From the Inkwell, From the Vein.....

The saying may be true that the grass is always greener on the other side, but with a bit of personal attention, who's to say your own grass couldn't be the greenest in the neighborhood. There will always be something or someone that is.... in your own opinion....better than you or what you have. This OPINION does not have to remain the concrete truth of the universe. Status and popularity are relative. And anything that is relative can most-assuredly be made to be insignificant. The only thing required is a change in mind-set or perspective. If you are happy with who you are and where you are...then why would you allow anyone or anything to change that??? Just because your neighbor has a different/bigger television, does not make it a better television...just a different/bigger television. If the desire to have exactly what your neighbor has is so overwhelming that you stay depressed until you have exactly what he has, then you were never satisfied with your life in the

What's it like being_______? .... fill in the blank any way you like and you'd probably still get the same answer--- "I don't know" At least it's the answer you'd get if the person you'd asked had never known anything different. What's it like being a woman? What's it like being blind? What's it like being rich? If the woman had never been a man, if the blind person had never been sighted and if the one who was rich had never been poor, then they would have no way of explaining exactly what it was like. How can the known be explained in relation to the unknown?? I've often wondered what it's like to be everything that I'm not. Maybe it's my inquisitive mind, or perhaps my multi-personality imagination or my innate writer. Most likely it's the delirious daydreams of someone bored/fed up with their state in life. Whatever the explanation, the end result is the same---- what's it like being_____? Whether the answer I pr

....life, that is. The unknown waiting for you around the corner, the unknown waiting for you the next day....just like a can of tinned food that's lost its label, you never know what you've got until you open the tin. If we knew exactly where our life would lead us, there would be no mystery to life...and definitely no promise. There would be nothing to look forward to, or dream about, because everything would already be known. We would know precisely where we would end up---what's the use of "dreaming" if you already know the ending to the plot??? At least with the future being unknown, there's always a chance of ending up better than you originally planned--- a bit like expecting tinned carrots and finding out you've got a sweet fruit cocktail. But, the reverse is always possible. And the ever-present fear of ending off worse than we imagined can keep us petrified, unable to move forward, unable to open the tin lest we are faced with a pile of m

There you are, you've got a fresh, crisp, lovely apple in your hand. The skin's all bright and smooth and enticing. One sweet bite, rolling around on your tongue, the sugary juices running across your lips. Then suddenly, you turn the apple around and all your pleasure is cut short.... you weren't the first to enjoy this apple. The hole is small, but it is there nonetheless. The producer of the hole has moved on, but it was there nonetheless. Seems that life is full of worm-holes. Every time you've got hold of something good, you find a worm-hole. You can't get your teeth around any part of anything good for fear of finding half a worm still inside the apple. But, to the practiced apple muncher, the occasional worm-hole is nothing to be bothered about. To the practiced apple muncher, it becomes a skill, an art--if you will-- to find the worm intact. We should all be practiced apple munchers....practiced munchers of life----hoping always to find the worm inta

"What goes around comes around..." "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you..." "An eye for an eye..." "You reap what you sow..." The world is filled with more than one adage about the future being a direct result of present actions. Whatever we do now has an impact on whatever is done to us tomorrow. Karma is the ubiquitous catch-all term for all these ideas---- when something happens to someone, who most assuredly "deserved" it....there is no better word to describe it. Though most times it is associated with the bad things that people often do, surely the reverse must be true also. If someone fills their life with only good deeds and only does well for/to others, wouldn't their life be filled with the same happy, good deeds from others in return??? I'd like to think so, in fact, I need to believe so. Otherwise, what's the point in doing anything at all.... "What you do to me is your kar

The absolute hardest thing that a writer has to deal with, aside from endless edits, is the weeks and months of waiting. Query letters, submission responses, competitions.....the total wait time for every piece sent off can potentially add up to years of thumb-twiddling--- oh, the injustice of it all. Of course, this time can so often be filled with the moans of self-pity, doubt, nail-biting, etc. This is even more true if there is no work-in-progress or project to occupy the mind and imagination. I'm in the midst of one of those wait times right now. I have about 3 months of waiting to see if I manage to place in the Writer's Digest Annual Short Story Competition....fingers crossed. :-D In the meantime, I'm trying not to think about the possibility of placing/failing and am trying to fill my time with constructive endeavors. I'm currently working on another short story for a competition in a couple of months. Having a full-time day job helps also take my mind off

The circle of life is a misnomer. There isn't merely one circle of life, but a series of concentric circles all spiraling inward, with the intent of collapsing the universe in on itself....or failing that, with the intent of driving us all mad. The number of times in the past year I can remember uttering the phrase--"Here we go again"-- is staggering. Seems the older I get, the more repetitious the doldrums of life become. And it isn't that I am against routine...quite the contrary. What I am against, however, is the mind-numbing, soul-sucking, time-wasting monotony of stagnation----both physical and mental. It seems every time I stop and look around, I find myself back on the same collapsing spiral. All forward motion only serves to sling-shot me back to the ever-sinking center of the circle. This isn't intended as a depressive missive or even a manic rant....just a statement of fact, an observation of life as I see it... I was never