“A what?” he leans towards me, obviously finding it hard to hear over the laughter at his table.
“A painkiller.”
He nods at me and smiles, “Looks good!”
“As advertised.” I look back to his table, there’s about ten of them crammed in there. I can’t quite work them out. “Work function?”
His face relaxes and a genuine smile extends across his face that I can’t help but return. “No actually, more like a social club. We’ve been meeting for maybe two years now.”
“Did you know each other before?” From here they look like they have been friends for ages, talking animatedly sometimes over the top of each other, then interrupting the person talking to grab someone else’s attention.
“No, we were complete strangers, it took some of us a while to warm up, but we’ve clicked.”
“Here you go sir.” The bargirl lines up his drinks. “Let me get you a tray.” It looks like he has bought for at least half the table.
“If you aren’t meeting someone, feel free to join us?”
I narrow my eyes, sorely tempted, but still wary. There were so many kinds of social clubs around. “What kind of social club is it exactly?”
He chuckles, and looks away blushing. “Well, it started because we were all single, looking to just make friends and hang out.”
“Socialising singles?”
“Yeah. We call ourselves ‘The Lonely Crowd.'” He shrugs loading the drinks on to the tray.
I look down at my drink, and back at the table and shrug. “Okay, I could use some more friends.”
She inhaled sharply, assessing the damage. She knew she didn’t have many other options. She had to be quick, people, neighbours would be coming past soon, asking their questions. She gripped the wire coat hanger in her hand and looked around to see if anyone was watching. All clear. She took a deep breath, set her eyes, put one hand slowly on to the gate, and quickly got to work.
She bent the last part of the wire with the pliers, twisting it around itself. It was secure. She had not thought that a fix was possible, or even in her control, but here she was. She had fixed the fence herself. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t perfect, but it was practical, and affordable, and she did it with her own hands. She smiled to herself as she put her tools away. “If I can do this, imagine what else I can do!”
Dear friend I think you would like my creative newsletter, do you want to check it out? love, Me
Dear friend sometimes it feels like I’m invisible because you only initiate contact maybe four times a year. I had hoped I was more special than that? love, Me.
Dear friend I’m too afraid to ask you if you want to chat or call or hang out for coffee because I will get my hopes up or you just won’t answer the question. love, Me.
Dear friend I really need someone to talk to regularly, will you be that person? Love, Me.
Dear friend Will you please bake me a cake and we can sit together and eat it all and watch a movie? love, Me
Dear Whale I really want to see you in person. Could you please time a spectacular jump for when I am gazing out at the ocean? Thank you.
Dear Stranger I need help working through this new area, will you please take me under your wing? Thank you!
Dear Rain I need you but you are making me angry at the moment and your mess is encroaching on my space. I need some alone time then we can go back to rainbows and jumping in puddles together again. Love, Me
Dear Family I love you, I’m flawed. You know this. So please stop pointing out my imperfections, while being surprised that I’m not wonder woman in the space of two minutes. I’m not your saviour. Use Jesus for that. Love, me
Dear Me I love you. I don’t tell you enough. Thanks for being you, I really enjoy it, and I enjoy hanging out with you. We have lots of fun and I’m thankful. Love, Me.
Story: When you make a connection with a girl at a party, but wake up to find that she didn’t write her number on your arm as you’d hoped. All you have left of her memory is a meaningless diagram drawn on your skin in permanent marker. Did she ghost you or does the drawing mean something more?
I’ve been thinking about that window for as long as I can remember. There is a blue wall against my back, an eggshell green wall to my right, and to my left is a mustardy wall with a door. But right across from me is a golden yellow wall, with a window.
At first all I did was glance at it now and again, playing with the small thought about how nice it would be to look out, or to even climb out, but those wonderings never remained. As the years go on, however, the more I find myself looking at it, admiring the colour and the peeling paint. I watch the panes, and the light reflecting through them. Every now and again I even catch myself staring.
I could move my position of course and look at the door, and some days I do. I know what is behind the door, but it breaks up the continuation of walls.
I begin to suspect that this window fascination is going to be a problem, when I begin reading books about windows, and all the beautiful things beyond. I read stories about people gathering up the courage to look out, and eat up everything they learned. I’m in awe of the people, and characters that open the windows and even climb out! Can you believe that?
It seems impossible for me. A nice dream to have. Special people, talented people look out windows. Brave people open them, and the truly heroic leap into the unknown. I was neither special, nor talented, brave, or heroic. It was nice to imagine, to lose myself in the fantasy of maybe.
