Tag Archives: The Courier Sentinel

Repurpose Your Life!

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Something About Nothing printed in the Albert Lea Tribune the week of April 13yellow chair PURPOSE

I have a case of the “I can do that’s.” My husband always tells me to concentrate on one thing and one thing only. These days he means my writing. I know he is right but my brain always has a case of the “I can do that.”

We now live in a world where it is fashionable to reuse and repurpose old things. It is popular to take pieces of one thing and put it together with pieces of something else to make something new. Having the scattered and creative brain that I do my mind cannot function well on concentrating on just one thing for my creativity. I find myself engrossed in writing a story and all of a sudden I see or hear something and an idea pops into my head. It is stuck there in a vision.

I take my vision to the sensible person in my household and he doesn’t see it. Now there are occasions where I can create my vision myself such as the wall I am working on in my writing room. I am papering it with old book pages. What better inspiration for a writer? But then, there are the projects that I cannot do by myself because I do not have the skills. I can see a bench seat made out of my old radiator cover. I see color and beauty in old dilapidated chairs and dressers. I see wall art made with old computer pieces. My heart beats fast and juices flow at the thought of old made new.

I felt very alone in these ideas until recently when a friend changed the venue of her store and another friend retired from her job. All of a sudden I have other people that get it. The store sells old and unique furniture. It is called Second Chances and it is all of that. The store has been in my community for years but recently the store has changed focus, and it values all that has been and all that the pieces could be.

Because of these new people in my life, the more conservative person is actually seeing my vision from time to time, such as when he helped me haul home an old tin kitchen cabinet that needs some indenting and some scouring and painting. I think the “aha” moment came for this conservative person when he realized there were more like me.

I bought a bed from my friend’s store. They delivered it. We asked if they wanted to take our old downstairs vanity and lights. I had dreams of taking that cabinet, putting a new top on it and finishing it off with one of those cute sinks that sits on top of the cabinet, making a new vanity for my upstairs bathroom. The vision didn’t seem to be there for my better half. As the vanity was being taken to the truck one of the women turned to me and said, “It’s not that we don’t want this, but why don’t you paint it, put a new top on it and one of those cool sinks on top of it for a vanity for you?” Can you see my smile as I describe the moment?

My retired friend has an eye for taking unusual pieces and making them into a beautiful piece of furniture that is unique. I love scouring the countryside with her to see what she is going to pick up next. She repurposes things that the rest of us would throw in the trash.

I do have another little piece of furniture that I have tucked away out of sight until I can create my magic. I actually dug it out of a dumpster. It is an old music cabinet that is sturdy but badly in need of a redo. The bones are good. Yes, people who love to make new out of old, do dumpsters.

One of my favorite things to do when I have writer’s block is to paint, either a crazy wall piece or a chair. My grandchildren request specially painted chairs for their rooms. When their tastes change they ask for a new custom chair painted with whatever their new passion is

I have never felt totally at home in a perfectly decorated tasteful home. I like to visit those perfect places such as bed and breakfasts, but my taste is a jumble and right now being jumbled is in. Things don’t have to match, and different patterns and colors are thrown together and somehow they work.

We feel guilty if our lives are a jumbled mess. Isn’t that what living is all about? We tumble through life, picking up pieces new and old, putting them together to go forward to the future. We carry the old parts of us forward in life, mix it up and it makes us who we are today.

I accept that I am jumbled, that my creativity gets in the way of doing one thing at a time. It is when I fight accepting that I cannot be the one-thing-at-a-time person that my life becomes weighted down with expectations of myself that I can’t fulfill and I get frustrated. I suspect it is the same for my Mr. Conservative.  He is the one-thing-at-a-time person. We work hard to meld the two together for a working relationship.

However you tumble and jumble, however you mix and match, reuse and repurpose whatever it is in your past and mix it with the new from the future. It will be uniquely you.

 

Am I Lost?

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am i lost1There are days when I can’t find myself. In my new book Something About Nothing, I shared one of my columns that I wrote on a lost day. I would like to share it with you to give you a little preview of the snippets of life, my life and how it might relate to yours, that I share in the book. Here it is. If you like it click on the picture of the book to find it on Amazon.

AM I LOST?

 

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” A friend sent me a card a few years ago with those words on the front. The card sits in my office where I can see it every day to give me inspiration.

Did I lose myself? Have you looked for yourself lately? A self-help guru who I listened to recently said to ask yourself these questions: Who are you? Where have you been? Where are you going?

I decided I needed to look for myself and find out if I was lost. How do I start? First, I looked to my childhood friend for answers. She asked me two questions. Do you still play with Barbie dolls? Do we still talk about our dreams with imagination? Of course, I don’t play with Barbie dolls! As far as conversation, we have our husbands, our children, our grandchildren, and our jobs to talk about now. Why would we talk about our dreams?

