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Question of the Day 7-2-2018

Please feel free to answer these questions on your blog or in the responses. If you leave me a link to your post, I will re-post it on my blog. You can also feel free to forward these questions to anybody who might be interested. Thank you to those who have already shared their thoughts.

What is your favorite Broadway Musical?

By and far, and always, the best – Phantom of the Opera.

Okay, I haven’t seen any others, but I am happy to stop at Phantom. From the very first chord to the last lingering notes of Erik proclaiming “It’s over now, the Music of the Night,” I get chills.

Face it, I’m a sucker for the tortured soul. I won’t say many of my characters are tortured in the same way as Erik, but they all have a bit of torture in them. I relate to him as both a person and a writer. I also played Erik in several play-by-mail games and had a blast!

So, what is your favorite Broadway Musical?

 

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Question of the Day 6-29-2018

Please feel free to answer these questions on your blog or in the responses. If you leave me a link to your post, I will re-post it on my blog. You can also feel free to forward these questions to anybody who might be interested. Thank you to those who have already shared their thoughts.

What is the best thing that has happened to you this week?

I got tired. Tired of living small. Tired of being afraid. Tired of saying, over and over, that I was going to change my life, work on my manuscripts, clean my house, fix my yard, live in the moment and then not doing it.

Have you ever had the feeling that something is changing inside you? Something vast and fantastic?

I have been feeling that way all week, like I am waiting for something new to be born inside of me. I was depressed and tired and just not able to do anything much.

Today, I woke up happy. The sun is shining. My mood is better. I am positive and hopeful and ready to try again to shape my world to my specifications.

Let the birth begin!

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Question of the Day 6-27-2018

Please feel free to answer these questions on your blog or in the responses. If you leave me a link to your post, I will re-post it on my blog. You can also feel free to forward these questions to anybody who might be interested. Thank you to those who have already shared their thoughts.

 

What is your top Bucket List item?

Let's do itI have always wanted to ride in a hot air balloon. I have been up in one, up and down, still tethered to the earth, but never really ridden in one. This was on my bucket list before I had a bucket list. Unfortunately, every time a chance comes up, I am tight on cash.

One day….. one day soon!

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Question of the Day 6-26-2018

Please feel free to answer these questions on your blog or in the responses. If you leave me a link to your post, I will re-post it on my blog. You can also feel free to forward these questions to anybody who might be interested. Thank you to those who have already shared their thoughts.

I’ve decided to only do Questions on weekdays. I just don’t have time (or sometimes energy) on the weekends.

What sentences (about anything) have stopped you in your tracks and changed your life?

 

“Everything is only as it is.”
― Yuki Urushibara

 

“The dead sit at our tables long after they have gone.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day    

 

 

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Question of the Day 6-25-2018

Please feel free to answer these questions on your blog or in the responses. If you leave me a link to your post, I will re-post it on my blog. You can also feel free to forward these questions to anybody who might be interested. Thank you to those who have already shared their thoughts.

I’ve decided to only do Questions on weekdays. I just don’t have time (or sometimes energy) on the weekends.

What are your top five favorite TV shows?

I tend to change what kind of TV I like, depending on what I feel like watching. If I had to list my top five shows, they would go something like this:

  1. Firefly – because… well….. just because.
  2. Documentaries – history, crime or just about anything which looks interesting.
  3. Reality TV – mostly because I’m a writer and writer’s love to peek into other people’s lives. (But please, no Bachelor, Bachelorette or any show eating yucky things).
  4. Cooking shows – not sure why, I just like them. And how are they that darn happy all the time?
  5. Amazon Prime’s Bosch. If you love the Harry Bosch series, you need to watch this series.

TV isn’t a big deal for me. In fact, we don’t even have a TV in the house anymore. We do, however, have computers for watching. I don’t watch TV on a regular basis, unless I am using it as background noise when I am working on the computer. In those cases, I usually listen to short attention span shows like Buzzfeed Unsolved.

Hey, maybe I should add that one to my list!

What do you watch?

