Truth and Secrets

I came across an interesting quote today: The truth of a person is in her secrets. I know this is true of fiction, especially mysteries and suspense. You learn about a character from what they are willing to do to protect their secrets, and what you think they are willing to do. For example, a reader could think a particular character might be willing to kill to protect that secret, but the character would not take a life under any circumstances.

But is this true in real life? Oh, not the killing part, but the bit about the truth of a person being in her secrets. If so, I have no truth because I have no secrets. I have habits I would prefer people didn’t know about, such as an unconscious tendency to bite off hangnails, and while that might tell you more about me than I would like you to know, it’s not exactly a secret except perhaps from me. If I knew I were doing it, I wouldn’t.

I paused here to look up the definition of secret to see if there is a secret to “secret” I didn’t know that would further explain the quote, but no . . . it’s as I thought. A secret is something that is kept or meant to be kept unknown or unseen by others.

Although I might prefer the people I see regularly to know less about me than I disclose here (though surprisingly, it isn’t as uncomfortable as I thought it would be, and in fact, it’s rather nice not having to talk about the minutiae of my life since they already know it from reading my blog), nothing I write about is a secret. When I was writing about my grief, people offline did not see the same sort of grief in me that I wrote about online, but that’s just the way things were. Even if I was hurting, I generally didn’t show it when I was around people. Like every other griever, I soon learned to hide was I was feeling to protect others from having to deal with my pain as well as to protect myself from their well-meaning (and sometimes not well-meaning) platitudes, such as “You have to move on,” and “You need to get over it.”

But as for secrets? Nope. None.

Some people have accused me of being secretive, confusing secretive with reticent, but the truth is that not everyone deserves to know everything about anyone. There needs to be boundaries, and people who try to look beyond the boundaries aren’t necessarily looking for the truth but are simply being nosy.

I do generally answer direct questions, mostly because I am not as devious as I should be and so don’t lie, nor have I ever learned to graciously deflect questions, but I tend to resent probing questions, and it shows. I don’t ask such questions, either, which becomes a problem when I am talking with someone who thinks that probing questions is how one converses. These people generally don’t want to wait until I volunteer information, which I will when it come up naturally in a conversation without the resentment I feel in an “interrogation.” And they feel belittled because they think I don’t care enough about them to ask them questions.

(Jeff and I were both of the “ask no personal questions” school, and yet over the years, we learned almost everything there was to know about each other, the information coming out in myriad conversations.}

This essay has devolved into a discussion of various means of conversing rather than the topic of the truth being in the secrets, but I suppose the two are opposites sides of the same coin. If you don’t divulge personal information, the other person sees secrets rather than reticence.

But it still doesn’t answer the question about the validity of the quote: the truth of a person in is her secrets. I don’t think it can be true except in the case of someone who is nosy enough to want to invade a person’s privacy. The truth of us might be in our most secret self, but that self is for us to know, not for general consumption.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Because of various Bob-related issues around town, I haven’t been working much lately, which has been nice. I like having my time to myself to do what I wish (and even what I don’t wish but need to get done).

Sometime during the next couple of weeks, things should settle down enough that we (my fellow caregiver and our client) can get back to our regular schedule, which will also be nice because the extra company is good for me and the extra money helps pay for a few frivolities, such as groceries and grass (the lawn kind, not the erstwhile illegal kind). Still, I’m okay with whatever might happen. Over the past decade or so, I’ve learned to be resilient enough to take whatever comes my way, though I do reserve the right to whine a bit if I feel it.

In two weeks and a day, we start a new year. I’ve never been particularly excited about a new year since basically all it means is a clean calendar and learning to put a different year on the few checks I write. Even worse, we carry our old selves into the new year, so despite all our resolutions (or lack of resolutions), the old year folds into the new one without a hitch. For some reason, though, perhaps because of uncertainties The Bob is still causing, I am looking forward to this new year with a bit of hope, as if it is actually something new.

For sure, it’s a new month, one that will bring me closer to spring and spring flowers to brighten my day. It will also bring me closer to another “elder” birthday, but that’s not a problem. The actual number of years don’t matter, of course, though what all those years have done to me does. I can still do almost everything I want to, but I am slower, and I find myself tilting forward when I stand or walk. It takes a concerted effort to remember to roll my shoulders back and stand up straight, but I can still do that, which is good. (In his old age, my father tilted forward when he walked, too, and I always wondered why. Perhaps our sense of equilibrium goes out of whack like so much else.)

