Tag: Write 2 Be blog

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A Lesson in Life that Skating Reminded Me Of

April 9, 2012 jcladyluv

Today I took my daughter skating. I thought it was a good way to end her spring break and I thought it would be good fun for her. I hadn’t intended on skating as well, I just wanted to sit on the sidelines and watch her hold onto the wall as she made her way around. Just as she did the last time I took her skating, which was two years ago for her birthday, she asked me to skate with her. I told her no because truth be told my knee was really bothering me. I sent her out into the rink and watched her take about five minutes (maybe more) to make her way around the first time.

After her first trip around she came to me and said she wanted to go home, that it was harder then she remembered. I reminded her that we don’t quit on things just because they seem hard at first and that the only way to get good at anything was to keep going back out there and trying. I assured her that she would get better at it just like she did the first time we went skating and the time she went skating with her class at school. It inspired me to go get a pair of rental skates myself (I hate putting my feet where others have been) and make my attempt to skate with her, as she requested.

Now I used to be a really good skater back in my teenage years but other than the attempt I made two years ago I haven’t really skated and with all of the aches and pains settling in within my body I get nervous at the thought of skating (or at least the part where I fall). I was truly terrified to get out there on the floor of that skating rink but I did it and pretty soon I was even able to let go of the wall, at least some of the time.

I believe that seeing me get out there and not giving up even inspired my daughter to let go of the wall a few times herself. I even noticed her gathering speed a couple of times, but she didn’t want to quit anymore. In fact when it came time to leave she didn’t want to go. I made a promise to her that we would go skating more often now. I had actually started to have fun myself and I forgot just how much fun skating was.

The thing about skating that I can relate to real life experiences sometimes is that it has a lot to do with being resilient. With skating, especially if you haven’t done it in a long time, there is always a good chance that you will fall (in fact unless you are a pro it’s kind of expected), but you don’t have a choice but to get back up again. You can’t just sit there and give up because you have to, at the very least, get back up if you want to get out the skating rink.

Much like skating, in life when something or someone knocks you down, maybe even literally knocking the wind out of you, you have to get back up. More importantly, you have to realize that you are going to fall many time but you have to keep getting back up again. It’s amazing that I got all of that out of skating but sometimes it’s the little things that you underestimate that have some of the biggest lessons for you to learn from. I can’t wait to get good at skating again and to help my daughter get to that point where she can let go of the wall and go it alone. Won’t that be something?

By the way I did, in fact, fall, but I got back up and skated around a few more times. It was so much fun!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Banishing the Age Old Excuse

April 6, 2012 jcladyluv

“Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born.”

~Dale E. Turner

This morning as I was watching the news they started talking about baseball (which is my least favorite sport, next to golf) and I started to go into my usual mode whenever I heard baseball mentioned, ignore mode. But this time something caught my attention, enough to actually make me sit and listen.

They were discussing the oldest major league pitcher to have ever played baseball. Jamie Moyer is a 49 year old pitcher who is now playing with the Colorado Rockies after suffering an elbow injury in 2010 that caused him to lose an entire season of playtime. The injury required him to have reconstructive surgery (Tommy John Surgery) with an estimated recovery time of at least a year.

The word throughout the sports world was that his career was most likely over because this was not his first injury. However, Jamie Moyer had other things in mind then letting go of his career, although his career has already surpassed many of the people he came into the league with and he was now playing with men of the next generation of baseball.

All he wanted was the chance to prove to all of the people who said he was too old or that he didn’t throw hard enough anymore that he could in fact do this once again. They gave him his chance and he proved them wrong and now he could potentially be making history as the oldest major league baseball pitcher to ever win a game.

It got me to thinking about all of the times that I doubted continuing my efforts as a writer because I was starting to feel as though maybe I was getting too old to be starting out in this career. I mean in my mind I should’ve already done so many great things within my career by now and I have, instead, been stuck going around in circles. Watching that story on the news this morning taught me something. The age factor is only in my mind, not anyone else’s.