 

 

 

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Question of the Day 6-22-2018

Please feel free to answer these questions on your blog or in the responses. If you leave me a link to your post, I will re-post it on my blog. You can also feel free to forward these questions to anybody who might be interested. Thank you to those who have already shared their thoughts.

I’ve decided to only do Questions on weekdays. I just don’t have time (or sometimes energy) on the weekends.

What is one step you have taken towards a current goal?

My biggest goal at this time is to finalize my filing for bankruptcy. Filing is a reality I have put off and ignored for too long. Now, I have to step forward and do what needs to be done, instead of hiding and crying because I don’t want to do it. At this point, it doesn’t matter if I want to file or not. I have no other choice.

To take a step forward, I dropped off the paperwork last Monday and have a meeting set for next Monday to turn in the final paperwork and meet with the lawyer.

I don’t like this. I don’t like not paying what I owe. Truth is, besides having no choice, I will be paying it all, just not on the schedule or timetable the creditors want.

My biggest fear is that the payments will be more than I can handle, what with still paying my mortgage, car and bank loan outside of the bankruptcy. I don’t want to live with this stress for another five years.

People tell me to just calm down, that the Trustee won’t set me up for failure, but until I know…. I’ll worry.

What steps have you taken towards your goal?

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Question of the Day 6-21-2018

Please feel free to answer these questions on your blog or in the responses. If you leave me a link to your post, I will re-post it on my blog. You can also feel free to forward these questions to anybody who might be interested. Thank you to those who have already shared their thoughts.

I’ve decided to only do Questions on weekdays. I just don’t have time on the weekends.

 If you won the lottery, what would you do?

Scream! Scream! Scream!

Ah, probably not. I’d wonder when they’d realize they made a mistake and come to take the money back!

But, let’s say money is no object. I won the lottery or whatever. That rich Uncle who dies and leaves me a fortune. Though if I had that rich Uncle….. I wish I’d known.

Anyway, I’ve always had a plan for how I would put my financial world to rights if I received a landfall of cash.

First, I would pay off my bills, including my house. I would set up an account to pay the monthly utilities automatically to free me from that obligation.

I would deposit a large sum into saving every month.

I would pay my family back a lump–sum of the money I have had to borrow over the years to stay afloat.

I would give a lump-sum to several of my friends who could use the money.

I would buy my youngest a car (once he gets his license). Just so you don’t think I’m  ignoring my oldest, I gave her my old car when I purchased myself a new one.

I would live at the beach half of the year. This necessitating, of course, retiring early. Maybe at different beaches every year.

I would live in England for a couple of years.

I don’t know that I’d want a bigger house, but I would fix the issues with my current house. I would l hire landscapers to make the grounds look the way I’ve always wanted them to look and to take care of mowing, raking and other tasks! I would have a sunroom added to the house, redo the kitchen and who knows what else.

Remember, for this fantasy, money isn’t an issue.

I would spend a certain, substantial, amount a month on my model horse collection.

I would travel with my friends and pay for the whole trip.

I would have a farm and some horses, even if they weren’t there for anything but to live out their lives in peace and quiet.

Oh, have one of those outdoor cat houses built for my cats.

I would buy as much forest land as possible and turn it into a natural preserve. If I could do the same with the rainforest, I would do that, too.

I would donate regularly to several charities and, somehow, find a way to feed all the hungry in my town. Even if I had to pay for every meal, no one would go hungry.

As for myself, I have no interest in plastic surgery (yuck!), but I might get my varicose veins zapped and try to decrease the brown spots and such on my face and arms.

Ah, fantasy, how vain you are! I may never get any of the above, but isn’t it fun to pretend?

What would you do if money was no object?

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Question of the Day 6-14-2018

Please feel free to answer these questions on your blog or in the responses. If you leave me a link to your post, I will re-post it on my blog. You can also feel free to forward these questions to anybody who might be interested. Thank you to those who have already shared their thoughts.

I’ve decided to only do Questions on weekdays. I just don’t have time on the weekends, plus my computer has been dead this week. This way I can do the Questions before I leave work.

Do you feel supported by friends and family?

