Tag: writing

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Advkce criticism

Advice/Criticism

Llyn Idwal approach photographed by myself July 2023. Not related to the post really but just a beautiful waterfall in North Wales

I submit to nycmidnight.com competitions regularly. They aren’t cheap to enter but each piece of work submitted is critiqued by three different people whether you get placed in the competition or not. But much as I loved doing this and would read the critiquing very rarely did I do anything with it until this time.

Here is the piece in the origin and then with my revisions. It’s never too late for revenge. Maybe it was because I was a runner up this time I did something with it.

Anyway this got me thinking about life etc. How often do we put ourselves out there to ask for advise, for support, for how to do something better, and then don’t do something with it? Even if we get unsolicited advice how often do we ignore that? I was even pondering on the times we’ve gone for paid counseling, paid life coaching, paid gym membership, etc, etc and then ignore the instructions, directions, suggestions. It may not be for you but it is definitely loads and loads for me.

Why?

Well with the writing I know it was because it takes time. It means going back and redoing rather than just producing more writing. A new project is more fun than looking over an old project and finding what could be improved.

I have to say with myself the more I’ve done work with QEC the more I’ve been able to listen to others, to not get hurt when I hear advise that I am not sure I like. I was chatting with my QEC practitioner about this and she thought it was that as we deal with the issues from our childhood that it is easier to listen to others and weigh up what we need to change, need to alter, need to think about, whereas with all those layers of childhood survival techniques in place we could fully hear/feel/know. As opposed to either thinking we should do all that we are told or nothing.

I’ve had an incident at work where I know that my old gut reaction would one of the following; to leave because why should I stay if they don’t value me; be super super nice and people pleasing so they wouldn’t sack me; spend loads of time feeling awful that I did that and beating myself up about it; and maybe even thinking “how dare they speak to me when I am older than they are?”. Instead I listened to what my manager said, saw my errors, said sorry, we were also able to talk about how it wasn’t totally my fault and that there were things needed ironing out in this area. Together we have been able to put together a plan that works for who I am and the situation. I feel fine about going to work and have not spent the weekend stressing about it. In fact it has only come back into my mind when I was thinking through how I could share my flash fiction writing within a blog.

I’ve been able to listen clearly because a lot of the rubbish that I didn’t even know was there has been cleared away. Maybe though it is also why I was able to read the comments about my flash fiction and see which ones I wanted to take and which ones I did not find helpful. I was even able to put this in the feedback NYCMidnight asked for about the comments.

So I think it is not that we don’t want to take the advice given, or feel we have to do everything we were told. We do but we have so many issues from our past that cause our nervous system to kick in that we don’t fully hear. So my advise to myself is to think about why I get uptight when someone gives me advice, whether unsolicited or asked for, really listen to my heart [that again], see what has made me either fight, flight, fawn or freeze, and get rid of that bug in my system.

Then I can change what I really know needs changing but also not get hurt is someone has misread me totally and doesn’t “see who I truly am”. [That feels like a title for another blog piece soon 🙂

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Listening Still

Relearning!

made by https://www.sethceramics.co.uk/

I’m sure I’m not the only human being who is a bit thick at times. Yes I talk about listening with my heart but as it says somewhere in the bible “The heart is fickle” or something like that. Well I’m not sure about you but my heart can get lost in its own stuff at times and it takes a few things to nudge it out again. And the nudges came in shed loads over the weekend.

As you know I’ve got this part time job 4 afternoons a week. It is great. It is right. It also helps that the rotas are not confirmed until the Friday of the previous week so I cannot get into planning because I don’t know when I’ll get that day off. The last couple of weeks it has been a Wednesday but the couple of weeks previous it was a Friday and who knows what for next week. So I have to be patient and wait.

I said to someone when I got this job that it was good because it meant I would have to say No to things but instead I have been filling up those mornings with things. Made all the more sneaky in that they are great things, all of which felt right. But what all these great things did was not only did they stopped me writing they also stopped me from pondering, from thinking, from knowing how I felt.

