At Least 100 words #3

Today is going to be an answer to a blog prompt, borrowed from Life of Lovely by Elizabeth McNair.

What do you want less of?

I never thought blog prompts to be difficult. I found LOL monthly pages of the blog prompts on Pinterest and I believed they would be helpful for the blog and my writing about two years ago. Some prompts were answered and posted on previous blogs and some were written in my morning pages books.

This question kind of has me thinking what am I getting in excess? This entry is being writing on Thursday with plans of being posted on Friday. The weather is hot but nothing out of the ordinary for Summer in New York City.

The world outside my home is a hodge-podge of things I am not paying attention to. I am one person and I want my day to be smooth. I can’ say that when I spend 30 or so minutes catching up with the state of the world. It messes up my day and today I want to be selfish.

There is nothing on this day and most likely on Friday that I want less of. The things that annoy or unsettle my state of mind, I do my best to avoid. It is a form of cowardice I should be ashamed of. Not happening today. I am annoyed a little that I don’t have a profound and deep answer to this question. It is possible if I look at the question in a different context it would make sense. I want less people hating each other for superficial aspects. I want less homeless, hungry people around the world. I want less uncertainty on what the day is going to bring.

I want less dystopian, apocalypse science fiction book to stop proving themselves right.

These are all wants that can’t really be changed by myself. In my personal life, I am still at a loss. Even when I want the answers to be simple.

End

Quotes For Writers #21

Dreams are … illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you. – Marsha Norman

At Least 100 Words #1

This is the result of essay #7. Writing and posting at least 100 words or more is a practice to use habit to spark inspiration. For the next several posts like this I will be reminding myself and you that about this challenge. I am a writer who does not write. I was seriously ill and hospitalized for the last 3 months, with the corona-virus and pneumonia. The fact that corona-virus is on the rise, mutating and airborne is a special fear that haunts me. Living with uncertainty is a terrible for many people and still we survive.

I normally have a quote that may resonate with my first paragraph at least. I don’t have one. I haven’t been looking at quotes for a few weeks. I have at least two days to find the quotes I want for next week. I think they should be overall themed but not feeling it yet. I think of myself as a borderline insomniac. My definition is that I can sleep, when I do sleep, and it is really easy to be up all night. Especially when I am doing something I like. I was reading some guilty pleasure books. Which is embarrassing because I did tell myself I would start reading more edifying books. As time moves on, sometimes I get that feeling that I am getting dumb. It is partly my fault I do actively ignore current events and the state of world whenever I can. Having the knowledge that the government in power has no concern for the people, they claim to respect and protect, is off putting at best, disastrous at worst. It is another horrifying fear, that must be dealt with daily.

I wish I could write this more eloquently on this topic, but I believe that there are many people on the internet doing just that. I can only comment on how it is affecting me, personally. I don’t consider other alternatives and therefore I manage.

I don’t remember if I wrote it in essay #7 or not but I signed in for Camp Nanowrimo. I borrowed the banner from the website. It is the third week. I want to be positive about my writing, but it is difficult. In the past, I would be more upset with my process. I have a conflict issue in the story. It is hindering the narrative. I should probably leave it alone and move to another section of the story, but I keep poking at it and coming up with nothing. The experts I have listened to or read in the past are shaking their heads at my stubbornness. My goal for camp was 30,000 words. The story is supposed to be part of an anthology I want to put together. I’m afraid it is possible the story is under-developed.

This is one of my many writing dilemmas. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.

Essay #7

I am rare, and there is value in all rarity; therefore, I am valuable

-Og Mandino

During the writing of Essay #6, I felt it got away from me. This is a sad confession for a writer. My goals are for you the reader to be inspired, entertained, and informed. To get something of value in exchange for the few or several minutes it takes to read this post. I started essay #7 with the initial idea of making my intentions for the blog and writing career clear, for myself and others. So, anyone who read the content would understand…

It got away from me again. Then it seems like my life attempted to get away from me. I wasn’t alone. But it isn’t a consolation. I got sick with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). I had hypoxemic respiratory failure. I was in the hospital for 3 months. I’m still recovering. I was released from the hospital with oxygen. I can barely walk without going out of breath. Despite all that, I am grateful that this is the only thing wrong with me. I pray for the others that are in similar or worse situations. I am humbled to know that other people, not my family prayed for me.

egyptian blue lotus

My experience in the hospital was intense. I wrote about it but I’m not ready to share. I am still getting the threads of my life together. This pandemic shredded it. I have been unemployed since I was admitted to the hospital in the last few days of March 2020. Even if I get off the oxygen, I don’t think I can go back to the job because of the physical activity it requires. The realization of many things can be overwhelming, remember the quote above.

