Creative Writing

I’ve loved to write my entire life. Be it short stories, essays, blog (you probably guessed that one), editorial/opinion pieces or different types of poetry, writing has always been a release for me and a way to be expressive and creative. Besides the multiple blogs I’ve maintained over the years, I’ve also contributed to a few on various topics, been published in various electronic magazines, and a few “real” news papers and magazines, too; I have even sold a couple of pieces (gotten paid for my work), which I’m fairly proud of to honest, and won a few awards and contests along the way.

Back in junior high school, what they call “middle school” now, I began writing poems as an English assignment; we had to write three poems in at least two different styles and submit them. I ended up getting an award of some type for one of them and it was published in some “journal”, though I can’t recall more than that. That assignment is what blossomed my life-long love of creative writing.

I think I learned about haiku in the English class that I spoke of above. I immediately loved its simplicity and how that “framed” style made me think harder to be creative and expressive in such a small number of syllables. Along the way somewhere, I later learned of Tanka, a similar but longer form of Japanese poetry with a meter of 5-7-5-7-7, adding two extra lines of seven syllables each.

Although I’ve written hundreds (and had a dozen or more published) of these two styles of poems, it has been years since the last one was penned. Today I read about a weekly haiku prompt and followed a link to read more. Suddenly I felt inspired to “tap” out a poem! Based on the prompt play, I now share that haiku with you:

After the green ball
My wiry little dog goes
Every time I throw

I don’t know if I’ll follow up with more poems/creative writing or not; there is a weekly prompt but I’m not committing to it or anything else with my currently limited free time. But if I do, I’ll share them here in all likelihood.

Swerving Without Braking

Given the title of my blog, I kind of thought it was time to make a post that played off of it a little at least. In my neck of the woods, literally speaking, we have a lot of potholes that begin developing this time of year. Trying to avoid them can seem, indeed be, impossible to accomplish. One of the worst things you can do when avoiding (or trying to) an object while driving is to swerve, especially a hard, fast maneuver, without braking. That fast gut-reaction cut of the wheel on its own can lead to terrible consequences, including loosing total control of your vehicle, fishtailing, and even a crash that can cause serious injury to person and property. Controlled avoidance, deliberate steering with the proper braking action, is the correct way to miss the pothole (or deer, dog, person, vehicle, etcetera) in your path. The same theory applies to life and its challenges, in my experience at least.

Over the holiday season I allowed myself some dietary freedoms that I thought I could handle and would save me from feeling “deprived” and lesson my enjoyment of these times. For the most part I was successful with this theory and strategy: for the most part. Unfortunately as the holiday season departed the bite of winter really began to take hold in my region. And my ailments don’t get along with winter weather very well. I also seek comfort in foods that are, well, comfort foods! But those foods aren’t really comfort foods for me: they are kill-me-slowly foods.

The success I’d had in my small indulgences led me to the false impression that I could take in more of these “treats” on a regular basis without negative backlash from my body. Soon I was seeing a spike in my blood glucose (BG) levels, some small, others too large for my target. And I also began to realize that I wasn’t feeling as well as I had been, of course I initially laid that blame on the weather solely, which wasn’t true. Then the scales began to reveal more bad news: the number was not steady, let alone going down, but climbing! I was swerving to avoid an obstacle in my path without methodically applying the brakes to control my trajectory, like the car and the potholes I began this post with.

About a week ago is when this reality clicked – and I’ve been applying the brake and controlling my path much better since then. The good news is the scales and the BG meter confirm that my path is getting back on course. The bad news is that my body still doesn’t tolerate winter weather changes well, and likely never will again: my ailments are not likely to get better and my body is going to continue to breakdown with the aging process. But I can do something about how I react to the situation: I can apply reason, caution, and experience to my decisions. While having those tools are an advantage there is no guarantee that I will always use them when I need to. Hopefully I will grow as a “driver” on this “road” as I have over the years operating a motor vehicle: with experience and time an almost muscle-memory style of driving has been “born” making my actions and reactions more consistent and with much less thought needing to go into them. On both the road of life and the roads of asphalt we all need to be solid, defensive drivers.