She thought she could decide and control what her life would be like. It took her more than fifty years to realize that she had zero influence and/or control over the most important decisions that she faced. More importantly, on those occasions that she relinquished her control, things seemed to work out better.

If you, my reader, can take any advice from one person’s tale, then this opening paragraph is for you. Open yourself up to the possibilities that you have not even thought about, because there are way better things in store for you if you can commit to that!

Since I was young, I have wanted to write a book. I started one in my thirties, and stopped after 40 pages. If I recall it wasn’t very good.

I have no illusions that I am capable of writing a best seller. But I am determined to write an entire book, and then to self publish. The self publish part is my 70th birthday gift to myself. (I will celebrate later this year. I have about 100 pages so far, and it is becoming more difficult as the story progresses.

Oddly enough, as I listened to an online homily this morning, the priest (Fr. Mike Schmitz) offered some statistics. The percentage of people who want to write a book? 80%!!! Of those, how many will actually begin writing a book (not finish, but just begin) – less than 15%!!! And finally, the percentage who will actually complete writing a book? 1%. Only 1%?

I have just been incentivized to finally finish my book.

I want to be a part of a 1% club!

I will also continue to practice my writing each day on this site. It is, after all, where I started my book!

“Nice day!”

I bite my tongue to stop from saying “well done, you should definitely look into being a meteorologist – you’re a natural!”

“Well now, isn’t he the little handful” to a stressed mom dealing with a toddler in full meltdown.

“Why yes, captain obvious, your methods of observation are second to none”

Or maybe you’re enjoying an ice cream during a mid day stroll, and someone says

“Well that looks tasty!”

“Um, no, they only had vegetable flavors today, this is lima bean” (heavy eye roll for effect)

To that I say, we need to practice leaning into silence – please.

Silence is great! Ask any frequent flyer. First rule of finding your seat is to not make eye contact with the person sitting next to you. If they ask a question, open your book first, take your time, look at them and with a half smile, nod, and quickly put your nose back into your book. (and yes, you either have a book, iPad or notebook if you are a frequent flyer – guaranteed.)

Before you consider me antisocial, please consider that I, personally, do not believe that I am. I believe in good, solid conversations versus banal, cliche’d offerings. I love to engage with someone who shares similar interests, or current events (political conversations excluded as they are impossible to navigate these days).

I even gave up my “no talk” flight rule once or twice. And while it’s a pretty risky thing to attempt, I have done it once or twice after carefully sizing up my seat mate.

On one such occasion, (it was more than ten years ago) it was a pretty short flight (just under two hours) and my seat mate on this day was reading a worn copy of “David Copperfield” and I simply said – “how many times” and he quickly responded “more than twenty” and we chatted for about 30 minutes about the brilliance of Dickens, our favorite stories, best lines remembered and recited, etc. and when we exhausted that chat, we each burrowed back into our books, and when our flight ended we politely said good bye before deplaning.

I think the average person deplores the common weather-greeting, or obvious observations. They are just really lazy attempts at friendliness and should be called out for what it is – “small-brain” talk. If you would argue that it is a conversation starter, I heartily disagree – in fact, for me, it is a conversation ender. If you really want to speak to someone, put a little effort into it. A very small, but deep conversation will always win out and leave a lasting impression. And truly, if you do decide to go the “weather” route, I won’t be unkind, but I won’t engage either, I will more than likely just smile and nod.

Daily writing prompt

If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?

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If I could be anyone else for a day, I would choose to be my enemy, My nemesis, or anyone who does not like me. What an opportunity for improvement!

I realize that there may be a few people will have no real or fixable reason to dislike me, or maybe they dislike me for reasons I cannot control. Examples might be, I don’t like her husband, her kids, her dog, etc. None of that is going to change obviously. And then there is the group who may think I do not measure up to their physical attributes area. I am older, and choose not to do any work to make me look younger. There are a lot of women my age who look incredible in comparison to me. I use a daily and nightly moisturizer, but beyond that, I like my aging face. I love my wrinkles, my white hair (I use purple shampoo to enhance the whiteness – so maybe that counts), and I am overweight. I struggle with autoimmune diseases that have challenged me in the weight department. I am active, and I eat cleanly, but I refuse to eat less than 1,000 calories daily, or workout beyond 30 minutes daily so that I can fit someone else’s idea of the perfect weight. The glp1’s are of no interest to me either, and I doubt if they would be good for anyone with autoimmune disorders.

Now, all of that said – I want to know how I can improve my interactions with those who might find me less than desirable. What did I say, or not say that earned me to be disdained? What can I do to change your opinion. As humans, we always have room for improvement. Sometimes people think it is just easier to ignore others than to express what it is or why they don’t like them. I think this would be an invaluable self improvement tool. We can invent an anonymous social media app, we sign up and then people can post anything that they found wanting about your or your personality. We can call it YES, Your Enemies Speak. As I indicated above, no physical attributes or bashing of family members, this would be limited to “relatability”.

And we can expand on that for couples. When couples divorce, before the final decree, it should be an option for each to complete a questionnaire to detail what went wrong.

My ex, who I divorced at age 22, is still super angry with me to the point that he will not attend any event for our daughter if I am there. I am 70 now. That’s a lot of anger. At 22, I am sure I came up short in the wife area, especially since we married at 19, bought a house at 20, and had a daughter at 21. Here’s what my write up would look like:

There is nothing wrong with you – we just were not meant to be together. I am really sorry that I disappointed you, I was looking for a roommate, not a husband, and I was too young and ignorant to know the difference. But our daughter is beautiful and she did better in the marriage department. Fifty years ago, girls just didn’t move out of their homes until they found a husband. That’s a terrible reason to marry, but to make up for that, I made sure that I helped all of my daughters, ours and the 3 others that are mine, lived on their own before they made a decision to get married.

