Oops! Mistaeks Happen

Thought for the day:    Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself. [Groucho Marx]                                 

Hi-ya. Welcome to this month's edition of the Insecure Writer's Support Group meeting... er, virtual meeting, that is. This, the first Wednesday of the month, is the time when writers all over the world post about the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the ins and outs... of writing. We celebrate... we complain... we commiserate. Whatever we need, this is the place to find it. Humble thanks and a jolly tip of the hat go to Alex Cavanaugh, our fearless ninja leader and the originator of this fine group. If you'd like to join (It's FREE!) or would like to read some of the other posts, please go HERE

This month, we're gonna talk about making mistakes. I am the author of my life. Unfortunately, I'm writing in pen, and I can't erase my mistakes. [author unknown]

It's true. I do write in pen, but I don't worry about erasing anything. However, my process involves a lot of scratching out and writing in the margins.

[image: morguefile]

When Smarticus and I were on our way to Alabama to visit our son and his family, an overturned truck on the other side of the highway turned drivers into parkers for miles... and miles... and miles. (And miles!) No telling how long traffic had been stopped, but judging by the number of people mulling around outside their vehicles, it must've been pretty long. When we finally got past the blockage and saw those poor unsuspecting drivers blithely heading for the unexpected misery ahead, I wanted to yell, Go baaaack!

Not that they could've heard me, poor things.

Evi-doggone-dently, some writers feel the same about writing: If you have any young friends who aspire to be writers, the second best favor your can do them is to present them with copies of 'The Elements of Style.' The greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy. [Dorothy Parker]

That's a bit extreme, but she does have a point. Without a doubt, there's plenty of joy to be found in writing, but there are a heckuva lot of unexpected traffic jams, too. The competition to carve out a comfortable spot in the writing world is fierce. It seems like bazillions of writers are scrambling to find an agent and/or publisher, and even more bazillions are self-publishing thousands and thousands of books every day. Sometimes it feels like all the other writers are flying down the superhighway in the other direction at a hundred and ten, while I'm still stuck behind an overturned truck. In all of those miles and miles and miles (And miles!) of aspiring writers stuck on the highway with me... how's a gal to get ahead? I don't want anyone to shoot me, but maybe it would be smart to simply... take the next available exit, sit back, and enjoy a nice strawberry shake. Or at the very least, take a detour. I'm getting too old for this crap.

Nah! A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. [George Bernard Shaw]

Man, I must have honor and usefulness out the wazoo, because I'm a whiz kid when it comes to making mistakes. But like Albert Einstein said, Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

 As you might have guessed, in a roundabout way, this month's question is about mistakes. It is: What pitfalls would you warn other writers to avoid on their publication journey?

For me personally, my biggest mistake was putting off writing for so many years. I let the busyness of life, the child-raising, all the myriad volunteer activities and club memberships, etc. stand in the way.  I always figured I'd get serious about writing... later... and now, boyohboy, it's later, all right. So my advise would be to just do it, already! Don't fall into the trap of thinking you've got plenty of time. This isn't a dress rehearsal, and as far as we know, this is the only life we have, so if you truly want to write... write, doggone it!

You can't wait for inspiration to strike. You have to go after it with a club. [Jack London]

Other pitfalls, which fall into a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do category:

• Don't worry about making your first draft perfect. Just get the words down, and worry about editing it later. (I could write OH so much faster if I could make myself follow this.)
• Once your baby is published, don't obsess over sales and reviews. Let it toddle off into the world on its own... and get to work writing something else. (Not that I, ahem, check them every day... or twice a day... or anything like that...)
• Don't take it personally when someone doesn't like something you've written. (As Megan Fox so eloquently put it, Hold your head high and your middle finger higher.) Just kidding. But face it: not everyone will like your book, because there's no accounting for taste. Heck, some people don't like steak or lobster...
• If writing is your dream, never give it up. Philip Roth said, The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress. That could be, but don't let that happen to you. If you love what you're writing, keep on writing! The going may be rough at times, but it's well worth it to finally cross the finish line. 

