Solitude

May 11, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I came across an interesting quote this morning by the French writer known simply as Colette: “There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.”

What’s interesting to me about this quote is that, although solitude was an issue with her, it isn’t for me. She died almost 75 years ago, so obviously, the times were different. Today I’m not sure there is such a thing as a poisonous solitude that makes one want to beat one’s head against the wall. We are all just fingertips away from connecting with the world, and if not that, then we’re just minutes away from a store where for the price of a loaf of bread, we can talk to a checkout clerk for a few minutes.

Admittedly, I am minimizing her pain, but I don’t feel that solitude is a big issue — not for me, anyway. I have people I can call or go visit, I can take a walk or work in my garden where people tend to find me. So solitude by itself isn’t a bitter tonic or a poison. Nor is it the heady wine she speaks of. It just is the way I’ve ordered my life (or perhaps the way life ordered me).

Loneliness, on the other hand, can be a bitter tonic if not poisonous, since it doesn’t have an easy fix. I mean, just by going out among people you can cure solitude, because even if you don’t know the people, you’re not solitary anymore. But loneliness isn’t as easy as being around people because one can be lonely in a crowd. One can also be lonely for a particular person, and if that person isn’t around, then the loneliness can be agonizing for sure.

Solitary and lonely — that’s not a good combination, though I tend to think it’s the loneliness that’s the problem, not the aloneness, but then, what do I know. I don’t often get lonely anymore since I am used to Jeff being gone. I am also solitary by nature, though if I am visiting with someone, I can be as garrulous and as sociable as those who prefer to wrap a peopled world around themselves.

I know some of you are lonely, though perhaps not solitary. Others are both lonely and solitary. Life can be bitter for those who have lost the one person that made their life a more loving and friendly place to be, so I don’t want you to think I’m diminishing your pain.

I’m just . . . thinking.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in life, relationships, writing. Tags: , , , , . 9 Comments »

Ordinariness as a Super Power

May 8, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What super power do you wish you had and why?
View all responses

When I was young, I thought mental super powers, such as telepathy and telekinesis, as well as the ability to see ghosts, were a sign of an advanced spirituality, that people who had such abilities vibrated at a higher frequency than normal. I found it disappointing that I was merely normal, not supranormal, just one of the masses. Nothing extraordinary.

Now I find comfort in that ordinariness. I’m glad I can’t read people’s thoughts, even more glad that they can’t read mine. To tell the truth, for the most part, I don’t even want to be privy to my own thoughts, which is why I try to focus on the moment and not let my thoughts overwhelm me. Besides, who needs telepathy when there is writing — seeing a few words or writing a few words exchanges thoughts from one person to another in a quite orderly and controlled manner. And conversation, of course. That’s an even more ordinary way of learning someone’s thoughts.

The telekinesis I exhibit is the ability to get up and get what I want, which is pretty remarkable, when you think of it. As for ghosts . . . no. Just no. My sister says she saw a ghost in my house, and if that old lady ghost lives here, at least she isn’t bothersome. I like being alone in my own space.

Although I sometimes think it would be great having the ability to manipulate the earth’s energy as do the power-wielders in The Wheel of Time books, I don’t see how that would add to my life. When I am reading those books, I can almost see the veneer of the world parting to allow me to step from one place to another, but there’s really no place I want to be other than where I am.

Unless a person is living in a comic strip or a magical novel, most super powers seem superfluous. Being able to fly, become invisible, shapeshift, time travel, control people’s minds, manipulate the weather, use elements such as fire and metal and water, foretell the future, live forever — it all seems too much of a good thing. I wouldn’t want to be burdened with any of it.

I tend to think my super power, if there is such a thing, is my ordinariness. Now that I am not young enough to want to be special, I would choose to be ordinary even it wasn’t already within my grasp. Because truly, ordinariness is a super power. At least, it is for me.

