Tag: life

Prompt 14

What do you wish you could do more every day?

I wish I could do more writing every day than I do now. Things are not the same any longer: until last year, I always found myself to write just about anything after work at night or even during my lunchtime at work. But gone are the days.

Maybe it’s because the routine of my work at my job changed. But then, I guess it’s just my lame excuse for not exerting myself to express myself in writing, which I love doing. I often wonder if this is my becoming disaffected with the quality of my writing, which used to be better than now. Some say it’s due to stress from work and attending to my infirm elderly mother at home, or both. Maybe so.

Elsie Robinson, who wrote the popular column “Listen, World” in the early and mid-20th century, encouraged her readers to write anything daily, like writing an article for a newspaper or magazine of their own. I think it’s a great idea. So maybe I should do the same every day.

Prompt 12

What was the best compliment you’ve received?

I am an analytical, sophisticated thinker capable of applying a concept, idea, or philosophy to things I read and experience. That compliment was a comment made on my term paper by my Colonial and Post-Colonial literature seminar class professor at Rutgers University. It was about George Orwell’s Burmese Days.

Other compliments I have heard are thus: that I am well-read, a good writer with poet’s rhythm, and a good egg. They all pertain to my writing, which I regard as intellectual, which means I have something to think about. Then in terms of my appearance, I have been told that I have the aura of someone famous and that I am sultry when I converse about the subject of interest, which piques my mind’s flair for sharing knowledge with like-minded people.

But some compliments are inwardly unappreciative, such as “You are so nice,” not in the least because it sounds like a superficial cliche that ignores the person’s virtue. Once you are seen as nice, you must remain nice, always smiling and being a yes girl. I’d rather be myself than a mindless servile, yes, girl.

s

Prompt 6

Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.

Hello Stephanie,

You used to wonder what and where you would arrive in each age of life: at 13 you would count the years when you became 20s, 30s, 40s, and so on. Then all of sudden, you are pitchfolked forward, leaping two bridges of 20th and 21st centuries. Still, it all seems like yesterday, and you never changed at heart.

Who would have known that you will adopt cats and love them to the bargain? Who would have guessed your letters to the editor of your favorite British history magazine have been printed several times? And who would have doubted that your age could not wither you away, nor custom would stale your resistant spirit and hunger for knowledge? 100 years of time in evolutionary scale does sound antiquated or anachronistic, but in truth it amounts to a millionsecond on our 24 biological clock, an amount so infinitesimal that such difference of time is ludicriously insignificant. So don’t sigh but sing that you just hit the centanarian chart. Awesome.

FRancis Bacon assured us that we don’t have to be anxious about how we should prepare for the end of life because nature will do the job for us. It will let us know at that time when a psychopomp will appear to bring your soul to the beyond. Or in your case, it will be Mothe Mary to whom you used to pray a rosary when you were little. Wouldn’t it be nice for you to meet Mother Mary rather than some scary-looking death angel? I know you have come a long way alone, but this is not the end. Nobody but your fate knows where you go or will go. Yet it would be best if you lived like you are living the second time to keep your youthful spirit.

All the best,

Stepheni from the Past