harmonize, integrate, synthesise, unify, put together – or, as is appropriate right now- PULL together.
We’re having to do all these things during these weeks of Covid 19 lockdown. It’s important we’re all attempting to orchestrate our recovery from this horrible virus that’s infecting the world. Although we might have to do our bit in isolation from others you could say we’re a bit like cogs in a wheel. We have to pull together to make the whole thing work.
Stay at Home
how we can help
I’ve just completed week four of staying at home. Yes, I get bored. I get worried too. It doesn’t do you any good, though, to whinge or moan. It only makes you feel worse. I try to concentrate on how lucky I am to have a home in which to self-isolate and a garden where I can watch our Norfolk wildlife.
Can I orchestrate my thoughts?
If I could get my head in the right place I’d be completing my seventh book (fourth novel) but instead I’ve been finding other things to do. It’s as if I have to move my whole body – sitting still to create is out of reach just now. I joined the WordPress daily prompt initiative in the hopes I could settle into writing again. Writing short posts like this one is the limit of my ability just now. So I garden. I cook new recipes. Bake cakes and bread when there’s flour in the supermarket. I take a short walk and watch the Downing Street briefing at 5pm every day to see what the latest developments are. I’m trying to put structure into my life of confinement.
Harmony out of chaos
We don’t know how long these restrictions will continue. I’m in an ‘at risk’ group as I’m older and because of CRPS. I suppose when we reach the point where restrictions are lifted a little, I’ll have to wait longer.
hoping for harmony
But, surely, we’ll get there. In the meantime I have to content myself with the knowledge I’m doing the best I can.
Some say the word April comes from the Latin ‘aperire’ – to open. In the old Roman calendar April was the second month of the year, a hopeful time with new beginnings and new life springing up all over the place.
Oh, to be in England now that April’s here . . .
But it’s hard to keep hopeful. England is in crisis due to Covid19. No walking in the park beneath cherry blossom for us this year. Got to keep our distance from other people. We can’t visit family and friends for Easter. Shops are closed and streets are empty. Beaches and country parks are deserted . Cities look like ghost towns.
Self isolation – no joke
I’m in week three of my self-isolation having begun it a week before the government said I should. Social distancing they’re calling it – to help stop the spread of the virus.
from Daily Express
I haven’t been able to sit still. This is the first time I’ve taken to my desktop to write anything. In between cleaning, laundry, gardening, batch-cooking etc. etc. I’ve shared a few posts on Facebook and savoured a cuppa while reading others’ humorous memes connected to this horrible pandemic and I’ve enjoyed the joke. Here’s a couple of my favourites. I’d like to give credit but I can’t find the originals now. Apologies to the creative souls who put them together.
humour in disaster?
Wouldn’t we feel safer if he was in charge? At times like this we really feel the need to have confidence in our leaders. Disaster films are one thing but this is FOR REAL. Here in the UK we’re building up to a massive demand for answers to our questions. But let’s get on with what we have to do now to play our part in our country’s eventual recovery. Then we must find and pay for ways to ensure the future is safer for our children and grandchildren.
Dark humour is appropriate right now. I like the following quip too which I saw the other day.
Covid quarantine
The enforced ‘stay at home’ opens up cracks in the most stable of relationships and families. Maybe an April joke will help get you through.
Denial comes in different guises. Usually when we say someone is in denial we think of it in negative terms. There is a person who won’t accept the truth, we think. There is a person who can’t cope.
denial as defence
You might not want to face the truth about all kinds of things: illness; ageing, addiction, relationships. Some people use denial as a means of self defence. They think by ignoring the facts that everything will somehow improve.
Wrong.
don’t deny your feelings
I have experience of it. I suppose most of us have at one time or another. But pushing aside problems only has the effect of allowing them to accumulate. Like cancer, they grow. They multiply. They keep on multiplying until your whole system is toxic.