Don't carry your mistakes around with you. Instead, place them under your feet and use them as stepping stones to rise above them. [author unknown]

Works for me! My stepping stones are currently stacked so high, they look like a Stairway to Heaven...

                      Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

What's Your Hurry?

Thought for the day:  Calvin: Today for show and tell, I've brought a tiny miracle of nature: a single snowflake! I think we might all learn a lesson from how this utterly unique and exquisite crystal turns into an ordinary, boring molecule of water just like every other one when you bring it into the classroom. And now, while the analogy sinks in, I will be leaving you drips and going outside. [Bill Watterman]

I think maybe one of the reasons so many people loved the cartoon Calvin and Hobbes so much is the unique and hilarious way Calvin's mind worked. His antics made us laugh, but there was always a grain of truth in his little-boy philosophies.

Like when he compared himself to a snowflake. Works for me. We are all unique in some way, but one other thing we all share with snowflakes is in the end, we all eventually melt. Our finite lifespan isn't cause for despair, though. On the contrary. I see it as all the more reason to squeeze as much meaning out of each day as we can.

The following post originally appeared in April, 2011 as Dashing Through Life. Here it is again, with some gentle editing. I hope y'all enjoy it. (Yes, I'm still editing and rewriting... and may be for a looooong long time. I wish editing a book took as much time as editing a blog post...)

******************

Thought for the day:  I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back.  Maya Angelou

It'd be a lot easier if life were laid out like a marked highway, wouldn't it? All we'd have to do is keep our eye on that center line and follow the road straight to our final destination. No guesswork involved. No tough decisions. Why, there'd even be signs to warn us of the bumpy patches ahead, and of the dips we're likely to encounter.





And just think! If we doze off and start to wander off-track, by golly, there'd be signs to tell us:


Just think how many divorces could have been avoided!

But, in truth, life would be rather boring if it were all laid out for us. Where's the spirit of adventure in that? Even though I'm directionally challenged, I love exploring those little dirt roads in life.

Years ago, my husband and I spent several unforgettable getaway weekends at a mountain cabin with some very dear friends. Like me, Smarticus also likes to venture off the beaten path. Thankfully, he has an uncanny sense of direction to go with it, so as long as I stick with him, I'll always find my way home again. Our friends, on the other hand, preferred the safety of the paved road and the well-worn path. One day, while the four of us were tromping along a trail through the woods, I heard the distant sound of water. Natch, I got all excited and took off through the woods. And natch, so did my husband. Our friends stayed glued to the marked trail at first, but quickly decided it was scarier to stay behind than it'd be to follow us. We encountered a multitude of large trees, downed and tangled, so we climbed over them. Ran into brambles galore, but we kept going. But as we climbed through and over the obstacles, the sound of water got louder and louder, until we finally emerged into a sun-lit clearing. It was worth every single scratch and bug bite we'd endured and every bead of sweat we'd perspired. For there we were, beside a small, secluded waterfall.

And we would've missed that beautiful moment if we hadn't been willing to take the scenic path. The detour. It's wonderful to have a clear destination in mind, but the trip is so much more enjoyable if we learn to enjoy the scenery along the way. Children insist on becoming adults, and you'll only have one shot at enjoying their childhoods. Our parents grow old and die, and then there's no time left to chat with them on the phone or to stop in for a visit. Our friends pass away, or move away, or simply leave our lives. Shouldn't we enjoy them while we can? I originally planned on calling my blog Never2Late. That very much reflects my optimistic viewpoint of life, but the unpleasant truth is ... sometimes, it IS too late.



Sorry! I've gotta dash!

Hurry, hurry, hurry. No time to stop and chat. No time to listen to the response after you ask someone how they're doing. Gotta dash, gotta dash.

I want to leave you with another thought about our mad dash through life.