I managed to justify it all by saying to myself that these were the right things to do. In fact a couple of them were things I had been hoping to do for years. Why is it sometimes those things you had set your heart on are not what you should be doing? At least not at this moment in time because they get in the way of the bigger thing.

The bigger thing in my writing. Not just these blogs but the other projects that need peculating time. But not just that. I have also learned that I need, like we all do really, to have time to feel my feelings and to really know my heart.

It is always interesting how taking time out to know ourselves and be the best version of ourselves is so overlooked!

So on Saturday I’m at a writing workshop and am saying to one of the group that I haven’t written much and she almost gives me reassurance that this is ok because we are all busy. My heart jumped. Busy is a key word and so I tucked it away.

Then on Sunday we went to a ceramics show. Firstly I chatted to a woman who now makes huge slab bird baths and she told me her story; of how she had once been a renowned collectable potter but had felt a call to something else and she’d had to spend time pondering until she found out how all her things connected. Again I felt that heart bump and had to stop and write down the key things that she said

Follow your interests. It is your interests that will take you where you should go. But take time out to find what they really are. It is about being brave enough to take time out.

Then I came across a lady who made the Caretaker bird in the photograph. Some of the info about these birds says how they came out in lockdown but now have disappeared. This bird is about resting, being, drinking tea, listening. I could not leave it behind. I was going to keep it in my study but it now sits on the hall table so I see it as I come and go. And it reminds me to take things slower, to listen, to drink tea, to be rather than do, to have time to look around, to not have to fill my day, my diary, with stuff.

I sat on the grass, wrote a bit on the backs of the business cards I’d picked up and listened to God/The Universe as my husband continued round talking to potters. I realised again I had filled my time so I did not have to listen to my emotions. They had been telling me for a while to give up a voluntary position but I had been ignoring it because I really wanted to do this. But I had to listen when I was getting bombarded on all sides to slow down.

So I cancelled something that only took up 2 mornings of my week but actually took up a lot of my headspace. Once I had made that decision emotions around a family thing came flooding in. All I could say was it was like slit being disturb on the river bed. Now if I hadn’t stopped this thing I think the slit would have stayed put. I think that’s why we keep busy. To stop the slit being disturbed. But the silt isn’t good. It stops the river of me from flowing freely.

So I’ve put in place some QEC time and also been able to spend the last 2 mornings pondering and being. I have felt such peace and not having to fit things in around other stuff. Pondering isn’t something you can fit in anyway. Neither is listening to your heart.

Yes we do all have things we have to do but too often we fill our days up with things we think we ought to do – to look good, to be busy, to feel we belong, etc. Stopping does hurt for a bit but it is better to know and to feel truly than to keep blundering through and taking one’s unhealed bits forward into something new.

I know I’ll falter at this. I know I’ll fill time up again. But I am hoping Beaty, the Caretaker bird on my hall table will keep reminding me of my true purpose.

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forgiveness Lord's Prayer

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a dog sitting at the top of the stairs looking cute waiting to be hugged after he has just trashed the couch and put all the cushions on the floor!

In my last writing group I ran only one lady turned up. Her and I have known each other for a while so we got chatting about more than just writing. Slowly it emerged about how forgiveness, of ourselves for being hurt as much as for others who have hurt us is important.

In fact Jesus says in The Lord’s Prayer

Forgive us our wrongs as we forgive those who wrong against us

[paraphrased]

So we are asking to be forgiven as much as we are asking to forgive, I think. There will be follow up post to this in May after we have done these phrases with the youth group because we all know these lovely young people seem to get to the heart of things.

But as we chatted I thought more and more about how can we understand forgiveness. So I set the challenge with the lady, which I am also going to share with my writing group mailing list for making Forgiveness some solid, giving it a personae, a personality, making to tangible. I think too often we try to understand abstract concepts but we need to make them whole and real.

For me forgiveness if a warm friend, but not the sort of friend who agrees with everything you say but who challenges you when you tried to get round things. I have a couple of friends who are like that. I’ll get into moan mode and they’ll got “yes I see where you’re coming from but have you looked at it from this side.” Now to me that is forgiveness. It doesn’t say you’re wrong but it says you have to move on.

