Quotation Saturday

RESOLUTIONS

“People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.”
~ Chuck Palahniuk

“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.”
~ G.K. Chesterton

“The problem with people that ignore people they dislike is they can’t ignore them. Anger carries a person in your mind forever, whether you choose to speak to them or not. Therefore, don’t mistake prosperity or accomplishments as resolution. You can’t escape what you will not deal with. The day you can stand in the room with someone and not be affected is the day you truly moved on.”
~ Shannon L. Alder

“The first day of the brand new calendar year is an empowered time to psychologically unwind to mentally find own life charged emotionally with a refined energy & enthusiasm to create a beautiful growth paradigm within the physically defined laws of nature and the rules of the game called life.”
~ Anuj Somany

STARTING OVER

“There are no coincidences in life. What person that wandered in and out of your life was there for some purpose, even if they caused you harm. Sometimes, it doesn’t make sense the short periods of time we get with people, or the outcomes from their choices. However, if you turn it over to God he promises that you will see the big picture in the hereafter. Nothing is too small to be a mistake.”
~ Shannon L. Alder

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come. -”
~ Joseph Campbell

“Hearts rebuilt from hope resurrect dreams killed by hate.”
~ Aberjhani

“The death of a dream can in fact serve as the vehicle that endows it with new form, with reinvigorated substance, a fresh flow of ideas, and splendidly revitalized color. In short, the power of a certain kind of dream is such that death need not indicate finality at all but rather signify a metaphysical and metaphorical leap forward.”
~ Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams

DREAMS

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.

“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
~ Oscar Wilde

“Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.”
~ Langston Hughes

“Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dreamer...you're nothing but a dreamer...

"The Lord is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His deeds. The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth." -Psalm 145:17-18

***

“They say that history repeats itself. Which part of your personal writing history would you like to repeat?” Asked by a facebook post on Writers Write.

Well I would repeat that dream I had of slowly, apprehensively walking up to a book signing, fearing a no-show and loads of people are waiting outside forming a line, to see me; awaiting my arrival. The cheering begins as I approach and I go on to sign hundreds of copies for my dearest of friends, my readers!

Then the regime slammed down the gavel and forced me to wake up. Seems the dictator didn’t want anyone dreaming on his reign!

Did you ever notice that there is always someone out there that finds controlling people a way of filling the emptiness in their lives? They live in lonely abodes, with minimal amenities, but an entire world of riches right at their fingertips, the keyboard.

In the windowed world they are drawn to exercise their power whether it demeans, hurts, maims or destroys a persons dream; they clench their fist in triumph knowing they maintain POWER and control your every move!

I’ve had my dream squelched more times than I can count but I continue to go on dreaming as a way of release and healing. While others might use writing as a way of controlling something outside themselves because really they can’t really dig their claws into the writing life. They figure squeezing the life out of a dreaming writer is the route to go. They appear to be aiding, but deep inside, their plan to thwart is obvious.

I tried to go back and rewrite a part of my writing dream, by starting where I began in the first place. Starting anew was a way for me to begin again; a fresh start. Begin from the very first page of where taking hold of my writing dream began.

Some people decided to rein in my dream and control it from where they stood, not even knowing it was my dream they were quieting. It was like putting a bit into the mouth of a wild and free horse. You might train it to be docile but you will never control the dream of being wild and free.

No, a dream is the essence of a human being. You feel it in your bones brewing under the skin until it finally bubbles and erupts into an explosion not even you the dreamer can control. You see, there is no disciplining that which you wish to control. The illusion may be there that you maintain control, but really, there is a wild stallion beneath that exterior just waiting to unleash her words.

While they try to bridle the dream, they can never limit the dreamer! The rope that binds may only hold a portion of that dreamer but it is the heart and soul that will win the sway of the leadership and break out to dream all the dreaming that the young horse desires.

As I gallop down the open beaches of the Assateague, I am a dreamer who has the wind blowing through my hair, and no one will hold this mare back from riding off into the sunset of her writing dreams.

She’s wild, she’s free…no one has the power over her, but her!

What part of my writing history would I like to rewrite? Not one thing, because without all the hurdles I’ve managed to get over, bullets that I’ve dodged, mud that was slung in my face, I would not be the person I am today!