When you know you have a medical problem you do something about it, don’t you? You go and get it fixed. But anything to do with emotions/feelings/fears/anxieties etc etc. we tend to shy away from. In a previous post I wrote about Brené Brown’s ideas on vulnerability. She’s all for coming out with your vulnerabilities and giving them voice. It’s the most courageous thing you can do.
But there are people who not only deny their own feelings: they deny yours too. When you’ve had the courage to make yourself vulnerable and express how someone’s actions make you feel they should acknowledge what you’ve said. If they refuse, they have a problem. They are in denial. And if you allow it to continue you’re the one who’s going to end up with a bigger problem than you had to begin with.
face your truth
Yet there is a positive aspect to denial. Consider the following:
Matthew 16:24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.”
Self denial is another matter altogether. Abandonment of the needs of self and taking up your share of the suffering of humanity (your cross) is key to being a good human.
All well and good if you’re dealing with other ‘good’ human beings. There comes a point, it seems to me, when you can’t continue giving to others if they are in such a state of denial they prefer to continue hiding behind a false front. Surely that would be time for some tough love. Standing back and allowing someone to experience the error of their thinking might be the lesson they need. Obviously you wouldn’t do that with a child who wants to play with matches but when an adult is making the choice to live in denial all you can do is let them get on with it and remove yourself.
you can’t live in denial forever
Well, Amen to that.
Anybody like to add their comments? Don’t be shy. You can reach me on my Facebook Celia Micklefield author page and on Twitter @cmicklefield
I lost all my widgets when my website crashed after updating to WordPress 4.7.2 I discovered the problem was caused by non-compatible plug ins. My screen showed the white page of death.
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare add_term_meta() (previously declared in /home3/cecilia/public_html/wp-includes/taxonomy.php:1153) in /home3/cecilia/public_html/wp-content/plugins/taxonomy-metadata/taxonomy-metadata.php on line 97
With the help of the marvellous James F at Hostgator we managed to get me up and running again. (see previous post.)
BUT. I’d lost all my widgets. Most of my plug ins were incompatible with my new updated system. What’s a girl to do?
Jetpack has the answers. Mostly.
This is a great package. Widgets coming out of its ears. Top Ten posts to show in your sidebar. Background stats to show how many views for each post. Subscriber email check box. Connection to your latest Tweets. Loadsa widgets.
You can tell there’s a ‘BUT’ coming.
I don’t like the image widget from Jetpack
It distorts your pictures. I’ve tried every which way to improve their appearance but gave up in the end. Images within the text of a post look fine.
widget screen
The widget screen above from my media library looks okay. But when I tried to put an image box in my contents sidebar on the right of the page the picture was as distorted as the ones in the popular posts widget in the primary sidebar on the left.
Altering pixel size did nothing to help. Instead I looked elsewhere.
Black Studio TinyMCE widget
This is the one I always used before updating. I checked its compatibility and – Bob’s your uncle – it’s good to go.
The burning hand image I use for my CRPS posts looks as it should in the contents sidebar. I’m happy to continue using this widget.
Now I want to know how to put borders around images as I could before updating. It used to be an easy option. Maybe I’m just missing the information. It must be here somewhere.
I’d been eyeing the update recommendation for some months. Each time I looked at my WordPress dashboard there was the update message again.
update NOW!!!
I know you’re supposed to update your systems. If you don’t you might find things don’t work so well. But I’m a careful sort. I wait. I wait to see if the latest update has caused problems for others before I take the leap into the unknown.
I made the decision. Time to update. I backed up using WordPress’ recommended plug in. I thought, It’ll be okay. If anything goes wrong I can go back to where I was before.
Update and calm in the same sentence?
Duh! See, I’m no expert at this malarkey. I’m a writer. I write novels and short stories and, to be honest, I’m pretty amazed that I ever got this far with managing my own website.
So, feeling reasonably confident I was fully prepared I hit the update button.
what progress?