This picture I saw on Facebook this morning says it all for me. Forgiveness is the challenging friend who says “let it go, you don’t need to carry this. Get off the track”. I did also discover that as well as forgiving I need to put in something more than to make it move from an empty forgive to a positive space. Perhaps I need to explore whether forgiveness walks alone or has a friend?

Categories
Lord's Prayer wisdom youth group

Just Do It

Blurred picture of a white egret in flight over Conwy Beach as the tide recedes on spring day. Photographed by Diane Woodrow
Egret flying over Conwy Beach Saturday 18th March 2023 Photographed by myself

Last Sunday I was leading the discussion for our Church youth group. We are working our way through The Lord’s Prayer. [If you go back through some of my posts you will see I am a bit “into” the Lord’s Prayer] This week’s couplet was “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

As always the young people are much less religious than adults and have reach a point of trust with me and my co-worker so they aren’t saying what they think we want them to say. There were some great things that came out of them about the closeness of God’s kingdom and the ease of doing God’s will.

I will paraphrase one girl but it was the bit that stayed with me. She said something along the lines of “God’s will being about trust and if we trust God then we can just do it, just go out and believe that God will make what we do God’s will.” Basically trust that what we feel in our hearts is God’s will. Too often we get into weighing up and judging and then disbelieving, sitting back, not doing.

Of course there are things we should not do, things we should run by those we love and trust – and that means we do need people in our lives that we can be open with and trust with our dreams, our desires, our hopes. So I suppose firstly we need to build up those people around us.

But at the same time as doing that we need to build up the trust in our own hearts. I am getting more and more to a point where I trust my heart and am aware when I’m not “feeling it”.

With these words of this wise thirteen year old girl in my head and a feeling in my heart that I had a space that needed filling in my day I went on Indeed to job hunt. I wasn’t overly serious because I had set myself quite firm criteria – children/young people and afternoons. Well up popped an job in an after-schools club in my town. I scrolled on past but couldn’t get it out of my head so in the end applied. I’ve got the job. I start next week. But when I was at the trial afternoon I felt my heart settle for being there, felt that it was a safe place that I was going to for the right reasons.

Then yesterday I was telling the vicar I co-run the youth group about the job and about how much this girl’s words had impacted me and I realised that this job was totally of God. It stops me from taking on too many things because I will be tied to work every afternoon but also if I want to write I won’t be able to do much during the day. I do have a couple of commitments but that is ok too.

So I did trust my heart, trust that my heart was hearing God/the Universe’s will for my life and I “just did it” and then it appears that I was given a reassurance that I had done right.

So yes it will be tough fitting everything I want to do in to my morning, and will be odd being committed every afternoon and only have weekends and holidays to roam randomly. But that doesn’t mean it is wrong to do. In fact it all feels very right.

Sometimes we do just have to trust and do it

Photo by Lucas Allmann on Pexels.com
Categories
time trust

Time Poor?

This photograph of my dog has no relevance to this post – apart from him never being time poor or time rich – but it for one of my readers who told me how much she loves my posts but especially the ones with photos of Renly, who she knows personally!

I was a meeting the other night and there were people there who kept saying they were “time poor“. I had heard the expression before but not really engaged with it. I think what they meant was they were doing lots of things and so were busy.

I response in my head in the meeting was to think that maybe they should be thinking about what they are meant to be doing and asking their hearts if this was what they should be doing. And then my next thing was to want to boast and say that “now I’m healed/healing I am time rich“. But then I realised that both those responses are wrong. I am comparing and being proud. Neither of which is being respectful to the people I was with who are working really hard for my little town.

As I pondered it and did some journaling around my thoughts I realised I often panic that I don’t have time to do things and that this is what is stopping me getting some work that I should have because I’d be great at it. But I am also worried that I won’t have that allusive “enough” time to do all I think I ought to be doing. So in reality I was no better. I still think I could be “time poor“.