The other thing that the new year will bring is an end to my 100-day blogging challenge, though that won’t be the end of the daily blogging. Although sometimes it’s hard to come up with something to say, it’s still a good exercise for me, so I will continue at least until I reach the 1000-day mark. (183 more days.) Or not. Life itself is a continual challenge, and we never quite know what each day will bring, but if everything goes as planned, I’ll be here every day until the middle of June.

Meantime, there’s the rest of today to enjoy, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Walking in the Dark

Here I am again, scrambling to write a blog post before the day runs out, though this time it’s not because of laziness or procrastination but because I was working all day and just got home. Not much happens to inspire me on such days, though I did enjoy walking home in the dark. I so seldom get out in the dark any more — there’s generally no need to — so even though I am always offered a ride home (sometimes insistently), I refuse. It’s only two blocks, and the problematic dogs are gone — one moved away with the problematic neighbors and the other canine died. (That woman should never be allowed to own pets. She told me that if she were a dog, she’d rather run free even if she ended up getting hit by a car, and guess what. Since I’ve been here, she’s had three dogs, and all three were killed. Weirdly, I even know the person who killed her last dog. Even weirder, now that I think about it, he knew it was her dog, so her blasé attitude must be well known.)

What I’m getting at is that the walk is as safe as possible. (Obviously, nothing is completely safe, but there are relative matters of safety. For example, there are a heck of a lot of places I’ve lived that I’d never even set foot out of my door in a dark evening, let alone at night.) It’s also fun this time of year seeing the colored lights. There are nowhere near as many here as there were in my dad’s neighborhood — those people must have thought that the only way to offset a non-snowy desert Christmas was to flood the town with Christmas lights. The decorations are tepid here in comparison, but still enjoyable.

The past few years I’ve made a point of doing a bit of inside decorating for Christmas — putting up a small tree and my bowls of lights if nothing else — but I’m not sure I want to make the effort this year. I will be spending the day by myself, and it seems rather absurd to put in so much time digging out the decorations and setting them up just for me, but then, on the other hand, perhaps that’s when it’s most important to make the effort.

I still have time to decide. Or not. We’re already into December! Amazing how that happens — time passing in huge chunks when one isn’t paying attention.

I used to think all those folks who got ready for Christmas early were jumping the gun, but now that I am aware of how fast time goes, I’m surprised more people don’t start getting ready in September or August or July.

But I am digressing. I was talking about walking home in the dark. Not only are the artificial lights pleasing, so are the natural ones — the stars that make themselves seen. You’d think out here there would be more stars visible, but admittedly, the lack could be in me and my old eyes rather than the meager light pollution generated by the sparse street lights. Luckily, there are enough lights to brighten my way when walking home, so I really shouldn’t complain about light pollution.

I got home safely, and in the end, that’s what counts.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

About Passwords

A couple of days ago, I got a security alert email from Google with a list of my duplicate passwords as well as those that were weak. This includes most of the sites I’d signed up for over the years. I suppose it really does behoove me to delete any site I have no more use for, and to update passwords. How kind of Google to send me a list of all those sites as well as the passwords!

I do have two concerns. If Google is privy to all our passwords, does it really matter what the passwords are? Even if they are unbreakable, they are obviously searchable if one has access to the Google cloud or wherever it is they store all their information.

The other thing is that once I have all those unbreakable passwords, they have to be stored somewhere because there is no way they can be stored in my memory — my brain memory, that is. That means they need to be stored on the computer so I can easily copy and paste as needed, which means that all those passwords are doubly vulnerable.

They’d eventually all be stored in my browser, which makes it simpler for me, but makes the sites more vulnerable. Even so, I’d still need a master copy of all the passwords because glitches do happen.

Despite my lack of concern, I did spend some time today with an online random password generator, which means that now there might be a fourth place where my passwords would be stored — on the generator site. Obviously, if they did store the passwords, it’s not that big of a deal since they wouldn’t know what site the password would open. And anyway, that part is easy enough to fix — just change a letter or a symbol. (This is an example of the passwords that were generated: eHLq-B9W. See what I mean about never being able to remember it? They did give a helpful memory hint, but I’d never be able to remember that either: egg HULU LAPTOP queen – BESTBUY 9 WALMART. Sheesh.)

