Not all life is about life, it’s about living as well.
Playing in the in between moments of need, want, loss, and fear.
Relenting to the everyday only leads to the everyday.
For the Sijo Challenge this past week.
© 2014-2023- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
Some of you probably don’t know about Kitty. Back when I first came home from the hospital six years ago this month, I didn’t know anyone here, who I was, or most anything about my past. If you think about that for a moment, you might realize a situation like that doesn’t give a person much of a connection to anyone. And over those first weeks you learn whether the people are people you want to be connected with.
For me, I was saved. Not by a person, but by a very tiny cat.
This is her way back then, after she and I got to know each other. I saw her in the tree line around the house and guilted someone into feeding her, or him as I thought she was at the time.
I would eat my lunch on the porch to get to natural light and fresh air each day and Kitty, as I oh so creatively named her (What else would you expect from an author of one Historical Fiction book about the British Navy and Pirates, and a short story for an anthology about magical realism?) would come and sit near me or play and even let me rub her tummy, which shows you how happy she was.
Well eventually Kitty earned a new name from the rest of the house.
You might guess it. Mama Kitty. That’s how they spell momma. But yes, the little hussy gave us Spunky, Fluffy, and Cautious. Sadly on Kitty and Fluffy are with us now. As for Cautious? We have no clue. But Spunky, it’s believed a Coyote may have led to his disappearance, as there were a lot of such cases during that time. But here are some Spunky pictures. He was a funny and adventurous guy/
Kitty isn’t as loving as she used to be. I think the kits wore her out. She was and is a great mother. She not so long ago adopted another son named Tiger. She even holds him down and bathes his ears for him. I’ll share photos soon, if I can get one. Here is Kitty now, just a few days ago. As you can see, she has become quite the little lady. And I mean little. She actually has the tiniest head of any cat I’ve seen. In person she is so delicate looking. Several months ago she disappeared. We were so worried. She finally showed up, starving, smaller, and the fur on the right side of her face had been ripped off. The thought is she was trapped somewhere, either by accident or on purpose, and she was able to finally escape. She’s good now and as pretty as ever.
Yesterday in my article Peacemaker to Positivity I mentioned accepting the events of your life in order to be at peace with yourself and to use those events to help others who experience similar things. That’s a lot to ask of someone.
There are events in this world that are difficult to accept. But you are either accept them or ALLOW them to run and ruin your life. And events are events. They are moments in time. Moments that have already happened and cannot be changed.
We all go through the “If only I had…” moments. Those are the “I am holding myself back” moments. If you are a parent you try and do things through you child you wish you had done. As a spouse you want to be more perfect than whatever your parents were.
We are going to fail in both of those. Our children are not us, so whatever they do is for them, not us. And our parents were them and not us. No matter what others do, it is them that do it. By accepting and moving on we can become a success at something on our own, for our own. We can help other people.
I know there are those moments that are truly horrible, but what can you do about them? Don’t ALLOW them to turn you into something you aren’t. Don’t ALLOW anyone to win over your life but you.
Much Love, Success, and Respect
Ronovan
© Copyright-All rights reserved by ronovanwrites.wordpress.com 2015
Phobias, Disorders, Anxieties. You know we all have one of these. And actually the labels can often be interchangeable so don’t judge a phobia by its disorder, you’ll just cause anxiety.
I am very prolific in my blogging. I write an article or poem a day except on Saturdays, and sometimes even then. So it seems that I have a problem that people don’t understand. It’s become worse over time since I began blogging.
And when I mention it, well the subject, people’s responses just make it worse because they don’t get it. It goes back to my concussion a couple of years ago.
Before that I was a very engaging person. Never met a stranger. Could have a conversation with anyone. But since then, and the retrograde amnesia, things changed. You know I kind of get afraid of things. And I became so isolated because of not only the amnesia but the light and sound sensitivity, and the migraines, that people actually became a problem.
I am now at the point I don’t go to stores any longer. I very rarely step outside the house at all. I’m okay with the no people in person thing though. I mean, I like being alone now.
My communicating with the world is through my articles. And unless you are a super close person to me, I don’t even talk in emails.
That brings me to the problem. And it’s kind of sad I even have to mention it, but I’m going to anyway so people will understand people like me, and not judge us.
When people comment on blogs, well some of them almost demand a response. I have a fear or responding. Don’t ask me why or what it is, but if you ever see a response it has taken a lot for me to get up to the point to do it. I have almost been to the point of removing the comment option from the blog. But people have met through my comments and helped each other.
