Five Years a Writer

...NEWS NEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWS NEWS NEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWS NEWS NEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWSNEWS NEWS... Patients discharged from Alberta hospitals to motels Panels flying off airplanes Cockpit controls tripped accidentally by the pilot’s elbow Tornadoes from Texas to Ohio Missiles landing in Ukraine A so-called election in Russia Relief ship heading to Gaza People dead from fire in an illegal Air B’nB in Montreal This was the list of top international headlines in a recent evening’s newscast, and I found it hard to believe the anchor wasn’t accidentally reading the script from an absurdist play. I wanted to cover my eyes and close my ears. How can the world be in this state? How can we bear the stupidity, the selfishness, the deceit and destruction? Sometimes I can’t bear it any longer, and that’s when I turn to music. I can shift my mood by turning away from the news and lea

Amanda age 60-something & Amanda age 20-something: Am I there yet? What am I doing and where am I going? These are not unreasonable questions to ask, as the earth keeps spinning and the days and months keep unfolding bringing all the tomorrows that we call the future. What will it look like? That’s a bigger question than I can answer. What will I be doing? While equally big, for me, it’s a question worth pondering and, as is my wont, writing about. Of course, putting words on the page as ideas and plans guarantees nothing; however, the words do give shape to — make concrete — the thoughts that float endlessly through my mind, landing nowhere and doing not necessarily very much for me. But the words on the page can be held in my hand and I can read them, review them anytime to remind me of what was important to me at one point in my past. And this re/viewing process allows me to assess today if those desires from the past still ring true for me — not a performance review, but a “d

Many years ago I had a bad experience collaborating with three others on a small business venture; we had grand ideas but somehow forgot (how?) to factor in the effort to find clients for our service. Crazy, and stupid, too. But, as my dear mother comforted me, the money I lost was far less than I ever would have paid for an MBA — and the lessons I learned run deep and inform my decision-making to this day. So. With that experience and those lessons in mind, I am putting it out here today that, a few (or maybe several or possibly many) months down the line — if all goes according to a larger plan, I’ll be seeking an audience for a venture that exists, so far, only in my head, and for which the location is not yet ready. Amanda playing a nerdy kid in "Emil and The Detectives" at the children's theatre,  summer 1978 While my main creative act these days is writing, back in my younger days I did a lot of theatre — beginning in Grade Two when I played the shoemaker’s wife in

Blessings of the universe on the makers of helpful YouTube how-to videos! We bought our house almost 24 years ago, because Val and I liked the layout of the main floor, which enabled us to knock out several walls to open up the space. We redid the kitchen from the ground up, taking down the wall into the dining room to create one large light-filled cooking, eating and living space. We knocked the two small bedrooms into one large one. But we left the bathroom alone. It was functional, the pink colour scheme was bearable in the short term, and our bank account needed time to rebuild itself. Three years in, we mapped out a plan for a new bathroom — from the studs out. We hired the necessary contractors, developed a razor-sharp project timeline, and then headed to the cottage for the duration of the work. Remarkably, the reno went according to plan and we returned to a modern bathroom. (Albeit with the solid and supremely heavy original iron bathtub still in place; that was simply too muc

Poetry is not my usual medium, but sometimes a prompt will inspire me to write in that form.  Below is a piece sparked by a contest; the challenge was to write a poem in 20 lines focused on loss.  The 20-line constraint got me thinking about other number-defined things and, somehow, the alphabet came to mind  —  26 letters. Hmmmm, I pondered: How about a poem in 20 lines about 26 letters. OK, I said to myself, I'll give it a go.  The content evolved as I wrote, with me not knowing at line 1 where I would end up at line 20; all I knew was that, somehow, I needed to make the 26 letters of the English alphabet the focus woven around the idea of 'loss'. And do this on 20 lines. (How long is a line? What do the contest creators mean by 'line'? I don't know and I didn't let that bother me.)  The result is below. I'll let you be the judge of it... All I know is that,  even though I missed the contest deadline,  I had fun playing with my idea in this form, and

Love in the Archives by Eileen Vorbach Collins Baltimore, MD: Apprentice House Nov. 7 2023 Posted to Amazon It seems crass to say I enjoyed this memoir-in-essays, given that it’s about how Eileen Vorbach Collins finds her way back into — and keeps herself in — the land of the living following her daughter Lydia’s death by suicide. But I did, and there is much to appreciate: the award-winning writing; the unvarnished truth about the bone-deep grief she continues to feel; and the grounding of her experience in the everyday. Vorbach Collins’ essays make clear that being present to the quotidian — mothering her younger son, Daniel; returning to work; finding her way into support groups; continuing to breathe even while screaming her anguish at unexpected moments — is the challenge after her cataclysmic loss. Vorbach Collins uses writing as a way to process her grief and her experience of living with that grief, still, more than twenty years after the death of her daughter. I am grateful s