Disillusioned

Hello Dear Blog Site,
It has been quite some time since I have visited you.
Why have I been away so long you ask?
Well, I became disenchanted, distracted, dispatched, disgusted, disinterested, disconnected, disappointed, disarmed and disillusioned.
With what you ask?
With life, laughter, love, with everything, everyone, no one, myself, nothing; with all that was, all that is, all that could be, all that never will be.
Life is a succession of never ending challenges. I work hard and try my best to do the 'right' thing by myself and those around me. But I fail. Not all the time, but I do fail.
I keep trying and struggling and reaching for what you ask?
I don't really know. Success, happiness, peace of mind.... serenity? I don't know, but I keep reaching.
I think peace of mind is what I am striving for, to know when I lay my head down at night I have accomplished something; that I have set something right in my little world.
But what you ask: what have you accomplished? what have you righted?
Therein lies my problem. I have lost my focus, my vision, my drive. How can I attain my goals if I have become so blinded by daily frustrations that I cannot see my goal? I feel I am free-spinning. Just moving in place, not moving ahead or behind... just .... stationary.
I believe I am coming out of the fog, the darkness, the void that is hopelessness. I am writing to you now so that must mean I am ready to address these issues. Right?
Instead of viewing my world through tainted and skewed lenses I need to step back and clear the viewfinder. Hell... just change lenses all together. Get a fresh look at the world I have created for myself and my children and realize that I haven't done so bad and the game has just begun.

Sharon

image from movie: City of Angels

Drivers

I have two routes that I take to work. Which one I take depends on my mood and just how late I leave home. One route is fairly peaceful. It passes through several residential areas and numerous traffic lights. The other route cost me money in terms of toll charges but it shaves close to fifteen minutes off of my commute when the traffic is flowing. Today I chose to take the quicker route as I had left home later than usual. This was not a wise decision. Traffic was bumper to bumper and top speed was 20/mph. Instead of shaving time off my trip it added over twenty minutes. As traffic moves slower the cars begin to be compacted together. Everyone seems to think if they jump from one moving lane to another they will make it through faster. Not so, it just slows traffic down because those of us behind you have to accomodate your erratic driving. This morning I had people cutting me off, trying to place their cars into the exact space on the road that was occupied by my car. At one point coming out of a toll section four cars were side-by-side vying for one lane. Now, I do not have road rage. As I write that I laugh to myself because I hear the words ‘rage much?’ I have been accused more than once of suffering from road rage. All I can say is … ‘guilty.’ I ask you how can one not become infuriated at the danger these idiots put us in with their racetrack antics? I will expand on this thought with three examples of idiot drivers.

The first driver, she shall be called Beamer Wench. She has been seen by all of us. She is the one in the sports car bouncing from lane to lane looking at her reflection in the mirror and flipping her hair about. You see her coming in the rearview mirror. She runs up on your rear as if she expects you to just move out of her high-maintenance way. Suddenly she whips around you, nose in the air and she cuts you off. Now she is in front of you. Not only is she in front of you but she slows down. You grumble a bit and then you begin to notice something odd. Beamer Wench is leaning into the middle of her car looking at the mirror and holding her long hair above her head with one hand and running a brush through it with the other hand. Who is driving the car? Unless she has three hands no one is driving that car. Yet she has just cut you off to get one car farther ahead simply because she feels she deserves it. Who wouldn’t get angry? Now, this happened to me today. I was nice and I did not ram the back of her car but I would love to have taken her off the road, one quick thrust into the left rear corner of her bumper and pretty little beamer would have been in the ditch and we would have all been better off. But, I digress.

Another driver, he shall be called Mr. White Boat. He is driving a white early eighties model boat of a car. He has gray hair that is fairly long except for the huge bowl shaped bald spot at the crown of his head. He has the convertible top down and whenever he makes a lane change you can see his entire body sway. We are driving on a six-lane road that is divided by a median. I am traveling in the far right lane. Not because I like to drive slowly but because my exit is coming up and I exit to the right. Mr. White Boat is two cars ahead of me. He had just floored his vehicle, flew around me and used up a gallon of gas to get two cars ahead of me. Now, just ahead of him is another car. This car is the main reason we are all moving slowly in the right lane. Beside this vehicle in the middle lane is another car moving at about the same pace. Mr. White Boat decides that it is his God given right to be in front of the slower cars. All at once and without warning his car lists heavily to the right, his body sways to the right and his car jets to the left across three lanes of traffic narrowly missing a black SUV. No sooner has he gotten into the far left lane does his car lists sharply to the left, his body swayed to the left and his car jets back across three lanes of traffic to the right nearly clipping the front of both slower moving vehicles. The string of obscenities has finally ceased slithering across my lips when Mr. White Boat slams on his breaks and turns off the road creating a cascade of break lights. As I write this I am still shaking my head from side to side and muttering ‘stupid idiot’.

