it’s still my responsibility to model for my kids and teach them how to observe. I feel as though I’m failing them in this area. I am also not ready to give up all of my traditions, and Yom Kippur is one of those thoughtful observances that gives you a mandatory stop and take inventory of where you are, where you’ve been, and we’re you’re going.

Yom Kippur is a little different today. For me, it’s less about what you can’t do, but what you can; what you do.

Fasting isn’t the absence of food; it is the presence of G-d as reminder of not only my failings of the past year, but also where I’ve succeeded.

Lighting candles for my parents. The reminder of where I’ve come from, how much I miss the every day, and it tells them that they are not forgotten.

Not working. No writing has always driven me crazy, but it has also afforded me the opportunity to slow down and think; to meditate. I am “forced” to something else.

My usual Yom Kippur activity is reading. Harry Potter was one of my Jewish holiday books and look at all my life has changed because of that beginning of that New Year. Overall, wonderful things from deep friendship to finding parts of me and knowing that are still parts missing; left to find.

This year’s book is Jesus: A Pilgrimage by James Martin. I know, an unusual choice for Yom Kippur. I’ve wanted to read it for some time. It was a gift from my godmother, and I look at the spine nearly every day and thinking I don’t have the time, I go back to my Kindle.

Yom Kippur will give me the time.

It is a whole day where I can read, pray, meditate, pray the rosary, light candles and no one questions the whys or the wherefores.

It is the one day out of the year where I don’t have to explain my actions.

It simply is.

Why are you….?

Because it’s Yom Kippur.

The simplicity of not apologizing for who I am or who I am becoming is part of my day’s meditation.

I do ask guidance and forgiveness for those I’ve wronged even with the best of intentions. Enlighten me how I can do better and I will do my best to try.

I will let my faith continue to guide me.

I will question what I don’t understand.

I will defend the wronged.

I will be the friend I’m supposed to be.

I will be the person I’m supposed to be.

Recommendation – Evernote

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evernote

 

 

My first smartphone wasn’t smart at all. It looked like an iPhone, but none of the icons were actually apps. I could surf the net but it wasn’t until the Android system that I finally understood and began to use apps.

I’ve been using apps for a few years now, and my favorite, most useful, the one I recommend to all, glowingly and effusively, is Evernote.

I have the app on my phone, my Kindle, and my computer plus I can access it from any computer by signing in at Evernote(dot)com. It is all synched and ready each time I open it up.

While I was still experimenting with this type of organizational app and trying out different ones, I was always drawn back to Evernote.

It really is the best one out there.

Evernote can be as general or as specific as you need. You decide how many notebooks you create. You choose and create your own tags. You can save things to a top menu for shortcuts if you’ll be using something more often for a period of time. You can even share your notebook with others if you want or need to.

Currently, I have seventeen notebooks and way too many tags, and I’m working on paring it down.

In addition to my long-hand notes, I also use it for checklists and collecting photos and links for other projects. It’s an all-in-one app; there are things it does that I haven’t even discovered yet.

I find it essential for my writing as well as organizing the information in my personal life.

It’s also free if you use the basic program.

Give it a try. You won’t be sorry.

Summer 2014 Wrap Up

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Last summer, I dreaded every day. It was too hot. I had no energy. The kids were too noisy and watched too much television. I pretty much hated every moment of last summer. In 2013, from the first day off, I had a countdown going for when they would go back to school. Seventy-six days and counting was my familiar refrain. With the number of days changing, of course.

I was very worried that this year would go much in the same way, and I was quite surprised at how well it went; not just that it went well, but that the kids had fun, I had fun, and I spent more days happy and content (for the most part) than not.

When the kids would ask me at various times during this summer when school was starting up again, I had to look at a calendar; I did not have it memorized and I wasn’t counting down the hours. Even they were surprised by my lack of knowledge.

Here in our section of the US, the students in the elementary schools are let out the last week of June. Camps and Summer Recreation programs don’t typically start until after the 4th of July holiday and they are expected back at school on the Wednesday or Thursday after Labor Day. This is usually about seventy-seven days.

In 2014, summer vacation was seventy days. Perhaps it was knowing that summer was ending a full week earlier than usual, but it started pretty well, and kept going that way. I could feel the difference. Part of that, I know, was my medication doing its thing, my continuing to focus on my coping and walking away when something was too much. I also asked for help. The kids were also a year older, which seemed to make a tiny bit of difference also.

With no summer school for anyone this year, the 4th of July was our first item on our summer to do list.

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Writing Prompt

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With October starting in just a couple of days, today’s prompt came easily enough.

If you decide to use this prompt and want to share what you’ve written with others, put your posted link in the comments. If you’re an artist and use this prompt, please share that as well. We’d all love to see the creativity around us, and that can inspire us too!

Squash, Gourd, and/or Pumpkin