NEW BEGINNINGS

Posted on January 1, 2024 by hafong

Happy New Year. It’s January 1, 2024. It’s the first day of the year. It’s the first day of the rest of my life. It’s also the first day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. So many firsts. So many new beginnings, opportunities and adventures. These are the things I will be writing about this month. Why am I doing the challenge?

I love the physical act of writing. I love tapping on the keyboard and see the letters march across the screen. It soothes and smooths me. Writing is how I restore the order in my brain. Otherwise it’s a frigging mess of mumble jumble. It helps me find my way out of a wet paper bag. So now you know. I write for my mental health.

There are rules in this challenge. I have to write a post a day. Then if I want to be in the daily thread/queue, I have to read the 2 posts above mine and make comments on each. I like rules. They make for good discipline. Being in a challenge makes it accountable. There are perks also. It gives me community. I meet and get to know other bloggers. I learn from their knowledge.

I like to succeed in showing up each day in January. I’m making attainable goals. It helps that I have chosen words for the new year. 1. Be brilliant. 2. Resilience. It’s a brilliant way of starting a new year and challenge. They give me something to strive for.

THE BEST LAID PLANS

Posted on October 1, 2023 by hafong

October 1, the first day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I hope to write a post each day of October and share it on the Ultimate Blog Facebook page. Of course sometimes when we have hopes and aspirations, even the best laid plans can go asunder. Being such a dismal and rainy day, there’s a high chance for failure. Such negativity! I can hear the tongues clicking. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m giving it a good go.

I’m choosing sweet, simple and to the heart – meaning short. When I first started this blog, I had aspirations of writing a thousand and two words a day. I have never achieved or even got close to the count. But I do love the written word. And I am good at short and sweet, stuff for Hallmark cards. So I’m going that route. I enjoy challenges, interacting and obeying rules. The rules here are fairly easy and simple to follow. If we choose to post in the daily thread, we have to read and comment on the 2 posts immediately above ours. I plan to do that. At this moment, I have no extra energy to go beyond. I thought I would put that right up front.

So here’s good luck to me and all. One post a day for October. That’s it. I have no idea about what I will write each day – probably just more mumbling about my day to day life. It keeps me sane and hopefully sweet.

CHALLENGES, RULES and OTHER THINGS

Posted on April 7, 2022 by hafong

It’s Day 7 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I find every day a challenge as soon as I get out of bed. Some challenges are better than others. I do love the writing, drawing and painting of life. They can set my heart a-beating and a-blaze. I am sure I have put in the 10,000 Malcolm Gladwell hours in both of them now. I’ve created this writing space in May, 2012. That makes it 10 years of writing. My first #100dayproject was in April, 2016 – the start of 6 years of my art journey.

Right now the writing poses more of a challenge for me. The Ultimate Blog Challenge has rules, not manybut some. It doesn’t pose any problem for me. I’m a Miss Goody Two Shoes. I like rules and I like abiding by them. But that’s not the case for everyone, it seems. For as long as I have been in this challenge, there’s been rule breakers. And don’t tell me that they don’t understand. Everyone participating is a writer. We know how to write, some better than others. Therefore it is reasonable to assume we can read, too. Most of the time rule breakers don’t bother me that much. But lately, I’ve been quite annoyed. Now, I have to get it out of my system and say the famous words: Let it go!

There, it is gone. It is a small irritant, magnified by my stupid thoughts of the moment. Generally the UBC group is a bunch of good eggs, supportive of each other. I am happy I am in the mix. Meanwhile, I babble on. It’s been mostly a beautiful sunny day. It got up to 12℃. The greenhouse got up to 33℃. I hope the cool loving stuff won’t bolt. I seeded a couple more things – petunias, basil and microgreens. I’m pretty happy with how things are growing. Another week and maybe I can seed some lettuce, spinach and other greens in our raised beds outside. Life is good.

I do have another challenge – the patience to proof read and edit. But, I bit the bullet and edited. Hopefully I’ve caught all errors and words that didn’t belong.

LIKE THE FIRST MORNING

Posted on November 15, 2020 by hafong

Cat Stevens’ Morning Has Broken plays in my head every once in awhile. I heard it last night.

Morning has broken like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird
Praise for the singing
Praise for the morning
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dew fall on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where His feet passMine is the sunlight
Mine is the morning
Born of the One Light Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning…

The song has a message for these times. The world as we knew doesn’t seem to be working any more. Covid-19 had us stopped in our tracks. We were in a lockdown, in a frozen moment. We could change. We had to change. So why are we back to what was even worse than before? Why are we so stupid about wearing a mask, keeping social distance and gathering within safe numbers? They seem simple enough to do, especially when our lives depend on compliance.

