2010...Reflection and Personal Redemption

I have spent the better part of this week going back and reading my old blog posts. I've been making a list of sorts. A list of things about myself. The good, the bad, and the ugly. There is lots of ugly. But before I move on to 2010 and a brand new decade. I want to learn more about myself or acknowledge those nasty habits of mine. If we don't face up to those nasty little critters it's hard to do anything about them. To say 2009 was a hard year is an understatement. Getting laid off in May I spent the later part of the year trying to start a new business in the midst of the worst economic climate in three decades. I must be a glutton for punishment. However there were some very good things that came out of 2009.

1. My faith.

2. My friends.

3. My ability to adapt and change my lifestyle--which is still occuring to this day or even this very moment.

4. My daughter and my husband. It's a miracle we haven't clobbered each other. But we are still a family. A strong family. Resilient, unwavering, and steadfast.


Now back to 2010. Before I set goals, or even thought about what I wanted to do in 2010 I wanted to see what I'd done in the past several years. What was good, and what was crap. (There was a lot of the latter).

I've learned several things:
The bad first...

I'm lazy.
I let things de-rail me.
Distractions. People.
Time management. Laundry. You name it.
I'm a procrastinator.
Sometimes I'd rather talk about doing something instead of actually doing it.
I say "yes" too often and not necessarily to the good things.
I over stretch myself and my family.
I'm horrible with money. I should turn my finances over to my father--but I don't think he'd take them.
I don't want to do sales anymore forever amen.


Now the good:
I'm a good friend.
I'm a good wife.
I'm a good mother.
I'm a good writer when I write. Notice the emphatic 'when'
And I'm a good daughter and daughter-in-law.
I am a faithful servant.

So what to do with all this information. The next thing I did was make a list. What am I passionate about now? What has changed since 2004?
I am passionate about my faith.
I am passionate about my music (all of it)
I am passionate about my young adults of which they have made this past year bearable.
I am passionate about my family first of all.

So that leads me back to what I want to write. I think it will have to encompass all of those things I'm passionate about. It is different than what I was passionate about in 2004. I think deeper now, and longer and in some ways I think I'm trying to find myself.

So instead of setting goals for 2010 I'm going to set a list of things I don't want to do:

I don't want to procrastinate any longer.
I want to write something worth reading, something with grit and something I can be proud of. Something my daughter can read, something my friends can read without cringing and something most of all my mother can read.

That's about it. I have some ideas. I have some plans. But I'll more than likely keep those to myself. I do love my blogs and am glad I never deleted them. How wonderful it is to go back and read something that is in effect what I did at that day, that moment, and to think I shared it with the world. Not a bad thing at all...

A reminder for Janie...

I love this story. I want you to write this story. I want to buy this book. I want to hold it in my hands--so that the ink smudges my fingers. So to remind you, my dear sweet friend, I will post this poem every January until you write this book. Even if it is only handwritten and bound by violet ribbons, or even for mine eyes only. So far I've posted this poem in some way shape or form every year since 2004...one day my wish will come true. Hugs, Janie. Take me to Bellamorte. Please...I need to escape.

For Janie...From Caroline to Aeschere...Lead me Astray

Lead me down the path
Where the blue crocus grows
Great secrets here are hidden
Among the dark and cold

The castle now has crumbled
Stone has turned to dust
The forest has grown stronger
But whom can you trust

This place where you hide
This place where death doth play
I see your face among them
The decrepit and depraved
How long shall you linger
In this secret hell
How long shall I wait
For you to break her evil spell


Your castle walls have crumbled
Your love has turned to dust
The forest is no longer
Whom can you trust

Leave that death behind you
Come walk within the light
I long to have you near me
Every day and every night

The moon is cast in shadow
Twilight turns to Dusk
Must you linger long dear
Oh whom can I trust


Come to me tonight love
Visit in my dreams
For if I shall not see you
My silent voice shall scream
This empty world may shatter
My heart will surely break
For what good is living
Empty and afraid

Come build a castle strong with me
Against the cold cold wind
Death shall go her own way
Far away from mice and men

I know my love could save you
From this cursed hell
If only I could reach you
And pull you free as well

Your haven is at stake love
The time is growing short
Shall the strong stand beside you?
Shall the weak fall beneath you?

