writing prompts 2023

The Bookshelf

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Daily Prompt: What makes you most anxious?

I have a shelf full of unread books in my living room.

Un.

Read.

Books.

I am so ashamed of myself and that shelf.

In the past I have neglected my health. I neglected doing things I enjoy like cooking and ha, ha, ha, drawing and photography.

Point of clarification. I suck at drawing and photography but I never let my lack of talent stop me from doing those things because I enjoy them.

But no matter how bad things got in my life, I never stopped writing and I never stopped reading. And then in the last couple  of  years I sort of crashed. I kept

writing but I dropped a lot of other things and that has stressed me out – a lot.

Well guess what baby. I’m back. I started my Goodread challenge back up and I’m reading my first book of the year. I am committed to reading a hundred books.

According to the challenge, I’m 17 books behind. Seriously. That made me laugh. But hey Goodreads, challenge accepted.

In my bones I know I’ll nail the challenge this year. Actually I’ve never done that. But when you say your going to read 100 books half that total is pretty cool.  I

think the  point is to read and fill your brain with tasty morsels, so watch my Goodreads icon on my blog and let’s see how it goes.

amm

Pretty Words

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RDP Tuesday: APRICITY

Photographer Unknown

There have been a few times, when I had to walk in a snow storm.

Both times I found myself in that spot because the roads weren’t safe to drive on and going on foot was the only option I had.

Once, and only once did the Sun come out during  one of those walks, and for just a few minutes, and when I lifted my face up to warm it, nothing happened. The Sun was up in the sky doing absolutely nothing except shining.

So I kept walking.

Then a few years ago I saw this picture and a video that showed what the Sun looks like from the icy surface of Pluto. The Sun is just hanging up there in the sky doing absolutely nothing except shining and I thought-

Wow. I know people who are like that.

You’re cold and  and maybe even a little scared and all they do is hang above you and shine and all you can do is keept walking.

Stuff or Swim?

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Daily Prompt: What are three objects you couldn’t live without?

One day I came home from work and found out my Dad had died, my cousin had died and short time later I would lose my dog too.

From that point on I lost everything else- or maybe I just let it go.

But in that short time I learned a very bitter yet valuable lesson.

You CAN learn to live without just about anything- you have to.

If you spend one spare moment thinking about what to save when you have to move and save yourself NOW, when the time comes for you to fight you won’t be able too because ‘ your hands ‘ are full of stuff.

Here’s a  real life sceneario for you to consider.

I was reading about a woman who lost her dog when the building she lived in collapsed.

The reason was she lost her dog was that  she had a choice to make in a split second- grab

her phone or save her dog.

She grabbed her phone.

Her brain was ‘full of stuff’ and in that second that’s what she saved. Her ‘stuff’. Her ‘things’. Something that she told herself at some point in time that she could not live without.

When the time came to make that choice, she acted on it.

I  have learned I can live without stuff, without things and I hope I always remember that.

 

Stuck In The Middle

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Daily Prompt: What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?

Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun1779/1788

Before I started Kindergarten, my Mom was sitting in the kitchen having cigarettes and coffee with her friends, and out of nowhere she called me over and said,

” Never, ever,  name your kids after your friends. ”

I think from that point on she used my middle name instead of my first name and so did most of my family. So from that day on, I was ” Marie ” The exception as most of the relatives from my Mom’s side of the family- I guess they liked her friend Anita, but my Dad’s side stuck with Marie.

My brother continued to call me ” Cheetos ” and he still does. And I’m still Marie to part of the family and Anita to the other.

So which do I prefer?

Well. I don’t like Anita because of the way most people pronounce it. It sounds like they’re saying ” Uh-nee-duh ” which is just clunky and ugly.

I liked Marie better and I really embraced ‘Marie’ when I learned about the doomed Queen of France, Marie-Antoinette.

I felt sorry for her.  In my kid’s  mind she was a girl  that nobody liked and  got her head chopped off which had to have been a horrific death.

I was a Doctor Phibes fan at this time so I understood Horror and monsters and I was sure that the people who jeered and tormented her on her way to her  death and the man who  executed her by the guillotine were pretty monstrous themselves.

Normal people don’t chop off people’s heads. They don’t even consider doing something like that and when they do, they ended up in a mental hospital or jail.

When I got older, I understood her death was a political execution but I still found it a hideous way to die and what she went through really did haunt me.

How?

Until I had problems with my thyroid, I used to wear chokers. I did that after I learned that during the French Revelation, women wore them in remembrance of people who had died at the Guillotine.

The women began wearing a political dress with red ribbons around their necks as a tribute and homage to all those who were slaughtered at the guillotine. This ribbon was worn in several different ways, around the neck like a simple choker, or tied around the back and shoulders to create an X.

So that is the story of my middle name and I’m going to follow this tag because I’m interested in other people’s stories about their sometimes neglected middle names.

 

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