I’ve mentioned comments before in articles and the responses have made it worse. People pride themselves in responding to every comment on their blogs. They brag about it in the comments. Some actually do genuine responses, but there are also those who do fake responses. If you’ve been blogging long enough you know what I mean. I personally am not going to do fake responses just to make my blog grow. That’s not me.
When I first began blogging I was able to make myself respond, but things have gotten worse as time has passed. I want people to know they can blog however they like and grow a blog. It’s your content that matters. If you have something people find worthwhile, that’s all that matters.
Don’t let other bloggers who say you must respond to every comment in order to be a good blogger, a successful blogger, force you to do anything. If you are like me and feel physically ill sometimes at the idea of having to respond to a comment, learn to not worry about it. I do it at times because a comment really requires a response, or I am having a good moment.
Is it a Social Anxiety issue? Maybe. Is it some kind of phobia about people? Maybe. Sounds like they are both the same to me.
If you read my blog and you comment and I don’t respond, don’t take it as I am not reading your comment or that I am not appreciating it. Sometimes I will click like on the comments to show I read them and appreciate them. Some people are Blog Nazis and don’t think that’s good enough. Whatever.
I’m good with what I can do. You be good with what you can do. Don’t judge. This is my outlet. This is how I talk to the world. And this is the last time I am going to talk about comments on this blog. I’m tired of it. Almost as tired as I am of people complaining about me not replying to comments.
Much Love, Success, and Respect
Ronovan
© Copyright-All rights reserved by ronovanwrites.wordpress.com 2015
Listing negatives and living in the here and now, in the moment without looking to the past for what we’ve missed and regretted and to the future for what we wished we could have. That pretty much sums up the past three weeks of thoughts about becoming more Positive.
Positivity doesn’t just happen. As I’ve mentioned before, you need to take baby steps to create a lasting mindset of positivity. A qToday I want to discuss a little about creating a positive environment to grow in. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to move rearranged your furniture, at least not yet. Hmm, maybe I will. Let’s see what happens.
First you need to decide how serious you are about wanting a better life. Some decisions might seem drastic to you. Some will be seriously life changing. But if you are wanting not only a better and more positive you but also a better and more positive around you, then tough needs to happen.
Second you need to learn what your environment is. Many people only think of the physical state of what I mentioned earlier, furniture or paint or curtains or a garden. But environment is many things.
“1: the circumstances, objects, or conditions by which one is surrounded
2a : the complex of physical, chemical, and biotic factors (as climate, soil, and living things) that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival
b : the aggregate of social and cultural conditions that influence the life of an individual or community”~Merriam-Webster’s
By looking at the definition of environment you may see where we are headed. You may not be able to rid yourself of all things negative in your life but you can be rid of what you can be rid of. One way to do this is to realize what is and is not important to your life.
Once again, a difficult/tough process, but one that is required. As always, start with the easy things first. For me it was things like music and other medium that gave me negative messages. Just because a song had a good beat I might have liked it but the lyrics were actually derogatory and very negative. I was hearing them but not really using my brain to say, this stuff is not worth it.
As for media, such as news articles and the like, I look at headlines and decide if I want to read or not. Do I need to know about certain celebrities and their fights with each other? Do I need to know about every single incident of any type of crime in existence?
The difficult things? Family? Friends? That’s where it gets a bit tricky. And it’s why you start with what you can control with a little more ease.
I know some people who are horrible to certain people but nice to me. Why? Maybe because I am positive and not negative to them all the time? I don’t know. But I do think it helps.
How you look at things can determine how you handle things, interpret things and how people look at you as well. You influence others by how you act and thus you change your environment. Does it always work that way? No, but it does work a lot of times.
Much Love, Success, and Respect
Ronovan
© Copyright-All rights reserved by ronovanwrites.wordpress.com 2015
On Monday I wrote an article titled Let a moment just be a moment and as a result of comments I began thinking a little bit. No comments from the usual suspects please about me thinking.
Emotional reactions and assignment of labels to events are habits. That can be good or bad or if you would rather you can call them beneficial or non-beneficial, as I often look at them that way myself. Some ‘good’ habits may not be beneficial or necessary. Recognition that you have these habits, either in a good or bad way, is a great benefit to you.