You were young too, and we did not treat each other kindly. I hope and wish that life has been kind to you, and that you have found love. I have to be honest, I have no need to talk now that our daughter is nearly 50 years old, I do not think we had very much in common to begin with yet you are her dad, and so I would never wish anything but the best for you.

If I could take this just one step further, if it were possible, I’d like to know what my dog thinks about me, yet I have the feeling that when he gets that adorable look in his eyes, he might just be picturing me as looking like a juicy steak!

Daily writing prompt

If there were a biography about you, what would the title be?

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I am not one to lament on the difficulties of life. I have been alive long enough to know that there is a reason for everything that we go through, and it is our challenge to get through it as best we can. I was the kind of kid that thought I could do anything, and I loved everyone. But it was around the age of 8 or 9 that I realized something was not quite right in our home. I am trying to think just how I may have perceived it at that age, but the truth is, I always felt God beside me. Even before things went south. I felt Him, and was comforted. Perhaps it was that protection that kept me from seeing until it actually became a much bigger problem.

Without going into too much detail, I would fall asleep when things were upsetting at home by saying my prayers. I was fortunate that the addictions my family suffered from were not constant. I had brief periods where normalcy prevailed. Sometimes that confused me though because as a child I would think that if they had the capability to stop in the short term, why not long term? I assumed it was because I was not quite lovable enough, smart enough, helpful enough etc., to make them quit altogether. It was above my thought capabilities to think it did not have anything to do with me.

And that’s where Jesus helped me again. And not by giving me answers, but just by comforting me. That breath in prayer that calms you. The feeling that you are not alone.

It was not a complete repair though as there are consequences to everything we experience. As an adult I have managed to avoid addictions to alcohol, drugs etc. because of how it affected me. I stopped praying. I felt cold and alone. I grew angry and I was sad. But I was not without my own capability of causing pain to others. I grew a sharp tongue, and the capability of cutting someone down to size in less than 5 words. I would feel so devastatingly ugly afterwards. And while it might have been the effect on me of years growing up in an alcoholic household, I, in my angsty teenage/early twenties refined that ugly power all on my own. I grew even more distant from prayers, from the comfort of God. It felt like such a relief to regurgitate my pain on the first person who either knowingly or unknowingly pissed me off. Lifting a weight off of my heart…that brief moment of relief when I spew the words that cut them like a knife, which then unfolds into shame when you see them recoil at your insults. I then become that little kid again, only now I have harnessed all the hurt into an adult-sized weapon mouth. “I am sorry” is not enough to repair the torrent I unleashed.

As I grew into an adult, married and then had my children, I suddenly realized that I did not want them ever to be exposed to someone like me or a world that could possibly sadden them enough to make them like me. Of course life must have a downside if only to show us the meaning of how wonderful it is to experience the upside. All of my children, each in their own wonderfully independent way, encouraged and deepened the best changes in me. But I wanted to do even better for them. So once again, I turned to prayer. Prayer has been the cornerstone of my life. I have no idea if I will ever become worthy of heaven, but I sincerely pray every day that I do, and that my family will too. Prayer saved me as a child, and now as a senior adult, each day I pray to repair the broken little pieces of me that fell by the wayside. I pray too for those I may have hurt with my careless words. I pray for my family and for everyone who sends a prayer to Jesus asking for His help. And each day, I pray, just trying to become a little bit better. My heart is now fully aware that it always was and still is Jesus, with infinite patience and forgiveness, wanting to lead the way for me.

Daily writing prompt

If you could un-invent something, what would it be?

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I am going to skip the obvious answers – nuclear weapons, viruses, etc.

Since this is a writing exercise, I am going to make it about my personal world. And for that I think that I would un-invent clocks.

I have time anxiety. I arrive way too early for everything. And I think clocks mess with all of us. We should leave for work, or school, when the sun rises, and go home when our work is done, whether the sun shines or not.

I think we would all get so much more done, and be happier if we were not tethered to our watches, clocks and alarm clocks. We would sleep when we are tired, and work when we are fresh and play when we feel we need it.

And before I get grief from night-workers, there is a small Norwegian sland (Sommeroy, I think, if I spelled it correctly) and while they are daylight challenged they somehow make living without clocks work.

I spent enough time on this!

Daily writing prompt

Where can you reduce clutter in your life?

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Clutter has never been my issue. Physical clutter anyway. I throw away anything and everything that I know I will not use. I like a clear, clean space. But I think there’s a reason for that – my clutter place is my brain. I can store stuff up there like the attic of a mansion. I can recall my first telephone number, as a kid, and my first telephone number as a married adult. Howard 2-0112, and Dewey 6-5619. If pressed I could probably call up my family members, including my in-laws numbers as well. Of course you didn’t need to remember area codes in those days. I not only know my own social security number, but I also memorized my husband’s, and my four kids. This, mind you, is just the tip of the iceberg of my useless storage system.

Of all those numbers above, I think I might have used my husband’s ssn once, when I was on the phone with the bank verifying something or other. What is important to save in the brain? Does the old stuff stretch the cache to hold more, or am I going to run out of space? Do I have an old Commodore 64 brain that will soon crash, or do I have an expendable iOS that will support me to the end? Does the fact that my surroundings are so spartan help my internal clutter to stay organized.

If I am being honest, these ponderings amount to a bunch of…clutter!