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Showing posts with label inspiration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inspiration. Show all posts
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Thursday, September 17, 2015
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 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.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
How it feels- a drabble by avsongbird
It’s so strange for me, to be accepted for my writing, my vlogs, for the
vids I’m putting out, and to have people get back to me. I’m not used to being
so openly accepted. I’ve always been more or less socially awkward, and I have
to laugh—people watch my vlogs and I’ve been told I come across as confident,
well spoken.
I’ve always had a decent enough vocabulary- being in love with words and
reading and writing the way I always have been, it’s kind of hard at this point
not to have a decent enough vocabulary—and I’m annoyingly aware of my tendency
to slip into rambling when I’m nervous or scared, or feeling unsure of myself.
If you came across me on the street, and you smiled and tried to pull me
into conversation, I’d turn fifty shades of red from the get-go, with my heart
tripping over itself and everything else in my chest as I offered you a shy
smile and tried to put together something clever or witty to say in return.
Knowing me, I’d end up coming across as eager to please and trying too hard, and all the best comebacks to all your jokes wouldn’t hit me until about
an hour or two after we’d parted ways again.
It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you; it’s not that I don’t enjoy
the conversation. On the contrary.
It’s just that I’m not used to it, and working my way into being social
and having the blogging and the Youtubing and all the things I’m doing now
building my confidence, it’s taking time for me to get my confidence level even
to the point it’s at now.
But if you mention writing… books… movies… music… or videogames…? If the
conversation steers off into one of my hobbies, I’m good. I could listen or
talk for hours about anything and everything, so long as the spotlight stays
off of me. I’ve had people I’ve met in my life where I sat up all night, just
listening to them talk about themselves, and their lives. I love hearing about
other people, and I’ve always loved listening to people.
It’s when the attention and the focus turns to me that I really get
really shy, and that includes talk of my stories, my videos, my singing, my
work. It’s really taking some adjusting to have people come to me and tell me
what they think. And I love it. Doing the blogs and now doing the Youtube,
especially now that I’m getting back into video-gaming and I’m having more Youtubers
and real let’s players draw me into collaborations and interacting with them,
I’m finding a sense of belonging and purpose that I haven’t felt in a long
time. And as busy as I am with all of it, I’m loving it.
I feel renewed as I sit here, knowing the running is getting easier
again, knowing I’m wearing clothes I haven’t fit into in years, knowing I’m
entertaining people and making people smile and laugh, and feel, knowing I’m
throwing everything I have into being the best wife, stepmom, writer, blogger,
youtuber, sister, daughter, friend that I can be, I feel alive in ways I
haven’t in a long damn time.
And it’s a euphoric feeling. There’s no other way to put it. Pure euphoria.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
For those of you who want to write or vlog
I'm not going to lie and say it's
easy to record and post some of the things I post, especially the one vlog
where I broke down and cried-- that one was especially hard. It was hard to
film, hard to play back and even harder to post it, knowing others might see
it. But I knew I had to do it, no matter how hard it was for me to do so at the
time. I wanted people to see me as a human being, and to know how much it means
to me that they allow me to share my work with them. I love the people I'm
meeting who are getting back to me. It's the most incredible experience I've
ever had. And human emotions aren't always safe, they aren't always bright and
shiny and sparkly and politically correct. But they're real, they're normal,
they're healthy.
If you want to write, you should. I still go back
to pen and paper sometimes because I love the feeling of the pen in my hand,
and when I need to keep up with my head, I go to the computer. And sometimes
it's just typing whatever comes into your mind that kicks your brain into gear.
Give it a shot! Because trust me, you never know what you're capable of coming
up with until you do it! And you don't have to do it for anyone but you. Writing
is the most amazing therapy, it really is. Even if no one else ever reads it,
do it for your sake first! Make yourself laugh, make yourself cry, and rage.
Let yourself vent. Let yourself FEEL. You'll feel much better afterwards, after
you get through the drained part after going through the storm that comes along
with it. Trust me, I've been through the wringer sometimes for the sake of a
good story. And if you ever need support with it, you know where to find me :-)
Friday, August 21, 2015
Lessons learned
If there’s one lesson
I’ve learned more than anything else in my life,
It’s that happiness is
something worth fighting and struggling for.
I've known intense pain
so I seek pleasure.
I've known hatred so I
seek to love and be loved.
I've known grief,
despair, loss
so I strive for and
celebrate happiness
Wherever and whenever
I find it.
With every lesson
learned,
Every hardship faced,
I find myself coming
closer and closer
to the peace and the
happiness I've always wanted
in my life.
And I'm grateful every
day that my husband and my stepsons
and my friends and now
my readers, viewers, followers,
are a part of that
journey.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
taking control of my life
This last
May, I woke up and decided out of the blue that I was going to turn my life
around. No one pushed me, no one coached me, no one dragged me out of bed
kicking and screaming and staged any sort of intervention.