Knowing you have created habits through the years, and if you examine your life you will likely see where certain habitual reactions began, you can either work to continue on a positive path to increase those beneficial reactions or work to decrease those negative ones that cause harmful effects on your life.
I know there are people out there that think how you are is how you are going to be forever. Let me tell those people this. “You’re wrong.”
Here’s the deal, yes, pretty much all of our lives are habits. Every aspect of our lives involves habits, other than the biological process such as breathing and the like. And even with breathing you can create a habit or routine manner of breathing in situations.
Think about that one for a moment. If you think when someone talks about your Momma you have to hit them or insult them back, then you’ve got a habit going on and you’ve also ALLOWED that person to own you for a time. They got you. They know your sore points, your weaknesses.
Just like in boxing when fighters prepare for an opponent they are training to how that opponent fights. They know what their opponent’s favorite moves are. If you don’t have habits then you can’t be owned as easily, including not being owned by your own weak mindedness.
Overcome your negative view of not being able to control your habitual reactions and thoughts through creating healthier habits of positivity. A way to begin is by looking at that List of Negatives I asked everyone to create a few weeks ago and think about how they became negatives. Examining and understanding your emotions and thought processes is one of the key factors of creating a positive you. A positive you is not just for you alone, it’s for all those who associate with you.
Everyone you know will benefit from a more positive you.
Much Love, Success, and Respect
Ronovan
© Copyright-All rights reserved by ronovanwrites.wordpress.com 2015
An Awesome post written for #BeWoW. Well, I think it was written for far more than that but it happened to coincide with it. I know she worked on this a few days and it came out great. A definite MUST READ for everyone. Seriously. Don’t miss this one.
“The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them.”~Woodrow Wilson
Two weeks ago I asked you to Make a List of Your Negatives, while last week I said to get rid of one of those negatives. Two problems with that last one. One, the article was long and few people read it. The other problem, for those who read it I imagine you were expecting me to tell you how to get rid of those negatives. By the way, there was more to the article than ‘get rid of one of those negatives’.
Today I’ll attempt to be brief and tell you how to be rid of negatives.
Let’s take your list of negatives in their nice columns and for every negative that comes from a past event place an x beside it. For every negative whose source lies in the future, in other words something you are wanting but can’t have yet or may never have, place a little circle beside it.
Now realize you are looking at things that cannot be reached or dealt with in the present. Wait before you start yelling about controlling what might happen in the future.
Those Past Negatives are in the past. Unless you want to apologize to someone or forgive someone, you are most likely out of luck. Drop those Past Negatives. And if you haven’t apologized or forgiven in all these years and are having problems with it, that’s called Regret. You can visit my Regrets are where they belong, in the past from this past Wednesday for some good quotes about regrets.
Expecting anything from someone else is a Negative you will never control. That’s one Negative you are to never allow to take a rest in your mind. It’s time to live in the now, not the yesterday, not the future, but the now. Here. Now. Not in the what you wished you had or what you hope to have, but in the what you have. You can work toward what you want to have some day, but that’s some day. That’s a goal, not a Negative.
Take your list, do the x’s and o’s and start working your way through those x’s. And really, if you are strong enough, you can toss them all, but if you haven’t already done that, then you most likely will need to take the baby steps I’ve talked about previously. There is no hurry, no race, no trophy.
You need to:
That last part is the most difficult. Read through the article again and you’ll see why you are to let it go and let it be over. You’re in control of it all. Don’t ALLOW anything, especially a memory to control YOU.
Live in the here and now, and enjoy life.
“When faced with a challenge, happy families, like happy people, just add a new chapter to their life story that shows them overcoming the hardship. This skill is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence.”~Bruce Feiler
Much Love, Success, and Respect
Ronovan
© Copyright-All rights reserved by ronovanwrites.wordpress.com 2015
There’s a saying that goes something like, “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone.” For about two years I’ve kind of laughed at that phrase. For some of us, when something is gone we don’t even know what it was which means we don’t miss it.
I’ve been fine with it. I go through each day with a new loss flittering away and I feel fine. That’s because I don’t know what flitters away. Okay, so I know something is likely being lost. I’m aware that memories are lost.
Normally I don’t stress about it because stressing leads to other problems. Recently a memory loss, a huge one, became evident—with vigor.
I’ll explain an “other” problem for a moment. Depression. Well, I don’t know that it really needs to be explained. We all know what depression is. When a memory goes away and I then have people forcing that memory back in my head, or trying to get it back in there, things happen. The brain snaps. I actually at some point feel a pop in my head. I am sure it’s not really anything physical, only a psychological representation of what is happening.
