Category: journey

Uncovering Magic…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay1 Comment

The whirring of the fan, bringing outside air in, consumes most of the sound space. Beyond that, the hum of the dehumidifier is almost defeaning. I don’t mind powering them off for this moment. It is October, yet the world of western Pennsylvania is not quite ready to relinquish us to sweaters and wool socks. Soon, she promises.

From the room across the hall another fan can be heard, but beyond that there is only normal Wednesday morning silence to accompany the clacking of these laptop keys.

Even when the world seems silent, a lot can be heard when we take the time to listen. When we intentionally turn off the noise, sink in to the present minute we’re fortunate enough to have, and tune our ears to take it all in…

Can you rest in this moment, wherever you are, and try to hear?

There are birds in my distance. Almost yelping, that is if birds yelp. (I don’t know what kind of birds they are, though truthfully I wish I did. Living here, with such a heavy wildlife presence I think of wanting to learn more about the birds, but I’m not in that place of self education quite yet.) It is that squawky sound of an entire flock of birds, known to accompany autumnal sounds. Are they preparing for their long journey south? If I learn what they are, will they take me with them?

The coffee pot beeped, just now, telling me that it’s patience for me is over.

The trees sway, though slightly, so with them comes no sound. At least not sound that I can hear from this side of my window glass.

I need to commit myself to pausing more. Busy is ok, but the quiet, still, absorbent moments are essential. The faint giggle of far away children trickled through that still air just as I typed out the world essential and I was reminded of how magic moments truly are. Real life magic is all around us, but quite often we are so busy (or distracted) that we can’t see it.

Recently, a guest on the Collective Podcast reminded me of the Maya Angelou quote “When you know better, you DO better.” and since our chat, I’ve thought of those words often. I am just as guilty, as the next person, of being slow to learn things and even slower to put them into practice. I am not proud. My life truth is probably more like When you know better, you should do better. What I do know is that each time I take an intentional pause to make notes of what I hear, what I see, and allow my soul to simply absorb the unplugged and real life happening within the world around me, I feel far more recharged than anything actual electricity is going to bring me.

If you’d love some really great wisdom about how we create our own circumstances, “logging out” of the busy and just embracing who we are at our core, tune in to today’s podcast episode #51! The show is back with all new episodes and I am so lucky to get to spend time connecting with such extraordinary and brave women! I can’t wait for you to know them too!

We are them too…

Published on by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment

There is this amazing time-lapse video bouncing around the internet that shows the blossoming of various mushrooms deep within forested areas. It is absolutely fascinating, disgusting, inspiring and flat-out-weird all at once. Isn’t that life, though? Most of the time.

As humans, we stumble upon stories ripped straight from the lives of others. The horrific crimes we can’t comprehend, the amazing tales of survival and super human fathomings. We love the miraculous, the oddly tragic- the real life stories. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been inspired to do something bold, brave or heroic after looking at an individual, upon hearing about their boring upbringing, which was followed closely by their average college, marriage and work experience, carrying them to this point of completely mundane normalcy. Films and books certainly aren’t written about people like this.

Two reasons for this are:

  • because that sort of life wouldn’t really inspire much of anything. (Maybe a little envy from someone whose lot in life has been particularly harsh.)
  • That sort of life doesn’t really exist. A perception of that sort of life can, but that sort of life itself? It’s not even possible. There may be seasons when we identify with feelings that our own journeys have been that uneventful. There will be other times, perhaps when we’re drowning in our own overwhelm, and we may perceive someone else’s seemingly drama free life is just like that.
  • bonus point- the moral of the lesson here is, just because something may look, or feel a certain way, in a moment- doesn’t mean that it is.

That idea, the idea of normal + boring, I think most of us have pretty wrong. We think, in times of distress, that this must be what simplicity and peace is like. It wouldn’t be. That imaginary life I’ve described? It is a one dimensional, apathetic version of what we minimize in our minds. Period. We only feel our lives are dull and boring, when we are discontent in our own circumstances. We only reduce someone else’s story to such when we are attempting to reduce them, in our minds, or when our circumstances feel too big/loud and we long for small/quiet. It is a perception. Period.

