Reach for the Thought That Feels Better

Well, I feel better just looking at this picture. How about you?

How many years have I been blogging? A pile. For the last week or so, though, I have been in a stall. You know one of those “What’s the use of it?” stalls. Not that I don’t appreciate all you guys who click in, I just wonder if I have anything of use to offer.

Seth Godin says this about blogging

 "No one clicked on it, no one liked it..."

These two ideas are often uttered in the same sentence, but they're actually not related.

People don't click on things because they like them, or because they resonate with them, or because they change them.

They click on things because they think it will look good to their friends if they share them.

Or they click on things because it feels safe.

Or because they're bored.

Or mystified.

Or because other people are telling them to.

Think about the things you chat about over the water cooler. It might be last night's inane TV show, or last weekend's forgettable sporting event. But the things that really matter to you, resonate with you, touch you deeply--often those things are far too precious and real to be turned into an easy share or like or click.

Yes, you can architect content and sites and commerce to get a click. But you might also choose to merely make a difference.

Most of us want to make a difference, yet I wonder, am I?

I wonder why I read blogs.

Sometimes it’s about content. I want to know how to do something, and thank heavens the internet can tell me how to work some of these high-tech devices, or the not so high tech, like how to fix the washing machine. That’s something we didn’t have years ago.

Something I read a blog because it appeals to me.

Sometimes I check out a blog because I believe it will help me, as Lisa Steele did on #Fresh Eggs Daily, when my two chickens died on the same day. She was so sympathetic. (Not my present chickens, they are doing fine.)

Sometimes we read because we’re curious as I have become interested in the life of Shreve in her blog #The Daily Coyote.

Sometimes we read for entertainment.

That makes me think of a morning three days ago when I had sushi for breakfast.

Well it was 11 am, almost lunch time and daughter wanted sushi, and sitting there I tried to think back to when American’s found that raw fish dipped in soy sauce and Wasabi horse radish tasted good. I remember the movie Lifeboat in which one of the fellows offered the Tallulah Bankhead’s character a tiny filet of fish, and disgusted, she threw it overboard. (Darn, no soy or Wasabi.)

My mind went off on a tangent, thinking about when we were kids and stood in the back of a pickup truck while it was barreling down the road at 50 miles an hour. Nope, I wouldn’t let my kids do that. But we did, and didn’t think anything about it.

And I thought about how the playground had no rubber padding, and the slide was so hot we scorched our bare legs on the way down. We drank a Coke once in a while, as a treat, not as a daily occurrence, and we didn’t have cup holders on baby seats, car seats, electric wheel barrows or lawn mowers. How did we ever stay hydrated? And what about those party lines where the phone was attached to the wall? Horrors.

I’m not saying those were the good old days, just remembering. A friend of mine who died this year said she wanted to stay around jut to see what would happen next.

So, what is going to happen next?

Who can predict? Right now I’m thinking that we can watch horror movies, (Why?) or violent ones, and listen to the naysayers, and let the media scare the pants off us. Oh dear, the election coverage is already blatant a year before the event will happen. Or, we can do as Abraham says, “Reach for the thought that feels better.”

We can notice that we breathed the night through without thinking about it. We can be grateful the engineers have given us highways in which we can travel in comfort to just about any place on the continent. (No covered wagons.)

And we have airplanes that will take us off the continent and bring us back.  We can be grateful that this thin layer of atmosphere--so thin that Mt Everest sticks up above it--sustains us. That we are lucky to live on this emerald blue and green planet that has such wonders it could or should put us into a constant state of awe.

Autumn: Outside my window, one branch on an otherwise green tree is red. And in October flowers are still blooming, and last night I heard a frog choking…

“Hack, gak, awk- the sound of a frog choking. Of course I meant to say, “croaking,” but instead said “choking.” What the heck, it’s funnier. 

ONE YEAR ON THE ISLAND, chapter One, two , three and four available on 

http://jdavisonisland.WIX.com/oneyearontheisland

Rubber Duckies, Dinosaurs and Moons

This Will Make You Smile, or Cry or Both

https://www.facebook.com/hamiltonsoutherofficial/videos/1679328955633502/

On the home front:

I picked up a little book at Goodwill the other day, a Newbery Metal winner. I should read this, I thought, find out what sort of writing wins the Newbery medal.

Well I was blown away. I read the entire book, Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech (Harper Collins 1994) Sunday afternoon, and I smiled and cried.