Jamie Moyer commented that “as long as you have an opportunity you can succeed, but you have to be willing to put the time and the effort into it.” Essentially as long as the opportunities keep presenting themselves to me, I don’t have a reason (or rather an excuse) to not go after them.

People often tell me that I waste a lot of time watching TV and watching the news, but I never listen to that because I know what I get out of it. I get inspiration and I get motivated. I hear other people’s stories and experiences and I receive the wisdom and lessons that they try to impart to those that are watching and listening.

Today, just in those five minutes that I watched that news piece I saw someone who wouldn’t let people tell him he was too old to continue on with his dream. I saw someone who didn’t use his age as an excuse to just give up. I heard something that motivated me to give up my last excuse for not going after every single opportunity that comes my way, especially the ones that are a pathway to my dreams.

I will only be too old when I can’t write anymore and my fingers can’t translate the words from my mind onto paper (or computer screen). As long as I have ideas in my head and the ability to convey them, I will never be too old. Hell even in my senior years (I mean really old-80’s old), I can still dictate my thoughts into a tape recorder and (if the arthritis has really set in) have someone else type up my work. Age really is just a number, not a dream killer!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

The No Matter What of It All

April 5, 2012 jcladyluv

“No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you’ve come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself.”

~Madonna

This week I have actually been really productive, or at least more productive then I’ve been in a really long time. I am starting to feel that drive again to get what I need done no matter what. I heard a celebrity say once that those three words were words that drove her to the level of success that she had reached. She said that if she always told herself ‘no matter what’ the job or task had to get done then she would be driven to do it. It may not be done perfectly or maybe not even in its entirety, but it will get done. I’ve been thinking a lot about those three words and this week that is what I have had in my mind. Instead of trying to make everything perfect and get every single thing done, I have just been content on getting whatever I could get done, no matter what.

I was talking to Ms. L. last night and I told her about the submission that I finally sent off to a magazine. It sounds like something that you would think I had been doing on a regular basis by this point but sadly it was not. I have spent months agonizing over whether editors will like my article ideas, whether my writing was really as good as I thought it was that they would even pay attention to a query from me, but mostly I had been trying to figure out how to write the PERFECT query letter. I have stacks and stacks of books (and internet research) on how to write a perfect (or irresistible) query but none of them seemed to help me. I had sworn that I would not send out a query until I got the query letters just right. The problem with that theory was that none of my query letters were coming out perfectly, so of course nothing was being sent off.

This week I said that I was just going to start sending query letters, even if they weren’t perfect, even if they weren’t even close to being right, because if I don’t send anything out then obviously no one will see my work and I will never see my byline in any national magazine. So I did. I sent a submission, and it was indeed imperfect, but it also indeed felt really good. The thing is that I can’t promise that the queries will be perfect, but I imagine that with more practice in sending them out on a more consistent basis, they will get better.

I also told Ms. L. that I was going to work on my latest novel that I have yet to finish because I honestly haven’t touched it since the end of National Novel Writing Month (I’m not sure why I haven’t). I said that even if I didn’t write much on it that I would at least work on it for half an hour, no matter what. I in fact did work on my novel, and though I did not write much on it, I did write for a half an hour. I plan on working on it tonight as well.

I am finding that this week is turning out to do for me exactly what I wanted it to do for me (at least on the writing level) which is re-light that fire under me to get moving and put all my plans in motion. I think now that I have really started to visualize my dreams I can begin to see them as my reality. It’s helping me put some action into all of the planning that I have been doing. It feels really good to feel that fire starting to burn again. I just hope it doesn’t go out again anytime soon. I’ve got too much lost time to make up for. But I will get the job done, No Matter What!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Visualizing You Are Already Where You Want To Be

April 4, 2012 jcladyluv

“Attract what you want by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled.”

