Creating life with words: Inspiration, love and truth

The scariest moment is always just before you start. (Stephen King)

The optimist will always find a way to start, the pessimist will always find a way to put it off. I am inherently an optimist, I see the good in situations and people, and usually quickly find a positive solution to everything that comes my way, good and bad. One of my sayings is to ask myself (when there is a problem), has anyone died? If they haven’t, then surely there is not really a problem.

The story of me being that kid in the room full of horse shit is probably true, but I have also learned optimism and practised it. Being an optimist has in part also kept me blogging and writing. Reading and writing, my blog from a few days ago has brought quite a variety of comments, and they are a significant part of our lives. Comments inspire me to keep writing, but also have kept me very grounded. So far, no responses have yet put me off blogging each day, although every negative one could be the start button for that (or stop button?!).

One blog follower commented via email to a couple of recent blogs saying, Dear Kate, What a laugh!  Firstly, that you think you’re getting fat and, secondly, the funnies in your honest blog. I relate so well to today’s words – and I’m still chuckling. The one about thermals was a scream, too.  You DID draw a cartoon – with words! Keep up the good work and stay warm. Love MW. Another email response said, Kate, you are not a real writer, and you should get over yourself, there’s not a Shakespeare or Wordsworth anywhere in there yet. You are after all, just a blogger!! GB. They did not send their comments to my blog, but both know me well enough to have my personal email address. I have chosen to copy them in here word for word (without their permission, but also without their names to protect them), as their comments well highlight the swings and roundabouts one must face when writing something that others can read.

One of my favourite speakers and authors is a man from Florida called Wayne Dwyer, and he once said that he sends his positive fan mail to the people who send him negative feedback, and vice versa, because, after all, it is just an opinion. The reading of my blogs is a choice, and my blogs are not likely to ever be on the curriculum anywhere, but that is not why I write. And I do write, copious amounts of words each day, many of which will never make it here or anywhere else, but that is not the point.

For me, writing is fun, it has become therapy, and it is the hard disc of my memory. Writing makes me a writer. Reading makes me a reader. Studying makes me a student. Working made me an employee (amongst other things). Cooking makes me a cook, but this almost always also makes people love me! My father always used to say, the way to a mans heart is though his stomach!  I’m not so sure that is true, but it worked for Mum.

So I’ll continue to be an optimist and will keep blogging and writing, until I have no words left inside my heart. I love your responses, no matter how or where you send them, the contrast of opinions is exciting and the more negative ones make me think more honestly, and the devil’s advocates out there make me ponder and question more too. Of course I love the praise too; who wouldn’t? Blogging and optimism are carefully bound together by food, readers and writers, all of us joining hands through our own experiences of life and love.