Don't think so much....

   Have you ever been told to stop and think something through?  I have.  It is a really good thing to have a plan before you start.  If you don't know where your destination is how do you know what direction to go.  I have also discovered there is such a thing as thinking too much.  What happens if you think too much .... NOTHING.
   That's right nothing happens.  Your brain goes on overload and stops.  You start to question everything.  Am I really doing this right?  Should I say that or maybe this?  Will the couch look better over there or should I put it here?   Should I go or should I stay?     AAAGH!!!!  Help someone please turn off my mind or hit reboot or something.
   My first brush with this was in high school.   When I was in drivers education, I had the hardest time learning to turn a corner without over turning the wheel.  My instructor finally told me don't look at where you are, look at where you want to go.  I was  looking  so hard at the curb to make sure I didn't hit it, that I turned the wheel right into it every time.  When I stopped watching the curb and started watching the road I quit hitting the curb.  But the lesson of over thinking didn't sink in at that time.
   I became conscious of this phenomenon when I was teaching dance.  The owner brought in a well known dancer to teach a class to the staff.  The class was great, but he ended it by telling us to think about how you moved your foot when you walked. You need to use that same movement when you glide through your dance steps.  When you walk you lead with your heal, roll on to the ball of the foot and through to the end of the toe.  When your toe leaves the floor, your other heel should already be in contact with the floor.
   We all thanked him very much for the class.  Then the owner stuck her head into the room and told us to come into the office for a quick meeting.  The office was just on the other side of the dance floor.  All we had to do is walk across the floor and through the door.  All 15 teachers just stood there.  We were thinking so hard about how to walk we couldn't take the first step.
   All of us where thinking along the same lines .... What is the big deal I have been walking since I was a toddler and I can't even put one foot on the floor.  Do I start with the right foot or the left?  I got to remember to lead with the heal and roll onto the foot and what???  This is crazy I know how to walk.
  Then we all stopped thinking so much.  We leaned forward and let our mind and body do what it was meant to do.  No, not fall flat on our faces.  But I must admit for a split second I thought that might happen.  We walked across the floor.
   This taught me a very valuable lesson.  If you try to think of every movement and every thought before you make it, you will never take that first step.  No matter if it is writing, sports, your job or just your life.  You need to think about were you are going, yes have a plan.  But, you also have to let go and trust yourself.  Stop thinking so hard about the journey and start thinking about the destination.  You will be fine, and you will enjoy the ride a  whole lot more.

from Wikimedia Commons

             A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
                                Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

I'm a star!!!

   I would like to thank Denise at L'Aussie Writing for giving me a Star award.

   To claim this award you need to answer one question.  What are your writing habits?  Then pass along the star to those you think could use a little star dust themselves.  So here goes.
   My writing habits are not set in stone, their not even set in jello.  I keep a journey, okay a spiral notebook, with me by the bed and when I leave the house so I can jot down ideas.  You never know where the next blog will come from.  This is about as organized as I get.  The rest... well, you'll see.
   I get up in the morning get a cup of coffee and head to the office.  I know my brain does not function until the coffee kicks in so I check my email while I wait.  Nope still not working, but I open a word document so I will be ready when my mind is.  Ohh, maybe a game of solitaire will get the juices flowing.  Come on Aunt Mary wake me up.  I am very competitive, I will not let the computer win, so I keep going till I win. Yes, okay back to the blog.
   It's what time?  Okay let me get some lunch.  One more cup of coffee and lets get to it.  Okay, coffee kicked in but not in the way I wanted.  I be back in a minute.  Now what was I doing.  Oh yeah the blog.  Document open, check.  Notebook of ideas, check --- uh not check it is still by the bed.  I will just go get that, and get down to business.

   What --- I'm just reading.  I said I was going to  what?  Oh crap, I got sidetracked.  Now I am ready.  I know what I am going to write today.  I set down and get typing.  Done.
   Now to preview and edit.  This takes as long as the writing.  I go back and forth reading, proofing, correcting grammar, spelling, sentence structure.  Over and over again until it is right or until I can no longer see straight.
   The whole process takes me about 8 to 10 hours.  Of course the actual writing part would probably only take a couple of hours or less, if my brain would cooperate.
   As you can see I need help getting my routine down.  It would be easier if Jack would just let me eat once a day.  But the man insists that the body needs to be feed more often than that to keep going.
   Okay now for the people I think are stares in their own right.

