NaBloPoMo

Okay, to whoever still comes by here to see what is happening: November is NaBloPoMo and I am going to take this opportunity to attempt to get back into the habit of blogging regularly. See? I have my badge and everything! Facebook is all right, but it does not seem to do as much for me as blogging does (or used to do for me--will the fun return?).

We will see how things go. I may post this today and that may be all I post. I am a bit concerned about what I will find to write about. The NaBloPoMo site will be putting up daily prompts so I may use some of those. I am considering taking a workshop on photography as a contemplative practice so that may also give me inspiration. I think this will be a month of eclectic musings. I do have a blogging app on my phone, so I could conceivably post a quick quote or simple observation every day. Or I could post a phone photo. So I do have options! Stay tuned!

If you do come around to comment, I will try my best to acknowledge your presence. And I will try to reciprocate with comments to your blogs. Please remember that most of my Facebook friends have no clue about the existence of my alter ego Annie Oddflower nor of this blog. I'd really like to keep it that way, so I'd be grateful if you'd help me out with that!

Okay--here is to small starts, persistent paths and perhaps clumsy finishes!

Loss

I've lost an old and dear friend, an earnest soul from way back in my past with whom I recently reconnected. We were gonna catch up with each other. He called a couple of weeks ago at an inconvenient time for me and I did not answer the phone. I thought he'd leave a message and I'd get back to him. He didn't, I didn't, and now he's gone. Oh the regrets -the loss- of not taking the time to be inconvenienced a bit for an old friend.

He had a massive heart attack sometime last week and remained in a coma until he died yesterday morning. He was my old youth pastor, one of my earliest mentors. Part of the inconvenience of his phone call was my own discomfort at knowing how different I am now from the "kid" he remembered from back then. And yet, he saw things in me and encouraged me and challenged me in his own way and now, in hindsight, I feel that the reconnection would have been worth the discomfort. How many good things do I miss because I am unwilling to suffer through and move past my own discomfort?

I've been reading back through my archives, reading all the posts made during September. Seems there are a lot of storms in September, literal and metaphorical. I've been thinking about this blog and how things were when I started blogging, about how I felt back then and about how much water has passed under the bridge since then.

I've never really gotten a clear focus on what I wanted to do with the blog. When I started out, I had been writing poetry and interacting on some of the poetry boards. That sort of fizzled out and I started writing here. Then when I went back to school, I started posting photographs and a little bit of my artsy-fartsy endeavors. But that is me, a bit eclectic and a whole lot unfocused!

I am back in a bit of a funk, taking medication that does not seem to be working all that well. Everything feels flat. It seems the changing of the seasons always helps perk me up. I am hoping the cooler weather will somehow invigorate my spirit and I can enjoy life again.

I had a dear friend send me the following quote with instructions to hang it in my closet (I assume so I would see it often). Naturally, I made a "thang" out of it. . .

New Roads

Paradox

Evening in Paris

I am playing around with posting from my phone and with my phone's camera. I have a small series of "niche photos" started and will experiment with posting them from my phone. This is an old Evening in Paris perfume bottle I have had since high school.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Quiet

Playing with one of the camera apps on my phone, wishing I had words to say.