NaBloPoMo Prompt #24: Alone time

From NaBloPoMo November Prompts:  Do you enjoy being alone? Would you rather be around other people?

I know that many people would describe me as an extrovert - I like people, I like talking to people, social time is a good thing - necessary.  At the same time, it takes a lot of energy for me to do that - emotionally. It always has.

For me, I like a balance - alone time is time to recharge my batteries, to let the masks down. It would be disingenuous to say that I don't have my social masks up most of the time - I think most people DO.  For me, I have to have some amount of time that I'm not trying top please others or to figure out what I need to do if I want to please others.  I'm getting better about that, but it is still something I have to work against.

I love listening to music and playing solitaire on the computer when I need to relax. I usually end up in cathartic tears - no reason - the music just moves me.  I also love to read although I don't do as much as I used to.  Being on the computer so much takes its toll and I sometimes just don't have the brain cells or eyes to sit and read for too long.  I know that I just have to start reading more and it will grow itself. I guess that's on my list of things to do again for 2012.  I will keep at it until I succeed.

Right now, for me, I think the answer to this question is that I like to be alone.  I know that later that may change, but for now, that seems like the right answer.

NaBloPoMo Prompt #4: Pen or Computer?

When you are writing, do you prefer to use a pen or a computer?

I prefer to use a pen when I’m writing, but my wrists don’t really like it much. My hands will start to hurt after a while.  I think there is just something much more kinesthetic about writing by hand and with a pen. Pens have a certain feel to them that I love – a smooth gel pen traveling down the page is the best thing.  Again, since I haven’t really sat down to write anything creative or of substance, I haven’t really done any work with a pen unless it was in my art journal.

I’m still thinking about writing a play and that would definitely be easier to write on a computer with a playwriting program instead of writing it out and then trying to format it back into something.  I don’t know why a play has been on my mind…it just feels like that is where my mind wants to go. I don’t know if it will ever come to fruition, but I want to try.

NaBloPoMo Prompt #3: Music and Writing

Can you listen to music and write? What song did you hear today?

Sometimes I will put the Glee Jukebox in while I am working on the blog or when I am working on some other writing project. I think once I am concentrating, I kind of block it out.  Some days I can listen to music and write or anything else and some days I just need some silence.

Honestly, I haven’t sat down to a serious writing session in so long, I don’t know if I could really write something of substance with music playing. Maybe with something instrumental or something, but I think lyrics probably distract me. 

The song I heard today that is still running through my head is “Turning Tables” sung on Glee by Gwenyth Paltrow.  I haven’t heard the Adele version in a while – I think I will have to look it up.

NaBloPoMo Prompt #2: Last Meal

If you knew that whatever you ate next would be your last meal, what would you want it to be?

I think this is such a weird question. Every time I read it/hear it, it just strikes me as being weird.  What is the last thing I want to eat in my life?  I don’t know.  I haven’t really thought about it that much. I think I would have to say either macaroni and tomato sauce (family recipe) or my mother’s stew.  Maybe some massaman curry or Indian food from Matali East in NYC. When I closed my eyes and thought about what flavor I would like to be my last, those two things flashed in my mind.

Honestly, I don’t think my mind would be on eating if I were going to die in the next few hours.  I would want to go to the beach with my family and friends and spend the day there, near the water, listening to the waves.  I’m sure we would eat, but everything tastes better when you’ve spent the day at the beach.

NaBloPoMo Prompt #1: On Writing

What is your favourite part about writing?

I miss writing the way I did when I was young. I was fearless. What happens that makes us feel so self-conscious as we get older?  I used to write every day – notes, poems, journal stuff, newspaper articles, letters to people – something every day. That is what makes a writer – writing. 

These days, I can’t really call what I am doing here as “writing” in the craft sense.  I think the blog has days when there is something worth reading from a craft sense, but those days are few and far between.  I need to get back to the writing all the time part – my words are a little rusty and dusty and I need to oil them and clean them up and take them out of the attic in order to get better and to enjoy it more.

I guess, from that perspective, my “favorite part” is doing it – that I am committed to documenting something regularly.  I aspire to more craft and I need to commit to that part of it – crafting words rather than spitting them out.

5 Moments

From NaBloPoMo prompt: If your life flashed before your eyes, what are 5 moments you know would be included?