I would never admit to anyone that I even think about looking out a window, or that I read about them. I’ve seen the looks that people give those people who swear they have seen the light, and cannot do anything but obsess about how to get out there. Every now and then one of them disappears and I wonder what really happened to them.
One day I was feeling a bit sick, or maybe a smidge abnormal, a tad reckless even, and I peeked up and looked out. Just like that. No thought about it or anything. I sat down underneath the sill in shock. What had possessed me to do that? I was overwhelmed with the light, movement and colour! I was very very clearly not cut out for looking out windows!
I put the idea out of my mind for a very long time. Then another day, I found one of those old stories, and I began to doubt my assertation. Perhaps my ego was out of balance that day, but I gripped the window ledge, took some deep breaths and tried again.
Oh it was amazing, and terrifying, exhilarating and overwhelming. My eyes were tired from the colours and movement, and my brain struggled to understand what I was seeing. Everything frightened me! Some days all I did was stare out the window and the things it showed, other days I couldn’t even bring myself to look at it, and this continued for days on end.
One thing was certain, I couldn’t go back. My eyes adjusted, my habits adjusted. And even if I didn’t look at it, or look out it’s panes, I thought about looking, and that was something. I was feeling entirely rebellious and reckless the day just before the new year, and I put my hand on the latch. Surely if other people had opened windows, I could too!?
I was practiced at looking out now, and I was sure I could work out how to open the mechanism. After all I had read books about it, and numerous explanations of how a window was to be opened, it was high time I tried. Who knew when I’d get a moment like this again? Surely I was wasting my life if I didn’t try?
Or was I? What if I tried and I couldn’t do it? What if someone wrote a book about how horrible I was at opening a window? What if I wasn’t strong enough? Was I really brave enough?
I wasn’t sure, so I lay back and stared at the ceiling instead. This continued for many weeks, many months and many years. Many doubts were discussed. Nothing was decided for sure. Should I? or should I not?Could I? Or could I not?
So one day, I tried.
It was hard to breathe but there it was. The window was sitting open, and I had opened it.
My heart was racing.
What could I do now?
Want to join in? The next prompt is
Don’t worry about how good it is, it’s all just good practice!
I’m surprised to say that even doing this for four days is making a difference to me.
In four days of showing up, I’ve learned quite a bit.
I’ve thought about problems in a new way, and solutions have come to problems I couldn’t even conceptualise. I am looking forward to seeing where we will be by the end of this month!
I’m trying to think about what other things I can challenge myself with.
Cleaning? Drinking 2L of water a day? I already know I can read a novel a day for a month. I know I can write 1700 words a day for a month and end up with a 50000 word novel draft. I can draw a picture a day for 30 days. What is next?
Is there something that you need to overcome?
Maybe all you need is a bit of practice?
I know there is a challenge I’m following right now which is all about decluttering and ridding your house of something, one a day for 30 days.
Maybe it’s not for you, but what if you did give a 30 day challenge a try? What if 30 days was all it took to solve that problem for you?
My friends at the Writer’s Hexagon have inspired me to work on my blogging, because as you know, it needs help!
We are talking about finding time to write and routines. I had this thought, well we found 10 mins of interrupted time today to write a prompt together, so surely we could find 10-15 mins to have a quick break and write something every day?
It’s taken me a long time, but right now I feel like I have a good writing routine that works for me. Somehow I’m still stuck on blogging. Really stuck. I want to do it, I like blogs, but my direction is muddling me. Like as soon as I opened this document and titled it “Blogs 2021” the idea that I had for the first blog post, which actually seemed pretty good, completely disappeared from my brain. Did I write it down? Of course not! So here I am now, writing about not knowing what to write about!
Maybe some of you guys might feel that way about writing, or about another project. Being stuck is very unmotivating!
But, my personal challenge for this month is to spend 10-15 mins a day writing a short barely edited blog post to put on my website. I know I didn’t begin at the start of the month, but we all need to start somewhere, and I’m ready to begin, I’m committed. So here I am writing about not knowing how to do this. I guess it is like what many writing sages say, the first part is showing up.
With Nanowrimo I found that the first week was a big effort to get my word count in, and then generally it was a bit easier. I am hoping it is the same for this.
But I’m here, and this is one down out of 25.
And guess what? Halfway through writing this, I remembered what I originally wanted to write about! But you guys will have to wait until tomorrow for that 🙂
Okay challenge, I feel like you are about to change my life.
