avsongbird vlog #28- a long weekend

Inspiration- a drabble by avsongbird

                You never know when inspiration will hit you, or where it will come from. It just hits you, like lightning. And it catches your soul on fire.

               I’ve always considered myself a kind of lightning rod. I never really understood why. Was it my imagination, my open mind, my sensitive and caring nature?

               All I know is, that lightning struck me for the first time when I was young, and it’s found me ever since.

               It strikes me anywhere, at any time it pleases.

It sends me searching for napkins in restaurants, begging for pens….

               It has me tearing out of bed, nearly falling on my face before I find myself running to my computer….

               It wakes me in the night from my deepest of dreams, brings me back from the innermost reaches of my mind.

               It terrifies me… invigorates me… it excites me.

               It makes my blood hum in my veins and makes my nerves tingle.

               It makes every inch of me come alive as I feel the inspiration burning in my skin.
               It makes me feel more alive than I've ever felt.

               It’s a scary feeling sometimes—wild, uncontrollable—but it’s exciting just the same.

               And I’d never have it any other way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWoMd371PfE

Going back- a drabble from my blog by avsongbird

now that I think about it… where IS my pen- drabble from my blog read audiobook style on my youtube channel

Ah the joys of laughing at yourself- read audiobook style on my youtube page

Hello world- a drabble by avsongbird

I got into a lengthy discussion with one of my readers today- free write read audiobook style by avsongbird

I got into a lengthy discussion with one of my readers today.

               I got into a lengthy discussion with one of my readers today.

               He asked me how it felt to document my life's details, to share not just my work, but details of my life and of my past with people I've never even met. He said that some of the finer details of my life made him feel uncomfortable, and I get that. Some of the things that happened in my past are touchy topics with some people.

               Living through them gave me a better understanding of others who've gone through the same thing.

               I gave it a fair amount of thought before I answered him, wanting to be as honest as I could be, and I told him it's hard, sharing yourself with others like that, opening yourself to others like that.

               But at the same time, it's therapeutic, sort of getting everything out there in the open like that, it's healthy. Certainly healthier than burying it all deep inside and letting it fester, letting it make you angry and bitter and making you feel guilty.

               Doing things like that allows things like that to own you-- and that path is certainly not a healthy one to travel down. It will leave you angry, bitter, self-destructive (and possibly even destructive), and it will isolate you.

               And it's a far better frame of mind to be in when you own your past, than when you allow your past to own you.

               At the end of the day, it's important to remember that everything that happened to you, everything you've been through, made you who you are now. That you wouldn't be who you are without every decision-- good and bad.

               Without every memory-- good and bad.

               Without every regret that haunts you.

               If you went back in time and changed any of it-- any decision you made, any action you took, any regret that you had-- then came back to the present, you wouldn't be you anymore. So everything I've been through, everything that's happened to me, everything I've ever done in my life-- I am who I am because of it-- all of it.

              It's a comforting thought, to see how far you've come in your life, and to recognize that fact.

               My blog is where I post my thoughts, my poetry, my stories. It is an extension of who I am. And I know not everyone blogs the way I do. How boring would it be if everyone blogged the same? There's no wrong way to blog. Blog what you want-- write to inspire, to get opinions, to begin discussions.

               If it's judgment you're worried about-- mockery, ridicule-- and what people think, don't. You can't let that thought stop you from doing what you want to do with your life.

               People will always judge you-- by who you are, by what you do, by what you look like and how much money you do or don't have.

               People are going to judge you. And some of them will be assholes. That's just something you're going to have to face. Because not everyone you meet will be an asshole. And if you don't risk the assholes, at the end of the day you'll be left wondering if you didn't just miss out on the chance of crossing paths with someone who could just change your life-- someone who would invigorate you, change your mind, make you see the world in a way you hadn't before.

               I've always been a firm believer in the life-changers-- the walking muses. I've met more than a few people in my lifetime who've inspired different works in me for various reasons. And they shall remain nameless, with my gratitude towards them just for existing-- for being who they are, and for inspiring such thoughts in me-- for sparking my creativity, and my imagination. I love them for opening my eyes, for changing my mind.

               I've met some interesting people since I started my blog-- writers, readers, people from all over the world. I've taken criticisms and compliments, been told how they loved or hated my work. I've read the work of others who'd read mine and chose to share theirs with me. And I was flattered at the thought that they wanted to know what I thought. I've had people asking me about what side projects I've got going, stories I've already posted, and what I plan to post down the line.  

