It has always puzzled me what all the cheering is for. Perhaps it’s simply the fact that I can still walk upright—most of the time. Or maybe it’s just that I walk at all.
Category: <span>Writing and Prompts</span>
When I finally understood the English lyrics and realized the depth of this song for the first time, I cried. Not loud, but quiet tears were running down my face. I was in my late 20s then and already lived in America.
Out on a walk on the island of Hydra, a vacationing Greek American comes upon an old Greek man sitting on a rock, sipping a glass of Ouzo, and lazily staring at the sun setting into the sea.
Every time someone calls me an author, I tense up. I can feel it in my shoulders. I purse my lips, and the wrinkles on my forehead grow deeper when I frown. “I wish they would stop calling me that,” a voice inside me whispers.
Do you open your neighbor’s garden gate, stomp through their rosebed, and then sit down on their patio?
The garden gate and the fence around the flowerbed mark the property line that we do not cross without the neighbor’s permission. In most cases, we can also easily perceive physical boundaries: if someone touches us, we quickly register whether or not we are comfortable with it and act accordingly.
I have been very fortunate in my life. I have been to Africa a couple of times, not just for vacation or a safari, but also, I was allowed to work there for a few months. Africa! When I say the word, you can hear the love I feel. It’s the same tone of voice that I use when I say “Hi, honey.”
I stayed behind with our dogs for a couple of days, a decision my husband and I had made together, while my husband hoped for a miracle five hundred miles away.
What’s the meaning of life? Oh, how I love this question. It has driven me mad for decades.
I couldn’t find the right words for it, and was unable to pinpoint my desire. Did it even have a name? The wish to have less restlessness, to be less overwhelmed, less of everything? Less cleaning, less sorting, fewer worries, no overthinking?
The journey of an author begins after the book is published!
(The Happy Quitter)