I will provide one more shining example of stupidity on wheels that occurred yesterday. Perhaps this one can be a lesson to Beamer Wench and Mr. White Boat. One section of road that I drive traverses a residential area and the speed limit is 40 miles per hour. Normally the traffic flows steadily along with little to no problems. Yesterday was different. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper and stop and go. As the traffic crept ever so slowly forward the familiar flash of emergency lights could be seen stuttering through the windshields of the cars ahead of me. The moving lanes of traffic condensed from three lanes to one creating a back up for several miles. As the other drivers and I came closer to the accident I expected to see at least a two-car collision, maybe more given how slow traffic was moving and the number of emergency vehicles on scene. To my surprise I did not see two cars or even three. On the grassy median lying against a tree amidst the broken glass and severed tree limbs there lay an SUV. It was such unusual sight; debris littered the median and the lanes closest to it. On the ground around the vehicle were familiar items: shopping bags, tennis shoes, an umbrella and several other ordinary everyday items. The back glass was missing, some kind of white cloth was hanging from the spare tire in the back section and all four wheels were in the air exposing the undercarriage to the sky. How this driver managed to find the median and those trees when there are three lanes of street to drive on is near unfathomable. But it happened. For whatever reason this vehicle had apparently jumped the curb, hit one tree, and then flipped over on its top sliding along the median and ramming into another tree. Ultimately, with the crushed passenger side resting against a tree, it came to a halt. Speculation could lead one to assume that maybe speed was a factor or maybe a tire blew but at forty miles an hour one should be able to still maintain control of the vehicle. Perhaps they were adjusting the radio and veered into the curb initiating this traffic halting mess. Perhaps they were sending a text message to say they had one more stop to make before heading home. We will never know what transpired to cause this vehicle to end up in such an unnatural position in the middle of a six-lane street. But as my examples have illustrated we can all understand how it might have happened. We can pray that all occupants walked away from this accident.

Maybe all of us who witnessed the aftermath of this accident or have seen drivers such as those mentioned here will think twice about speeding, responding to the ring of the cell phone or taking our eyes from the road ahead for whatever reason. Perhaps we can all think about the other drivers for a change. We all have places to be and we all need to arive alive.

Drive safe.

Sharon

The Dying Art of Formal Writing

The Dying Art of Formal Writing

I am new to the blogging world but I am an email junkie. Most of my communication is conducted through email, text messages or instant messages. I have occasionally dipped my toes into the cool waters of the chat rooms but I found it to be less than gratifying and sometimes teetering on the cusp of frustrating. For the sake of this post I will skip the semantics.
If one only visited the chat rooms or communicated through instant messages the idea that a new form of writing has evolved and has conquered all would pervade. I suppose in some realms it has. People are now writing in cryptic messages and using virtually indecipherable symbols to express thoughts and ideas. This lends credence to the idea that the art of formal writing has begun to traverse the same paths as the Empires of the Ancient Worlds leaving behind fragmented details which allude to a society that has long since slipped into the icy depths of the forgotten.

However, I have spent some time introducing myself to the world of blogging and although some of the sites are not encouraging. Others caress my aching intellect by their skill and grace with the electronic quill and parchment akin to that of the most noble of laureates. To my delight I discovered literary elements present in many of the sites I visited. This discovery has affirmed my belief that the art of formal writing is not dying. It is thriving and surging through our societies on the electronic tide that is known as Internet blogging.

Tantalizing my literary taste buds is the blog site known as 'A Slice of Cherry Pie' http://asliceofcherrypie.blogspot.com. Julia Parsons is the author of this site devoted to ‘food, friends and life.’ Well, that is what the title bar reads. Now, I am not big on cooking myself, contrary to my southern upbringing but I found myself intrigued by the posts. The authors’ style of writing provides smooth transitions from one idea to the next creating palate pleasing entertainment. Subtle humor, irony and other literary elements are tastefully interwoven into the body of the posts inviting the reader to relax and enjoy the gentle simmer of the story line.

Now, that was only one example of the treats I discovered on my voyage across the electronic oceans. I would provide more examples but this is after all a blog right? This post is not intended to be a review of the sites I visited it is only affirmation that formal writing is not dead nor is it in its final stages of life. It is evolving as life itself does by adapting to a new world.

As the younger generation matures and their familiarity with the tattered and torn form of writing flowing through text messages, instant messages and emails engrains itself in their minds. We may all see formal writing skills slip below the surface. As for now, it is a refreshing and encouraging discovery to find formal writing gracefully dancing atop the electronic waves persistently lapping at the shores of illiteracy.
Sharon