The Dash is an inspirational poem that was written in 1996 by Linda Ellis, and her words have inspired millions of people all over the world. She writes about that little line, that simple dash on a tombstone that represents the real story of a lifetme, that defines who we are beyond a simple beginning and end date, and touches, simply and succinctly, on what's truly important in life. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

How about you? Are you strictly goal-oriented, or do you enjoy life's surprising detours? Whichever category you fall into, I hope you'll always try to carpe  the hell out of each diem. Let's enjoy our dash, shall we?

                              Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

Follow Your Internal Compass

Thought for the day:  Plagiarism: the unoriginal sin  [Roy Peter Clark]

This picture from seniorarkhas absolutely nothing to do with today's post. I just thought it was funny.

This post has nothing to do with plagiarism, either. I mean, I can't copy from myself, right? Which is to say... today's post is a somewhat edited rerun. Another oldie but goodie you may have missed the first time around, when it ran in September of 2011 as Trust Yourself; You Know the Way.

I hope you enjoy it.



*********************

Thought for the day:  Going in the wrong direction beats sitting still on the tarmac.

Did you hear about the student pilot who got hopelessly lost on his first solo flight? When the air traffic controller tried to help him out by asking for his last known position, the poor guy said, "When I was taxiing for take-off, sir."

Ever feel like that? Like you aren't sure where you are, how you got there, where you're supposed to be going, or how you're supposed to get there?

High school and college graduation speeches are always filled with optimism and confidence about conquering the future, aren't they? The world is our oyster. Only problem is, nobody provides us with a darned oyster knife. We each have to figure it out for ourselves.

When we graduate into adulthood, we have to stop taxiing. It becomes time to file our flight plans, and for better or worse, take to the skies. Few of us followed the flight plan we expected for our life, or landed exactly where we expected to be when we proudly walked across the stage to accept our diplomas. That doesn't mean we took the wrong path. Sometimes our internal compasses lead us in a different direction, and what do you know? It turns out to be exactly the one we were meant to take all along.

                                           It's time for a little story.

Douglas Corrigan was one of the airplane mechanics who built Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, and after Lindbergh's successful flight cross the Atlantic in 1927, it became Corrigan's dream to follow suit. Being of Irish descent, he desperately wanted to fly non-stop to Dublin.

So he got his pilot's license and bought Sunshine, a second-hand single-engine 1929 Curtiss Robin, and applied for permission to make the flight.

Wouldn't ya know it? The dastardly FAA denied his flight plan. Said his plane was too old, and unfit. So he worked on his plane some more, and filed another and another and another NY-to-Ireland flight plan. All denied.

But his plane WAS approved for transcontinental flight, so in 1938, Corrigan flew from California to New York. There, he filed a flight plan to return to California.

Because of heavy fog covering New York that fateful day, Corrigan was directed to fly east  . . . just until he rose above the fog . . . and then turn back toward the west.

Only he, um,  never did. He kept going... east. Claimed his compass wasn't working properly, and he didn't even know where he was when he landed . . .  in (ahem) Dublin.

For this, he earned the nickname Wrong Way Corrigan. As it turned out, the FAA had a point about his airplane being a crate. Sunshine developed a gas leak on the California to New York flight, and when he was over the Atlantic, so much gasoline was leaking into the cockpit, Corrigan had to punch a hole in the floor. It took him 28 hours and 13 minutes to complete the flight to Ireland, and by the time he landed, he was a celebrated hero on both sides of the ocean.

Needless to say, the bureaucrats at the FAA were furious, but how could they throw the book at America's hero? Corrigan was slapped with a perfunctory 14-day license suspension, which was already completed by the time he arrived (by ship) back in the U.S.

And know what? New York City gave him a bigger parade than they'd given Lindbergh in 1927.

Until the day he died in 1995, Corrigan maintained that his navigational error was purely unintentional. I'll let you be the judge of that. But in that one flight, he broke the law, charmed the Irish, became an American hero, and earned an unforgettable nickname: Wrong Way Corrigan.


So, what's the moral of the story?

Others may try to dictate your flight plan through life, but you're the one in the pilot's seat. Only you can decide where you're going and how you're gonna get there. Trust your internal compass.

