Category: From Despair
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Wisps of sphagnum moss . . .
As age creeps up on us, it can get harder to deal with rejections, failures, lack of success, whatever you might feel despondent over, but on the other hand perhaps one’s skin gets tougher too. Strategies for coping might have been developed, and these in turn can contribute to continued productivity. When we took our…
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Rough seas before calm
The other day we explored further west and we ventured into the prevailing wind to reach the agitated seaside. These days I sometimes wonder if I’m not pushing against the wind only to reach a seascape in turmoil. The problem with writing competitions, though I’ve related how I’ve got several outstanding submissions, is that like…
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Perseverance, because . . . what else?
Sometimes setbacks feel so very daunting that it’s hard to see how or whether one’s pursuit of any particular project is worthwhile. In writing, in particular, this feeling must be so pervasive as to drive so very many authors to despair. I’ve had this sense of banging into a wall for several days now, amplified…
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Resilience: the gift that keeps giving . . .
I don’t know how a parent teaches resilience to their children, except by some sort of example. We’re pretty sure that ours have seen enough situations where we’re down, struggling, and have somehow managed to get back up on our feet and try again. Let’s say rather that we’ve certainly felt we’ve had our share…
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Joy is hard to find in autumnal despair . . .
I’ve been feeling a bit like our bedraggled trees, the hornbeam that’s losing all its yellow leaves now, and the red stemmed dogwood in a similar situation as the stiff wind does its leaf-taking. News comes in from a lovely blog I’ve begun to follow, Your World in Your Hands, of another blogger whose homily…
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The gleaming in the gloaming
My beloved tells me that ‘gloaming’ is dusk, to those of a Scottish persuasion, but the Oxford English dictionary suggests that twilight is also gloaming, and astronomical twilight is either just before dawn or just after sundown. So I hope today’s joyful title makes reasonable etymological sense, anyway. There are so many metaphors for that…
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Palpable relief?
Over time, I think it’s natural to develop work-arounds, ways of accommodating when things don’t go according to plan. So if the fan oven element could not be repaired, or if the problem was deeper in the electronics somewhere I couldn’t reach, there was still the other side which works without a fan. Work-arounds are…
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The joys of forgetfulness
Remembering is over-rated, while the peace of forgetfulness is too often seen as cause for despair. Our task, in Writers Group this week, is to consider the topic of ‘forgetfulness.’ But to my mind, the stimulus has said everything there is to say about the topic. Except for my own personal revelations, of course. I…
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Emergence . . .
You can’t under-estimate the joys of emergence, in my book. We began chitting our potatoes shortly after they arrived from the seed company, early March. Today, in early May, the first signs of real growth could be seen coming out through the holes in the black weed cover. Hurrah! But that doesn’t mean the weeds…
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Revelation from an old poem
The Top Hat, The Auctioneer, and The Lover It was there at the old village auction A decade ago, perhaps more. Infected I was with the vigour, Vivacity, vim and some ardour In the calm steady hands of the porter A gentleman’s felted top hat! The auctioneer eager for bids from the floor. He caught…
Roads to Joy 