Have you ever seen the white page of death? It looks something like this:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare add_term_meta() (previously declared in /home3/cecilia/public_html/wp-includes/taxonomy.php:1153) in /home3/cecilia/public_html/wp-content/plugins/taxonomy-metadata/taxonomy-metadata.php on line 97
What the . . .?
NOOOOOOOOOO!
I tried accessing my dashboard. Nothing doing. Just the white page of update death. FATAL ERROR are very scary words. I think my hair actually stood on end.
update howling
I had a bit of a think. I made coffee. Thought some more. This must be fixable, thought I, but I need a fix that’s easy to understand.
First stop – Youtube.
Youtube is amazing. You can find out how to do everything from installing a post motor filter in your old Dyson to bathing a canary in preparation for a bird show. (I once spent a whole afternoon learning multiple ways of tying a scarf around your head for a fancy dress party). But fixing a FATAL ERROR on your website? I knew it was going to give me grief. Two minutes in and I was losing the will to you know what. Eventually it became clear I needed to contact my server who hosts my website. Hostgator. Right then. Saturday afternoon? Is there anybody there?
My website server. Could they help?
Their website says – Contact us by email, phone or use the online Help Chat form.
a) they don’t give you an email address
b) I can’t afford to call Texas
c) the online help is experiencing an excess of traffic
Hmmm. I wonder why. Maybe all the bloggers out there have received their own white page of death.
I tried again and again. Still nothing doing. Back to Youtube to see how to access my cPanel at Hostgator. This is the page where you can get into your account and, I thought, maybe I can simply delete the offending plug in which has obviously assassinated my website.
Hostgator control panel
Hostgator didn’t seem to know who I am. They wouldn’t let me in. I searched through all my carefully stored and protected info from the early days and found my welcome email with my username and password. I made doubly damned sure I entered it properly.
Zilch. Nada.
Funny, I thought. They know who I am when it’s time to pay the bill.
Saturday afternoon became Saturday evening and my eyes were on stalks. Reluctantly I conceded defeat and poured a large brandy.
James F to the rescue
On Sunday I got through. James F appeared out of the wide blue yonder and answered my online question.
hostgator help
So now I’m back up and running. BUT –
all my plug ins are deactivated and, according to WordPress, most of them are untested on 4.7.2.
Now I have no FOLLOW CELIA subscriber check box. All my colourful content in the sidebars has disappeared. I can’t put borders around images in my posts nor can I automatically share my posts on Facebook, Twitter et al.
I’m disappointed. Not with James F. He is Superman as far as I’m concerned. But, come on WordPress. I’ve been a good girl and updated and you took my sweeties away.
Ah, well. I’ll just have to find plug ins that WILL work with my new updated system. Bear with . . . .
Send me a comment. I’d love to hear if others have had similar issues. And when I find a plug in that lets you subscribe please do.
I never got one. An apology. A whole year has gone by during which time I’ve had some struggle. Not to mention pain. I have CRPS as a result of injuries caused when I was knocked down by a careless driver. I cope with the pain most days with strong medication and I’ve even managed to reduce the amount I use. On warm days. Cold days are a different matter.
I had to leave my home in France. For most of last year I missed it: the warm climate, the friends I made there, the warm climate, the wine, the warm climate. You get my drift. Norfolk is a beautiful county and there are far worse places you could live in England but I couldn’t help thinking about what I was missing. When I saw flowers in a pretty garden here I’d remember the shrubs and flowers in the south of France. When I visited the coast I would long for the blue of the Mediterranean.
And I wasn’t living my life the way I wanted.
Finances have been difficult and I still await the outcome of the legal wrangle which continues over the shared property abroad. I’ve experienced anger, bitterness, a desire for revenge. All those dark emotions which don’t make you feel any better at all.
And I wasn’t living my life the way I wanted.
wise words
It took me a while. Maybe I’m a slow learner. But I got there in the end. Even though I never had an apology from the man who hit me with his car nor the man who wanted me out of his life, I am now living my life the way I want. Frugally, it goes without saying but I feel free.