Remember where you came from, and which end goes up, and you'll never get lost.

                                  Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.
           
 [Photos of Corrigan courtesy of National Archives. The duck's adorable dupa is from morguefile]                                          

Pole Dance, Anyone?

Thought for the day:  You can learn a lot about a person by the way he handles an unexpected detour.

Now that we're back home from our road trip and settled in again, I reckon it's time to come up with a regular post, huh? I must confess, to make sure I got them done, I wrote the Veterans Day post and LST 325  posts weeks ago, so this is the first gotta come up with somethin' post in quite some time.

As luck has it, a couple of you already provided me with what I need to get my blogging engine started again.

The lovely Marcy of Maine Words kindly shared the Versatile Blogger award with me shortly before my hubby and I took off for Florida.

As a recipient of this award, I'm supposed to reveal seven random tidbits of information about myself, and then pass the award to seven other bloggers I admire. Not sure if I can dig up seven things of interest about myself ... OR limit myself to only seven bloggers I admire ... but I'll give it a shot. Thanks, Marcy.

Also, the lovely Julie of What Else is Possible? shared another thingie with me that's going around the blogosphere.

 It isn't exactly an award; it's more of a nudge to get bloggers to reveal themselves. Wait a sec. Maybe that wasn't the best way to explain it. Not reveal as in rip off clothing, wiggle one's derriere, and slither around a pole, but reveal as in tell a little something about oneself. Actually, ten somethings. So, I'm gonna take the liberty of combining this with the Versatile Blogger award, and tell you a total of ten deep dark secrets, and call it a day. (And sorry ... they're neither deep nor dark.)

• Since the thought for the day is about unexpected detours, I'll start with that. Being a directionally challenged person, and the daughter of parents who were even more talented than I at getting lost, we always stuck our tongues firmly in cheeks and referred to the experience as taking the scenic route. And, to tell the truth, as long as said detours don't make me late for a commitment, I actually like 'em. They've led to some pretty interesting sights, and to some pretty interesting people. Besides, who's to say? Our true destinies may lie in the detours. 
• I don't give a diddle about diamonds and gold. I prefer wood and leather.
• I always work the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle in ink. (Erasable, of course.)
• When I was eleven years old, I inherited two glass powder boxes that had been sitting on my maternal grandmother's dressing table for a bazillion years ... a clear one with an elephant lid, and an amber one with a deer on the lid. Years later, my son accidentally broke one. Fast forward another twenty years or so, and Eureka! Doggone if I didn't spot the broken deer's duplicate at an antique store. (And immediately started crying.) Thankfully, the shop owner didn't take advantage of the tearful situation, and charged a fair price, because there was no way I was leaving that store without it. After that, my hubby, mother, mother-in-law, and a couple aunts turned me into a powder box collector. Now, thanks to their loving generosity, I have quite a few of them, and some are quite beautiful and unique. But (shhhh) I'll tell you a secret: I would've been perfectly happy with the two. They're the ones sitting on the top shelf in the picture below.

• I love playing most board games, with the exception of Monopoly. Loathe that game! As luck(?) would have it, whenever our family plays that vile game, I'm always the first one eliminated. (Oh, darn! Breaks my heart!) Then I sit back with a cup of tea, and read the newspaper, which is exactly what I wanted to do in the first place.
•  What can I say? I like to win. So I tend to be a tad too competitive, especially when playing trivia, word games, or cards. In particular, I used to be a cut-throat Pinochle player. My husband, on the other hand, never even played Pinochle until after we got married, and never gave a good diddle about it, or any other game. Still doesn't. Which is a good thing, because his nonchalant attitude tempered my card-counting bloodthirsty ways. (It's just a game, Susan; it's just a game.)
• Most of the things I consider treasures have little or no monetary value. Like this tiny teacup in the picture below. I found it in my father's house after he died, and it's the last piece from the set of dishes I owned when I was four or five years old.