1. Seeing Roby the day he found out he had HIV.
2. The moment Roby died.
3. The moment my father died.
4. The first moments of seeing "Les Miserables" in the Broadway theatre in NYC in 1988.
5.  Visiting Switzerland when I was a kid - the cowbells, the green, lush pastures and the Alps all around us. Or the first time I went to a Saturday work party to interview the drama people.  I'm pretty sure that Kevin was one of the first people we talked to since we knew him from the journalism (J1) class.

Memories Of Car Trips

Tell us about a memorable car trip you took as a kid. (Prompt from Nablopomo)

When I was a kid, we took A LOT of car trips. People didn't fly around with their kids as much back then (well, I don't think they did...we didn't). Some highlights from memorable car trips:

1.  When we lived in Aurora, Colorado, my dad would sometimes get us all in the Scout on Saturdays. We would get all excited, "Daddy, where are we going?"  He would say, "Crazy" and proceed to take a long winding drive on some backroad somewhere that wasn't paved. Usually, we would end up at Target. I was too little to read, so I thought that the store that had the red target was called "Crazy".  I loved going there because we usually got to pick out a new book.  I found out later that my dad took those drives to keep his leg bent for a period of time - he had to do that to keep range of motion after getting run over and being in and out of the hospital in traction for a year right after I was born.

2.  We drove from Denver to Chicago the summer before we moved to Wiesbaden, Germany. We were visiting all the relatives. I had just turned 6 at the time. I remember I had this multi-colored, striped bathing suit. The first night we were at my aunt Betty's house, I remember running around in that bathing suit until I finally just lay down in the middle of the living room and fell asleep.  That was the trip they had a terrible hail storm and one of the dads ran out to their car with a metal garbage can lid over his head. He got hit on the head (via the can) with a hailstone and got knocked out. The other dads had to run outside and drag him back in. I have never gone outside during a hailstorm...

3.  I remember driving all around Colorado when we went camping and fishing. Back then, no one really brought beverages with them when they were in the car. When we went on a long trip, my mom would pack up the cooler and put it in the back of the scout. When we got hungry or thirsty, we would pull over to the side of the road and have a PBJ sandwich and a little dixie cup full of Pepsi. We never really drank pop when I was a kid - just sips from my mother's cup unless we were traveling.  I have a slide of one of these little roadside picnics, but I haven't been able to get the scanner/printer/slide transfer option to work on my printer. I'm working on it, so hopefully, I will get some photos in here soon-ish.

4.  When we came back from Germany in 1976, it was December.  We flew from Frankfurt to London where we had a LOOOONG layover. There had been a problem with the first plane and we had to wait hours and hours before being diverted. We landed at La Guardia in NYC (which, by the by, closes at midnight due to noise ordinances in the city) after 2:00am, so we couldn't get a flight to Pittsburgh where my grandparents lived.  We stayed in the airport Holiday Inn with $10 in vouchers for all 4 of us to have some food in the morning.  Even in 1976, $10 was not adequate for 4 people in NYC in restaurants in or around the airport. I remember my mother exclaiming about the $5 hamburgers on the menu. We finally arrived in Pittsburgh where we stayed a few days and my parents bought a Pinto. There. I said it. I'm sure it was what we could afford...After a few days, we piled all our belongings into the Pinto and put all our CHRISTMAS gifts on top of the Pinto and started our trek to Dallas, Texas to visit my aunt.  I remember driving across the Mississippi River on some bridge and sending up a childish prayer not to let our gifts fly off the car and into the river. I was only 9 at the time, so I think I can be forgiven in light of the chaos of moving to a different country.  The gifts survived and we made it to Texas just fine. By New Year's, we had driven from Dallas, Texas to Panama City, Florida where the beaches actually looked like snow.

I've got a million of them... bunches from my childhood, some from my youth, some from adulthood.  It's getting late, but maybe tomorrow I will tell you about my trip to SF for a weekend. We drove. It was that trip that helped me develop my one of the first rules of travel:  Always stay in a place at least twice as long as it took you to get there. 

Theatre Memories

I was browsing some of my favorite blogs today when I got home from work to wind down after the week. I saw the title of Jamie Ridler's post "Everything I Needed to Know, I Learned from Theatre" and I was immediately jetted back to my high school theatre days. Her list is fantastic and I thought I should come up with my own list. I must say that I agree - everything I needed to know, I learned from theatre, too.