I’m not sure what anyone would gain by breaking into any of my sites. Any online ordering I do is through an account that I keep empty until needed, so there is no way anyone can clear out what little money I have. Only two sites have my social security number (well, any number of sites would have it because the IRS and other government bodies have online sites, but those sites are not under my control, so I’m not going to worry about it). One of my sites already has a strong password, and the other will have one soon.

Other than that, despite my once active presence online, there really is not a lot of my personal information out there.

Apparently, though, stealing personal information is not the only reason sites get hacked. They use the hacked sites for phishing schemes, generating spam, installing malware, and a host of other not-so-nice activities. (At first, when Facebook blocked my blog for being spam, I thought it might have been infected, but if so, Google would have put a warning on the search result as they did once when a bit of code got mistakenly inserted into one of my posts.)

I’d started this article by thinking I’d ignore the password situation and stick with what I have (on the assumption that if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it), but now that I’ve looked further into the matter, I see that it would be a good idea to better secure my sites.

I’ll do it first thing tomorrow.

Or the next day.

Or maybe the day after that . . .

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Facebook’s Vendetta

Facebook is continuing its vendetta against me. It still has my blog URL banned, still say my blog is a spam site, and there is no recourse since they don’t answer emails, snail mails, or online help messages. For a while, I just let it go, figuring if they didn’t want me, I didn’t want them, but a few people mentioned how much they missed seeing my blog on their feed, so I got in the habit of reblogging this blog onto another blog — Dragon My Feet — and then posting that URL to FB.

That worked for several months, but suddenly, all photos that had been part of that reblog — the photos I use to illustrate my posts — disappeared from Facebook going back to when I first started reblogging. I experimented with uploading the photo directly to Facebook, and also uploading a new photo to the reblog, and those photos are still on F. So now I know — they have extended their ban of my URL to any reblogged photo that originated here.

I thought of continuing to upload a duplicate of the photo from this blog to the reblog, but then I rethought that idea. It’s only a matter of time before their bots notice that my so-called spam URL is posted on the reblog, and then they will ban that blog, too. For now, I will continue posting the reblog URL on FB, but for those FB friends and acquaintances who want to read my blog, now would be a good time to sign up to get notifications directly to your email address. (Scroll down to the bottom of the left-hand column and click on “follow.”) As with FB, you can simply “like” a post if you want me to know you were here and don’t want to leave a comment, but of course, I am always appreciative of any comment.

If it weren’t for those friends and a group or two that I keep up with, I’d be done with FB. One of the groups I keep up with is my own Suspense/Thriller Writer’s Group, though I am considering disbanding it or at least denying members the ability to post. It used to be a fun group, but less and less as time goes on because of all the changes FB makes. In fact, FB has been messing with the groups again, so I had to change the group from “public” to “private” because if a group is public, now anyone can join without being okayed, and most of the people who want to join are spammers. Real spammers, not people like me who got caught in the FB fly trap. The problem with disbanding is that first I have to remove all 3,500 members one at a time. I did that for another group I had and it’s no fun.

It’s getting to the point where this blog is my only interaction online. Twitter is absurd, LinkedIn is worthless for my needs, and if there was ever any possibility of signing up with Instagram, it ended when FB bought site. I also lost interest in Goodreads when Amazon bought it.

I suppose I should go through and delete some of those old accounts (Google just emailed me and told me I had too many weak and duplicate passwords, and most of those are for accounts I haven’t visited in years.) Though chances are, I will do the same thing with those accounts that I do with FB — just keep on doing what I am doing . . . or not doing.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Books and Blogs

I seem to be doing my blogging later and later as time goes on. Unfortunately, inspiration is hard to come by when one spends most of one’s time alone. And then there is the matter of laziness, perhaps, or simply a tendency toward procrastination. Either way, here I am with my lights on since it’s dark outside, trying to think of something interesting to say. One of these days, I will give in to the temptation to let a day or two slide, but for now, I’ve committed to daily blogging for the rest of the year.

Just about the only thing I’ve been thinking about (other than that it will be another six months before I can get back into gardening) is the awful book I just finished reading. I could have put it aside at any time, of course, but then the uneasiness fostered by the story would have lingered much longer than it would by finishing it. Normally I don’t read contemporary women’s lit, but I needed a break from my usual diet of murder and suspense, which is a mistake I won’t be making again soon.