So more listening to my heart, listening to God who Created the Whole Universe, listening to the Universe. Then I realised that if I listen to my heart then I do have enough to do each day the things I am meant to do each day – whether that is keep house, run workshops, visit an ill friend down south to relieve her husband, see my mother, have coffee with my friends, be in school to do the things I am great at doing there. I will do what I am meant to do with the energy and time I need to all that.

So not “enough” as in the worrying that there isn’t enough but trusting that each and every day what I choose to do from listening to my heart will be what I am meant to do, and that I will not do too much or too little, will not be too busy, too time poor, but will glide through calmly knowing that I am being what I’m meant to be with enough time, energy, resources, experience, etc that I need. And then like my little dog I can enjoy the moment, seize the day, and live life to the full of who I am and what I love to do.

An aside – too often we see “living life to the full” as being super busy, but I am finding that the more I listen to my heart, to God, to the Universe, the more I am filled with deep joy, deep contentment, deep peace and a freedom to trust, the more I know that I am living life to a fullness that I never had when I was busy.

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NHS respect

Respect

This view from my window this morning does not show the magnitude of the rain or the ferocity of the wind

This is a bit of a ramble from my thoughts this morning. I might do something more coherent in a few days! Maybe!

I was journaling around this word “Respect” and about the strikes and a WhatsApp conversation I had had with my son last night around him leaving the army this morning as I listed to the rain throwing itself at the window and the dustbin men emptying this bins at 7am.

He is leaving the army, along with many others, because he does not feel respected. When one really listens to the NHS staff on the picket lines, as in really listen, the main issue is the lack of respect. When we used to do Airbnb, because we lived within five miles of our local hospital, we had lots of junior and trainee doctors and nurses along with other hospital staff staying, and all were struggling with the lack of respect they were receiving – from their management and from the expectations of the public. One instance was when there was a call for doctor’s to be working all over the weekends, and one young woman told us that for that to work the doctor’s canteen would need to be open, the laboratories would need to be open, and there would need to be more doctors to cover all this.

A friend who worked on the railways was saying that most rail-workers contracts include having to do overtime and that most contracts are Monday to Friday and very few for the weekend and yet people want to catch trains on the weekend.

It made me think of the line from The Jam song “Going Underground” – “the public gets what the public wants” and I do wonder if this is what is going on. The government are so desperate for votes that when those they see as important voters ask for something they get it whether it is supporting the people who work in that area or not. But it is all done without respect for the workers – or even for how much it costs.

It is this respect that is the big thing though. I remember my Mum saying that they would always give the tradesmen – dustmen, postmen, milkman, paper boy – a tip at Christmas. Ok so I do remember her saying that with the dustmen it was more for fear that they would not pick up their bins in the new year but it was still done. It was till saying “thank you for being out there in all winds and weathers to do a rubbish job. I appreciate it”.

I know there was the clapping for the NHS during lockdown but then all was expected to go back to “normal” after a few weeks. And actually normal, as I had heard when doing the Airbnb prior to lockdown, was overworked staff, was ambulances outside hospitals for hours, was someone who phone for an ambulance for her father having a heart attack being told to get the town’s defibrillator and then drive her dad to hospital because the ambulance would not be there for over six hours. The news about all this is not news. It has been going on for years and years.

But I believe it is from years and years of lack of respect. I don’t think it is money really that is wanted. Though a decent wage for a hard job would be a start, but I think it is the need for those in power, and for us the general public, to show respect to those doing these jobs and stop expecting more than they are able to give.

I’d just like to end with this that I saw on Facebook this morning which I think sums things up

Thanks to Gaz for sharing
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christmas Mary

Mary

Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com

I was pondering a piece by Ordinary Pilgrim this morning around Mary and icons from from Medieval European female monasteries that open up to show Mary with anything from just Jesus to the whole Trinity growing within her

Externally, she is portrayed as a simple mother; on the inside she hosts the mysteries of heaven. 

https://www.ordinarypilgrim.co.uk/blog

So I got to letting my thoughts flow through my pen and what struck me is how we have turned this simple, ordinary teenage girl into something super human; have taken something that could have happened to anyone who was willing into an hierarchical structure with, depending on denomination, either priests and vicars, or with pastors and a pastoral team.