• My parents had a pool table in their basement, so I started playing while I was still in elementary school. Being rather competitive even then, I got to be pretty darned good. Could even do a trick shot or two. On my first evening at college, a couple hometown boys, who were big bad jocks in high school, invited my roommate and me to go to the student union with them. Seems they wanted to teach us non-jock nerdy girls how to shoot pool. (heh, heh) Alas, let's just say the evening did not go well for them and their poor widdle egos. (In retrospect, we might've let 'em win a game or two if they hadn't been so bloody condescending.)
• When I was young, I loved the Clifton Webb movie Cheaper By the Dozen.  So much so, I wanted to have at least a dozen children of my own someday. Didn't work out that way, but whattaya know? Life blessed me with a dozen grandchildren, and that's even better!
• I still have several dolls. In the middle of the picture below  is ALF, the one and only doll I ever bought for myself. (I LOVED that show  ... and his big feet.) On the left is the angel Ruth doll my wonderful sister-in-law made for me after my mother died, and on the right is another doll named Ruthie. My mother made her, and we laughed like idiots when she gave her to me. (Ugliest doll I ever saw, and I love her to pieces.)

There, is that ten already? That wasn't so bad. Now the harder part. Handing the challenge off to seven other bloggers. Not that I don't admire seven of you guys and gals. Au contraire, mes amies. I admire ALL of you. The difficult part is finding seven of you willing to (ahem) reveal yourselves. (I mean, after all, not everyone wants to wiggle and slither around that pole, or is willing to bare one's soul.)

Ah, what the heck? I'll name seven of you, and if you want to run with it, YAY! If you're too chicken to do a pole dance you'd rather pass, that's okay. Maybe you'll give it a go next time. After a few adult beverages.

• Laura at Austanspace
• L.G. Smith at Bards and Prophets
• Carrie Boo at Carrie on Carrying On
• Julie at Empty Nest Insider
• Murr at Murrmurrs
• Anne at Piedmont Writer
• Mr. Charleston at Termites of Sin

The voyeur in me would really enjoy seeing those folks do a little soul-baring, because I'd like to know more about them, but even if they don't, check out their blogs, okay? 

In the meantime, I already showed you mine. Time to reciprocate. How about revealing a tidbit about yourself in the comments? Doesn't have to be ten ... or even seven ogles. Just one little itty bitty peek ...

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

[Oh yeah, almost forgot. The cute Road Trip picture at the top of the page comes to us courtesy of the cool folks at icanhascheezburger.com]

Trust Yourself; You Know the Way

Thought for the day:  Going in the wrong direction beats sitting still on the tarmac.

Did you hear about the student pilot who got hopelessly lost on his first solo flight? When the air traffic controller asked for his last known position, the poor guy said, "When I was taxiing for take-off, sir."

Ever feel like that? Like you aren't sure where you are, how you got there, where you're supposed to be going, or how you're supposed to get there?

High school and college graduation speeches are always filled with optimism and confidence about conquering the future, aren't they? The world is our oyster. Only problem is, nobody provides us with a darned oyster knife. We each have to figure it out for ourselves.

When we graduate into adulthood, we have to stop taxiing, file our flight plans, and for better or worse, take to the skies. Few of us followed the flight plan we expected for our life, or landed exactly where we expected to be when we proudly walked across the stage to accept our diplomas. That doesn't mean we took the wrong path. Sometimes our internal compasses lead us in a different direction, and what do you know? It turns out to be exactly the one we were meant to take all along.

It's time for a little story.

Douglas Corrigan was one of the airplane mechanics who built Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, and after Lindbergh's successful flight cross the Atlantic in 1927, it became Corrigan's dream to follow suit. Being of Irish descent, he desperately wanted to fly non-stop to Dublin.

So, he got his pilot's license and bought Sunshine, a second-hand single-engine 1929 Curtiss Robin, and applied for permission to make the flight.

The FAA denied his flight plan. Said his plane was too old, and unfit. So, he worked on his plane some more, and filed another and another and another NY-to-Ireland flight plan. All denied.