I accept
I have learned so much since April 2015 and most of it has been about myself. Relationships end. It’s a fact. You can’t blame someone for falling out of love. So, instead of being stuck in thinking about what has gone from my life I’ve been able to concentrate on enjoying what is my reality NOW.
And as soon as my thinking changed so did a whole load of other things.
Now I can forgive.
forgiveness is freedom
I forgive the careless driver. I forgive my ex. Neither of them have made me less of a person. I believe I’m a better person now I’ve learned how to overcome a host of difficulties and put in place boundaries which before I chose to ignore.
I know now how I want to live my life. I can forgive the people who took away from me the life I led before because I’m free to fill my time with things I enjoy and people who love me as I am.
I have let go of the longing for what has gone. That doesn’t mean I have rolled over and allowed myself to be abused further. No. I am stronger. My boundaries mean I stand up for myself. I say what I mean and mean what I say. With gentleness. Kind but firm.
the last chapter
I’m in the last chapter of my life. It’s going to be the best. The creativity lost to me through pain, both physical and emotional, is returning.
I want to get back to my writing. I’m ready to live my life the way I want.
ditch the junk
I was crushed, I admit it. But I didn’t want to stay crushed. I still have life to live and love to give.
I want to go on loving life
There’s no point in waiting for an apology. Some people don’t mean they’re sorry anyway. Some people don’t know how to be sorry. That’s their problem. You can forgive them and move on. Let it go. Set yourself free.
Truth be told, for a time I didn’t even want to be a girl. My mother told me once if I’d been a boy I would have been called Howard. (She had a thing about the actor and singer Howard Keel.)
I tried to keep up with the boys because I thought my father had really wanted a son. I ran with the lads. Played boys’ games. Most of my friends were neighbourhood boys. Until, one day I climbed up a drainpipe onto the Drill Hall roof and couldn’t get back down. Somebody’s dad had to climb up and give me a fireman’s lift back to safety.
where Cecilia lost her street credibility
My street cred was ruined. I was a real girl after all. A girl christened Cecilia after her paternal grandmother. My grandmother was a miner’s wife, skilled at spinning out the family income to feed her brood of six children. She made the best custard in the world. I digress.
It took me a long time to grow into my name. I still don’t do frills and fancies, preferring classic styles and understatements fashion-wise, but every now and then I can fall in love with most unsuitable, uncomfortable shoes.
The meaning of my name came as a shock. It means ‘blind’. What? In what ways am I blind? There are several interpretations as in ‘blind’ faith where the believer does not need proof to believe. I rather like that.
Most people will know that Saint Cecilia is patroness of music.
St Cecilia offering her music to God
According to legend Cecilia was a Roman woman of noble birth who was martyred for her refusal to worship Roman gods. She is often depicted with a musical instrument of some sort but she also sang. My grandmother Cecilia made sure all her children had a musical education. My father played honky-tonk piano, two more of the six gained degrees in music, one became a music teacher. One son married a lady with an incredible soprano voice, my aunt Irene, and many of Cecilia’s grandchildren went on to be passionate about the Arts. For me, it’s writing now but I sang with an international choir in France for seven years and before that took part in competitive singing in the east of England winning several silver trophies over the years. Strange, how things turn out, isn’t it?
Now I can be proud to say my name. I’m comfortable with it. Friends call me Celia for short, or Cee-Cee or just Cee. But I was named Cecilia and that’s all right with me.
You return home to discover a huge flower bouquet waiting for you, no card attached. Who is it from — and why did they send it to you?
I love flowers. I can’t imagine not having flowers to look at. I often take photographs of plants and flowers I find particularly pleasing. They satisfy a part of me I can’t describe. I don’t know whether this kind of pleasure has a name of its own but, for me, it’s part of a feeling of connectedness, as if the plants can feel me admiring them and are even more beautiful because of that.