I can be . . . me. I don’t need to be someone other than what I am. Don’t need to grasp for specialness. Don’t need to compare myself to others. Don’t need to reach beyond what I have. Being ordinary and accepting my ordinariness allows me to embrace the special joys that come from simple pleasures, allows me to look beyond myself and engage in meaningful moments with others. Admittedly, ordinariness isn’t the sort of super power that creates comic book characters, but it’s the sort of power that allows a person to live a life of peace.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, history/myth, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Family Mysteries

May 7, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s a mystery from your own life that you’ve never solved?
View all responses

I’ve always loved stories about family mysteries and secrets. It’s such a delicious feeling reading about people discovering that what they thought they knew, they didn’t. That their reality was in truth something completely different.

If there are any secrets in my family, they are just that — secret — since I have never heard of any. There are a couple of interesting family stories, though, with maybe a bit of mystery attached.

According to family lore, our family comes by its insanity naturally — we inherited it. My great-grandfather was a scientist and inventor. He worked with Edison and other renowned scientists of the day, perhaps even Tesla. He invented the postmarking machine and foolishly sold the patent to get funds to invent a subway sweeper that never caught on. The people who supposedly did him a favor by buying the patent, became very rich because that postmarking machine was used continuously until the digital age made it obsolete. This otherwise intelligent man had been married twice. One wife he threw down the stairs. The other he consigned to the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island.

No one knows which of my great-grandfather’s wives is my great-grandmother (and therein lies whatever mystery this story contains), but even if she weren’t the one committed (especially since there’s a chance he had her committed for his own reasons rather than her mental state), the insanity could come from dear old great-grandfather himself because there does seem to be a portion of insanity in incarcerating one woman and tossing another down the stairs.

Whatever genius he had wasn’t passed on to me, which is just as well. Too many geniuses seem to be unbalanced, and I much prefer the balance I’ve managed to find in my life.

There is another story that I think about — my mother’s brother ran away in his teens. He couldn’t handle school, was considered slow, but who knows the truth of that. Back then they didn’t have names like dyslexic, and ADHD, and whatever else they call kids who have a hard time in school. This uncle completely disappeared. No one in the family ever heard from him again. A couple of decades ago, the church in the small town where my mother and her siblings were raised got a request from a family in Florida for his birth certificate so they could arrange his funeral. Wait — does that make sense? Why would they need a birth certificate? Anyway, for whatever reason, the family contacted the church, and that’s when his siblings found out he’d been living with this family as a caretaker, jack-of-all trades, and adopted grandfather. I have no idea when or how he met up with this family. I don’t know what he’d been doing after he ran away. I never even knew he existed, frankly. But it does make me happy that this boy who ran away because he didn’t fit found a place where he did fit.

No much as secrets go, but there it is. My family life laid bare.

Eccentric scientist with wild hair and glasses holding a flask with green and purple liquid in a cluttered lab with sparks and chemical equipment

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in history/myth, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

No Doubts

May 3, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Truth is hard to come by these days because no one has any doubts. No matter the side people are on, if there are sides, they all believe absolutely that they’re right.

What happened to doubts, to thinking that “Yes, ‘A’ seems right but maybe ‘B’ has points, too”? The trouble with people not having any doubts, who believe unquestionably in the rightness of their stance, is that they never seem to take into consideration things like trade-offs. A measles vaccine saves lives, but it also destroys some lives. There is a whole lot of doubt in the discussion, but you never see it, just utter “knowing” on both sides.

It’s not just online — that absence of doubt — but also conversations in person. It’s hard to converse with people who have no doubts, who know what they know and have no interest in knowing anything else.

I don’t think there’s anything that’s so true — so doubtless — that it’s set in stone. Not even the pyramids, talking of stone. The research I did years ago makes me think the pyramids are not tombs. The later ones, perhaps, were created as tombs, after people lost the reason for the pyramids, but originally they seem to have been a means of pulling energy directly from the earth, a lost art that Nicola Tesla tried to recreate with his various experiments, including the Colorado Springs wireless electricity tests and his Wardenclyffe Tower. There’s a lot of talk in certain segments of the internet about such lost technologies, as well as the theory of Tartaria, an advanced civilization that supposedly was erased from human memory when the world was “reset”. Although it’s fun reading about such theories and seeing the “proof,” I don’t really believe in a reset theory, and yet other research I did years ago, on the origins of the Black Death, makes it seem as if that could have been a reset, a way of stopping an explosion of human progress.