But his plane WAS approved for transcontinental flight, so in 1938, Corrigan flew from California to New York. There, he filed a flight plan to return to California.

Because of heavy fog covering New York that fateful day, Corrigan was directed to fly east  . . . just until he rose above the fog . . . and then turn back toward the west.

Only he never did. He kept going east. Claimed his compass wasn't working properly, and he didn't even know where he was when he landed . . .  in (ahem) Dublin.

For this, he earned the nickname Wrong Way Corrigan. As it turned out, the FAA had a point about his airplane being a crate. Sunshine developed a gas leak on the California to New York flight, and when he was over the Atlantic, so much gasoline was leaking into the cockpit, Corrigan had to punch a hole in the floor. It took him 28 hours and 13 minutes to complete the flight to Ireland, and by the time he landed, he was a celebrated hero on both sides of the ocean.

Needless to say, the bureaucrats at the FAA were furious, but how could they throw the book at America's hero? Corrigan was slapped with a perfunctory 14-day license suspension, which was already completed by the time he arrived (by ship) back in the U.S.

And know what? New York City gave him a bigger parade than they'd given Lindbergh in 1927.

Until the day he died in 1995, Corrigan maintained that his navigational error was unintentional. I'll let you be the judge of that. But in that one flight, he broke the law, charmed the Irish, became an American hero, and earned an unforgettable nickname: Wrong Way Corrigan.



So, what's the moral of the story?

Others may try to dictate your flight plan through life, but you're the one in the pilot's seat. Only you can decide where you're going and how you're gonna get there. Trust your internal compass.

Remember where you came from, and which end goes up, and you'll never get lost.

                                  Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.
                                                             

A Convoluted Path

Thought for the day:  If  you come to a fork in the road, take it.  (Yogi Berra)

WHICH WAY??? 

I'm directionally challenged. Anyone who knows me well knows this. In fact, this particular shortcoming provided my husband with a good deal of cheap entertainment before we were married. In the 60s, gasoline was dirt cheap. I'm talking a quarter a gallon or less. (PLUS an attendant pumped it for you, checked your oil and tires, washed your windshield, gave you savings stamps, AND a free gift if you spent over two bucks!) Anyway, since the price of driving was so low, cruising was a fun and inexpensive way to spend an evening, and we did it often. We'd drive around in his '61 Impala,  talk, listen to the radio, and usually ended the evening by meeting friends at our favorite drive-in eatery, which also happened to be a prime spot for pop-up challenges and impromptu drag races. (Natch, we were purely spectators.)

Once in a while, we'd be tooling along, yammering, listening to the radio, with no particular destination in mind,  (at least, not in MY mind) and he'd suddenly turn to me, grin, and say, "Show me how to get back home."

Say, WHAT? Half the time, I didn't even know where we WERE, let alone how to get home from there, but I tried. Even succeeded most of the time. Of course, there were times he'd get weary of the whole game and say, "Are you SURE you want to go that way?" or, "I DO have to go back to work on Monday."

Going in circles isn't the problem. It's knowing when to exit.

The point is, even though I made a LOT of wrong turns, we eventually made it home again. So, maybe Yogi Berra was right when he said, "If you come to a fork in the road, take it." Maybe the precise route we take isn't nearly as important as we make it out to be. After all, there's more than one way to get from point A to point B. So what if our path is so round-about it resembles the ones taken by the kids in "Family Circus"? Or if we get side-tracked on a detour and take twice as long to get to our destination as we'd planned? So what if our sons and daughters quit college to do their own thing? Their paths to adulthood may not be the direct straight line paths we would've preferred, but as long as they make a success of the trip, isn't that all that matters?

 So what if I waited so many years before getting serious about writing? I'm here now.

If there were a cosmic information booth, I probably still would've chosen to wing it, rather than ask for directions to my predetermined destination. There's something empowering about picking our path when we come to those forks in the road, isn't there? One decision leads to another leads to another, and eventually our decisions bring us to the place we're supposed to be. Even if we make a wrong decision, it's never too late to change course. We may go the wrong way around the beltway, but baby, we're here now ... older, and hopefully wiser, for having taken the trip.

