Last year Sara Letourneau tagged me for this and now I’ve finally gotten to it. It sounds like an interesting tag. Normally, I don’t care for prompts (I don’t like being told what to write), but here is what I’ve come with. But first …
Les Rules
- Open an new Microsoft Word document.
- Set a stop watch or timer for 5 or 10 minutes, whichever challenge you think you can beat.
- You topic is at the end of this post, but DO NOT SCROLL DOWN TO SEE IT UNTIL YOU ARE READY WITH A TIMER.
- Fill the Word document with as many words as you can. Once you begin writing, do not stop.
- Do not cheat by going back and correcting spellings and grammar with spell check in Word. This Challenge is only meant for you to reflect on your own control of sensible thought flow, not your ability to write the right spelling and stick to grammar rules.
- You may or may not pay attention to punctuation and capitals. However, if you do, it would be best.
- At the end of your post, write down ‘No. of words =_____’ so that readers have an idea of how much you can write within the timeframe.
- Copy and paste the entire passage on your blog post with a new topic for your nominees, and include these rules with your nominations (at least 5 bloggers).
Sara’s prompt:
“One door closes, and another door opens.” This is often a phrase quoted when you lose a job, break up from a relationship, or in my cause get rejected from a publisher. However, I often feel like when one door closes one door is open, and I have to wait for another to open, or the other door isn’t really a door, at least not for a human anyway, more like a dog door that you have to squeeze through and sometimes you realize you can’t fit and you have to back out. Other times the “door,” is more like a window, one that you have to climb up to and fiddle around with the lock to get in—and there’s the awkward moment when you find out this is the wrong window.
I’m not sure if that phrase rubs me the wrong way, but sometimes it feels like phrases like this over time lose their meaning. At one time, a phrase like that brought me great hope, but now that I’ve heard it fifty times, it just sounds like noise. It’s why I’m always on the hunt for new quotes, new things I’ve never heard, even with church.
I’m going to be honest here, I often feel like I’ve heard the same sermons over and over again. I feel like I can almost predict how it’s going to go and that irritates me. Sometimes I want to know the end of a story, but other times I want to be surprised. It’s the reason why clichés lose their fervor. Because they’re heard over and over again and then eventually they lose their meaning.
What does this mean?
Perhaps we should try using new quotes. Perhaps we should say things a different way. I know when I heard a new good quote in an anime, book, show, or movie, I’m awestruck. I can say that about many quotes I’ve heard in Attack on Titan, The Hunger Games, or the Hobbit. Sometimes saying a similar thing a different way can make all of the difference from “I heard that before” to “You know that’s really true and that relates to me.”
One of my favorites is when Marco from Attack on Titan tells Jean (not verbatim) “It’s okay that you’re weak. It means you can relate to the rest of us. That makes you such a good leader.”
Phrases like that impact me. Phrase that I’ve never heard put that way. Those are what encourage me when I’m having a bad day.