Tag Archives: Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

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How has this year passed by so quickly? It seems like 2021 just began.

Here are some of the things that spark my creativity.

Quiet Time Alone. That is to say, I must be alone and in a quiet environment. Just one of these two things is nice and can go some of the way to refilling my introverted needs, but I need both for my creative juices to really start flowing.

No Pressure. The more freedom I give myself to write whatever I want, the more I can get written.

Amusing News Stories. Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes. Why not use it as the basis of a new story?

Kernels of Truth. A lot of what I write is inspired by true events. Someone who has known me for years might pick out a scene, a setting, or a snippet of  a conversation from something that actually happened, but all of the scenes before and after it will be pure fiction.

Justice. Real life isn’t always a fair or just place by any means, so I find comfort in generally making things turn out all right in the end in the worlds I create. What makes this interesting is that some of the books I read do not follow this same pattern at all! I think there’s plenty of room for all sorts of tales in our world.

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Butter tarts.

Canada celebrates Thanksgiving about six weeks before the United States does, but the types of food typically served at both of these Thanksgivings are pretty similar with one exception which I will take note of in my next paragraph.

Some Canadian families serve butter tarts for or as part of their dessert at Thanksgiving. I can’t eat them due to my milk allergy, but I keep hoping one of our local vegan bakeries will make a version of them I can try someday. They do look good.

I always enjoy eating pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes with gravy, dinner rolls, ham, fresh salads, and roasted vegetables. (My family would switch between serving ham and turkey depending on which one was on sale before Thanksgiving, so they’re both Thanksgiving foods to me).

I have neutral feelings about sweet potato casserole (generally too sweet for my tastes), canned cranberry sauce (sometimes too sour) and roasted turkey (often too dry). These are foods I’ll take a small, polite serving of but generally skip over when it’s time for another round of food.

I dislike fresh cranberry sauce because of how sour it is, so this is something I quietly leave for others to enjoy.

My grandparents tend to serve apple or other types of fruit pie at Thanksgiving as well. This seems to be a fairly common thing in the Midwest, although I don’t know if the same can be said for other parts of the United States. Maybe one of my fellow Americans can say?

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a pie I disliked, fruit-filled or otherwise. They’re all delicious to me!

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Ebooks are my first choice because they enable me to carry hundreds of books around with me wherever I go. It’s easy to bookmark where I stopped reading, and I never have to worry about having an allergic reaction to them.

With that being said, I did begin to learn to enjoy audiobooks last year. It’s nice to listen to a story unfold while you’re doing chores or taking a walk, especially if it’s something I’ve read many times before.

Sometimes I get distracted while using audiobooks, so my preference is to save them for rereads of old favourites. This way it doesn’t matter if I accidentally tune out for 10 minutes. I’ll still know what happened and what will happen next.

Paper books often cause uncomfortable allergic reactions for me if they have any mold, mildew, or dust in them at all. The older a book is, the harder it becomes to completely avoid these things in them. My immune system is pretty sensitive to the slightest whiff of this stuff. If only I could somehow monetize that superpower!

I tend not to read paper books for this reason unless I’m travelling somewhere that doesn’t have reliable internet or electricity. With that being said, they’re an awesome choice if you’re going camping in the middle of nowhere or if the power goes out.

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“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“Don’t try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.”
― Philip K. Dick

“The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story

“If you have to think about it twice you probably shouldn’t do it”
― Sophia Nam

“People make mistakes, it’s just part of life. But, it’s what we do with those mistakes that matters. What matters is what we learn from the mistakes, not what the mistake is.”
― Chris Hankin

“For the advice in a joke is sometimes more useful than the most serious teaching.”
― Balthasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

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I enjoyed most of the required reading in school.Then again, I’ve been a voracious reader my entire life!

Some of the famous writers, poets, and playwrights we studied in school were ones I was already familiar with. For example, William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Langston Hughes were all appealing to me.

School introduced me to other storytellers that I hadn’t yet discovered such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, S.E. Hinton, and the person or people who wrote Beowulf. It took a little work to understand them and the cultures that created them, but it was well worth the effort.

I strongly disliked a small percentage of the writers we were assigned to read. A couple of them were dreadfully boring, and others talked about things so beyond my personal experiences that I struggled to relate to them in any way. Out of respect for those individuals, I won’t mention them by name. Not every author will appeal to every reader.

I sympathize with students who felt that way about most or every English class assignment. Yes, expanding young minds is a worthwhile goal, but some works have aged so much that they might be better suited for an adult audience than a preteen or teenage one.

This might veer a little off-topic for today’s post, but I think modern students should still study some classic works. There’s definitely something to be said for being familiar with famous stories that are referenced in so many later paintings, plays, songs, and novels.

However, I also hope that today’s kids and teens will have a chance to read some contemporary authors, too. Not everyone enjoys older writing styles or the themes they explored back then, and there are brilliant storytellers in every generation!

I’d rather encourage students to learn to love reading and to get into the habit of trying new authors, genres, and styles of writing as they come across them.

The classics that might not appeal to them today will still be there when they become adults and have more life experience with which to understand stories from past centuries. Then again, maybe they will be like me and quietly cross a few names off of their reading lists for good!

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I wish someone could invent an app that would get to know the user’s habits, preferences, talents, and interests in depth and without selling to or sharing any of that information with other companies. Instead, users would pay a small monthly fee to keep it going or opt to see ads if they wanted the free version. Companies who wanted to use it to find new customers, employees, or volunteers would pay a larger monthly fee.

We’d start using it by filling out a survey and sharing updates on how we spent our time in many different areas of life.

The app would then start to recommend people, experiences, events, volunteer gigs or maybe even actual job advertisements to us. The more information it had about your likes and dislikes, the better it’s recommendations could be.

For example, if you loved Jazz, it could let you know about any upcoming concerts or festivals within X number of miles or kilometres of your location. You could also opt in if you wanted to make friends or find romantic partners who shared that hobby.  Anyone who was a Jazz musician could receive tips on restaurants or other places that were looking for live musicians, and people or companies who wanted to hire one could do likewise.

There have been multiple times when I heard about something I would have loved to attend or apply to work/volunteer for after the fact. I’ve often wished for a centralized way to be notified about stuff I enjoy doing and meet others who shared those same interests.

If it were moderated correctly, I think it would be a fantastic tool for networking, finding a great job, building communities, making friends, meeting a new life partner, advertising to niche audiences, and so much more.