These are the things I am doing to feel that I am not only healing physically but moving forward:

I make and keep appointments with my doctors. The lack of self-care is a real thing and not just a health craze and clickbait. I let myself fall through the cracks and now since almost dying, I must work to get better and maintain that wellness.

Starting next week, I will be posting along with quotes for writers, I am challenging myself to write at least 100 words and post them. I started this post in February, came back to it in June. I have waited almost seven days to re-read and complete it. I am giving myself a pass because of health issues and the world. However, at the end of the week, it is easy for the negative feelings to rise when nothing of value is accomplished.

At first, many of us thought that the lockdown would mean time to be creative. It worked for some and then there were people like me, who were already struggling the added stress due to the state of the world did not help and I was sick.

The previous challenges have been 500 words, then 500+ words, I have even gone up to 750. I’m started lower than usual because I am trying to meld habit with inspiration again. When inspiration fails, the habit will take over and vice versa. I learned about that from great author Octavia Butler. How can I go wrong?

Another thing I must do is read something uplifting, read something educational, and read something true. If I am lucky, I will be able to stay in tune with my work. I have been stalling on reviews.

The beginning of the year was difficult. I am glad to be alive. I believe my life has a purpose and this thing I do here is my talent. I may never be a best seller or reach the views of millions in my lifetime. I post my essays for the few and that one who will read it and be happy, that one who would read it and be inspired to write better and that one who will read it and not feel alone. We are all rare and we all have value.

End

Essay #6

lioness standing At the beginning of 2020, I wanted to be optimistic about the new year. I was faking it until I made it. I made plans and expressed vocally the positive changes I was making to my life that should benefit in the future. I listened to podcasts and watched YouTube videos that were resolution pro and resolution con. I agreed and disagreed with all of them. I don’t think I made a resolution. There were things in my life that needed to be addressed and I was working on that.

Posting weekly or bi-weekly on this blog is always something I wanted to do. Having and keeping a decent writing habit as well as producing content on other projects were in development since last year. There were complications.

I was always aware that my life felt like a roller coaster. There were days when things were up and days when things are down. There are reasons for it, but that is a different kind of blog essay. The point of this essay is me attempting to work on what exactly should be happening in the future for this blog. -BlackPrincess

I called this blog, the JC Henry Universe because the plan was to place all my writing here. The fiction and creative non-fiction, reviews, etc. In the past starting and maintaining a blog was a path to success for a writer. I am not sure if that is the case anymore. There are blogs and podcasts everywhere, gaining success that equals to notability or monetization are dreams of so many myself included. FYI, I have been attempting to develop a podcast for at least 2 years. I will write about that in another essay. Every creative person I know and the millions I don’t know has a website or blog, they chip out a place for themselves on social media. The Twitter account of JC Henry Universe is affiliated with is JCfabulous and jc_henry_universe on Instagram and JC Henry on Facebook of course.

This blog has not gotten a decent essay from yours truly for nearly two months. I posted quotes for writers because those quotes reminded me of the person I wanted to be. Despite writing for nearly 25 years I am still an amateur. It is so easy to fall into a rut and give up.

This essay is about how not to give up.

I am rare, and there is value in all rarity; therefore, I am valuable

-Og Mandino

This quote has helped me get out of many of rut in my life. It aided me in looking into other places to find people, similar to my situation as a writer and beyond. Because of them and it, I have been able to catch myself when I am falling and for this time, in particular, pull myself out, cause I fell in. I have no idea who Og Mandino is and I have decided I don’t want to know. In the past, inspirational, motivational words had been attributed to people with awful personalities or behaviors. I don’t want what I feel about the words to be tainted because of the person. I want to continue the mystery of the personal. Too many times we, the audience, the public, demand more from the celebrity than we should get. Then we want to judge them if they seriously guard their privacy or judge them when they don’t.

egyptian blue lotus

Again, this is an essay on how not to give up on a Blog. I can honestly say I have not given up on writing. I write most days. A lot of it is not for the public. I feel for the words that are for the public. The stories that are trapped in my head. This would be the part where I write what will be happening for the next week or month. I’m not because I’m tired of breaking promises to this blog. The best I can come up with is that my goal for the end of this week is to finish the open essays I couldn’t finish in December 2019.

In conclusion, I have not made it. I am still making it.

End

Sunflower 100