We were already masking up before the Covid. It’s not like it is a new phenomenon. Medical staff wear them in their work. Farmers wear them to protect them from grain dust and pesticides. Many labourers wear them in their jobs to protect their respiratory system from crap. Now we all need to wear them to protect our lives. So what is the problem? When the gathering was restricted to 12 people in a household, why does someone have a party of 50 people? So today’s Covid news in Saskatchewan is 2 deaths and 181 new cases. Our population is only a little over a million.

I’m losing my direction of where I am going here. It is late afternoon. The sun not only has gone, it never showed up at all today. I’m feeling a little dour. It is temporary. What I really want to impart is that this is the moment for us to change. This could be our first morning, sweet from the rain’s new fall. Let us not squander this opportunity. There are so many things we could do/change to save our planet and therefore ourselves. If we all do a little, it adds up to big.

FOR THE MONTH OF OCTOBER

Posted on October 1, 2019 by hafong

October 1, another new day, another new month. I’ve been remiss in showing up here in this, my writing space. Hopefully I can show up daily for the month of October to mutter, sigh and bitch about the weather and whatnot. This month I’m writing for the Ultimate Blog Challenge. My rules are always the same for this challenge and space. They are:

To show up every day.
Truthful and respectful.
Hopeful and helpful.

I’ve had a difficult and challenging September dealing with one of my neighbours. I’ve always had a difficult time all the years she’s lived next to me. But I realized this time that she has given me much insight into myself and human relations. She has taught me many valuable lessons about life and what is important and what is not. It is strange but I am grateful to her for all the miseries coming from her direction. Every cloud does have a silver lining.

For October, I hope to capture the silver linings of those clouds. The sky is cloudy today but my world is lit by the gold and oranges of the autumn leaves. There is much wrong and meanness in the world. There is also much right and kindness in the world. The ying and the yang. I like to concentrate and share the love and kindness and what is right out there. It’s a worthy goal.

WHEN THE BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE

Posted on April 2, 2014 by hafong

I try so hard to do the proper thing at all times. I am such a serious person. Having fun doesn’t sit well with me. It makes me uncomfortable. I came by it honestly.

I was taught all the rules of etiquette:

Respect your elders
Say please and thank you
Never lie or cheat
Greet people when they come to your home
Say goodbye when they leave
Help another in need
Remember your family and friends
And so on and on

My mother is a bit of a perfectionist so it’s no wonder that I am, too. Her flower beds consist of plants in straight lines, as is her vegetable garden. I try to digress but eventually I came back to the straight lines. Everything seems to work better that way.

Whereas my mother is a neatnik, I am a slob. I seem to have inherit from my father as well. Though I fight that part with all my might, it is to no avail, of course. But my neatness comes out in different ways. When I am making cinnamon buns, I have to measure to see that the pastry is rolled out to be exactly 8″ x 15″. And I have to cut each bun 1″ thick. It is ridiculous to bring out my measuring tape to do so. But having each bun the same size matters to this rigid part of me.

But I am trying to be a little freer, letting go of rules. It does make me somewhat uncomfortable. But I say to myself, uncomfortable is only a temporary state. Let go. Live on the wild side. So nowadays my loaves of bread of not of equal size, nor are my cinnamon buns. I am a little squirmy inside. Sometimes I am a lot squirmy. But I am letting my butterflies fly free. I am not having fun yet but I feel some wings fluttering inside. It is a beginning.

THE GREAT PAUSE

Posted on August 7, 2013 by hafong

I’m feeling like a fetus in the womb, warm and safe. And I am not ready to come out any time soon. And if I could sing, I would croon myself a lullaby .. to send me off to dreamland. Hushabye, don’t you cry….

It is alright. I can cry even if I am a big girl. It’s a sign of being human, vulnerable and brave. And it is some sort of rites of passage. I would want to mark it in some sort of way, even if it is in some sort of paralysis.

I have forgotten that I am a living organism of cells and protoplasm. I am made of energy. I breathe, feel and react. I have lived years in the world according to rules, regulations and protocols. Now all that is switched off. How shall I live then?

Now is a good time to pause, to let all the tremors, doubts, fears and other bogeymen run through my body. Let them come, one by one. Let them sweep me clean of all malevolence. Let me get to know the woman who is still in me…..the woman of hope, joy, laughter, love……waiting to be born again.

onethousandandtwo

Looking at Infinity

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