There seem to be two types of books that are targeted specifically for women — happily-ever-after stories (romances that tell the beginning of a relationship), and unhappily-ever-after stories, (novels that tell what happens to the loving couple after many years of being together).

This particular book was of the second variety. The main theme was about communication; none of the characters every told their partner what they were thinking. They expected the other person to know what was going on in their minds without their having to say a single word, and each character interpreted their partner’s actions in light of their own insecurities rather than the partner’s.

Even worse, the novel told three very loosely connected stories. The only connecting element was a house that none of them end up with; otherwise, the three stories had nothing to do with one another. Worst of all, there was nothing in any of the stories to offset the growing sense of dread and dreariness as the couples all drifted further apart. Just misunderstanding built on misunderstanding built on misunderstanding.

Simple discussions at the beginning of the book would have swept away all those misunderstandings. But then, there would have been no book for me to suffer through. Nor would I have had anything to write about today.

One of the stories was about a couple who were divorced from their original partners, and who ended up getting married. Since each had children from the prior marriage, and each child brought their own insecurities to the new home, dread was piled on dread. Some of that dread, I am sure, has to do with my own situation. I am at the age where, if I ever ended up in another relationship, it would be complicated by his children and grandchildren and perhaps even a great-grandbaby or two. (Unless, of course, he’s the type to eschew all family, in which case he wouldn’t be worth having.) The mere thought of having to sort out and find a way to combine the baggage of two lifetimes wearies me.

Luckily, I have no interest in another relationship. I have a house (and this blog), and that’s about as much responsibility as I want in my life.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Dark Too Soon

I don’t mind being alone, don’t mind the reason behind the isolation (a huge upsurge of Bob activity in this area), but having to do it in the dark seems a bit much. I’m not really in the dark, since I can turn on lights, but the sun sets at 4:44 pm. It seems as if the day is no sooner getting started than it’s ending.

Even that, I suppose, isn’t such big a deal, but when it gets dark too soon and I haven’t done my daily blog post, then I panic. Where did the day go? What did I do all day? How can I write if I can’t remember?

I’m glad, of course, that my days are so uneventful. I’ve had enough trauma to last me a lifetime, and even though some friends are going through disastrous experiences, I am at one remove from their situations. A lesson I learned from my grief days (days? No. Years!) is to let people have their own sorrows. I empathize, of course, but I can’t take on their sadness — it belongs to them. Come to think of it, I’m even at one remove — or several removes — from my own grief. In four months, it will be twelve years, and that is a long time. (To put it into perspective, that’s the time it takes for nine-year-old children go through puberty then the teenage storms and finally to reach adulthood.)

The only thing of note I did today was turn my Suspense/Thriller Writers Group on Facebook from public to private. FB is changing the way they do groups, so now if you have a public group, anyone can join immediately without being vetted. Considering how many spammers find the group (not just robots but also authors who only want to promote their books), it would turn a rather innocuous and inert group into a nightmare. Besides, since my blog URL is still blocked, I have little interest in spending any time on FB. For now, I reblog this blog to another blog and post that URL on FB, but when they discover my ruse, and block the reblog, then I’m finished with them.

Although it’s not particularly noteworthy, since it’s something I do every day, I did go out and water my lawn. It still astonishes me that I did that — add a bit of lawn. I wanted just a small corner of grass in my yard (else what’s the point of having a lawnmower), but since I didn’t know how big of an area a pallet of sod would cover, I agreed to buy the two pallets a local landscaping company had left over from another job. I worried that it wouldn’t be enough to cover the 400-square-foot corner; instead it covered 1,000 square feet, if not more, especially since they had a partial pallet left over they threw in at no cost.

I suppose 1,000 square feet isn’t all that much lawn, though it seems huge when it needs to be watered.

Oh, and I did manage to blow most of the leaves off my rock, but a big wind will simply blow them back. So here’s hoping the winds remain fairly calm until the leaves settle in.

I hope you’re doing better with the early dark than I am. And to think it will continue getting darker for the next six weeks! Hmmm. Perhaps I shouldn’t think about that.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

My Butterfly Mind

I read not simply for the story or context but also to give my conscious mind something to do while my subconscious does the work of processing the thoughts that flit like butterflies through my mind. The problem nowadays is that my shortest-term memory is shot, so as I watch those butterflies feast on each thought, if one catches my attention, a moment later, it’s gone, leaving me with the feeling that I was supposed to remember something that I forgot.

