Once upon a time

Once upon a time

A strange group of words to put together. I wonder why they did?

Why only once upon a time and not twice or thrice?

We all have a story inside us. It started to form when we were born and it unfolds day by day.
The trick is to capture that awareness and write it down.

Does it make it any more or less precious by doing so?

I don't know and I suspect that no one does. But what I do know is that for me writing down threads of it help.
It helps me to make sense of the good and the bad.

It makes me see how they all fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
They are all equally important in my life.

A long time ago a councillor suggested I wrote down everything I could remember of my life from my earliest recollections to the present time. He said it would help me make sense of what I'd done, who I was and why. It wouldn't necessarily give me answers but there would be clues.

It was a very bad period of my life and I think the act of writing kept me sane. It gave me a focus.
I wrote as things came to me, I didn't force it.
There are never any easy answers but I didn't, and don't, expect that.

What it did for me was very valuable. It showed me who I was and some of why.

I'm going back over a quarter of a century, maybe more.
Long before I got into "Morning pages"

It was a way to get the mess out of my head and in to the open, so i didn't carry it around with me.
It didn't solve everything but it gave me strength to cope.

Then I read The Artists Way and heard about morning pages and I started to journal once more.
This time it was a way to empty my head of dross and to allow my inner child artist self to have a voice. A loud voice.

It worked then and still does.

I don't have the urge to write every day but the story waits inside until I'm ready to give it a voice.

My story will keep unfolding until I leave this mortal plain.

What about your story?

Do you listen to it?

Do you write down the words it says?

You might be surprised where the story leads.
After all:-

"Once upon a time"

But remember "They all lived happily ever after" is only a fairy tale.

Words or pictures?

On my trawls through blog land over the past few years I have often observed an argument.

Maybe not an argument more of an Us versus Them.
Quite often I've seen it said that a blog with pictures is not a proper blog.
A proper blog is apparently one that just contains writing.

I don't agree.

There are a couple of reasons that come to mind.

Firstly.

A blog is usually someone's personal journal or collection of ideas.
A way to document their life. A place to keep track of projects maybe, or places visited. That kind of thing.
Pictures are useful, indeed I would say necessary, for this.
Something to refer back to.

In this time of computers this is the modern equivalent of a picture album.
As such it is important for the individual who uses their blog for such.

Secondly.
A picture paints a thousand words.

Who has not been moved or horrified by a single image?
A new birth, a beauty in itself.
The pictures that showed the famine in Biafra, so many years ago yet still as heartrending when we see them.
Disasters or triumphs, 1 picture can be a story within itself.

My blog is my journal.

Things I used to write and illustrate in a book I now do online.
For me it has proved to be a more creative medium because I can now use virtually instant photos for illustration.
No more waiting for a film to be developed and then finding out I hadn't quite captured the image I wanted.
My diary has always been a pot pourri of stuff, for lack of a better word.

I could never close the journals with all the bits stuck in. Things I collected on my journey through the seasons and along the wheel of the year.
This blog may not be as tactile but it does enable me to capture more of the elusive dreams and ideas that the muse sends me.
I write and create art, take photos and such for ME, no one else.
I do so online because that is the medium that now gives me more space to be me. Living in a tiny home, space is at a premium and with this method it takes up far less space than books on shelves.
Those who read my diary (blog) do so by choice. What they take away from it is also their choice and very valid.
Should my ideas help or inspire or amuse in some small way then all to the good.
But I don't write for them I write for me.
I suspect most people would say something similar.

Curator of ideas

I am a curator of ideas.
Some I work on
Others I just look after.
Yet others I cook and marinate then pass them on to be worked on by others