~Neville Goddard

I was watching Dr. Wayne Dyer on PBS last night and his program, Wishes Fulfilled. I got a lot out of the three hour motivational program (and dvr’d it so that I can go back and get more out of it later). He said things that I in some ways already knew and realized but sometimes hearing them from someone else, from another perspective, changes the way you receive the information. When his program opens he has a statement on the projector screen for the viewing audience that states “If you would like to accomplish something, you must first expect it of yourself.” Makes sense right?

I know that if you succumb to the negativity that builds up around you, you are going to eventually project that same negativity into every facet of your life. This week is about me getting my fire back that I once had and somehow lost. It’s also about getting back to that person who didn’t always let the negativity surrounding her overtake her. It’s about getting rid of that mentality of being so fearful of everything that she never enjoys what good could be happening in the present moment.

I thought that I would be in a certain place at this point of my life and because I’m not there yet I’m doubting every decision I make, every decision I don’t make, every opportunity that I take, and especially the ones that I don’t take. People always say to go with your gut when making crucial life decisions, but lately I’ve realized that my gut instincts aren’t what they once were because of that damn fear. It’s keeping me from seeing myself in the state that I want to be in and I know that if I don’t begin to see myself in that place, I might never get to that place.

Dr. Wayne Dyer said that people who say that they will believe something when they see it have it all wrong. He said that you will only see it when you believe it, and he’s right. I mean after all, if you can’t believe in and see it for yourself then how is anyone else going to be able to see it?

So instead of continuing to wish that I was more of a success, and agonizing over why I’m not, I need to act as if I am at the level of success that I want to be at. I should imagine that I am already in that place where my company is not only up and running, but it’s going strong. I can see it now!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Have You Danced With Your Fears Yet?

April 3, 2012 jcladyluv

“Let fear be a counselor and not a jailer.”

~Anthony Robbins

I know that I seem to talk about fear on this blog a lot but I feel that it is so prevalent right now and fear can be so paralyzing when you have no outlet for it. This is my outlet.

I realized last night that I am so much more crippled by fear then I could see. I was watching Oprah’s life class last night on her network and she just so happened to be talking about living fearlessly. Her guest, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, talked about dancing with your fear (facing them) and that fear is really about changing your story and your state of mind.

He talked about everyone having a story that they keep telling themselves, whether it is that you are worthless or that you are just always going to fail or many other negative things we tell ourselves. He recited a quote that if you tell yourself a lie enough times then you start to believe it, so if your story that you’ve been telling yourself for years is that you are never going to succeed or be anything, eventually you will begin to actually believe it. His theory is that if you change your story, make it more of an affirmation of what you are going to do and who you are going to be, then you change your state of mind and you will begin to believe it.

Oprah posed the question to her audience and those watching at home, “what is the story you’ve been telling yourself all these years?” I thought about it and when I talked to Ms. L. I realized what it was. Not only am I afraid that if I try to really accomplish my dreams it is just going to eventually fail, but I am also afraid of the other end of the spectrum. That I will actually succeed and begin to make that climb up the ladder and that I might do one little thing to mess it all up and end up right back where I started, at the bottom. I’m afraid of the not knowing and of the changes that will come. I’m afraid that I will prove to all of the people who said I would never be anything, that they were right.

Tony Robbins also said something else that rung true to me after he said it. He stated that sometimes we want those fears because it protects us from having to step into the unknown. I was never a completely fearless person, I always tended to be moderately cautious, but I never used to be that person that was so intensely afraid of change and all of the unknown things that are out there that I would sabotage my own self but somehow I have become that person.

So how do I get back to that person who not only accepted change, but welcomed it? How do I become that brave artist again that didn’t care (at least as far as my writing went) about what anyone had to say?

I suppose that “dancing with my fear” is a start. If I don’t face them head on and stop pretending that they do indeed exist then I am never going to remove those fears from my subconscious and my life. Fear can really be crippling and it can have the power to kill your dreams, if you let it. But I’m not going to let it. Thank you for letting me express my fears here to all of you. Knowing I can be vulnerable here helps a lot in the furthering of my dreams.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Even an Icon Like Oprah Can Have Fear

April 2, 2012 jcladyluv

“The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.”