Canadian Blogger Girl, mussing of a military wife.
Rayna at Coffee rings Everywhere.  The best drabbler around.
Al at Publish or Parish.  You are always a star.
Grandpa at Life on the Farm.  Tales from the rain forest.

Laura, at A Shift in Dimensions I don't know if you have time for awards are not, but you are my biggest star.  You always take the time to help me out.  Thank you.

   Let me know about your writing habits, as you can see I need help with mine.  Maybe I can use your tips to get myself more organized.




I think Amazon is trying to tell me something....

I died once...

  Welcome to my second #fridayflash.

I died once... #fridayflash


  I died once.  I was just a few months old.  My mother and I were staying at her parents home, when I became sick.  I stopped breathing and turned blue.  They say I swallowed my tongue.  Though I don't know how I could have done that.  My eyes rolled up into my head and I went limp.
   My grandfather was an ex-marine and he took charge.  He swept me up into his arms and carried me outside away from the women.  No one knows exactly what he did.  But he brought me back to this world.
   When we came back in.  I was soaking wet and screaming at the top of my lungs.  My mother and grandmother said it was the sweetest sound they had ever heard.
   When asked what happened all my grandfather would say is he pulled my tongue out of my throat and threw a bucket of cold water on me to shock my system.  I don't know if he told them everything.  He always tried to protect us from the ugly parts of this world.
   They say when you die and come back, you bring something of the other side back with you.  I couldn't tell you if that were true.  I was too young to know what was normal and what was not.  It was all normal for me.
   As I grew I started to realize I could tell when things were going to happen, like when it was going to rain.  I would smell and feel the rain coming, even on  a bright sunny day.  My friends and I would be playing when I would announce we need to head back to the house before it started to rain.  They would laugh and point out there was not a cloud in the sky.  It is coming within the hour, I would say.  And it did.  The weatherman was right 60 percent of the time, I was right 100 percent.  I didn't know why I could feel the rain on a clear day or not feel it on a cloudy day.  I just could.
   I also had knack of getting along with all kinds of animals.  Even the dangerous dog that was tied up by the shortcut home.  No one could get near him.  I could.  I would look him in the eyes and talk to him.  He would listen.  I would pet him and tell him to let my friends pass.  He would lick my hand and step out of the way.  Some people have said it was because I showed no fear that he allowed me near.  Maybe so, or maybe he understood me.  You would have to ask him.
   He wasn't the only one.  A friend and I went to one of her friend's house.  She had a cat who would not go near anyone by her owner, not even the girl she had lived with for the first 8 weeks of her life.  While we were all sitting at the table, the cat creeped into the room,  jumped up in my lap, licked my hand and went to sleep.  The owner was amazed.  Dogs in a frenzy would stop and listen to me, when they would ignore their owners.  Animals in the woods would come close and sit by me.  I don't know why, they just would.
   As I grew older I noticed other things.  I could tell when someone was upset by their voice over the phone.  But I have been told others can do this too.  That it is because of the tension in the voice.  Maybe it is.
   After a while I didn't need to hear them to know if something was wrong.  All I had to do was think of them.  I knew what someone was doing and thinking.  I didn't even know myself how I did this.  It would just pop into my head when I thought about them.  I would call them and find out they were thinking about me. 
   I could tell the sex of the unborn child of a friend.  I was more accurate than a sonogram, but only with people I knew.  I could not walk up to a stranger and feel the child's sex.  At least not yet.
   I never knew this was unusual.  I thought everyone could do these things if they tried.   To me this came naturally.  Maybe it was because my great grandfather was one of the most powerful Medicine Men of all the Cherokee tribes. 

From Cherokee Museum

   But I didn't know this.  You knew, but you never let on.  You didn't want me to feel different from everyone else.  But I was different.

   Yes I died once, but I came back.



©2010 Pamela Jo

Is Cursive writing a dying art...