Friends, yes, family… not so much. I’ve always felt different, the odd one out in my family. I’ve never felt understood as a child and, after being diagnosed with bi-polar, I felt even more at odds. My family doesn’t understand the bi-polar and I’m not even sure they made any attempt to understand. Maybe, they did, but with the issues from 2016, everything seemed to fall apart. They didn’t understand that the medicine mix-up changed me both at the time and forever. Every time I felt like I was back to myself, I realized later that I hadn’t been back. I’ve come to realize that  some mental abilities are not going to come back.  Multi-tasking, for instance.

No more multi-tasking.  Thus no more horseback riding. I just can’t focus on all the different aspects at once. Also, I don’t have the attention span I once possessed.

I self-published a book of poetry and gave one to my sister, father and aunt. Not one of them ever said a word about it afterwards. The same with the piece I read at my mother’s funeral. No one in the family said a word. Many others at the funeral did speak to me about the piece.

I don’t mean to be whining, just trying to give examples of how and why I don’t feel supported by my family.

Maybe they do understand more than I think, but it doesn’t help if I feel misunderstood. Or maybe, it’s just me being paranoid.

 

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Question of the Day 6-7-2018

Please feel free to answer these questions on your blog or in the responses. If you leave me a link to your post, I will re-post it on my blog. You can also feel free to forward these questions to anybody who might be interested. Thank you to those who have already shared their thoughts.

What does it mean to be brave?

I’ve tackled this before, in different ways, but it seems like a good time to take the issue up again.  If you’d like to read the earlier posts, I’ve linked them below.

What does it mean to be brave? Bravery is an empirical thing, part dream and part hard reality. Does bravery really exist in the world as it is today or is it a relic of the past, a construct of some fantasy world of swords and might and magic?

Conan for instant. Or James Bond and Jason Borne. Frodo Baggins. In fictional worlds, it is easy to define and pin-point bravery. The hero stands for the defenseless villagers against the dragon or the ruffian from the street saves the Princess from danger and ends up, for his bravery, a Prince. Fiction is mostly black and white, freed from the messiness of grey by the harsh editing of a writer toiling through the blackness of the night.

It is harder to be brave today. Not only is everything a mix of black, white and grey, but the issues are more complex in these days of cellphones, Instagram and instant messenger. In World War II, Hitler was the Black, the Allies the White, unless you view the issue from the German side. Or maybe not. I am not German and have no idea what modern-day Germany feels about the past. To the Allies, he was The Black. The old saying is ‘might makes right.’ and the White held the might in this situation.

The definition of bravery is vaguer today than it has ever been, because we know so much more. No matter where we live, we can be up front and present at the smallest injustice anywhere in the world.  Is there a difference between the fighter pilot who goes up against the enemy and the woman who manages to make it out of bed even with depression or chromic pain or any other disorder, disease or phobia so crippling to the most ordinary lives.

The dictionary definition of bravery is:

1 : the quality or state of having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty : the quality or state of being brave : courage

And from Veronica Roth in Allegiant:

“There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater.

But sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life.”

What is bravery to you and what kind of bravery do you have today?

 

Am I Ready To Be Just Another Ordinary Hero?

Heroes and Villains

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Question of the Day 6-6-2018

Please feel free to answer these questions on your blog or in the responses. If you leave me a link to your post, I will re-post it on my blog. You can also feel free to forward these questions to anybody who might be interested. Thank you to those who have already shared their thoughts.

Do you celebrate the things you have?

I like to think I do. There are times when I want something so bad I feel like crying, but I now realize that nothing, material or immaterial, is important enough for that. If there is something I want, it will come if I am meant to have it. If I’m not, then it won’t.

Celebration and gratitude thrive hand-in-hand. I can sit in my living room and be grateful for all that I have – celebrate all that I have – or I can think about the new chair I’d rather have, or the new rug or a new floor. The trick is to know that, yes, I may ‘dream’ about these things happening in my future, but I am not lacking for them now. If they are meant to come, they will. Simple fact. If I am not meant to get that new chair, then I’ll happily live with the one I own now. It may be old and look ratty, but it’s a place to sit, is comfortable and it’s here.