Quotation Saturday

PEOPLE

Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in this life.
~Jean Paul Richter

It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks.
~George Eliot

Learn to regard the souls around you as parts of some grand instrument. It is for each of us to know the keys and stops, that we may draw forth the harmonies that be sleeping in the silent octaves.
~Anonymous

You must look into other people as well as AT them.
~Lord Chesterfield

HAPPINESS

Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.
~Democritus

When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
~Helen Keller

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions—the little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The man is happiest who lives from day to day and asks no more, garnering the simple goodness of life.
~Euripides

DON’T WORRY --- BE HAPPY

Don't waste your life in doubts and fears: spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts; the sight of the deep-blue sky and the clustering stars above seems to impart a quiet to the mind.
~Jonathan Edwards

Thus each person by his fears gives wings to rumor, and, without any real source of apprehension, men fear what they themselves have imagined.
~Lucan

Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those that never happen.
~James Russel Lowell

FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.
~Harriet Tubman

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
~Pamela Vaull Starr

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
~Henry David Thoreau

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
~Lanston Hughes

What Dreams May Come

Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you. ~Marsha Norman

***

Well here we are. Today I’d like to talk about a few things, if you don’t mind.

For one, I almost gave up on writing (yeah right, you say?) No, seriously, I really have not felt like writing because a few loose cannons went off, and tried to disable me, but then I realized, no one can hurt me but me! I am my own worst enemy when it comes to writing.

I’m no longer a part of a certain writing site, just too much has happened, too much pain and bitter feelings there and as I let the administration down and many writers, I have other avenues in writing to pursue. My old friends will have to visit my blog if ever to see me, or not visit me at all and let me get on with my life. Thanks for the many good years, but now it is time for me to go and grow. They know who they are, know what they did, and they have to wake every morning and live with trying to wreck a writers dreams. Personally, I hope they look in the mirror and feel good about themselves.

It is Spring as you might have all noticed, as the robins are dancing in the yard, flowers have reared their head from the soil, and a mild winter will bring us a beautiful flourishing abundant Spring and Summer for sure. Well Summer is still iffy, since I think we’ll be getting some horrendous storms that will cripple a couple places, but don’t hold me to that, okay? It might just be an amazing and uneventful summer where you are at.

Dreams come from imagination. Your conscious mind creates things and it is up to you to make that dream become reality. My dream of writing cannot be put out by a few watery hoses; someone better bring out mightier and more powerful arsenal to squelch THIS flame.

While the first three months of the year have not been uneventful with Omaha trips, infections poisoning our systems, attacking us, and months of the same from my once joyful writing site, I am heading into Spring, and my New Year (Yes, I celebrate MY new year on Easter) with promise and HOPE for a new beginning.

As I’ve peeled myself away, I have opened new layers of consciousness which have enabled me to meet new people, become a part of NEW places to advance my writing because as it is told to me often, I have a talent, and as such, I must find a way to utilize the gift given to me.

Next week, we’ll begin looking at grammar and all the useful tools available. I will not list the different sites I’ve signed up to, because I do not want the vipers to follow me and continue to haunt and taunt me. But you’ll see, as I move forward, we move forward together. New tools, new aspects of the writing field, can only mean New Growth as Spring comes alive and showers me with what dreams may come alive for me as the days roll along.

Dream On

“Dream on it. Let your mind take you to places you would like to go, and then think about it and plan it and celebrate the possibilities. And don't listen to anyone who doesn't know how to dream.” ~ Liza Minnelli
***

Dream on, dream on, dream until your dreams come true. Ahh the words of a song by Aerosmith. I remember as a kid hearing this song and it just moved me on to dream. Sitting there with my feet up on the sofa, foot and head bobbing along with the song until finally I was on my feet playing air guitar! Those were the days.  Just like my aim with this blog, to move you on to dream of becoming a writer.

You see so many reality shows with young people dreaming of being singers, dancers, winning a million bucks for stranding themselves on an island with some other folks with the same dream. I even remember a day where stand up comics were given the spotlight to see if they had what it takes to be ‘professional’. Why is there no show for writers to showcase THEIR work.

Ok somebody is going to steal my idea, and I lay claim to it if they do, because maybe I want to see a show, of wannabe writers standing up on stage reading their work and in as few as 500 words hook the audience, and only giving the audience more, if the writer has nailed hooking them and leaving them wanting more.

Oh this reality show is only on dream status for now (tv producers out there? Contact me, I’ll give you the entire idea, for a small price. ;) ) You see it would never come to fruition unless you of course wore your most sleaziest outfit, showed lots of cleavage, and delivered something that our sick society would want.

You, as a writer, have a job to do. You’re writing is not just a dream. I was always told by my siblings when I said I wanted to do this or that, to 'DREAM ON!' And that is all I ever did was dream. I never had the encouragement from my siblings that I do now from the writing community, and that is what I’m here to tell you, DREAM ON... you can do it! You’re dream can become a reality. Stick to it, write your heart out, never give up, and as Liza said, “Don’t EVER listen to anyone who doesn’t know HOW to dream!”

