Daily Shalagh
Daily Shalagh is otherwise known as everything I think and say and do. Or another home page.
Our Beloved Trees
Trees are being torn down in my neck of the woods to “make way”. Progress takes no prisoners. Multitudes have silently died for the sake of the broadening highway that takes folks to the ocean. They break and fall and are left in their bare stump shame while the surveyors in orange vests plan the earth moving and paving due to upset traffic patterns for years to come. When they paved my street, comments were made that the tree in front of my house was expendable. Much to my delight, their asphalting didn’t damage our...
read moreHow Summer Did Not Start Out Like Plummeting Space Junk
(If you’d like to listen to me read this post, there’s an audio recording at the bottom of the post. Scroll down and Just press play and Soundcloud will do the rest) In Summers past, I have entered the season like a plummeting piece of space junk. My landings are often fast and furious, and usually neurotic and messy. I even posted a warning to myself last year in case I’d forgotten what craziness Summer usually brings me. But if I told you this Summer’s first week was uneventful, would I believe it? Let me fill you in...
read moreBooks That Don’t Help
(If you’d like to listen to me read this post, there’s an audio recording at the bottom of the post. Scroll down and Just press play and Soundcloud will do the rest) Is it that I’m too pragmatic or my expectations are too high? Because I believe that if you’re going to make the effort to write a book or create anything that you want people to buy or buy into, you need to make sure it will in fact help them and not just you. Books need to have a little more purpose for the money they ask. There’s a book up...
read moreA Controlled Creative Climate
For the longest time, I have wanted my own creative space. I have carved them out of back rooms and basements. In this house, I have use of a sun porch which we call the craft-room. It would seem that would be good enough until I can’t be in there alone without “company” and then the Summer weather makes the room unbearably hot. But don’t be fooled, this isn’t just about the actual space to physically create in. This is also about the mental space and permission with which to be our truest selves. I have waged a battle inside that had...
read moreGaining Creative Confidence : Our Creative May
This past month of May, I again hosted a creative challenge called Our Creative May with the participation of some of my creative cohorts and Our Creative Selves contributors on Instagram. I’d done the same back in September of 2016 with great results and while I felt I struggled a little this time with my expectations around creating marvelous pieces and making creative strides, I knew this was not all there was to this month of creating. And I’ve sat quietly since gaining an understanding of really what it was that I need to...
read moreEvidence
On my walk today in the beautiful Spring-like weather, I saw evidence that the woman of the house is gone. Or more that the evidence that she was there tending to the garden and the porch has ceased. The weeds that grow and the dirt laying down on the porch furniture are telling a tale in their silence. I am familiar with the houses and yards of the houses I’m walking by for the many stroller rides and runs I’ve taken past them. And I used to admire this one with its screened in porch and mulched plant beds. Admiration which was more...
read moreSweet Technology
Were you to know me, you’d be shocked by my use of the phrase of “sweet technology”. I have had a long running substantiated horrible history with technology. Although it’s never the tech’s fault and always my spastic excitable brain’s fault, I still have long had a bad taste in my mouth for technological anything. But my forced use of technology to blog and pursue becoming a better writer combined with my mandatory use of social media to share this writing, have forced me to walk through many technological fires. I’ve called many a tech...
read moreThis Week in My Head: On Fighting the Fear and the Pain
A brain spill is a great place to start. And to keep a real face here, this is what I wrote to myself this past week. I have gone through some physical and mental pain and fear which, after sitting with it, has kicked my butt into gear a little. Fighting to stop the pains in my body, physical and mental. Pain causes fear. Fear causes anxiety. This is my living through the lesson about how “pain means something” and the resolution to rid myself of it takes work. Am I worth fighting for? Because the answer to this question will decide the next...
read moreBattling Against the Becoming
I am the caterpillar inching my way along fueled by the promise of flying one day. But all that potential to fulfill that flight is so scary. Everyone will be watching me! Maybe the beautiful butterfly that I could become is poisonous and very dangerous … to others and myself. And so, I fight the becoming, eschew the wings, and ignore the chrysalis phase. And moan and wail as I see others flying by. I chatter at myself, trying to pick the lock of myself. I query and banter, I call out and disagree. I cancel and ask for permission and still I...
read moreYou Will Be Your Own Destiny
I am going through a rough patch right now. It’s a quagmire of doubt I regularly like to reroute myself through. I decided to try to just stay and wait it out, to witness myself and try not to rush in to judge or fix. I know I need to remember my purpose, my destiny and then this morning I woke up with this in my head. “You will be your own destiny and your own reason why.” And so, I resigned myself once again to searching again for the breadcrumbs I have left for myself. The clues as to who I think I am and...
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