Mary was so amazingly ordinary and yet too often people are not allowed to believe this could happen to them. Or have to take it through a leader of some sort – whether vicar or church pastor or whatever the denomination calls those who stand at the front.

The amazingness, for me, of the Incarnation is that it came to an ordinary young woman in an ordinary town. I’ve often wondered if Mary was the first person the angel came to or whether there were others who said No? It is Mary’s willingness that is amazing. But also each of us can grow something of God within us and take it out into the world. We don’t have to be gifted orators, or want to win everyone over to be a signed up follower of Christ. But each of us can willingly say “I have God living within me and I can take that wherever I go”.

I wonder if the line “your kingdom come, your will be done“, which too often we prayer much too quickly but also see as for something bigger, actually is “let that little seed of you, God, that is growing in me come to fruition today”.

So as I pondered what is being birthed in me this season I also prayed for all who profess a faith in Jesus, and even those who don’t, that they would allow what God has within them grown to be something as amazing as Mary allowed.

Jesus does say we will go on to do more amazing things than he did. Maybe, just maybe, that is allowing God’s incarnation in each of us to grow unhindered into all it is meant to be. Not held back by the culture of our churches, our church leaders, our families, our own hearts that can’t believe God would do that with us. And I also prayed for all church leaders of whatever denomination, whatever stream, that they would not get caught up in the machinations of leading their congregations and be able to let the seed of God that is within them grow into whatever it is God wants it to be.

Mary did not know what Jesus would be like when she said Yes to God’s proposal. She did not know what would come next. In fact she did not even know is she would live through the birth of this child – death in childbirth was very common up until very recently. But she said yes. Am I willing to say yes to this seed that God has inside of me whatever happens to me? Are you?

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Begging crowdfunding

Crowdfunding or Begging

Photo by Lukas on Pexels.com
Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com

Last week I went down South to visit my mum and catch up with some friends. My chosen companion whilst driving is Radio 4. So I drive for about 5 hours listening to various things, some of which stay with me and some I just forget.

One thing that stayed with me was an article about people who were struggling to pay their bills who were putting up pages on GoFundMe or similar crowdfunding pages. The one woman that they concentrated their feature on was a young woman who had only just gained an MA in journalism but was now out of work. She had set up a page to pay her rent and bills until she got the job she wanted. One of the reasons she was on was that she had raised more than she had asked for. At one point in the interview she said that she knew she could take any job but that she wanted to wait to get into her chosen profession.

What I wanted to know were her thoughts to the homeless person she probably walked past regularly, the beggar on the street, the tramp. Did she and those that had given to her campaign see those people as valid? Would they give as much to them?

I think too often we judge by the cover. So people will give to the pretty young woman who has fallen on hard times but not to the smelly dirty person who is on the street.

I also think that by giving on one of these crowdfunding sites one can distance oneself from the cause. It just takes the push of a Paypal button and money is moved to this woman’s account. I do remember my daughter saying that when she was in London more and more buskers especially were getting these free credit card machines and it did increase their takings. None contact. None involvement.

Whether it is the pretty young woman who wants a top job and isn’t willing to be a part time barmaid or supermarket worker or the long term homeless, is it that we really do not want to know the why of how they got to that place? Are we willing to slow things down, get into a dialogue, find out what is really going on? I think I am as much to blame. It is easier just to push that campaign button, that easy give button, that “sign here” button, than it is to slow my life down, work out what areas of live I really do want to focus on and really dig deep into what is going on here.

Just an aside – when I was planning this post it was going to be very much about berating the middle class aspirations and how no one cares about the downtrodden, but as I have written, as often happens with me and writing, I have changed my view point. I am now pointing back at me and asking what would I really do? Am I similar to what has gone on? Sometimes I think it is good for all of us to have a real look at what we are saying and whether we too are hiding behind something.