When I take time out to paint or draw, it’s always flowers that come to mind first.
soft pastel drawing of Hollyhocks
Even weeds have a beauty of their own.
Convolvulus
A secret admirer would know all my favourites. Someone who really wanted to reach me would know I have favourite colour combinations.
white petunia, blue plumbago
So fresh and clean: blue and white together. In fact, I have a thing about blue flowers. They resonate with me like no others. Catch them at twilight and their colour glows in the half-light with a fleeting intensity. It’s a bitter sweet pleasure: it passes so quickly. You have to be out there and specifically look for it.
Put me in a bluebell wood in April and I’m in heaven. Not only does the colour get to me, there’s the perfume as well – ah, sensory paradise.
April bluebells
Here’s a selection of flower pictures I’ve been moved to take:
Stargazer liliesfuchsia
magnoliarose
Seems I like a bit of pink, too, huh? My secret admirer would have this sussed. Well, of course he would; he has made a point of finding out these things.
The red rose is supposed to be symbolic of love. When I lived in France they were used as an early warning system protecting surrounding grape vines. At the first sign of disease on the roses wine growers would know how to treat the vines.
early warning roses
But, listen, here’s a secret. I have problems with red flowers. I never know where is the best place to plant them. To my thinking they can take over the whole garden with their showiness. They draw the eye and steal away attention from other more deserving beauties.
My ideal garden will be full of flowers but they will share the space with friendly companionship. They will be gentle and welcoming. There will be plenty of green also to act as a foil and add depth to the overall effect.
a French yard full of flowers
So who is my secret admirer?
A man so kind and thoughtful he has read this post and found a way to put a bouquet together that will both surprise me and fill me with admiration for the depth of his caring.
Why has he given it to me?
Because he loves me, silly!
(Don’t forget to FOLLOW CELIA for more Random Thoughts posts. Your email remains private. Or send a comment. I love to hear from readers.)
How would I wish 2015 to be immortalised in stone?
In response to the WordPress daily challenge <a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/immortalized-in-stone/”>Immortalized in Stone</a>
If I were to commission a sculptor to carve an immortal, personal symbol of 2015 what would it be?
a prize to die for?
I have a rather complicated image in my mind’s eye of the way I’d want my 2015 carved in stone as regular readers and friends will understand. To be immortalised means to be made non-mortal. God-like, even. Something never-ending, absolute, memorable. All positive.
And – lo, and behold, I’ve got there. Not immortal. No. Not there. I’ve arrived at the positive place that seemed unreachable six months ago, Hallelujah! Fates be praised. I’m sitting in the same chair by the same window, looking at the same view but I’m seeing something entirely different. Where once I saw empty space, now I see freedom – the freedom to fill that space with whatever I choose. How fabulous is that?
the price of immortality
I’ve done the dying swan bit. More than once. I won’t go into details. Suffice it to say I keep on bouncing back. I should have been a cat but I don’t know how many lives I have left. Whatever it is I choose to do next I better get it right. You know, just in case I’m running out of bouncability.
However, not everybody agrees that being immortalised is necessarily a worthy objective.
But the challenge is not about the immortality of the individual: it’s about the year 2015. Which brings me back to the positive/negative argument I’ve had going on in my head since February.
I still have some heavy negatives to face. To fight. But, oh, boy am I up for it. I haven’t felt this strong in an age. I’m back to being me, the real me who somehow disappeared and only came out to play once a week at choir practice. It’s a damned good feeling.
So what would my sculpture be?
Imagine a stone spiral. At the solid base supporting the structure are hewn family, grandchildren and friends. Their loving arms are entwined above their heads and they’re holding up filigree metal branches decorated with books and paper and paints and paintbrushes and music scores with treble clefs and triplets. There are lipsticks and fancy bottles of perfume and shoes with killer heels.