People who believe in such things have no doubt that they are true. Those who don’t believe have no doubts that they are false.

What happened to doubting? Maybe doubt is another lost art.

A few weeks ago, some fellow left a few comments here on my blog telling me that if I’m writing for myself, I have no business publishing my articles, that writing is a service writers do for others. He is convinced of his rightness, but I have doubts. For one thing, I am not narcissistic enough to believe that everyone wants to read what I write; in which case, any writing I do has to be for me. It also seems to me that so much that is written is garbage, which is certainly no service to anyone. And it’s garbage because people are writing for others. They write the books they think people want to read, they post the memes they think people want to see, write articles they think people want to believe, and in all of that, the truth gets lost.

Oddly as it sounds, I’m beginning to think that truth can be found in the doubts. And maybe that’s where wisdom lies, too — in the doubts.

As Robert Jordan wrote: “You can never know everything, and part of what you know is always wrong. Perhaps even the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing that. A portion of courage lies in going on anyways.”

This could be why wisdom is so hard to come by nowadays — no one has any doubts. No one even seems to know there is anything to doubt about their position.

It’s possible I believe so much in the importance of doubting because I have doubts about everything. But who knows? Not me, that’s for sure!

 

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in blogging, history/myth, internet, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »

Puzzled About Puzzles

May 2, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Now that I’m not going to the library and am only reading or rereading the books in my house, I’ve mostly exchanged my reading time for pencil puzzle-solving time. I have a foot high stack of puzzles that I bought years ago when I moved here, but then I got caught up in visiting the library because it felt like such a treat.

Well, library visits aren’t a treat anymore, and the puzzles are.

When you are working a puzzle, such as a crossword puzzle, and you come to the end of what you can do on your own, do you consider it cheating to look at the solution for hints so you can finish the puzzle? Or do you see checking the answer as part of the fun of doing puzzles? Or do you abandon the puzzle unfinished to keep from cheating? If you do consider it cheating to check the solution for an answer you have no way of figuring out, do you also consider it cheating to ask someone, to use a crossword puzzle dictionary, or to look online for the answer to the clue? Do you find yourself shying away from difficult puzzles because you can’t do them without periodically checking the answer?

Years ago, I might have considered it cheating to look at the answers, but I don’t now and haven’t for a long time. It’s all part of the game for me, a way to keep the puzzle going if I hit a wall, a way to up the challenge. If I only do puzzles that are easy enough to “win” all the time, what’s the point? And anyway, if I complete the puzzle, I don’t consider it a win as much as a chance to start a different puzzle.

I’m just curious what people think. Doing the puzzles again reminded me of a discussion I had with someone years ago. I didn’t know her, she was just responding to a blog post where I pretty much asked the same questions as I am doing here, but it shocked me when she berated me on my behavior. She was appalled that I would cheat, because even if you “cheat” when it’s just a game you’re playing against yourself, then it’s still cheating

So, I know one person’s answer!

And I know mine. To me, cheating connotes an intention to deceive, and since I’m not deceiving anyone, not even myself, doing the puzzles, however they are solved, is all just a way of passing the time. Maybe it’s even a way of exercising my mind. And perhaps I’m even learning something along the way. Besides, tossing out a puzzle just because I couldn’t finish it without a quick look to see where to go next, is a waste of money. Admittedly, I bought past-date puzzle books in bulk, so each puzzle probably cost less than a penny, but even at a penny, an unfinished puzzle is a waste.

Speaking of puzzles, I created the following puzzles in 2009 for a promotion when A Spark of Heavenly Fire was published. Instead of numbers, these Sudoku puzzles use the letters from the title of the book: A, S, P, R, K, O, F, I, E.

Have fun solving! And if you get stuck, click here to find the solution: Spark of Heavenly Fire Sudoku solution.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Nix on the Happy Face

April 28, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What are your favorite emojis?
View all responses

I have never liked any emoji even before they became emojis. Especially the idiotic happy face that began it all.

