New Ideas – Page 4 – Carolyn Cordon

Feeling More Open!

April 2, 2020 carolyncordon

These are very strange times, with the Covid 19 virus wreaking havoc on our lives, and on the economy. Fears of death, having to stay away from each other, not hugs to friends, or even family not living with us. What weird times we’re in …

Not poetry readings in hotels, no book launches in libraries or other venues. No getting together somewhere nice for a writing group meeting. Sure, there are many online options for all of these things, but there are no hugs between friends and peers. No chances to catch nuances in conversations, and body language.

I’ve been feeling quite low, about these things, but today my mind is getting out of that mindset, and I’m looking more outward, outside of the window, up to the sky, which is a beautiful blue, that I so much love to see!

Looking out of my window, seeing what Nature is up to, living, breathing, being, these are still going on. And although there is death happening here, it is only pesky mice getting caught in traps, and that is a normal kind of death that happens at this time of year, when colder nights bring mice inside at night time … Normal.

And having and doing things that are ‘normal’ feels good, because so much of what is happening right now is far from normal. The song from the early eighties by The Specials, is in my head, and the lyrics leaping out when I see and hear the latest restrictions … The governments are doing what they have to do, I guess, but it feels like we’re being punished for being naughty, when we don’t really know what we’ve done wrong …

But sky and trees, and the birds, they’re all keeping on too, doing their normal things, and this lovely Autumns day, mild and only a gentle breeze, but with rain forecast for later in the week, normal weather for this time of the year. And even though the writing group I’m involved with won’t meet up ‘for real’ this afternoon, at the Prince Albert Hotel in Gawler, as is normal, we’ll be meeting up for the second time, online, and will try to conduct a meeting as normally as possible.

Reaching out to others, keeping an eye out, and helping, via the internet, or phone, these are things we do, because we’re all human, even now, when life feels far less ‘humane’. The absence of touch is hard on people who love to hug, or shake hands, clap each other on the back. But we find other ways now, a kind message via email, a comment on Social Media, a blog post such as this one. Reaching out to others, because we’re people, and that is what is natural and normal, for people to do.

I’ll go on thinking about finding normality, and how and why it’s so important, and this afternoon, I’m thrilled that my writing group friends will be there with me, online, and still connected, just without any hugs … People need people. Best wishes to all, struggling through this Ghost Town of a world …

New Ideas

Thoughts Of Death Yesterday, Now Life!

March 29, 2020 carolyncordon

Yesterday I was thinking on one thing that I’d done, a thing I was not at all happy at myself for doing. I’ve worked on those thoughts, assisted in part by a friend, John Malone, a poet and former teacher, who thinks about things in sometimes quirky, but wise, ways. He encouraged me to write a poem, or in fact a pair of poems about the troubling thing.

I thought on what he suggested, and yesterday in fact wrote those two poems. I’m not sure if other people would get the importance of this pair of poems, but they have much meaning for me. I feel better about myself, I feel like a good person again, doing what I can, when I can, but realising I am not perfect, no-one is.

So today, I’ve been thinking about all of this Covid 19 ‘stuff’ and how many of us are more or less locked away in our own homes. I know I haven’t been doing much at all, in terms of physical things, just sitting around, taking in hours and hours of bad news. But I decided that had to change, I need to be active, at least sometimes, and I needed to get going with it now.

I did 31 minutes of Wii Fit exercises today, a fairly gentle exercise program. It’s been 61 days since I last did this, apparently. I did a mix, sticking with easier exercises mostly, and had a ‘results’ mix of rubbish and nearly OK. No Olympic efforts, that’s for sure.

I set myself a new weight loss challenge there, because my current weight is too high still, it was a bit over three and a half kilograms too much, I think. Not good enough. I’ve set a goal to lose half a kilogram in one month. I think I should be able to do that, if I more or less stay with my current diet, and keep on with the Wii Fit as often as possible, heading toward the harder items as feels possible.

Listening to my body, not my mind, doing it so I can really feel it, not woosing out. I still want to get my weight down to a particular weight, but carefully – slow, slow, no rush. It would be a good Christmas present, or even a birthday present to myself next year, maybe …

One thought I’ve had is halving the amount of chocolate I have at night. Easy to do. I’d slow down my consumption of the usual piece of chocolate, and mindfully focus on enjoying it slowly, deliciously … If I were to give up eating the usual chocolate, it would help with any weight loss, perhaps, but it’s the finer things in life, that make it worth living. So small amount of good chocolate, small glass of wine, occasionally, good coffee, but not too much of it.