               Do I regret sharing so much of myself? So many details, even the ugly ones? No. Because I'm just starting to branch out and to have people reach out to me, to contact me, and I'm coming across incredible people I might never have met if I hadn't taken the leap into online sharing. People who've told me "Oh my God that's how I feel" or "I went through the same thing". I couldn't have had that if I hadn't been so open about my past, and my experiences.

               Do I regret it? Not even close. If it makes you uncomfortable, if it bothers you that I write the way I do, that I talk about the things I talk about, then I'm sorry, and I hope you don't let your experience here make you shy away from reading the other works of the other writers on this site or others. Some of the best writing I've read over the course of the last few years has been by people who've been bloggers-- some of them fanfiction writers (before you judge, seriously, check them out). Some of them are incredible writers, people who fall in love with stories and shows and characters the way I fall in love with stories and characters. People who want to share their love of the stories and characters with others in turn.

               I get that. As a writer, as a reader, as a lover of books and comics and movies and all things creative and imaginative, I get it. After all, what good is fantasy, imagination, movies, books, stories, if you're not emotionally invested on some level? How boring to sit back and read something or watch something and afterwards "Yup that was something" and just go about your life completely unchanged by it?

               Do I regret? No, not even for a second.

Unleashed

When was the last time you unleashed your passion,

Unbound the corset and let it fall?

When you ran full speed to the edge and dove headfirst

Into the power of the fall?

Tell me, when last did your heartbeat,

Make you deaf to all other sound?

When did you last take a chance and move forward,

Excited when your heart started to pound?

When did you feel the last surrender?

When was the last time you tested your drive?

Or are you doomed to wander the earth without,

Always living, but never alive?

Why would anyone read this? No really. lol.

I sat down to write my blog for today and (not for the first time since I considered starting a blog) I found myself asking myself why. Why would I do this? Why did I feel the need to publish my thoughts online for strangers to read? And more than that, why would they read them?

You want to know the truth? It's because it scares me to death. 

All my life I've loved words and what they could do, and I've loved seeing what I could do with them. I've loved sharing them with people and seeing how people reacted to what came out of my head. It was so surreal, to see people laughing or crying or otherwise reacting to what I wrote, on a person to person basis. 

I've written stories for people, I've written poetry and songs for people, and it felt natural at the time, it felt right. I've written stories and poetry and songs WITH other people, and I've laughed more than I thought possible collaborating with others who know what it is to feel driven to write (You know who you are, and you're amazing!). It's amazing, the energy, the vibe you get when you're working with people who share your passion like that. It's incredible. I hope to do much more of it in the future. 

But the thought of sharing such a personal part of me, something that's just me, no censors, no filters, no editors beyond myself, no collaborators, no smoke, no mirrors-- just me and my words left to stand on their own-- with people on a large scale across the digital world is a very scary thought. So the idea of having people beyond my small circle of family and friends read my words scares me half to death. 

But I feel like I have to do this. Because over the years, as I've met more writers, more artists, more people in general throughout the course of my life, I've come to realize something--

I'm not the only one who's afraid of putting myself out there. 

I've met artists with incredible talent and potential-- writers, singers, painters, carpenters among them-- who never felt they were "good enough" or "talented enough" to put themselves out there. That were scared to death of the failure they convinced themselves was inevitable. 

And the thought that maybe if I take that risk, maybe someone, somewhere out there might stumble across my words and think "hey, if she's scared to death, and she's doing it anyway, maybe I can, too."  

Because you can only learn so much from books, from school, from training, and teachers. Eventually, you have to let go of those guard-rails, and you have to step out on your own, with your head held high, and you have to think, "You know what? I've got this." And maybe your risk will pay off, and maybe it won't. But even if you fail, at the end of the day, you can look back and remember the fact that you had the guts to step out in the first place, and realize that even that is more than the people who never took that risk. 

That in taking that risk-- even if you don't get the trophy, even if you fall on your face, or you're laughed and mocked-- was a success that no one can take away from you. 

I know I'm not the best writer on the planet, not by a long shot, and I'd never claim to be. All I can do is put out the best work I can, and hope it finds the people it was meant to find, and that it entertains them as it's always entertained me. 

That's why the blog. That's why I'm facing my fear. Because my desire to share my passion with others and to entertain them and maybe help them to face their fears or even to just enjoy my work and forget their problems for awhile far outweighs my fear of failure, of mockery. 

Because even making one person smile or laugh or to not feel down or alone with my work, is enough to make it worth it for me to do this. 

I love passionate people

Passionate people are the most addictive people on the planet, aren't they? The ones who love the smell of fresh cut grass or the way the sun feels on their upturned face. Or the way it feels when water laps around their bare ankles, and curling their naked toes into the sand.


They're the ones who stay up for days on end just to see their work finished, whatever it is. The ones who have inspiration hit at 2 in the morning and welcome it regardless.