Usually the thoughts are not important. For example, the thought today that I sought to recapture and only remembered much later was to remember to take the vitamins and minerals that are supposed to boost the immune system. Actually, the stray thoughts are always relatively unimportant. If they were important, such as remembering that I have something cooking on the stove, then I immediately get up, forgetting the rest of my train of thought.

Hmm. Sounds as if I am mixing my metaphors, a butterfly mind with a train of thought, but I suppose a mixture is better than continuing to beat the first metaphor into redundancy. (Was that a third metaphor? Does it matter?)

You can tell that today was a relatively uneventful day since the only things on my mind are thoughts about thoughts. An uneventful day is good for me, though not so good for this blog. But then again, I am sure you are sick of my less-than-exciting treatises about my adventures in gardening.

I did speak to a couple of people today when I was out walking, making sure to keep my distance, so that was nice. It doesn’t take much to make me feel as if I am not totally alone. And I talked to a couple of people on the phone yesterday as well as received some texts. But still, I am mostly isolated with thoughts generated only by my own mind, and I follow along those thoughts as they flit about, gathering what nectar and nourishment they can, until . . .

Wait, what was that I just thought? I forgot, but I’m sure it was unimportant. Or not.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Dona Nobis Pacem

I joined the peace bloggers in 2012. And every November 4th since then, I have blogged for — and about — peace.

This year’s theme is “Courageous Peace in a Time of Great Change.” I believe in personal peace, in finding peace within ourselves no matter what happens to provoke us into chaos. In fact, I think personal peace is the only peace attainable because it’s the only sort of peace we have any control of. Wanting world peace is a cliché, a coward’s way of putting evading responsibility and putting the onus on others, and those others generally use “peace” as a club to beat the unpeaceful into submission. But taking responsibility for oneself and finding personal peace? That takes courage. Eschewing the outrage so prevalent today? That, too, takes courage. And finding peace in a time of great change? That takes the most courage of all.

I have been folding a senbazuru, which is 1,000 origami cranes, in my effort to find my own peace, a sort of mindfoldness. (As of today, I have folded 992 cranes.) Traditionally, the crane has been a symbol of success and good fortune, and supposedly, if you had the patience and commitment to fold l000 paper cranes, your wish would come true. (It’s no wonder that one of the first books about origami, published in Japan in the late 1700s, was entitled, How to Fold 1000 Cranes.)

In the last century, however, the crane became a symbol of peace because of one girl, Sadako Sasaski, a victim of Hiroshima. Dying of leukemia, she started folding a senbazuru in the hopes of getting well. When she realized she wouldn’t finish the task before she died, she switched her focus to peace. Legend has it that on her deathbed, she held one of her cranes and murmured, “I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.”

Today is the annual Blog Blast for Peace, a time for finding the courage to write peace on our own wings as we go about our busy lives.

Dona nobis pacem.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

One Week Until the Blog Blast for Peace

A week from today is the annual Blog4Peace event, where bloggers from all over the world post photos and essays about peace. I do not think such an outpouring of peaceful musings will do anything to bring about world peace for the simple reason that such unrest is not an organic matter, rising independently of human action, but is purposely created by powerful people who want more power. The rest of us are quite willing to live peacefully in our own small worlds, without ever causing a riot or a war, though minor contretemps do arise now and again.

Despite my cynicism when it comes to world peace, I participate in this Blog Blast for Peace because it’s worthwhile. (And because it gives me a topic to blog about, and topics are sometimes hard to come by.) One day a year, people are focused on peace, on bringing about peace (if only in their own lives), on something other than sowing discord on the internet.

And who knows. As Mimi Lenox, the founder of Blog4Peace, believes, words are powerful. If enough of us concentrate on a single thought for a single day, there’s no telling what can be accomplished. So, on November 4, I will be blogging for peace. What about you? You don’t need to have a blog to participate; you can post your offering on any of the social sites.

How To Blog For Peace:

  1. Choose a graphic from the peace globe gallery http://peaceglobegallery.blogspot.com/p/get-your-own-peace-globe.htmlor from the photos on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BlogBlastForPeace#!/BlogBlastForPeace/app_153284594738391 Right click and Save. Decorate it and sign it, or leave as is.
  2. Send the finished globe to blog4peace@yahoo.com
  3. Post it anywhere online November 4 and title your post Dona Nobis Pacem (Latin for Grant us Peace)

Sounds cool, doesn’t it? See you on November 4!

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.