I was a pretty theatrical child (ask my family) and I did some stuff when I was younger - in grammar school. The summer before junior high, my family left the place I felt most at home and like myself and moved to Portland, Oregon. I was an outsider in a place where outsiders did not belong. Every place I had ever lived before was a town or base where other air force kids lived. Kids moved to town and left regularly and everyone knew how to open the door to newcomers and wish people well when the left. Here, some of the people I met had never even been out of the state. They were suspicious of people who moved here from somewhere else.

In high school, I thought I found my niche in journalism. That was the world where I felt most comfortable. When I was a junior in high school, I was sent to the drama department to do a feature story about a play that was written by one of the students. We had to go to school on a SATURDAY! to get our interviews - I didn't even know that EXISTED IN THE UNIVERSE. Honestly, that day changed my life. I met friends I am still in touch with today, I met Roby, I found theatre, I found myself. BRILLIANT.

I'm not sure I can bullet point the things I learned in the theatre...they are so ingrained in me.

• We can do anything when given the right support
• The curtain opens whether we are ready or not
• The back row folks paid for their seats, too. Make sure they can hear it
• The only one who doubts you can do it is you
• Smoke and mirrors looks pretty damn good with bangles sewn on
• There is nothing like building something from the ground up with people you care about
• Laughter gets you through all the hard stuff
• Sometimes make-believe is necessary
• Don't lose the keys!
• Everyone has talent, they just have to find it
• Show tunes cure what ails you 

I'm sure there are a million more things...I thought I could come up with a nice list of meaningful items, but the visions and memories are blocking the writing. Maybe I will be able to find them, but for now, I am just going to enjoy the nostalgia.

A Rose by Any Other Name

Do you like the name you were given? Is there a name that you think would suit you better?(prompt from Nablopomo)

I never really thought about my name until I was in high school. My best friend and I would write notes back and forth and she really identified with Scarlett O'Hara in gone with the wind and thought I was like Melanie, so we signed our letters with those nicknames. Ironically, I never read "Gone with the Wind" - I should read it now...see what she was talking about. She always said that everyone liked Melanie and Scarlett was always looking on, wishing that people liked her but unable to do what it took to make that happen.

I thought about writing under a pseudonym but then I realized that if I ever did become a famous author (haha), I would want people to know it was me.

Roby and I talked about names of characters we wanted to write about and he wished he could change his name, but I never really thought about it. My name is my name. Sometimes I wished for a more exotic spelling for either my first name or middle name, but ultimately, my name is who I am and I don't know that I could actually pull anything else off.

I think I was pretty lucky in the grand scheme of things - my family is from the south and we have names like Leafy Mae and Bernice Fae (sounds like Burnisfae) and Barbara Mae (Barbmae) and Bonnie Dale. They are old-fashioned, southern names that I'm not sure I could have lived with when I was 12 years old and living in a new place, not knowing anyone and trying to find a way to blend in. Now, I would probably be more okay with an unusual name, but I never had to worry.

Writing Prompt #1 Nablopomo Style

What is one skill you wish you had? What is preventing you from learning it now?

I noticed last month that the Nablopomo site now offers daily prompts to aid those of us out here who are creatively challenged. I have so much to say, but then, after a long day at work and much mental editing, I often find myself at a bit of a loss. Now I'm not saying I will use their prompts every day, but I think it can be handy, every once in a while, to have some help with a topic. I can stream-of-consciousness with the best of them, but I do need a topic to get me started.

So, skills I wish I had...there are the outlandish skills that you can't really learn - how to fly, invisibility, see the future... Skills I really would love to have - photography skills (working on it slowly, although I will never be a National Geographic photographer). Artistic patience - I think I am too hung up on getting it "just like what I see in my head" (which is a very complex place, in case you were wondering). I wish I knew how to play an instrument (violin or piano, I think) and I think it is too bad I never learned how to really dive. I want to learn how to make glass mosaics. There are so many things to learn and so much to do... To tell you the truth, I am slowly working my way through some of the realistic things I want to do. Who knows, maybe someday I will get to some of the less realistic things, too. I don't spend much time wishing for this stuff, I just add it to the list and then work on crossing one off the list as I can.