Silver lining

Good morning,


I came here to blog on my regular day and ended up first on the blog itself. So I read Miriam's post. And I'm sorry but it made me laugh. Okay people, I'm not a sadist person. No, if anything my emotions lead me to do many things based on empathy and sympathy. I laughed because I saw myself in Miriam's post. I laughed because she's a good writer and made it humorous.


Life has a way of not going the way we want, of knocking us down, of making us question every decision we've ever made. It makes up sometimes want to do things contrary to our nature.

People we care about let us down. They cease communication without explanation. They make us feel devalued, lied to, and as though the relationship has become one way.

All of this is a part of life I've learned. We can not control others and can barely control our reactions to their actions. I've learned that generally at the source of our pain there's a human or two in the background that we imagine is sticking it to us.

Knowing this I limit myself to the amount of control I give to humans to affect my life. I shut myself off from them in order to protect myself. Then I look for joy in the oddest places.

Last month when I was once again questioning the why of this blog and my participation I received a reply which carried me through and made me write this month's post. So I'm going to share with you one of life's little unexpected pleasures.

For the past week or so I've had sporadic Internet service. On Friday I talked with a tech for almost 2 hours and we fixed it. Then on Saturday the same thing happened. On Friday the tech was in India, on Saturday Mexico.

These are the things I learned on Saturday about the tech that was supposed to be helping me fix my problem. Her birthday was Sunday and she made 27. She can not cross the border into the US. She was a troubled teen who took the wrong path doing many things and becoming pregnant at 17. Her daughter lives in Calif with her father, her son lives in Mexico with her. Her mother died of cancer several years ago and for an unknown reason her mother's family broke off contact with her and her father. She's an only child. She wants to go to university. Her 5th grade teacher once told her mother that she was a talented writer but she's never tried. She admitted to me that she wanted to be a writer.

When she asked me questions about myself that I thought were not supposed to be viewed I realized that my talking to her was not about fixing my Internet problem but about encouraging her to go for her dream. After a two hour conversation where my tries to gently get her to do something to fix my computer wasn't working I gave up. The call was meant for me to talk to her. So be it.

When the conversation ended I was sputtering, "but we haven't fixed my computer." She promised someone would call. Which they didn't by the way. LOL. But I stayed on the page I was on trying to remember what the guy from the day before had told me to do. After about another hour I got my Internet working and it's been working since.

The point of this post is this: While encouraging this young woman to go for her dreams I became encouraged myself. How can I tell others not to give up if I give up myself.

I'm writing and submitting my work regardless of the depressed market, regardless of publishers being inundated with the same things that I write. I'm a writer and I can't give up. Writing is not for the faint of heart.

So Miriam, and all, take heart. Each day is a new opportunity. Look for the unexpected joys and hang on.

Dyanne