If we could see a time-lapse of our own lives, we would be amazed. There are hardships and heartbreaks we’ve all known, and many of us are living them as I type this. Sometimes it is easy to hear the circumstances of our own journeys in comparison to another person and think we have nothing to share. It isn’t true. Each and every one of us have lives comprised of many things, things both beautiful and horrifying, that others may need to see.

We love the stories of the hero who lived through incredible difficulties, overcame extreme odds and we sit through the movies and documentaries about them, awed. They inspire us. We read books about them, tell others about them, and often make changes in our own lives because of the incredible examples those people were. Our entire world is built on the foundation of everyday people living through something and then paving the way for a better future because of it. (NOT despite it. BECAUSE OF IT.)

Guess what, friend- you and I? We are that very sort of person. The abuses we’ve known, the mistakes we’ve made- these things can bury us in their rubble, if we let them. How do we not allow that to happen? We choose not to let it. We move on, altered for the better, because. Because, because, BECAUSE- Always.

Someone, somewhere, can see the time lapse of your life (in a sense… not an actual time-lapse video, because that would honestly be awkward for everyone.) and move forward, for the better, too. The mushroom is merely a fungus, living on the ground, and sprouting from the mildewed bits of dirt on the forest floor. Often they are toxic. Sometimes they can make people happy, or paranoid, or what have you. Some of them are ugly, many are beautiful and often they are an annoyance. They come from the worst, often remain the worst- but their journey when viewed with a nutshell perspective is mesmerizing.

Friend, we are so much more than forest fungus. We may come from the worst, but we don’t have to settle for becoming that.

Middle…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay5 Comments

Hello and Happy Friday!

Most Fridays I join the lovely little community over at Five Minute Friday, with a weekly writing prompt by Kate. This week’s word is Middle…

I hear it all of the time honestly, middle… 

You don’t know what I’m in the middle of. 

I’m sorry, Ive been in the middle of ________. 

I think the biggest thing standing against me is that I’m a middle child.

Middle child, middle of divorce, middle of a big project… We seem to, as a people, keep ourselves purposefully stuck in a middle. We allow this seemingly negative space to hold us captive to something else, even when those somethings may lead to better, even desired new spaces for us. There may be some honesty within our middles, but we also use our middle as an excuse- as a crutch…

There are many overused, yet accurate, statements such as the middle of the road, or middle class, which also- though not technically negative, are infused with just the right amount of something unpleasant that we equate them as such.

Let’s be honest- middle is safe, most of the time. (and not in a really great, rescuing us from danger sort of way) We walk the middle line, metaphorically, so that we don’t have to decide or claim ownership of a commitment completely. If we don’t actually decide, or choose, then we can’t be wrong. If we we aren’t wrong, we won’t fail. While these subconscious patterns elude us into believing we are being responsible, we are inhibiting our personal growth.

Sometimes we will veer from our safe middle ground, and we will get hurt. That’s ok. This is how we grow.

What if we tried to drive down the middle of the road? We would cause absolute disaster. The middle may sometimes be the best choice, (obviously not when driving) but the middle isn’t as safe we often want to believe.

~

Since I have you here, I wanted to share a few things SUPER quick, so that we can get on with our reading of other Middle themed posts and (Hallelujah!) our weekend!

  • There is a new season of Heartland, on UPTV and I’ve linked a teaser for you!
  • Our new episode of the Collective Podcast features an interview with writer Brie Jacobson, as she shares her story about surviving the Route 91 Music Festival shooting, in October of 2017.
  • Lastly, I did CampNanoWrimo this month and finished a 50,000 word writing challenge! So much lay ahead, regarding this precious (to me) manuscript of mine. I’m hoping to have the first draft done very soon, and move into editing. I have such a supportive readership, and so I wanted to thank YOU for that! This is as much our project, as it is mine. We’re all in this together….