If I commit to my plans, I can get things happening how I want them to be, in regards to my healthy body project. Will I be able to do the same with my writing projects? I hope so. I’ll think about it and get some words written down in regards to that some time soon. Tonight? Tomorrow? Next week? I don’t know, but hope it will happen, when the time seems right.

meaning in life, Philosophy

Thoughts of Death Haunt Me

March 28, 2020 carolyncordon

In these troubling and almost surreal times, I’m finding myself thinking about death, which would be fine, if the deaths were of characters in the Cosy Murder Mystery I’m supposed to be writing. But the deaths are not fictional deaths of some characters in my work-in-progress ‘Winds of Death at Talloola’, instead the deaths are real deaths, as the total of deaths from Covid 19 rise, and rise, and rise …

And there was a death in our house recently, one not caused by plague, but in response to something that sometimes becomes plague-like. It was a mouse, a not yet fully grown mouse, that made the mistake, as mice too often do, of coming into my house, my kitchen, and falling victim to our range of mouse traps.

This mouse fell victim to not just one, but two traps, both at once, and while it pains me, it is also good that it was trapped, and will never again invade my kitchen, possibly spreading disease … I’ve taken the mouse out of the traps, and released the body back to Nature, where other creatures will welcome the carcass, as much as I definitely didn’t welcome the living creature.

Mice are cute as pets, I suppose, but I don’t want them in my house.

There was another death too, this one caused entirely by me, and the guilt I feel is magnified by the esteem in which I hold the creature I killed. I was driving home from a needed visit to pick up something, and a quick visit to see my mother. The car I was driving has cruise control, and I was cruising along, on cruise control, when I saw this creature, but I didn’t slow down quickly enough, and crashed into the magnificent owl standing on the road, too close to where I was headed.

Crash, bang, an explosion of white feathers, and another owl fell victim to man’s most dangerous weapon, the motor vehicle … I’ve looked at some photographs and from what I’ve seen, it was quite likely an adolescent Barn Owl, out at the wrong time, and in the wrong place. There is a little less traffic out and about at the moment, but it only took one car to kill this magnificent bird. My car.

My heart aches, but that is nothing compared to the destruction of this bird’s life … There was going to be a poem written about this, but I am still too shaken about what happened to write that poem. It may remain inside my head forever, and I hope, may make me even more careful, when I drive. Cruise control is great, but I must be the one doing most of the ‘control’, and slow down when I need to …

The Barn Owl is a common bird, all around the world, but that doesn’t lessen this particular owl’s importance. To say I’m sorry is an understatement, but my sorrow, while comforting to acknowledge, does nothing to bring back the life of this bird … I can spread a little knowledge about the bird, and encourage other drivers, as well as myself, to be aware of all of the living creatures on and around the roads, when we are driving, human, animal, and particularly confused owls, who would have been safe at home in their nesting place, not standing on the road in the mid afternoon …

Some information about these owls : https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Barn_Owl/id

Life, in these times of Covid 19 virus-driven deaths, feels even more precious than ever.

Cozy Mystery, New Ideas, poetry

Prioritising Your Writing Tasks

March 2, 2020 carolyncordon

OK, that mad but fabulous month of daily writing prompts is over now, so that means I’d better get stuck into doing some proper writing, I think. And in fact, today I’ve produced some more words to go into my most important work in progress, the first of my Cosy Murder Mysteries. Or is that actually the most important? Maybe the poetry collection is more important? Oh dear …

Actually, it isn’t an either or thing at all. The two different things are different genres of writing, and are both at very different stages of completion. One is almost ready to hand out for possible first reading, and feedback, the other is barely begun, and many, many months from having anything to give to others for a first read. I can work on both of these things, one in the morning, the other later in the day, perhaps.

I have almost enough poems written for the poetry collection, because February was a full on prompt wriitng and responding to prompts month. I intend going through the list of prompts I posted on this blog every day in February, and I will write new poems, for any of the prompts I haven’t yet written anything in response to.

If I was asking others to respond to my prompts, I should put my money where my mouth is and respond too, shouldn’t I? Yes, I think so! And for anyone interested, this is the full list of my Fabulous February Writing Prompts. If you missed it last month, you can have a look, and use it as a resourse the next time you need a writing prompt!

My Fabulous February Writing Prompts
(one for every day of February 2020)

1st Rush

2nd Star

3rd Maybe I will, or maybe not …

4th Next

5th Never

6th After

7th Yesterday

8th Because

9th When the time is right …

10th Mine

11th Asleep

12th Trees

13th Superstition

14th Some things I love …

15th Knowing is one thing …

16th Senses

17th Could you ever?

18th Friendship

19th It’s getting closer! Are you ready?

20th Underneath

21st Philosophy, finding meaning for being

22nd Vision – looks can be deceiving

23rd Inklings – much in small hints, and intuition ? maybe …

24th Reasonable action, beats thoughtless reaction

25th Lies

26th Open or shut

27th Worthy or worthless?

28th The American Sentence – read about it for this day –

29th Prove it!