~Oprah Winfrey

This morning Oprah was on the CBS This Morning show and she was promoting her network, OWN. She talked about a lot of different things but one thing that struck me was when she admitted that if she knew then (when starting the network) what she knows now she probably wouldn’t have done it (or at least not at the time that she did it). She acknowledged that when she launched her network she was not ready. In fact that was one of the lessons that she took away from her process of starting the network, that you shouldn’t launch something just because you already gave a date to everyone else if you are not ready to.

That was both shocking and admirable to me and just made me want to model my business sense (that I am still trying to mold) after the road she has already paved for the women coming after her even more. She spoke of the critics in the press who have criticized her brave but somewhat dismal start to her cable network, and one headline, “Oprah not quite standing on her OWN”, that she tries not to let dictate whether she is in fact succeeding or failing at her new endeavor. In her words, “it’s just press”. She said that because you fail at something (which her network is in no way failing) doesn’t mean that you are a failure.

It made me start to think about that good old fear of failure that I can’t seem to shake for the life of me. Why am I so afraid to fail? It’s not as if my failing at any given thing would mean that it’s the end of the road for me and my dreams. In my heart I know this but my head (or perhaps that little devilish angel sitting on my shoulder) keeps telling me that if I fail even one more time at something then that’s it, I’m just destined to be a failure. If only I could shake that demon trying to creep its way into my subconscious every time I think I’m going to get somewhere. But maybe that’s just it. Maybe it creeps in because I am getting somewhere.

My best friend, Ms. L. always says that when everything starts to begin to go wrong that she knows she must be doing something right. She says that it just means that the devil is working overtime to stop the progress she is making. And look at Ms. L., she just launched her magazine, PIEhole (of which I have an article in) and it’s taken off better than I think even she expected it to (although I knew it would). Although she never acknowledged being afraid as often as she probably was, she never let that fear stop her.

Hell, if Oprah can have the courage to admit that she was afraid of something (because it seems that she just does this stuff so fearlessly) but that she pressed on anyway, then why couldn’t that be my story down the line as well? I know that I would never want to be doing anything else and I truly feel as though God instilled in me this specific purpose and I owe it to him, if not myself, to see that purpose through. As Oprah also said in her interview, “There’s never going to be a time to quit. I will die in the midst of doing what I love to do and that is using my voice and using my life to try to inspire other people to live the best of theirs.”

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

And the Lucky Winner Is…Not Me!

March 31, 2012 jcladyluv

Okay so I am sad to announce that I did not win the big mega millions lottery pot this past weekend and I along with millions of other people in the world am saddened by it. Of course it might have helped my odds if I had actually played the lottery. I do wonder what the lucky winners are going to do with their newfound wealth. I can only imagine what I could and would do with that kind of money.

Actually Ms. L. and I were going over our individual lists of what our newfound wealth could’ve brought us if it had been one of us who won. Of course there were the obvious things on our lists like getting some of the little things for ourselves that we as single mothers whose first priorities are our children can not get at this very moment. Then there are the college funds that are a must to have for our children to be able to go to college wherever they chose to go and not have to worry about money.

There are the trips that I have been dying to take (there aren’t too many places Ms. L. hasn’t been already) and the house and car that I would buy outright if I had the money so that I wouldn’t have a mortgage or a car note. The big thing, I think for the both of us, is to be able to fully fund our businesses. To have the money to put into the business you are trying to grow without having to ration out just how much goes in this or that part of the business is a feeling that would be priceless.

Building my business would allow me to sow those riches right back in my purpose and have it to continue to keep growing my wealth (not just monetary wealth) and enable me to become completely self sufficient. I would feel such peace knowing that my business will fully provide for me and my daughter the way I’d always imagined it would. There are other things that I would love to do with millions of dollars (if I had it). I have a few select foundations that I would love to donate money to, and a foundation of my own that I would like to start (to help with the fight against bullying).

