Lesson Learned

We all have challenges and battles in our life. Sometimes the lesson is less about defeating them and more about learning not to defeat ourselves.
― Brittany Burgunder

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson.
— Orison Swett Marden

I believe that there's a lesson in almost everything that you do and every experience, and getting the lesson is how you move forward.
— Oprah Winfrey

I have a story to tell, one that does not leave me in a good light, but it contains a valuable lesson.

Last Sunday I spent the afternoon working on a cross stitch project that makes my eyes buggy. Using my reading glasses helps some, but it takes a long time for my eyes to re-adjust to normal again. Or as normal as my eyes get without glasses. This is an important thing to note because it impacts what happened later.

It was after dinner. I was sitting in my recliner and seeing as there hadn’t been a whole lot going on during the previous week I decided to skip my Monday blog post and work on my three-minute words instead because I was a couple of words behind. So I had my writing journal open on my lap, because that’s where I write my three-minute words.

Anyway, I as I was contemplating my next word I was sipping my mug of tea - not an 8 ounce mug, or even a 10 ounce mug. No, it was my 16 ounce mug. I guess my eyes were more tired that I realized and I closed them for just a second. Next thing I know I have a flood of tea covering me. Good thing it was drinking temperature and I didn't get burned.

My chair was soaked. My jeans were soaked. The floor was soaked. The tea ran right over the top page of my writing journal. What a mess! And I should also mention that when I do the three-minute words in my journal I like to use coloured pens, to set them apart from the other stuff in there. And unlike last year's journal where I used coloured ball point pens for prompts, etc., this year I splurged on a set of coloured fountain pens. Which means, as you've probably guessed already, the scene I was writing got washed away.

By the time I got everything cleaned up – which included having to go upstairs and change out of my jeans because they were the hardest hit by the tea – I had no idea what I’d written for that scene. Which means, of course, it was probably the best scene of the whole story. LOL

I can be grateful for two things: that my journal is wire bound and I had it folded so only the top page was facing up, and the journal pages are extra thick. So I only lost that one scene. It did, however, take the rest of the evening to dry out. But you can be sure when I did finally rewrite that scene, it was with a ballpoint pen.

Anyone need a set of coloured fountain pens?

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WORDAGE REPORT

I have six journal entries for Elemental Spirit and I was lucky to get those done because I spent most of my time working on my stitchery. If I could be as single minded about my writing as I am about other things, I’d have a stack of books to my credit by now.

I skipped the Monday post on my other blog last Monday because I just didn’t have anything interesting to say. Some weeks are like that.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 1014+1058=2,072
Elemental Spirit – 669 words
Total words: 2,741 words

Three minute words – 121+149+151+121+126+116+125=909

Goals For Next Week:
Finish Christmas story, keep working on journal entries, maybe write a poem.

EDITING:
Do the journal entries I did for Elemental Spirit count for editing? No, I didn’t think so. *sigh*

Goal For Next Week:
Actually do some edits on Elemental Spirit

MARKETING MONDAY:
I had an appointment with the optometrist on Monday. As I might have mentioned, I broke my glasses a few weeks ago and for the record, Gorilla Glue does not work on everything. So I was mostly going without glasses, but for driving I used my prescription glasses from about ten years ago. The optometrist put three different kinds of drops in my eyes – I was lucky I made it home in one piece, even with my old glasses. Anyway, that pretty much took care of anything that required me to see clearly the rest of the day. In other words, no marketing last Monday.

Goal For Next Week:
Submit two stories and one poem.

TECHNO TUESDAY:
I finally got the charger for my Paperwhite, so the only excuse I have for not setting it up during was that I made my stitchery a priority.

Goal For Next Week:
Set up Paperwhite

CRAFTING:
We’re having the first in-person meeting of the stitchery guild in two years, and I really don’t want to show up with nothing for “stitch and tell” so I spent most of last week working on the cross stitch challenge we were given. I could have had it finished Saturday morning, but I thought it would look better with lace around the edge. So I checked out my stash and found some lace. After spending several hours attaching said lace, I realized it did not look better and ended up ripping it off again and refinishing it with just a felt backing.

Goal For Next Week:
Work on embroidery on granddaughter’s dress.

WHAT I’M READING:
No Noras last week! I’d say it was a miracle, but the truth is I just didn’t have time for extra reading because I was so intent on my cross stitch.

On the Kindle. I finished Her Cowboy Prince, by Trish Milburn. Now I’m back to the dragons with Becoming Dragon by Eve Langlais. It’s a definite twist on the whole shifter thing. The hero starts out as a gator shifter, who’s genetically altered with dragon DNA.

GOAL REVIW:
Well look at that. I reached one of my goals – I finished one of my stitchery projects. Too bad it was at the expense of pretty much everything else. *sigh*

But I didn’t get my Christmas story done, and didn’t get around to checking out any other contests. Hopefully I'll do better on the week ahead.

Have a happy writing week.