“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: "I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.
Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions--predigested books and ideas...marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short...and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.”
I’ve come to realize that blogging is just like any other commitment; you have to commit to it. I completely and utterly failed; not only myself, but my readers as well, with not posting [my promised post] on Friday.
I do, however, have an understandable excuse [as always] -I came home from work around 5pm with a few hours to relax by myself until my hubby came home and we headed out to a gathering with friends. I thought that would be the perfect time to sit down and write, as there would be some wine involved in the evening activities, who knew what time we’d get home and just how my blog would turn out if I didn’t do it before. I made myself some yummy pasta with fresh tomatoes from Memere’s garden, and got ready to type; only to discover that between the hours of 5:00 and 8:00pm, my brain shuts down. I opened a new word document, stared at the screen for a half hour, practiced my type-delete-type-delete skills and then gave up.
We all have a point of time in each day when we feel we are at our best, when we are most productive and very awake. Some of us are morning people; some of us are nighthawks. There are those of us who might be mid-day-ers or mid-morning-ers; either way, we are all different and we learn through doing. I tried to be an early evening-er on Friday and it just didn’t work. I am a morning person and can be a nighthawk. I can either write my blog in the early am or late at night, so I think I’ll stick with those times from here on out.
So… my promised Book Blurb [I don’t want to call it a review because I don’t like telling a story about a story; it’s not one of my favorite things to do]-
My Book Blurb was one of the parts of my post that I at least had typed out [1/2 page-ish] on Friday, but because I was in such a sour mood at myself, I got up from the computer without saving; just left the document minimized, all tiny and lonely down at the bottom of the screen, to be lost in cyberspace when my hubby shut the computer down that night. Grrrrr….
The Lost Girls and the Wander Year is not a book that I would normally pull of the shelf at Chapters; [it’s in the the Travel section, for goodness sakes!] but, I absolutely loved it! I say that and you might wonder, “If you loved it then why did you only give it a 7?” Well, because it’s so different from any other book I’ve ever read, I had to change my rating system. A 7 in this case is pretty high. It was very well written with the chapters divided by each of the 3 authors describing their own experiences and accounts of the trip. Holly, Amanda and Jen were each going through their own personal life changes and challenges which brought so much more to the book. It wasn’t just about all the exciting places they visited or the crazy adventures they went on, the book touched on how leaving behind loved ones affected them as individuals and their relationships, how witnessing real life poverty first hand made them feel so grateful -yet silly- for all the things they had, how compelled they were to do everything they could to try and make a difference, how amazing it was to see the sheer gratitude the villagers had for things as simple as cutlery sets which the girls has given them a gifts. It was a great novel and a definite eye opener. The book was also one big travel brochure and because of that, I am totally aching to try my hand and this whole traveling the world thing!
As for my Friday surprise, I haven’t quite figured that out yet. I need to do something fun/different/thought provoking/exciting/neat/creative/unique and Natasha-like every Friday just for kicks. It’s only Monday. We’ll make this Friday the initial FunFriday post, ok?
Please forgive me for the weekend letdown. I am seriously mad at ME.
Also – solid quote today, right? I thought it was fitting. We always have to look at the big picture. I may have had an understandable excuse, but I gave myself the responsibility to create, maintain and learn from this blog, and that I need to keep in mind.
Nightly Night! [Incase you didn’t realize, this is my favorite nighttime saying]
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| I am not the only slack Ass in this house! |
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