I made
the decision that I didn’t like the direction in which I was headed. Or, more
correctly, the lack of direction that my life seemed to have.
So I
decided to change. And ironically, the steps I decided to take, and the actions
I took on in the following days, weeks, months, have started me along a road
that proved not to be changing me into a new person altogether, but helping me
along the path to becoming the person I once was, before my proverbial train
derailed and went careening down into a ravine.
Taking
control over your life and deciding to take better care of yourself can start
out seeming hopeless, as you find yourself facing opposition from the people in
your life who’ve grown accustomed to the person you’ve become. Some of them
might have become comfortable with the fact of knowing that they have you under
their thumb, precisely where they want you, and they may not want you to pick
yourself up and to decide that your life is yours to live all the time, instead
of whenever and however the people in your life will allow you to live it.
I’ve been
a caring and a giving person all my life, which unfortunately has led to me
being used throughout the course of my life by people who saw my giving and
caring nature as a reason to use and abuse me in whatever ways they saw fit,
and trust me, learning to say no and to make myself unavailable to those who would
use and abuse me has not been an easy task—I’ve come to care for some of those
people a great deal over the years. The idea of saying goodbye to some of them
breaks my heart, but at the same time, those in your life who only remember
you’re alive whenever they need or want something, and who ignore you the rest
of the time, are not good people to have in your life. They’re physically and
mentally exhausting, physically and psychologically draining people, and if you
don’t stand up for yourself every once in a while and realize that you deserve
to be treated better than that, you will find yourself being treated as a
doormat by these people. And if you truly meant something to them, they would
not treat you that way.
Taking
control of your life takes time, and as I said, you’re facing opposition—not
just from other people and outside influences, but from yourself.
I used to
run every day, a couple of hours a day (I took days off every week, don’t
worry. I was driven, focused, not pathological). When my train derailed I spent
years trying to figure out who I was, and I fell into a much more sedentary
lifestyle.
Trying to
get back into that rigorous training schedule was a nightmare at first—between
finding the time, and the sore and aching muscles (Oh my God I thought my legs
were going to fall the hell off, and part of me lay there on the tile beside
the treadmill and wished they would have on more than one occasion), and your
mind telling yourself you’re fighting a losing battle, there were times I wanted
to quit, but I didn’t.
Throughout
my life, whenever I saw something I truly wanted, I went for it, and I’ve been
called things in my life, but a quitter has never been one of them. When I have
a goal in mind, I go for it, and I’m all in.
Now, I’m
three months into this new, unmapped phase in my life, and 13 lbs. lighter than
I started, down a couple of pants sizes, and my blog and my youtube are humming
along at a comfortable pace. My husband’s thrilled to death to see me working
with a goal in mind, and I couldn’t even begin to describe how good it feels
for me to know that I’m working towards something again.
With the
people watching my videos, reading my blogs, the people that are beginning to
interact with me and who are starting to recognize me as a writer—as a new youtuber
and a supportive friend-- I find myself waking up each and every day with new
ideas for directions in which I can take my blogs, my youtube channel, my
writing, my life! And I’m loving every single minute of it.
I’m
writing with renewed enthusiasm and vigor, and as my writing and my running and
my home and family life are falling back into place, each and every aspect of
my life is falling into place, and I have to admit, I’m feeling more and more
proud and more and more confident as a writer, as a wife, a stepmom, as a
woman, and a person as the days pass.
And I’m loving the hell out of
it. I can’t wait to see what’s around the corner. And it’s been far longer than
I’m ashamed to remember since I last felt that way about the direction in which
my life was going.
If your
life has gone off the rails, as mine did, if you find yourself playing the
doormat, the way I have, and you’ve wished someone would come along and get you
to change, if you’ve wanted to change yourself, do it. Don’t waste another
damned day waiting for outside help. You are all the reason and the inspiration
you need, because every day spent as a doormat for those who don’t give a damn,
every day spent not achieving your goals, your dreams, is a day wasted.
And it’s
a day you will never get back.
So let
this be the last day you wish you could change your life.
Then
tomorrow, get out there and do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gQqo6s1ZyA&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gQqo6s1ZyA&feature=youtu.be
Saturday, August 15, 2015
"owning up and being yourself"- a drabble by avsongbird- includes vlog of reading from my youtube channel
It’s so easy to say that the
circumstances that are your life were NOT your fault—that where you are and
what you are, are simply the product of others. It’s hard to stand up straight
and strong, steeling your spine against those who would judge you, and to say
“Yes, I made those decisions, and I made those mistakes, and I am the reason
that I screwed up.”
Hard, yes, but necessary in the
path to growing up.
I know that for a long time I was
guilty of passing the buck to others. I kept telling myself that it wasn’t my
fault—that I was as I was because of genetics, because of my sheltered
upbringing, or because I wasn’t allowed to do otherwise.
The truth was—I liked where I
was. I was loved, I was sheltered, I was safe, and that sanctuary was always a
strongpoint for me. It is all at once my springboard and my safe-haven—the
place I always start from and come back to, my alpha and omega.