When that happens, Ronovan is gone for a time.
My huge memory loss recently led to such a situation. I would think things were going fine, then wham, another hit from a different side. Lulled into things being okay. Wham, another hit. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
Now, here I am, depressed, physically ill, and looking for the learning lesson of it all.
Memory problems make for a bad emotional entity. They also make for a bad relationship of any type. You wake up and you don’t know if that person who is your friend, spouse, significant other, father figure is still going to be that for you.
Who is it fair to in that situation? As I’ve been writing this I’ve been sorting through it all. I suppose the best thing is if it’s a repeat offender status thing, cut and run if the situation allows for it. I know live in family members can’t do that but there are things you can do.
Accept the memory loss person (MLP) for who they are, knowing what is possible.
Be supportive in the efforts of the MLP to handle it. Think for a moment about this. You wake up, or are even going along writing or watching a video and then—WHAM—you don’t know what day it is, or what city you are in, or who that person in the other room is. Ever wonder how a person handles that each day?
Think about being in the middle of a sentence and forgetting who it is across the table from you. In this age of internet and digital conversations and friendships it’s even more difficult to remember without those constant physical/visual cues.
People might find it surprising that I wake up and have forgotten the people in my house. Or I will go through one of those situations above. My body goes through a routine each morning and I discover what my problems are and I just go with it. I’ve told myself in letters not to stress, that I am normal. This is normal for me. I tell myself to begin to write something from a list of projects I’m working on.
Sometimes memories will come back or at least enough of a familiarity to make things fine or functionable. Yeah, another of my made up words.
What about the other person, the person forgotten?
What would I do if I were on the other end of this?
I honestly can’t answer that with an all encompassing solution. I think patience is part of it, understanding, and you know maybe even just cut and run. I know people balk at that last one but it is an option. But that is the option people will focus on here because it is seen as the uncaring, cold idea and how could I even think of telling someone to do that if a person cared about the MLP or of the MLP cares about the person.
I’ve been living with this for two years. You get to the point, where after having written about it, thought about it, and lived through it, you cut through it all to the heart or heartless of it all and give solutions.
And what about the MLP? Should they keep trying to remember, opening themselves up to an emotional tug-of-war to then either go through the loss again, perhaps not knowing it, or then being shut off once a connection is established again?
What do I do?
I have no one answer for myself. Perhaps I should, it would make my life easier. Can a person live a life, a healthy life mentally without people? I suppose they can but I’m not that far gone yet.
Now, for those who look at my writing and things I share each day and think I seem normal and I have all these friendships and all, the MLP has tricks they use to get by. Don’t call out the MLP for this if you still want to be a part of their life. At least they are trying.
I’ll tell you one trick I have. It’s called the Ronovan Writes Weekly Haiku Poetry Prompt Challenge. No, that’s not a plug for my challenge. I am telling you about a trick. There are people who do the challenge every week, and that means I read their work, usually at least twice, think about it, review it, see their names, and all of that every week. It doesn’t work for each person because of lack of regularity but when I see the name I know it’s familiar and once I get to their site things come back.
MLPs have sensory/emotional impressions of people if not actual memories. I know by a name, if it has been around me long enough, if that person is someone that is positive for me or negative, if that person is a friend or foe, if that person is emotionally good for me or a life drain.
When you hear that old saying about first impressions, it’s true. Make a good first impression and good last impression as well. You are asking, “How do I know when that last impression will be?” Whenever you leave the communication presence of someone, that’s your last impression until the next time you connect with them.
Well, this has been a longer message than I had planned, and I’m not sure if it is even what I had intended, but it is what it is and that’s all that it is. So, as I have just now read back through it, you might find it surprising I forgot about half of what I wrote while I was writing this. But again, it is what it is. I’m not to blame, you are not to blame, there is no blame.
Oh, I just remembered why I was writing this. Seriously. That big recent memory loss I had, like a mind wipe almost, took some important people away and broke things. Hmm, never mind. You know, I’ve tried. I think I will just deal with the depression of it all, come out the other side, and say I am what I am. It’s all I can be. Even if I don’t like it, I have to accept it or wind up on the 6 o’clock news.
Much Respect
Ronovan
© Copyright-All rights reserved by ronovanwrites.wordpress.com 2015
ronovanwrites 