Walk Two Moons  is narrated by a thirteen-year-old-girl--suspense, sad, funny, poignant, healing, all the things that ought to be in a book.

Sal (Salamanca) is locked in a car with her Gram and Gramps for ten days while they drive from Kentucky to Lewiston, Idaho. “We’ll see the whole ding-dong country,” said Gramps. But that’s not why they are taking the trip—it’s a path to a missing mother.

I had to read the chapter “The Marriage Bed,” told by Gramps to my husband. 

Fascinating that the old folks didn’t like to use the words “Native Americans” but thought “Indian” sounded nobler, American Indian.

Injun to Indian to Native American, Grams concluded, “I wish they would make up their mind.”

I wondered if my high school sports teams, “The Dalles High Indians,” were now called The Dalles high Native Americans. We even had a bonafied Celilo Indian high school kid as a mascot. He had a charming personality, was popular, and we never felt we were exploiting him.  During many games or festivities he would dress up in native regalia and parade around the football field. We meant no disrespect. He made us proud.

About Walk Two Moons—fascinating that there tucked away in a stack of books at Goodwill Industries, I find gold. 

Goodwill Industries--is that the fate of books? 

P.S. The Second Chapter of One Year on the Island is now available

http://jdavisonisland.WIX.com/oneyearontheisland

see Chapter Two on menu, or click

http://jdavisonisland.wix.com/oneyearontheisland#!chapter-two/vpnrn

Plunging Ahead

Regarding my writing skills, I don’t have another half-century to wait for the publishing industry to decide if I suck, and since I have the desire, the fortitude, and the belief that the Great Spirit does not give us a desire without also giving us a way to achieve it, I am plunging ahead.

One Year on the Island is open for anyone who wants to read it.

jdavisonisland.wix.com/oneyearontheisland

The first chapter is posted. A chapter a week will follow until the book is complete, or I die, whichever comes first.

My long-time blog readers will remember that I blogged as we lived the island experience. “Wait a minute,” they might say, “I’ve heard that before,” but there is more…hey, it’s been five years. I also contemplate, add data on the island we call Hawaii, the dance we call the Hula, and the belief held by the Hawaiians of Aloha. It is more that “Hello, goodbye, or love.” It is doing good without expecting anything in return.

And it is my hope that some motivation slipped in.

Motivation for what?

Well, whatever you want.

Aloha from Joyce

They Scoop Through the Sand to Find What Others Have Missed

Why read this blog?

For the same reason I'm writing it--I wonder where in the heck it is going. Isn't that the way with carving or sculpting, you throw the clay onto the wheel, it begins to form. It takes shape under your hands. You you pick up a chunk of driftwood at the beach. It clearly tells you what it wants to become. 

Perhaps we will meet in the middle, I write, you read. Or not.

Here are a few things I know for sure:

I am offering you advice when I find it, experiences when I have them, and the benefit of over half a century of living.

I am offering you a nudge into believing that the impossible can be achieved—well the near impossible.

I am offering you quotes from the greats, and absurdities from someone like this (man trying to push a dog into lake, and falls in himself) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzJYVuqoixA  Justice.

I am offering you a chance to believe in this life, an after-life, and life in worlds beyond. A discussion? That’s all right with me. I have friends from across the spectrum of beliefs.

They say that we live to experience life. We write about it to make sense of it. I am doing that, and I encourage others to do the same--it's better than therapy, cheaper too.

Perhaps I ought to change the name of this blog to Wishing on Pink Flamingos instead of Wishing on White Horses, for this pin from my #Pinterest site has more repins than any other. 

"They scoop through the sand to find what others have missed."

My daughter and I called ourselves The Pink Flamingo Real Estate Team when we were Real Estate agents--thus scooping through the sand. That endeavor lasted about a month, for we found that our ladder to success was leaning against the wrong wall. We didn't want to be Real Estate Agents. Besides my writing, there is something else in store...

I wonder what it is.

Sign in on the box below just for the fun of it, to tell me what's up, your story, or to say, "Send me blog posts notices."  Or not.

Love to you,

Joyce

P.S. Oh, yes, don't forget to vote for me--as often as you can--no more than once a day. I'll love it, my dog will love it, my cheering section in the eithers will love it, the rest of the writers for #Harlequin will snarl in disgust.

https://www.wattpad.com/166395267-complete-manuscript-song-of-africa-part-3