October 1st, 2017…

Published on by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment

On the Collective Podcast today, we have a survivor of the Las Vegas shooting that happened at the Route 91 festival, in 2017. She bravely shares her story and, while it may seem obvious to state, shines a spotlight on how most of us have gone back to life as usual, while the survivors from that day (and let’s be honest, many other brutal days, with other locations and other acts of violence) can never regain the normal they knew before…

Please listen to Brie share her story in episode 46…

And also, please do something beautiful in memory of these souls who lost their lives. Do not allow life to minimize them into one dimensional memories- these were living, breathing human beings, just like you and I. Look at their faces, learn about them. We need to, as a society, reacquaint ourselves with people and less with disconnected news blips.

these days…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay4 Comments

This has been the first summer that we have lived in our little nearly-lake side cottage. We piled our boxes and possessions in during the sticky post-summer remnants of last fall. In these summer months I have walked the tightrope stance of being annoyed that early mornings were so bright, and wishing I could bring myself to wake up earlier. Isn’t that funny? There I am, sleeping away (and I’ve never been a great sleeper anyway,) when the beautiful sunrise comes peaking in and I grumpily shade my eyes only to later wish something (anything) could help me wake up earlier. How often are we guilty of begging for an answer, when the solution is right before our eyes?

Well, 4 a.m. yesterday and 4:30 a.m. today have me (reluctantly) up and facing the day. Yesterday it occurred to me that a few weeks ago, the sun would have been right on my tale, but this day it seems, doesn’t have its rising scheduled until pretty much 6 a.m.

The days are getting shorter…

And truthfully, I am sad about this.

The longer summer evenings have, for the first time that I remember, caused their own set of issues. My husband’s hours, for work, had him heading to bed long before it had even considered setting, and so I would struggle. While I should retire, as well, it was full sun outside. The result was, almost always, me up past 1 a.m. because this night owl knows how to self sabotage, apparently… (I hear you saying well no wonder you were struggling with the 4:30 rising sun! I know, I know…)

Complications aside, I love a long evening. I love the breezes as they chase away the heat of a day, as the sun sets late. All too soon it will be pitch black at four in the afternoon and the sun won’t be rising until hours after our early work day has began.

I am sad because shorter days mean that we are on the downslope of this year. This year who, for its first half felt unfairly brutal and stripping, and then suddenly I’m left whiplashed and wondering where it has gone.

As we age, this passing of time happens at lightening speed. It may also be fair to point out that my crotchety regards to early sunrises and late sunsets can also apply (a bit) to older age as well. I could remark about how I can’t win, but the common denominator here in all of these ill-fated trains of thought is simply me.

Last night I had a video call with my sister, who was buying school supplies. I felt a mix if things. I had noticed their appearance, in our local Target, last week. I had avoided them, an act pretty unlike me, as I love school supplies. I guess I wasn’t quite ready to embrace the impending change of season, not quite willing to surrender my grasp on summer.

But still, these days are getting shorter.

Last night, around the time of the video call, my husband and I were at an outdoor blues concert. It was amazing and lovely, peacefully and summery, when all at once two things occurred…

One, I looked up at a girl’s t-shirt which read class of 2024. I scoffed and made some low-breathed remark like yeah right, she looks a little tall to be a kindergartener. Here we are, on the literal cusp of 2020, and I sat clothed in full denial because how? (seriously though, how is this even possible? And is asking this a sign of old age?)

Two, halfway through the show, as the sun was beginning its descent, people started packing up their chairs and picnic remains. The slowly fading sun had escorted in the bugs, ready to have their evening feast on all of us.

The days are getting shorter.

Also, next Monday’s show will be seven days worse…

Do you love the late summer sunsets or prefer the cooler, early evenings of Autumn?