Categories
joy peace

True Peace, True Joy

Sunrise over my local park. Taken by myself Oct 2022

There is some stuff going on in my life and I spent half the night planning my speech to say what I really thought, talk about my hurts, my fears, etc. I felt I had a right to say this. Funny how we are brought up that way. And then go on to do some self improvement stuff which talks to us about firm boundaries, being honest, our rights, etc.

Well for me about 5.30am I felt an almost audible voice asking me why I felt the need to say what I felt, why I needed to put over my point of view when in fact no one has asked for it. So I chewed this over, noticed a few repeated patterns that I thought I’d dealt with, and then asked what I could do to change.

What came to me was Philippians’s 4:7 “The peace of the Lord that transcends all understanding” So being me I journaled around that.

What came up was that that real joy and real peace are there for us no matter what is going on in our lives, no matter what we are feeling. It doesn’t mean that we deny our feelings. Often living in that total joy and peace of God/the Universe we can be more open and honest with ourselves about how we feel. In fact I googled an article around this and the writer said how they go walking with their anxiety rather than trying to hide it, and this was from a piece that started with the Phil 4:7 verse.

How would I describe that total joy and peace? I don’t know. All I can say is that I know it is there. I know I can tap into it whenever I want to, though often I don’t try to – which is when I say what I shouldn’t or do what I shouldn’t and let my fears, issues, self-righteousness, hurt others.

The whole point of something “transcending our understanding” is that it transcends it, which means we cannot and should not try to understand it. What would be the point? It makes no sense to be fearful but at peace, to be grieving but feel deep joy. But then what would be the point of understanding everything?

It is great to have mysteries and as a Christian I do not want to understand all that is God. I do not want to be able to figure God out. Well what would be the point of that?

I have to trust in God with all of my being, not understand God with all my being. I have to let go of my need to sort it all out, of my need to be right all the time. I think if we all lent into a higher power of some sort, let go of our need to control each and every situation, let go of our need to figure the whys and wherefores of everything and just accept that somethings just are.

So today I am accepting that no matter what is going on in my life I am going to walk in a place of peace and joy that is bigger than I am, that I don’t understand, and that is ok.

Categories
judging talents

Talents

Photographed on a beach in Cornwall by myself August 2022

There are some talents that are noticeable and some that aren’t. If you can sew, knit, etc then people notice what you do. We’re having two rooms in our house painted this week and next and our painter has talent.

Other people’s noticeable talents made me a bit insecure. I thought I had no talents, which is a blatant lie. I have many talents but they aren’t things that can be noticed. I wonder how many of us can be like that; that we only see ourselves as talented if it is something that can be noticed, gets published, wins prizes, and now in this digital age, has lots of followers and likes.

I love to write and it is one of my gifts. I’ve only had two books published – one that I self published and one that I paid towards being published. I have won a few competitions, interestingly with poetry rather than stories. But I am not going to be a renowned author because I don’t have the push and drive to get to that place, and I am not good at marketing myself. But I have many hidden talents.

I am great with teenagers, that species that many adults avoid. I love going into schools or running youth groups to chat, challenge and encourage young people. I have also been told I am a good listener, which means my walks round the park can often take much longer than the 45 mins they should . When I’m in the mood I am a good cook and do enjoy feeding people. I also love doing these blogs and have been told they encourage other people too. I love taking photos and writing poems about what they make me feel, which is where the Inspirations From Walking In Wales book came from

But it is hard sometimes not to compare ourselves to others, to see talents as a hierarchy rather than gifts we’ve been given. Again I think it comes down to wanting to put things in good and bad boxes rather than look at what gives us life. Once we get into comparing ourselves to others we are saying this is a good talent and this is a not-so-good talent. We have then judged ourselves and found ourselves wanting. Would God do that? Also once we have seen ourselves as not-good-enough we don’t allow ourselves to just be.

We need to know that what we have been given is good enough for who we are and what we are to achieve with this “one precious life” [Mary Oliver “The Summer’s Day”] and then go for it, be our true selves and enjoy it along the way.