Category Archives: Random

by | December 22, 2011 · 7:51 am

Early Resolution for Next Christmas


I love Christmas cards. Especially the ones with old-fashioned, Victorian designs, and the ones with pithy quotes. I collect them like crazy. If I have the means and the price is just right, I’ll snatch up a box or two of those wonderful boxes of holiday well-wishes. I’m a Christmas card addict.

With all those cards, you probably think I send out bundles each year to family and friends, yes? Ah…no, not quite.The boxes of cards sit throughout the year collecting dust. Then around Thanksgiving, I dig them out of whatever dingy hole they fell into during the past 11 months and revisit my treasures. And I think about all the people I want to send Christmas greetings to. I plan to have them all written and sent out by the 2nd week of December, so friends and loved ones will receive them before THE BIG DAY. And then life steps in. My best laid plans are put aside for a few weeks, in deference to holiday parties, children’s dramas, concerts, shopping, decorating and gift wrapping. Before I know it, December 21st rolls around and I’ve sent out no cards at all. Haven’t even written notes or addressed the envelopes.

I love receiving Christmas cards. I love sending Christmas cards. I love Christmas. But somehow the holiday rushes by way too fast and my good intentions are left in the dust. Part of the problem I think is that as a writer, I can’t just pen a quick note and send it on its way. No. I’m compelled to compose a missive that will fill the entire card, and perhaps the back also. I hate white space. If there’s too much of it, I’ll blissfully blather away about nothing and everything just to fill the empty spaces. I blame this in part on my journalism classes many years ago, where they repeatedly instructed us to “fill the white spaces.” I was brainwashed, utterly and completely.

I think for 2012, I’m going to purchase leftover Christmas cards after the 2011 holiday season and leave them on my desk. I’ll be sure to see them each time I sit at my computer and won’t forget where I’ve stored them. I’ll have holiday photo cards printed up of my son & I sometime around April. I’ll start working on the cards in August or September, and have them all addressed before Thanksgiving. That way, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, all that will need doing is purchasing lovely holiday stamps and sticking them on the envelopes. The first of December, in the mailbox they go. Yes, lovely.

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by | June 13, 2011 · 11:39 am

hope


what is hope? from whence comes this word, this feeling? is it truly “hopeful” or does it sink us deeper into depression when that for which we “hope” doesn’t come to pass? and if we talk about what it is we’re hoping for (sometimes ad nauseam), does it jinx us; put a wrench in the fulfillment of said hope? or is that just me?

maybe the hope of something should be kept a well-guarded secret. but if that hope involves another person, group of people, etc, if we keep what we wish for secret, how will said person(s) know how to respond? or even that they’re supposed to respond? bah. it’s enough to make you tired.

according to dictionary.com, hope is defined as “the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best; to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence.”

synonyms of “hope” include: faith, expectation, dream, desire, goal, prospect, promise, anticipate, acceptance, assurance. the list is (probably literally) a mile long, and consists of both nouns and verbs.

hope has been around for a long time, and is of unknown origin. it occurs hundreds of times in the Bible. some of my favorite verses include:

  • Romans 8:25 “but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (still trying to wrap my head around that one);
  • Proverbs 13:12 “hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”
  • Proverbs 23:18 “surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off.”
  • Hebrews 11:1 “now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

many businesses, especially churches, utilize “hope” as part of their name: hope college, hope cleaners, house of hope, new hope baptist church. and let’s not forget about people who bear either the first or surname of “hope.”

then there are “hope quotes.” here are a few:

  • “to love is to risk not being loved in return. to hope is to risk pain. to try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”
  • “love comes to those who still hope even though they’ve been disappointed, to those who still believe even though they’ve been betrayed, to those who still love even though they’ve been hurt before.”
  • “hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.”
  • “learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”

there’s even a short page on hope at wikipedia. okay… maybe i’m analyzing this just a little too much…

i think you get the point. it appears that hope is not just a word, it’s part of our essence, one of the things that makes us human. so nope, sorry. don’t think it’s possible to live without hope and still retain our humanity.

even when unrequited hope slams into you with an unyielding fist, making you stagger, breathless with anguish, a kernel remains. as you recover from that soul-wrenching, hope quietly grows. and one day when you least expect it, it’ll peer up at you, like the first flower of spring; it will rise anew, strong and confident, ready to once more reach for that expectation, hoping that this time, it will see fulfillment.

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by | May 25, 2011 · 12:27 pm

deal with it


i used to take everything personally. easily offended, i would cry if someone looked at me cross-eyed. even at work. it was embarrassing having to excuse myself in a choked voice, hurry to the ladies’ room, lock myself in a stall and muffle my sobs at this or that look someone gave me or something they said about my personality, my height, my tone of voice, my naivety, my family… it was exhausting.

relief came when i was about 21. during one of these “choking on my tears” sessions, a co-worker told me, “wendy, you better learn to develop a thick skin, or you won’t make it very far in this business.” of course at the time i was working for an a/c company, where most of my co-workers were men, and while they were usually respectful, several had criminal records and the personalities to match, all were hard-drinking, and as salty as sailors. but i took that advice to heart.

i slowly learned that most people aren’t out to offend me, the world DOESN’T revolve around me, most people DON’T care about my feelings, and i CAN ignore the cussing and swearing. i developed a thick-skin, learned to assert myself, and when i stopped to think about it, realized that my offense meter is actually pretty high – i’m not easily offended…unless i choose to be – usually when people misuse proper grammer and spelling.

what freedom! of course, along with this realization i learned that many other people have low offense meters…and my straight-forward, assertive personality lays them out like swatted flies.

i do believe that growing up means things like developing a thicker skin, understanding that the world doesn’t revolve around you, and realizing that most people (myself included) do not (well, not usually, anyway) sit around dreaming up ways to offend others. most of us have better things to do with our time. such as hold down a job, raise a family, attempt to find our way out of the maze of consumer debt, and debate politics and religion.

while i try to employ a certain amount of tact (within reason – MY reason) in my own speech, i refuse to try intuiting what’s going to offend others, apologize for my own thick-skin, or my “call ’em as i sees ’em” approach.

so grow up, get a life of your own, develop some common sense and a thicker skin, act like the adult your birth certificate alleges you are, and quit trying to make everyone around you as miserable as you seem to be.

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