I called a friend of a little shorter duration. I have only known this friend for twenty-three years. I asked her, “Am I lost?” She asked me two questions: Do you dress like a clown when you entertain nursing home residents? Do we still laugh and dream about our lives after kids? Such silly questions. I have no idea where my clown costume is and we don’t have time to dream. Our work, our children, our grandchildren, and our aches and pains are all the conversation for which we have time. We are old. Dreams?

Next stop was the hubby. Am I lost? He didn’t get this question. I was standing right in front of him, although he did mention something about being more spontaneous many, many years ago before raising children. Who has time for spontaneity? There are bills to pay, children to visit, and then there is just plain tired at the end of the day.

I asked my daughter if I was lost. She asked me one question. “Where is the quilt that you were making for me for my high school graduation seven years ago? (Shh! Remember no one knows that I used to sew!)

Maybe I was lost. Maybe I am still lost. But maybe it is like the card: “Life is about creating yourself.” Who is the me I will create today?

Something About Nothing

 

There is Always Something Underneath the Nothing

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Something About NothingSomething About Nothing Column published in the Albert Lea Tribune
and The Courier Sentinel the week of April 6, 2015

Ray Bradbury said “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” Ray Bradbury, who died in 2012 at the age of 91, inspired people to dream, to create and to think.

Reading that quote brought to mind some of the reasons I started writing, especially this column. I was tired of the reality of the information I read in the newspapers each day. I was tired of the bad news that played time and time again on the radio. We needed something light and funny to lift us out of the sadness of reality.

The same could be said for my books in the Cozy Mystery, Fuchsia, Minn., series. I wanted to take my readers out of reality for a few moments in their lives and make them laugh, be silly and breathe in a stress-free world.

I am not a stranger to stress or depression. If I am not careful and wallow in the realities of the world, they grab a hold of me and beat me down. Writing takes me away and gives me breath to go back and deal with whatever reality is happening in my real life.

I write, not only to stay drunk on writing so reality does not destroy me like Ray Bradbury suggests, but also to reach out to others, to share my life and hope that something will connect and help someone else. I do that with humor, silliness and at times ranting and raving or sharing my heart because of something that has moved me deeply.

I have been writing this column since 2006. I have been asked to share my columns and so I have put together a book of my first columns and titled it “Something About Nothing, Volume 1.” It is snippets of my life, of silliness and whatever else you might want to call it. There will be more to follow over the next year.

Each week when I ponder the subject for my column I consider it a gift if it comes easily. I find if I am not out and about in the communities visiting with my family, friends and readers, the subject for my writing becomes smaller and more closed. Writing my Granny books is easy because I can make it up as I go and it can be farfetched and over the top. This column needs to be inspired by real life people and real life experiences. That means at times I have to leave my comfort zone and get out in the world and experience new things.

Spring is here. It is very easy for our world to become smaller during the winter.  Living in a small community occasionally can cause our world to stay smaller because we want everything to stay the same. We don’t want anything to change or feel we are too old to learn anything new. Possibly it is the fear of what the change will bring or the fear of failure if we don’t succeed when we try and learn something new.  And so, as we age our world gets smaller. We spend more time alone and more time with the television and the radio. We hear the bad news of the world, the bad news about aging and our conversations become more about our health, the weather, and the same old — same old.

This column was started when I realized that the greeting we give every day to each other on the streets are not listened to. The answers are always the same, “I’m fine.”  Or the greeting is the same, “Beautiful day.” Or “Cold out today.” We don’t take the time to see the people and listen to what is really going on under the nothings of our conversation.

There is always something there. Under that nothing might be, “I’m lonely.” “No, I’m not fine, my sister just died.” We don’t take the time to read between the lines or look someone in the face to see if they are really fine.

Do you know someone that is always making jokes and never has a serious sentence or is very defensive and abrasive? That is the nothing. Underneath that nothing there is a reason for the behavior. What is under the nothings that you speak that you hide from the world?

A few years ago I hid the fact that after an illness I was having a terrible time with depression and anxiety. Those closest to me knew, but I wrote this column, or should I say, I struggled with writing this column, trying to hide my something underneath the nothing. It was only when I shared what I was going through and others reached out to me that my healing began.

This spring, go out into the world and look for the somethings underneath the nothings. You will be renewed. You might make some new friends. I will stay drunk on writing to escape reality. Find your frivolous way of bringing joy to your life and escaping reality for a little while. As the flowers peek through from their hiding place this spring, look to see what can sprout anew in your life.

If you want to read my new book, “Something About Nothing,” it can be found locally at Book World in Albert Lea and also The Interchange in Albert Lea. It is also available at Courier Sentinel Offices in Kiester and Wells, along with the Quilter’s Cottage in Bricelyn. Also it is available as a Kindle download from Amazon and paperback at Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com and other independent bookstores.

Recently I had a bad review on one of my books, but I happen to think the bad review is one of the best reviews I have received. They said I had scrambled eggs for brains and I wrote like Dr. Seuss. I leave you with a quote from my mentor, Dr. Seuss.

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” — Dr. Seuss