So I thoroughly enjoyed February, with the fun of the prompts, but I’m going to get some real writing done in March, in both my Cosy Murder Mystery series – (the first book), and my next poetry collection. If I keep on with as much passion and effort for these two things, as I put into the Writing Prompts in February, there’s no telling, what I can achieve! Good things though, I’m sure about that.

And about the Cosy Murder Mystery series, I was listening earlier today to a webcast seminar thing, which indicated there was no point talking to an agent about a piece of fiction, a book, until you had written it, and tidied it up and made it as shiny and bright as you possibly could. That kind of put a dampener on my enthusiasm, but not for my book, but for the thing I was watching and listening to.

If I have to get the book written, I was wasting my valuable time, listening, and instead I actually wrote a bit more of that Cosy Murder Mystery book. This felt like exactly the correct way to spend my valuable time! So from now on, every morning after breakfast will have some time put toward one or the other of my book projects, and all will go well. That’s how it feels to me, anyway!

Do you have any thoughts about any of this? Feedback is always welcome, that way I don’t feel like I’m talking to no-one! I love receiving comments!

Philosophy

Looking Back, and Satisfied!

December 31, 2019December 31, 2019 carolyncordon

It’s been an interesting year, this year. 2019 – it was filled with opportunities, those taken, those left, and I’m satisfied with what I achieved, even though there could have been more.

There can always be more, of course there can. But less is another option, and sometimes taking less leads to deeper, more meaningful things instead of the big and shiny things. And of course, there are the things that life throws at us, unexpectedly, and we have to try to deal with them, in the best way we can.

So in this year, I attended book launches, included my own, I lead a writing group that put on monthly Poetry Readings, sourcing Guest Poets to bring new interest to the event. The group Adelaide Plains Poets Chapter and Verse, also successfully put on out fifth Festival of Words. Good things happening, with words, are excellent!

I wrote much poetry, and probably have enough quality poetic words for a new full size poetry collection, and will into taking that further in 2020. I also broke my right ankle, in September, which could have been terrible, but instead lead to a completely different kind of poetry collection being written, and launched in this final week of the year of 2019.

“Angles on Ankles” is a chap book, all about my broken ankle, and contains my thoughts about this whole broken ankle ‘thing’, all written poetically, 21 poems in fact. This book has been declared to be a good little book, and given I only wrote it initially as a kind of therapy as I was in rest and heal mode in October after doing the damage, I’m happy to have got the book published commercially here, or by leaving me a comment below.

Other members of the writing group have also had success with their own writing, and I am so glad for them for what they have achieved. What else? Well after breaking my ankle, I have begun an exercise/rehabilitation program, using exercises given to me by the physio I saw when I was actually able to stand up and walk.

I added in a couple of my own physio kinds of exercises, including using our family Wii Fit exercise machine. I’ve been doing most if not all of these exercises every day now, for the past week or so, and I hope I can keep this habit going, because it is certainly a good one.

I have also got more into the habit of blogging much more often, on at least a few of the blogs I have. This blog, focused on me as a ‘wordsmith’ – writer, poet, blogger, etc, is my most important blog, but the blog I began when I was diagnosed with MS, has morphed into a blog that took on things related to my broken ankle, because of course both MS and a broken ankle have mobility issues happening, and falls can be lessened with strengthening of the body …

I was going to work at becoming a writer of Cosy Murder Mysteries this year, and did in fact do some planning, and writing in this particular genre. But it was bad timing, because that broken right ankle happened, and my brain couldn’t focus on fictional problems, when my own physical problem was right there with me … But 2020 is a new year, and certainly I’ll be looking at getting back into my “At Talloola” murder mysteries!

I am happy with all of this, for sure. 2019 has also been a year of becoming serious about becoming a Stoic. Holding to Stoic thought, thinking about things and acting in a Stoic way has certainly aided me in my life, this year. As I was ‘getting over’ this broken ankle, I had a Stoic outlook, rather than a ‘woe is me’ outlook, and so the time went well for me, with the poetry happening, and then the book.

Stoicism helps in so many ways. Thinking things through, then acting in wise ways, rather than acting with no real thought at all, is almost always the best way. It is a work in progress, and I know some of my thoughts are still far from in keeping with Stoicism, but my actions almost always are more considered than those initial thoughts may have been.

I was pleased that a bit of Stoicism made it’s way into that ankle poetry book, and hope to continue working hard at moving upward and onward with my Stoic Wisdom. This is my Stoicism blog – My Stoic Life. I will be using it more and more, and will endeavour to post there much more often, as I go … I look forward to reading comments on my blogs, often! I will follow, if you give good and thoughtful comments

The theme for our writing group’s Festival of Words next year is “Vision”, and I have my own personal vision, of 2020 being the year my writing really takes off!