And when the wind caresses my sculpture there is a humming sound through the branches; forged musical notes tinkle like a wind chime; the high heels tap their timpani against the stone till the spiral spins on its axis. When decorations fall from the sculpture it doesn’t matter because other people can add their own mementoes; their own important little fancies so that my sculpture is always changing.
Maybe we don’t realise how daring we are being when we write.
We just sit down and write words, don’t we? We write them in such a way as to make an entertaining story for our readers. We have a market in mind. There’s a particular women’s magazine that likes to see short stories about ordinary people with problems to face and how they overcome them. Another magazine prefers stories with a hopeful ending.
Blog readers want to read about the subject we’re known for. So we write blogs on topic and perhaps we do it with some humour and we add photos and memes and illustrations to make the whole thing attractive to the eye.
We want to connect
With our readers. With the world. We give of ourselves in our writing, not in a conscious way, I believe, but without deliberation. We are who we are and we give it. Give ourselves. And by doing this we are exposing our vulnerabilities.
daring to be
We give our opinions. We can’t help doing that. We don’t want to lecture but it’s almost impossible to write without giving opinions. They’re there in our writing whether we like it or not. Even when we don’t realise it, our opinions are hiding in the spaces between the words, between the lines.
My subtitle under the name of my website is ‘write from the heart’. It used to be ‘writer in Languedoc’ because I’d fallen in love with that part of France and couldn’t wait to write about it. I’d given my heart to a man and his son and moved there with them. After ten years he replaced me with another woman.
But I still love Languedoc and want to continue writing about it. I’m not strong enough to do that yet. Imagining the places I loved visiting or looking through my photographs still hurts me so I avoid it. I can’t write my Wicked Stepmother Chronicles now either because as well as losing my partner and my home, I’ve lost my stepson as well. Only insofar as I don’t get to see him everyday, though. When he comes to visit family in England he comes to see me too. So, you see, I wasn’t really Wicked. I made jokes about our differences. I gave my opinions on too many hours spent online gaming and the harm I thought it was doing. And my stepson understands this. He knows I was doing my best to help him make healthy choices. But it hurts that I can’t write either my Wednesday Vine Report or my Wicked Stepmother Chronicles because I’m somewhere else.
So today I’m writing something that isn’t hurting me.
daring to be courageous
But it’s still from the heart. According to Brené Brown writing from the heart makes me courageous in the original sense of the word. I feel the things I write. And that makes me vulnerable. Here’s what Brené says:
She is FABULOUS. Watch all her videos. We can all learn from them. We can learn that it’s okay to be vulnerable. That it’s a necessary part of being human to feel our emotions. It saddens me that there are people who don’t have the opportunity to feel; people who are not only wearing shields or armour to protect them from their emotions but simply do not feel them in the first place. Or they experience emotions only in a shallow and fleeting way and to them vulnerability is the greatest weakness of all.
When I’m not writing posts for my website I’m writing about the people I’ve just described. I’ve known one intimately. He almost destroyed me. I thought I was weak, faulty, deficient in many ways. I was not enough of the things he wanted and too much of the things he came to despise. I know different now.
daring to be vulnerable
But I’m keeping my silence on the subject here on my website. For now. The book is coming along nicely and one day I’ll publish. Writing the book is giving me an inner strength and, encouraged by Brené Brown’s research, I know I’m doing the right thing.
daring to be strong
It takes nerve to be vulnerable. It makes you nervous. You’re taking such risks in being human. Opening yourself to all manner of manipulation by deceitful people. But I have always been one who could cope with whatever life throws at me. I just wish it wouldn’t throw so much my way. Well, I’m still here. I’m still writing.
And now I can stop beating myself up. I’ve made my decision. I’m more informed. I’m not walking away from all the things that ‘give purpose and meaning to living’. I give of myself. It’s who I am. I want to continue loving life. I want to continue loving people.
keep on loving
And keep on daring to be vulnerable.
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