One of the longest side trips I took on the way to where I am today involved amateur radio. Getting a radio license had never been a part of my original plans,  so little did I know that once I did, my life would take so many other unexpected twists and turns. In a bizarre cause-and-effect path that indirectly started with my love of trivia and resulted in four terms as the Section Manager for my state, it was an exciting trip, and one I'll never regret taking. Next time, I'll tell you how following the path of amateur radio led me to such an amazing place, the President of the United States thanked ME.

So, how about you? Are you one of those fortunate people, like my husband, who set your guideposts early in life, and followed a fairly direct route to where you are today? Did you always have a love of writing, or of some other pursuit, and followed that clearly marked path as long as you can remember, with grit and determination? Or have you taken a lot of side trips and detours along the way?  (If you have, I hope you enjoyed them as much as I've enjoyed mine.)

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

Dashing Through Life

Thought for the day:  I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back.  Maya Angelou

It'd be a lot easier if life were laid out like a marked highway, wouldn't it? All we'd have to do is keep our eye on that center line and follow the road straight to our final destination. No guesswork involved. No tough decisions. Why, there'd even be signs to warn us of the bumpy patches ahead, and of the "dips" we're likely to encounter.





And just think! If we doze off and start to wander off-track, by golly, there'd be signs to tell us:


Just think how many divorces could have been avoided!



But, in truth, life would be rather boring if it were all laid out for us. Where's the spirit of adventure in that? Even though I'm directionally challenged, I love exploring those little dirt roads in life.

My husband and I spent several unforgettable weekends at a mountain cabin with another couple. Wonderful people. Like me, my husband also likes to venture off the beaten path, and thankfully, he has an uncanny sense of direction to go with it, so as long as I stick with him, I'll always find my way home again. The other couple, on the other hand, preferred the safety of the paved road, and the well-worn path. The four of us were tromping on a trail through the woods one day, when I heard the distant sound of water. Natch, I got all excited and took off through the woods. And natch, so did my husband. Our friends stayed glued to the marked trail at first, but quickly decided it was scarier to stay behind than it'd be to follow us. We encountered a multitude of large trees, downed and tangled, so we climbed over them. Ran into brambles galore, but we kept going. But as we climbed through and over the obstacles, the sound of water got louder and louder, until we finally emerged into a sun-lit clearing. It was worth every single scratch and bug bite we'd endured, and every bead of sweat we'd perspired. For there we were, beside a small, secluded waterfall.

And we would've missed that beautiful moment if we hadn't been willing to take the scenic path. The detour. It's wonderful to have a clear destination in mind, but the trip is so much more enjoyable if we learn to enjoy the scenery along the way. Children insist on becoming adults, and you'll only have one shot at enjoying their childhoods. Our parents grow old and die, and then there's no time left to chat with them on the phone, or to stop in for a visit. Our friends pass away, or move away, or simply leave our lives. Shouldn't we enjoy them while we can? I originally planned on calling my blog "Never2Late."  That very much reflects my optimistic viewpoint of life, but the unpleasant truth is ... sometimes, it IS too late.



Sorry! I've gotta dash!

 Hurry, hurry, hurry. No time to stop and chat. No time to listen to the response after you ask someone how they're doing. Gotta dash, gotta dash.

I want to leave you with another thought about our mad dash through life.

The Dash is an inspirational poem that starts:

I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone from the beginning to the end.
He noted that first came the date of her birth
And spoke of the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years.

This poem was written in 1996 by Linda Ellis, and her words have inspired millions of people all over the world. She writes about that little line, that simple "dash" on a tombstone that represents the real story of a lifetme, that defines who we are beyond a simple beginning and end date, and touches, simply and succinctly, on what's truly important in life. Here's  the entire poem   I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

How about you? Are you strictly goal-oriented, or do you enjoy life's surprising detours?

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other. What can I say? I gotta dash!

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