Come on Come Clean…We ALL Need Affirmation

After my last post on my blog it started a conversation about numbers which I thought was interesting. A lot of us say we don’t care about the numbers and yet we know how many followers we have and though I have noticed that some blogs don’t have the LIKE icon on their blogs, most do. Even in our private lives we seem to keep score to a certain extent. While my daughter and I say” I love you” freely. My son seems to feel the need to ration out his “I love you s”  thinking that they will mean more to the receiver if he doesn’t say them at the end of each visit or phone call which is just a natural place for my daughter and I to say it. Well, I can say that they don’t mean more or carry any more weight than my daughter’s ten “I love you s” to his one. But I must admit that I do notice when he says “I love you” because he doesn’t say it as often. Is that what he is aiming for? I think it must annoy my daughter if I am impacted by my son’s rationed out “I love you s” though in the scheme of things… we are the ones that actually are experiencing joy more of the time but I guess it is all perspective.

I think that from the time we are little and our parents put up our refrigerator art or our teachers put our first papers up on the bulletin boards or later,  read a story we handed in out loud to the class that they especially found well written….  we feel that affirmation and like it and want more. It can be an A on a paper. A membership in a club. A spot on a team. Even when someone in your family says I love you. We need it all. Can we live without it? Sure. But not without it affecting us.

I remember when my first husband and I were just married. He’d never had a birthday party before. Which I found rather odd because my mother in law was a wonderful woman. But for whatever reason she’d never given birthday parties. It affected him. And I kind of am just realizing it now. Because he sucked at birthdays.

Anyway, I decided to give him a surprise 25th. His sister came over to help. I had been raised to always say I love you as I walked out the door and so I said it when I walked out, and he said it back to me. I think his sister saw the opportunity and said it too. He didn’t say it back. It really hurt her. We talked about it later as we were getting things ready. I just told her that they hadn’t been raised that way and to not let it bother her and that she knew that he loved her. I know he did. (He really loved his niece (her little girl) I’ve always felt that if you love someone’s kid, it is a reflection of your love for them whether you ever say it or not!) Years later before he died, he said he “I love you” all the time. I think it is just a maturity thing.

I think it all starts in the beginning… how ever we start out…. even if our mom says I love you all the time to us… and puts our papers up on the refrigerators, whether we get birthday parties or never have ever had one… we may end up saying I love you everyday or ration them out… we may also end up rationing out our LIKES to only the very special posts…. which are the ones I covet. But I must say that I do care how many followers I generate and what kind of interest my posts attract and I will take a thousand I love YOUS and just the few at a time. I admit it. I want them all. I am a writer. I think that makes me a little different. I think we all need it… bit I am willing to admit it!!!   I NEED AFFIRMATION!!!! to me…. It’s really not just a numbers thing. I need need to know that you like me. You really, really like me! And if you are my kids… I will take as many I love YOUs as I can get! 😉

Behind The Door Of Yesterday

Behind the doors of yesterday

we all hold that perfect key

unlocking places in our past

where shadows used to be

Dancing upon moonbeams  until all  the music dies

letting go of all the pain as the broken winged one flies…

Falling hard from our dreams, when we finally land

 

searching for our innocence all where we first began.

Diane Reed

2013

As I continue to work on my book, I feel stuck. I am in a place of pain. Of total confusion. I guess ambivalence would be the best word to describe where I have landed. I keep going backwards. I need to start moving forward. I have a story to tell. A lot has to do with my past. I have the framework sitting there for me to build upon and yet I am not sure why I need to write these silly poems that have nothing to do with me today….

Or do they?

A writer writes….

A writer writes…

because she has to.

We are different.

We feel things differently.

Others who  hurt and feel joy,

just hurt and feel joy.

we need to write about it

and relive it with every word.

We invite our shadow of experience

to follow us and whisper words

that can only be found inside our heart…

The one thing that holds the pen to the stories we have to tell!

Diane Reed

2013

I have been on a break… working a lot and exhausted emotionally and physically! I heard something today that inspired this~

When an actor was describing why they act. A student was asking him if he ever got stuck. He went on to say that sometimes he is in a middle of a scene or an assignment and it just flows and other times it just doesn’t. The seasoned actor smiled and replied. If it worked everytime, everyone could do it. WHEN it works is what makes it special.

I loved that!

Have a great day!

Passions

I am back! From LA and the buying trip I went on.

I visited my friend Jody and got to spend girl time with my baby who has surprised me and become Vegan. And so we had a few foodie moments this trip.

Making falafels and trying out a new Vegan restaurant.

She is inspiring and very healthy but it is more than just health for her and she has inspired me to be more aware and I am so proud of her passion when she has a conviction. She went shopping with me and so we got both ends of the taste spectrum. Her trendy and young version and my safe, conservative, what Paso Robles peeps are (hopefully) buying!

I do need to go and price everything but first I wanted to stop in here for a few and say that I have missed you all terribly and just wanted to catch up for a minute.

If you recall, I was off to write a song as well.

Well, I must say that the melody that I was given inspired me to write a more spiritual song which is not what he (my song writer friend) was looking for and he said that in fact, his inspiration was derived from the few chapters of my book that I posted here

a few months ago, which by the way, he was not overly complimentary of. So I was touched that he would take the time to find inspiration from my story.

I have sent him snippits of what I came up with. It was not my best work. Something was missing. And I think that I know what it was. Passion. It is not that the song was not good. It was not that I am really not a song writer. I think it is just because there is work I must do and it is to finish my book

.

I have a raw and un-nerving passion that makes me trudge on. It may take a lot of hard work and soul searching but I am passionate about the message behind the story and this was a good wake up call.  I need to focus on more things with passion. I have realized that lately when that little ingredient is missing, I am not in a place where I should be.

Here is to finding my way back to the place where I can find the passion

and

the words again.

Gone Writing…

I think I really am going to take a break for a while from the power posting. I kind of feel that all of the dialoging we had in regards to my last post made me really take a look at my own motives for being here. Though I feel that I have grown so much and made  many good friends, I have spent more time trying to keep up with the comments and the new posts from other posters than working on my book. I have to admit to some of you who have been encouraging me to get to work… I haven’t.  As simple as that. I work on it for about an hour a day editing but not really inspired to write more. And yet, I could write on my blog all day long. So it made me wonder if….Maybe I need to focus just on my book for a while.

I am not saying that if I get inspired by a poem or some enlightened thought, I won’t come on here to share it, but I think that I lost something along the way… wanting to be LIKED and grow my stats. THAT is not what I am about. That is not why I write. And I refuse to get caught up in the gimmick… as one of “friends” I have made here pointed out… that a lot of people “click” your post to just generate traffic to their own. She mentioned that if you go to the time on your email you can see. I was disappointed to find that a lot at least in some of the people who “liked” me all at once. I refuse to get sucked into that. I love the comments and at least know that those people did take the time to read what I wrote but even so… I don’t want to care that much. I just want to write for me and for the other people that might be touched… A way to get my feet wet, get feedback, make genuine friends and connect. NOT beat yesterday’s stats. (Which yesterday I broke all records for some reason~ maybe cuz this subject  hits a nerve with all of us)  Soooo I am taking a little break from what I call Power Blogging…    And GONE Writing!