Lead me Astray, love
Among the forest walk
Lead me
Love me
Save me
Or death shall have us all.

copyright 2004, all rights reserved, by Michelle Bailey

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Looking Back...

It has been five years. A long time to play at writing. Smile. Here is a bit I wrote in January of 2005, but still so true even to this day.

The Vigil...
By D.M. Bailey

Writers are eccentric creatures. No one really understands us. Not even our very talented mothers, spouses or our children. They cannot understand the way our brains work. How we can sit hour upon hour with only a pencil and a piece of paper in our hands for company or perhaps only our computer and our music to guide us through the maze of our minds.

Worlds are created, mythologies built, and characters are brought to life all in the mind of a neurotic writer. We create the hero, the heroine, the dastardly villain everyone loves to hate, and the mentor. All within our minds. I think it is safe to say that sometimes we are not totally present in this world.

We can go days without speaking to another soul, go without food or sleep just to write the next word.

Normal people do not understand this. They do not understand the drive, the compulsion to go on or the absolute need to create. It is like inhaling air into our lungs. The life blood of our soul.

It is not something that can be explained. That one exquisite moment when you know what you have written is special, if only to you. But who do we share it with? No one. We sit in our darkened tower, alone, weaving a tapestry of the deepest, darkest, richest threads we can find, praying that one day someone may be able to experience the beauty of what we have created.

Countless hours are spent planning and plotting, dropping breadcrumbs along the way hoping that whomever reads our stories will get to the end of our book and say..."I have got to read that again."

Only then, when our spell has been cast, have we as writers, done our job.

It can be a lonely life when you have no one to share the glory or the pain of creation. I am lucky. I have my goblin sisters. Some are not so fortunate. However, even within the confines of the sisterhood, no one sits with me when I write, or plot, or pull at my hair.

It is only me and the sound of tapping keys.

"Magnolia"

My dear friend posted a picture of one of her favorite childhood "haunts" so I wanted to share with her one of mine. Many a lazy Sunday has been spent in this place. These gardens. It's like a fairytale in and of itself. Perhaps here is where my imagination began to run wild pulling at the tethers of my own reality as a child.



Once seeing Magnolia, it's not a far stretch to realize that there are indeed magical places here on this earth.

So then there was light...

And it's a train. Laughing hysterically here, and sometimes silently and sometimes not so silently. Let's see--ant's attack through the kitchen window no less, an absessed tooth that thankfully doesn't hurt anymore not for going to see a professional but a handy dandy left over bottle of penicillin which will truly probably not hold off the infection for long, my husband's unemployment running out, a looming dentist bill that will probably set me back hundreds and um...gee is there anything else that could possibly go wrong this week? I'm doubtful.

"That which does not kill you makes you stronger."

Hell, if I had any insurance I think medication would be totally called for in this instance. Honestly, putting one foot in front of the other is becoming more and more of a challege.

I'd really like to go curl up in a corner and just forget about the world for a bit.

In fact I did a bit of that today. I read the first book of The "Vampire Academy" by Richelle Mead. (I hope I got that right, I'm frankly just too lazy to go look it up at the present time to make sure)I read it on my daughter's recommendation. Do you hear that, Janie? Her recommendation. Quite shocking. Almost as shocking as finding her reading poems by Byron and copying them in her neat little handwriting into her book of favorite poems.

I'm so proud.

But I digress. I really like the Vampire Academy and wasn't sure if I would. I tried reading some other Vampire YA fiction that left me feeling a little flat but I'm totally into Ms. Rose and her companions. And thankfully, Meg's has the other three books in the series. Yeah me!

So hmmm...what to do at 12:33 a.m. in the morning? I can't go snag the other books from the daughter as she's asleep and probably is sleeping with her arms around the book just so I can't have it as she's not finished with it yet. You know, I can't get ahead of her in the story because well...that just would be wrong. According to her anyway.

Guess I'll have to figure out something else.

Hope all my dear friends have had better weeks than I.

Alexander Rybak - Fairytale (2009 Eurovision Song Contest Wi

Same guy! Tons of talent. See what searching you tube for the world "fairytale" will do for you when you have the flu?