But unfortunately, I did not win the lottery and my list will just have collect a little bit more dust. I wonder what all of you would do with millions of dollars. Have you ever thought about the changes that you could make in this world with that kind of blessing? If you haven’t thought about it I think you should (especially all of you who play the lottery on a daily basis). You could be the next big winner!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Jaded View of Things

March 30, 2012 jcladyluv

We live in an imperfect world. That is certainly proven time and time again. While the world is anything but ideal, I don’t believe there is a reason to be jaded about every situation that you face. People tend to take their bad experiences with people in life and transfer them onto others that they meet in the future. I am not exempt from that fact but I try my very best to not to make judgments based on what I have already been through. I would like to think that everyone and every situation is not predetermined by the past.

I think that if people spend too much time living in the past, believing that every experience that they had is going to keep repeating themselves, they miss all of the good stuff that could happen in between. My mother believes every person (men in particular) has an angle, an agenda. She is a person who has zero trust for anyone and believes that this world is full of dishonest people who are just going to hurt you. I on the other hand struggle not to believe that. I don’t pretend to think that everyone is an angel but I try not to walk around expecting to be hurt. I just don’t want to allow myself to get that jaded.

If you always expect the worst of everyone and from every situation that is exactly what you will end up getting. You get back what you put out into the universe and I don’t want to receive that kind of negative thinking. I want good things, I expect good things, and all I want to put out into the universe is what I expect to get back in return. You can’t make every situation you go through in life turn out exactly the way that you want it to. The best that we can do is deal with each situation as they come and take the lessons we learn into the next one without any prejudices thrown in the mix.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Giving Up is Not an Option

March 29, 2012 jcladyluv

“If you’re tired of starting over, stop giving up.”

~Author Unknown

I have heard so many people say that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. I suppose that could translate to people simply giving up and throwing in the towel. They may examine what went wrong down the line, but for all intense and purposes they give up the fight because it just got too hard. When they do find themselves wanting to go back to that place later on in life they find that they have to start all over again and that can be discouraging for anyone.

I found the above quote (at the top of my post) when I was going through my facebook timeline and reading other people’s updates. When I read it, I tried to figure out if that applied to me. I replayed certain big moments throughout my life where I felt like everything just fell apart and I had to carry on but I don’t think that it was ever a case where I had to really start over. That’s because never once have I given up.

I’ve always been more of a pick up where I left off type of person. I will admit that when I find the walls collapsing around me I do have a tendency to get the urge to run for the (imaginary) hills. Instead I just take a step back from things and in a sense reevaluate what’s happening. When I go back to the problem, I never start from scratch, I simply pick up where I left off and continue in a different direction (hopefully the right one this time).

Starting over isn’t ideal. Once you’ve started something and have a clear vision for it there should be no turning back. You should never see that rough patch as a reason to begin all over again when it isn’t necessary. You can’t complain about how hard it is to begin again if you are going to keep giving up when it gets hard.

Ms. L. told me the other day that I have to start seeing the things in myself that other people see in me and she went on to list a lot of attributes that she saw in me that made me feel a little embarrassed. I wasn’t embarrassed because I was flattered necessarily (although I was) but more so because I couldn’t see what it is that she sees. But if I had to list one strong attribute about myself that I firmly believe is true and can clearly see in myself, I would have to say it is that I never give up.

I get knocked down (a lot), and admittedly I stay down for longer than I should at times, but I have never just completely given up. I’ve wanted to. I sulk, I cry, I ask why me a countless number of times (which I know I need to stop doing), and then I suck it up, I reevaluate the situation, I get up and I get moving again. Sometimes I am only operating on a hope and a prayer, but sometimes that is all that you need in order to operate. For anyone out there who is thinking about giving up on something that they know is meant for them, don’t. It will just make things a lot harder when you have to start all over again. Stop starting over with a new (not always better) plan. Instead just stop giving up on the old one.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”