Sometimes words can elicit a dream like the famous works by Martin Luther King, “I have a dream...” There comes a time in everyone’s life, where we dream a dream of bigger brighter and better days. This is my dream, to see each of you reach out and fulfill your very own dreams! I’m tired of all this talk about ‘reality’ shows, lets make our DREAM, a reality!
 
Are ya with me? Dream on, dream on...dream until your dreams COME TRUE!!!

Focus: Part II

The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination; it is essentially a part of it. ~Charles DeLint
***

I think I missed the five tips to get you focused so that you can do away with the networking of the facebook frenzy for a moment. I’ve come down pretty hard on facebook this week and it is only because I allowed it to absorb so much of my time and needed to be slapped upside the head by some things that kind of put everything into perspective for me.

Let me just say this, I am highly insulted when someone says I  basically: Don’t love my country/child/mother/brother/sister, dead or alive, that I was raised basically by the Hickmeisters of society all because I won’t repost something on my wall? I am not a conformist of this world who has a need to repost my love for my country/child/mother/ father/sister/ brother. I’m finding, my mother actually DID raise me right! :) *holds door for you*  “Now PLEASE leave. Thank you.”

By falling prey to the facebook fiasco you lose focus on things that really matter. Do you really need to know or let others know how you were raised? I have a blog for that. :)

Stay Focused

1. Many of you have jobs/children that keep you occupied; so busy you rarely find a moments time to write. Make it a point to focus on you somewhere in the day, if you don’t, you will lose yourself. Write! Junior napping? WRITE! Dad home/fed/bathed? Hand off junior to HIM and take a moment for you!!

2. Don’t lose sight of the goal at hand. Think about what it is you want to accomplish. Maybe it IS your farm at farmville, maybe you want to take a walk. Make a goal, and stick to it.

3. If writing is your goal, and you’re pretty serious about it, make an effort to sit down and write in the quiet moments you have alone. Calgon will not take you away to the bathing fantasy of your dreams. Someone HAD to purchase the stuff, right?. Make it a goal to ‘buy’ yourself some time to write!

4. Once the distractions (facebook, coffee, playing,) are out of the way, sit yourself down to WRITE! Why not write out the goals you have in mind for the day? I can bet on the list wouldn’t be ‘One-hundred things to do on facebook, then write.’

5. Focus! This is not the time to be discouraged or lured away by all the shiny objects dancing around in your face, or all the peeps on facebook that you know as acquaintances (excluding your network of friends, mind you) FOCUS on your goal! Grab what you want and go with it. Become your dream and soon...all the flashy elements will become diamonds in the sky!

Quotation Saturday

FRIENDSHIP ~

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. 
~Albert Schweitzer

A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they're not so good, and sympathizes with your problems when they're not so bad. ~Arnold H. Glasgow
 
If a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it. ~Edgar Watson Howe

I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better. 
~Plutarch

PHILOSOPHY ~
 
When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics. ~Voltaire

My definition [of a philosopher] is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down. ~Louisa May Alcott
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. 
~Ambrose Bierce, Epigrams

Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to our selves. That we have first raised a dust, and then complain, we cannot see. 
~George Berkeley

DREAMS ~
 
Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare. 
~H.F. Hedge
 
Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you. 
~Marsha Norman

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake. 
~Rene Descartes
 
Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison. 
~Henri Amiel

BOOKS ~
 
Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message to us from the dead, - from human souls whom we never saw, who lived perhaps thousands of miles away; and yet these, on those little sheets of paper, speak to us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers. 
~Charles Kingsley

Let your bookcases and your shelves be your gardens and your pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. 
~Judah Ibn Tibbon

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. 
~Francis Bacon

Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world. 
~Walter Pater

LOVE ~
 
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. 
~Mother Teresa

There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved. It is God's finger on man's shoulder. 
~Charles Morgan

Love has no desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. 
~Kahlil Gibran

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Quotation Saturday

RESOLVE

"People do not lack strength; they lack will." 

-Victor Hugo

"He who is firm in will molds the world to himself." 

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing." 

-Abraham Lincoln

"Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind." -Leonardo da Vinci


HUMOR

"Gentlemen, why don't you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die." -Abraham Lincoln

"Wit penetrates; humor envelopes. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature." 

-Peggy Noonan


"Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment." 

-Grenville Kleiser


DREAMS

Sometimes my dreams are so deep that I dream that I'm dreaming.
-Ray Charles

Never surrender your dream to noisy negatives.
-Author unknown

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. 

-Edgar Allan Poe

FAITH
 

And so faith is closing your eyes and following the breath of your soul down to the bottom of life, where existence and nonexistence have merged into irrelevance. All that matters is the little part you play in the vast drama. 

-Real Live Preacher
 

Desire, ask, believe, receive. 

-Stella Terrill Mann
 

Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles. 

- Confucius