What keeps you awake at night? Whatever happened to…?
What keeps you awake at night? Do you lie there, staring out the window at the moon, worrying about the state of the world? Worrying about the state of your world? Your love life, financial problems, health issues? Fictive or real, your call.
Write about something you will never throw away, and of course, why. Is it a program from a London West End musical, a dried corsage from a high school prom, a letter from an admirer – or love letters…!?
What or who are you obsessed with? A rock band, a restaurant, a country, a city, an author or a book…?
What song really gets to you? Is there one that always makes you cry, laugh? Why?
Write about something that turned out differently than expected. Were you expecting doom and gloom, abject failure? Or a glorious win? What went awry?
Have you ever wondered what happened to someone you knew long ago? Have you ever searched for them on Facebook (or on another social media site) and reconnected? Write about one of those searches – fictive or real – and what came of it.
Even if it’s only 500 words, it will do you good!
(Photos compliments of D C Hubbard)
I began life afresh, many years ago. A clean sweep, a cathartic letting go of all those possesions and responsibilities. The big house went, the expensive furniture, the career, too, in favour of a worn-out camper van and a sense of freedom.
Of course, I took the necessities of living, but the sweeping continued, and for twenty years, I trod lightly, frequently bundling all I had into the van and later, just a car, and for a while, just a rucksack and a couple of toolboxes (handywork often being my means of making a living then), everything I owned under my borrowed camp bed on a friend’s balcony.
And yet, through all of it, I carried one possesion, and only one, from my childhood. A woodworking plane, 18″ long and weighing a few kilograms. I’d always loved woodworking, a passion my dad brought to me, and that plane was so sweet, I stole it from my dad when I fled the nest. It took him months to miss it, so I rest my case: it was better in my hands than his!
I have it still, and use it from time to time, not superceded by the welter of modern power tools I now bring to bear on our extensive renovation projects.
My owl mug. My kid sister gave it to me as a going away present when I went off to university at Leeds in 1977. It’s glazed brown with a baroque sketch in orange of an owl, clearly an owl, despite being endowed with the sort of tail feathers a bird of paradise might be proud of. I used it as my tea mug, my coffee mug, my water mug until it broke a couple of years ago. I was surprised to see it was made of china and not earthenware as I’d always assumed. Now the mug is still there, at the back of the cupboard in two pieces, waiting to be reconstructed in order to do service again, perhaps as a plant pot. I think of my sister whenever it catches my eye.
Those are both great memories, you two! Thanks for sharing them!