Image via Wikipedia

    I heard a story on the news the other day and it got me thinking.  It was survey of incoming college freshmen this year.  It seems that the majority of them do not know how to write in cursive.  The folks that do college entry test say that 85% of the students tested now print their essays.
   Is cursive writing dying out?  Is it soon to go the way of the Dodo bird?  Something only seen in museums.

Image via Wikipedia

  I remember when I went to school learning how to write using a Big Chief tablet and a black jumbo pencil.  I could not wait to learn to write in cursive.
Why because all the grown ups wrote in cursive, and it was like a secret code.  If it was important like a letter or postcard it was in cursive writing.  These things had to be read to me.  How did I know there wasn't a secret the grown ups were keeping from me.  Kind of like when they would spell words they didn't want me to understand.  What kind of secrets would be revealed when I could read the code for myself?
   I concentrated so hard on learning those letters.  After all I was on a mission to learn the secrets of the adults.  When I could read and write in cursive I found out that apparently most of the adults didn't take the same class that I did.  Oh there were similarities in their cursive writing and what I learned but the adults each had their own way of writing.  It made it a little harder to read, but I made it out.
   What secrets did the writing reveal... nothing.  They would write letters about what we did, how much they missed each other and things like that.  But at least I could now read for myself what they wrote.  I no longer had to depend on others to read the letters from Grandma to me. 
   I later learned everyone develops their own way to write.  Your own personalty shaped your formation of the letters.  Your way of writing becomes so much a part of yourself, that it revealed more about you than you knew.  Reading and interpreting writing is what a handwriting analyst does everyday.  There are volumes written about it.
   But if cursive writing dies out who will read those volumes of information and what will become of our written history.  Most of the letters and documents that make up our past are written in cursive, The Deceleration of Independence,  The Constitution and most every important document from our forefathers.  Not to mention all the personal letters from people like Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain and from your great grandfather to your great grandmother during the war.  Only a lucky few would still be able to read and enjoy these writings in their original form.
   Will future generations come back full circle to were we started when we were children?  Will they have to depend on others to read the code written down in the letters, and hope that nothing gets left out?  That in itself should be reason enough to continue to teach and learn cursive writing.
   But then I have always loved a mystery and wanted to see everything for myself.  Maybe, just maybe there is a hidden code in those letters.  Do you really want someone else to read and discover it before you do?

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Email to Mom...#Fridayflash

   Okay everyone I am biting my nails and suffering a panic attach but here it is the first time I am participating in a #fridayflash.  I wrote this a while back.  I just had to get the courage to show it to the great writers out there in blog land. Be kind, but please let me know how I did.  I can't get better if I don't know how.

Email to Mom -- #Fridayflash

 
Dear Momma,
   Sorry I have not written I have been busy in the garden. I'm sorry I did not get the flowers planted in your garden in time this year.  I did however get the vegetables in and they are doing great.  It wont be long till we will have to pull out the canning recipes.  I can't wait to try Great Aunt Jean's tomato recipe.  It sounds delicious.
  This is great.  I still have a hard time believing I'm talking with you.  To think my little brother helped make the programing that makes this happen.  He told me they are really close to perfecting the voice over internet too.  I can't wait till I can hear everyone's voice again.
  Oh yes, he said to tell Mr. Bell thank you for the suggestion.  It was just what they needed.  It allowed them to get over the plateau they had reached.  He also told me to tell you they already have some researchers working on sending images as well as voice.  Wouldn't that be great, then I could see you as we talk.
   Let Mr. Jefferson know I was able to get a hold of his family in Virginia.  They said their computer has been down but it should be fixed by the end of the week and they would contact him then.
    I have so missed you, but I know you are catching up with all the family and friends there.  Tell all my cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents I said hello.  I miss you all and can't wait to see you.  Don't worry I am going to do as you asked and stay here until I'm called. 
   Well I've got to go for now I'll talk to you soon
  
Love always,
Your daughter

PS:  We were able to find that old fashion yellow rose that you wanted.  We all went out this weekend and planted it at your grave.  Hope you like it.


©2010 Pamela Jo