Genetics? My line is a line of
strong men and women, all of which I am proud to call my ancestry, and of which
I am proud to be a descendent. Whatever problems I ever claimed to have with my
genetics was simply a cop-out—a scape-goat- a way for me to explain away those
times when I raged, when I felt weak.
The weakness was never in them—in
the ones who came before-- it was in me that it resided, and always has been.
Do you want to know the truth?
The honest, complete, black-and-white truth?
I was afraid, though I would
never admit it.
I was always afraid that I would
not be accepted for who I was, loved for who I was. I spent most of my life
working as hard as I could to please people, to bend and twist myself into what
I believed they wanted me to be. And I was losing myself continuously in the
process.
How can you ever hope to find who
you truly are if you do that? The simple fact is, I couldn’t. The fact is—you
have to free yourself to be who you ARE, and be true to your nature, in order
to find real happiness in this world. Otherwise, no one can ever really know
you, or touch you, or hope to really connect with you any deeper than your
inner walls allow.
That can lead to a solitary life.
Believe me—I know. I kept myself isolated for a long time—a prisoner in my own
mind, and I do not recommend it to anyone.
Monday, August 10, 2015
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Monday, August 3, 2015
"Nurse! Help! I think I sprained my everything!"
"Nurse! Help! I think I sprained my everything!"
One of
the things I've decided to devote myself to, in my course to get back to
finding myself again, is getting back into my running training. And I'm not
gonna lie to you. After taking the last few years off, learning how to be a
wife and a stepmom and getting into the swing of things and how busy my life is
now? Getting back into running after so many years without it is pure hell.
When I pulled that treadmill out early this week and hopped up on it, turned a
show on (seriously, if there's any show out there that will make you feel
guilty sitting on your ass eating popcorn while watching it, it's "the Walking
Dead".), and I turned that treadmill on and power-walked ten miles? I
thought my legs were going to fall the hell off.
Coming
down after such a long run, having a pick me up wind-down snack after burning
so many calories, my eyelids drooping, I heard voices in my head as I lay
there. Voices telling me I was too old for this crap, that I was too far out of
practice and shape for this crap, that I'm a wife now, a mom now, that I don't
have to worry about this kind of crap. And with my legs aching and every bit of
me feeling like it weighed a million pounds-- feeling weak-- my hair soaking
wet, my body drenched in sweat, the smallest part of my brain might have
believed it. But then I reminded myself that I'd just gone ten miles, even
after so many years off. And that yeah, I was tired (let's be honest, I was
beyond tired), and I knew I'd be sore the next day (Oh God, so unbelievably
sore haha), but I'd done it. No one else had coached me, no one else nagged me.
I did it, on my own, because I wanted to do it.
And I
slept better that night than I had in years. Which, as a chronic insomniac,
meant a hell of a lot to me. I woke up in the morning feeling incredible. Sore
as hell, in need of ice packs and wanting to put my feet up, but I felt
accomplished. And yeah, it was only ten miles, but it was something. And even a
little something is far better than nothing.
That
night, I queued up the blu ray again, and I was back up on the treadmill again,
telling myself I'd walk another ten miles. Not running, not out to give myself
a heart attack or asthma attack, just walking, decent conversational-type pace,
and see how I felt (At my size, there's no way in hell I'm gonna hop up there
and start running. I'm driven, goal-oriented, not crazy.)
I got so
caught up in what I was watching that after awhile, I stopped watching the
digital readout on my treadmill, and when I found myself looking down, I was
surprised when I realized how far I'd walked without realizing it. The ten
miles I'd done the previous night felt like nothing now as I stood there,
staring down at those numbers, still walking, and yeah, I was sweating from the
pace I'd kept, yeah I power-walked the whole way, but I knew I wasn't done yet.
I went
another mile that night before I stopped. And it felt good. It felt like
progress.
I've been
at it for over a week now, just power-walking, not trying to outdo Olympians or
professional athletes, just going by how I feel and making sure I don't push
too hard. I'm in it for the long haul. If I overdo it, looking for the quick
fix, and I hurt myself, I won't be doing myself any favors.
I've lost
weight already this week, and my pants are getting looser. And I'm sleeping
better than I've slept in years. And yes, it means less time at the keyboard,
working on my writing, and it means getting even more creative with my
scheduling between looking after my family, my household, my pets, sleeping,
writing, running, blogging and youtubing, but as I find myself now beginning to
find balance between all the aspects of my life, and as I find myself
recovering more of who I am now, I find myself finding peace more and more
easily in each and every aspect of my life, which in turn lends peace and
balance in all the other aspects of my life in ways that I haven't found in a very
long time.
It feels
good. It feels like control, empowerment, accomplishment. It feels like
cresting that damnable mountain and picking up speed as I find myself coming
down the other side.
And damn,
does it feel good.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Monday, July 13, 2015
Sunday, July 5, 2015
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