WfW ~ better late than never ...

I am writing with Words for Wednesday, the schedule for the rest of the year can be found [there>] on Elephant's Child, Sue's blog.   I'm actually playing catch-up for two weeks today because I did not feel a new story brewing in my fingers last week.  And I'm still not certain what is going to appear on the screen today.

The goal of WfW is to take given prompts, words, phrases, photos, colors, or music and create a story from them. This week's words and color of the month are in bold italics.

If you visit the hosts' blogs you can also read and cheer on the other writers participating in this weekly fun.

  Writing has always felt like a privilege.  Even more so than reading at times, although when I have found a writer who draws out the best in my imagination I feel like all of my senses are being catered to.

  To "read" a landscape so vividly described that you can feel the warmth of the morning sun on your face.  To see the luminous bright red of fall leaves before they drop.  To smell the fresh coffee in your mug, and to hear the song of the sparrow in the tree.  That is the kind of novel that inspired me to begin writing.

  While I don't feel that I am at the same level of skill as many other writers I admire (I do still at times find typos and grammar errors in my own three books), I don't feel that I'm a failure by any means.  We make mistakes, we learn, we grow, we move on, we make mistakes again.  Get up.  Learn.  Grow.  Move on.

  Rumor has it that it is a simple fact of life that we all fall down at some point.  It's what you do when you fall that determines whether you will be a success or failure.  Might I also mention that true failure is when we stop trying?  It doesn't matter how many times you fail, or make mistakes.  What matters is whether or not you let them beat you.  Refusing to stay down is a win.  

  With every ascent, there is a descent, but the successes come when we continue to climb.  Pushing the bicycle to the top of the hill is the hard part.  But the exhilaration of the feet-off-the-pedals-wind-in-the-hair-screaming-at-the-top-of-your-lungs-speed-demon ride downhill doesn't come on a flat level surface.  It doesn't come without the hard work of the climb.  It doesn't come if we stop trying to get to the top of the hill.

  Mistakes and failures are just the beginning outlines of learning what needs to be done to succeed.

*~*~*

  It was such a random thought that I let it go almost instantly as I haphazardly threw things into one of the tubs I was using to pack up my craft supplies.  But then it floated back around in my head again and wouldn't leave.

  What if my fixation on the man I thought first proposed to me some forty-plus years ago was just a figment of my imagination?  I mean, my memories of what he said, and what I said, and what I wished I'd said that night have remained consistent.  My memories of him and how he made me feel, were just as consistent.  But what if all of it has been just a vendetta my mind has playing with regrets because of later bad choices I'd made?

  Forty years was a long time to pine for someone I'd known for only a year.  Is it possible that some of my subsequent choices were made because I was worried about having more of the same regrets?  Was I holding on to something that didn't exist?  Or was it holding me back from something that could? 

 All of my bold talk about learning from mistakes ... what had I learned from that one?  Maybe I treated his proposal as a joke when I should have said yes.  Maybe I should have said no when others asked me later.  That may be the ones that I proposed to, I should have just walked away from.

  Had my fear of missing out on love again caused me to make some massive emotional and financial mistakes because I jumped in without checking to see if there were rocks in the water?  

  Most certainly.  But what am I to learn from this revelation now?  Maybe just that I hadn't missed out on anything after all.  If it had been a sincere proposal, why would he have just disappeared into the night when I saw him two nights later?  Why wouldn't he have stuck around to convince me he wasn't kidding?  

  Maybe I should stop having regrets for something that could have been a blessing in disguise.

~*~*~

  Christmas music playing in September isn't something I normally hear, but it has become something of the norm lately.  Apparently, this is the beginning of the "ber" months (which at first I thought they were saying "brrrr" and was surprised because we've been in the middle of a horrible heatwave) in the Philippines.  They begin preparing for the holidays with the first "ber" month, listening to music and shopping.

  I can totally get into the shopping, but want to at least get Halloween out of the way first.

  My nephew and his family came by Labor Day weekend.  Just can't beat bear hugs.  Especially Dan's.

  We had hail, rain, and some wicked lightning this afternoon.  Power was out for several hours, finally coming back on after 9p.  Between heat waves and hurricanes, this has been a summer to remember.  Another hurricane in the Atlantic has the Coast Guard on high alert I'm sure all up and down the east coast.  I'm in the middle of the Appalachian mountains, so not likely to get the coastal surge of waves, but more than likely more wind and rain like today.  Especially if it goes back up to a Category 5.

  The garden has started to give up in the heat of late summer, and I'm trying to figure out how to move the herbs inside for the winter.  Especially the basil.

  This morning on the drive to Lewisburg I saw a black bear.  It almost tried to cross the road right in front of me, but thankfully changed its mind and ran back into the woods.  I wouldn't have been able to stop safely to keep from hitting it because of a car right on my tail, and hitting it would have broken my heart.

  There is a house on the way that has been getting renovated, and today I saw that they've finally painted the exterior.  I will have to stop and take a picture soon.  It is a pale blue, with yellow trim, and a tower the color of antique pink carnations.  A surprising color combination that I wouldn't expect to like on a house, but it fits this one perfectly.

  I'm still in the process of unpacking, but it has become more of a priority to purge the junk and prepare for another move in maybe a year.  Sometimes what we thought would be a dream house to live in is really only a step up the ladder from a nightmare.  

  Thunder is rolling loudly in again.  Time to hit publish.