I've always been addicted to passionate people. To the way their faces light up like a five year old at Christmas when inspiration strikes them, and they take off running headlong into pursuing whatever it was that inspiration was.


They're like a breath of fresh air, aren't they? Just being around them feels like electricity. It's exciting. That kind of passion, that kind of energy, that kind of drive and will and focus-- it's intoxicating.


They're like muses with pulses. Just being around them makes you feel more awake and more alive than you ever feel otherwise. They make you feel like anything is possible. And maybe it is.
It's incredible.


I thrive on being around people like that, feeling their energy, their genius. It inspires me to feed my passions, to wonder "what if" and "why not". "Why nots" and "what ifs" can change the world.
Passion like that fuels things, it drives things, creates and awakens things that never would have existed without it.


It throbs the heart and quickens the blood. It shivers down nerve endings you never even knew you had.


Passion like that can change your life. Passion like that can change the world.

I've been writing for a long time. I read somewhere that being a writer is like giving yourself homework every day for the rest of your life. And it is. Not that I'm complaining. There's days that my fingers practically itch to sit down to that keyboard and let them fly over those familiar keys.
I read somewhere that a writer is always either writing or thinking about writing-- that we don't get vacations-- and it's true. Even before I first put pencil to paper all those years ago, I was aware of everything. I found inspiration everywhere. I found it in the pictures that music always put into my head, I found it in the way the rain ran down windowpanes. I found it in the laughter and tears and the anger and joy of everyone I've ever met in my life.


All these years later, I still remember the way it felt the first time I put pencil to paper. The first time I penned out a title, and directly beneath it, I wrote the words "Written by" and my name. All these years later, I remember how good it felt to sit back and to just stare at those words.
The first time I wrote the words "the end" and sat back to stare at them, I remember the feeling of accomplishment way back when. And no, that story was never in any book, no it was never an article or seen by anyone aside from my friends and family, but it was the first thing I'd ever written on my own. It was something that wouldn't have existed if I hadn't taken the time and had the thought to put pencil to paper.


Looking back now, the grammar was probably horrendous. Back then I knew nothing of when to separate paragraphs, or the "rules" of writing. Then again, to this day, I still don't know the rules of writing. Rules... it seems strange to me, always did. Hemingway once said that writing was easy, that all you had to do was sit down at a typewriter and bleed. How can you do that-- how can you be that honest, that open-- and still always follow the rules?


My grammar isn't always perfect. Sometimes my spelling can be suspect. But I write now as I've always written-- from my heart, my gut, my soul. I write as I feel it, as I see it. When I'm angry I write it as I feel it. When I'm elated or heartbroken I write it as it feels. If you're looking for perfect grammar, if you're looking for someone who's taken the classes or who watches for that evil little green line (yeah, that little line and I have an understanding. He tells me what to do, and I ignore the hell out of him.)


I'm a young woman who fell in love with the written word when I was four, when my mother first sat down and taught me how to read, how to write my own name. From then on, I was hooked on words, and the incredible worlds that books could show you in your head. The incredible things they could show you. It was like magic to me, even then. There's no other way to put it. I became addicted to words. I read any and everything I could get my hands on. I lost count of how many times my mom would take me to the library and I'd check out stack upon stacks of books, swearing up and down that "these books will last the week, mom, I promise", only to have them read within a couple days.


She used to laugh and swear up and down that I didn't read books, that I devoured them. And I loved every minute of it. To this day, I'm known to pick up a book and to read it through without stopping.
But I'm off topic. I do that. Apologies. Merely trying to give you an idea of what to expect if you choose to read my blog. You're falling headfirst into the mind of someone who's been in love with words her whole life, who loves books and the writers of them, who loves movies and all the people behind them. As someone who's been told I have "the imagination from hell" I love nothing more than to be around people of a similar nature. They fascinate me. They inspire me.


I love to sit down with people and talk about books, about movies and music. I love to sit down and brainstorm with friends about writing they're working on, to share mine with them and to hear theirs, and to help them with theirs, if I can. I love to see inspiration light them up and see them take off running with it. It's magic. There's no other way I can think of putting it. Pure magic.


If you're still here, and I haven't scared you off just yet, I thank you so much for your time, knowing just how precious and fleeting a thing it can be. If indeed you choose to read my blog, please know that I only wish to share my thoughts and my passions, my dreams and hopes with you, in the hope that perhaps one day something you come across will inspire someone somewhere somehow in their lives. That perhaps it will spark something that sends them running full speed from their computer, driven to work on something that stirs their passions, and sets their soul on fire.


If I can do that, then I consider it time well spent.