I wasn’t aware of the smiley face in its infancy because it was an inhouse graphic created for State Mutual Life Assurance Company in 1963 to make their employees happier about a corporate merger. The face quickly moved beyond those bounds, and in Denver, in the late sixties, a jewelry store passed out happy-face stickers for a promotion, so that sappy yellow face was everywhere. I don’t know why — perhaps because it was everywhere — I couldn’t bring myself to like the insipid thing.

Even worse was after Hallmark took over the design in 1971, added “Have a happy day,” and then expected people to . . . I don’t know . . . give Hallmark happy days by buying happy faces, I guess.

I disliked “Have a happy day,” even more when it replaced “thank you,” as a farewell to shoppers who’d completed a purchase. I was depressed a lot back then, which made that whole “have a happy day” thing seem like a slap in the face, but more than that, it was so utterly phony, it depressed me further. Ironically, I’d give anything to have people go back to “Have a happy day” if they’d only get rid of today’s version, “Have a good one.” That sure makes me cringe! “Have a good one what?” I ask when I’m feeling particularly curmudgeonly. I can’t help but think of caregivers asking their elderly constipated patients if they’d had a “good one” that day.

In my life, almost always things I like disappear, most recently the most useful sprinkler I’ve ever found, with several water patterns as well as an ability to convert it to a hand-held sprinkler. But that sappy face? Nope. Now that it’s a global necessity, embedded in almost all computer programs, it will hound me forever.

Admittedly, I’ve used various emojis when trying to elucidate what I thought a witty comment, but that didn’t always work well.

Many years ago, I signed up for a dating site at the instigation of a married friend who wanted the vicarious experience. I eventually ended up communicating with one fellow who mentioned that he loved laughing and humor, and I don’t remember the comment I made, but it was supposed to be a humorous response to his humorous comment, and to emphasize the point, I added a happy face emoji. He took the comment at face value, and got nasty with me. I explained that the emoji was an indicator of it being a joke, and he got even more angry and said he didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone who had to use happy faces to explain what she was saying. Apparently, the only one who was supposed to funny was him. I tried a different site, and there he was again. So, to my friend’s disappointment, that was the end of my efforts.

But not, alas, the end of emojis. If I do grit my teeth and use any emoji to end a text conversation, it’s something simple like a heart or a tree, but mostly, I stick with (gasp!) words. It’s so much better for my peace of mind.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Decision Fatigue Redux

April 27, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Here’s irony for you. Yesterday I wrote about decision fatigue and counted myself lucky that I have so few decisions to make. Today, I’m sitting here at the computer, staring at a pretend piece of blank paper, sorting through a multitude of options, trying to decide what I want to write about. And it is making me so very fatigued!

So much is going on out there in the real world that I could talk about, maybe even should talk about — not so much what is happening, but my reactions to the reactions of what is happening. Are people really so unhinged nowadays they bemoan that an assassination attempt failed, while others demand that next time they find better shooters, and still others scream “staged”? And are so many as blasé as they seem, that such behavior (both the attempt and the aftermath) is so expected, that it’s simply ho-hum?

None of this behavior is anything I want to deal with. It certainly makes me determined to take better care of myself. Many of the people teetering on the edge (and some that have flat-out fallen on the side of derangement) are in the age group and even the profession, that will be the caretakers of my generation. Crikey, I so do not want to have to deal them now — I can’t imagine being dependent on such people in my feeble old age. Luckily, unbalanced and heartless folk seem to be a minority (at least, I hope they are). Even luckier (if it can be called luck) my limited finances won’t support such care, which again comes down to my taking better care of myself.

After all my waffling about what to write about, I made my decision. There’s nothing I can do about anything that’s going on and nothing I write is going to make any difference, so I’m going to shut down my computer, turn off the outside world, tune into my own world, do the best I can for myself, and make this a peaceful day.

Wishing the same for you.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, blogging, dealing with old age, internet, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . 3 Comments »

Gift of Companionship

April 17, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday was one of those special days that can’t be planned. Well, I suppose it could be planned, but the logistics of arranging such a day and making it all come out to perfection would take more energy than I have. Besides, part of the perfection was the unexpectedness, the way everything that happened coalesced into something special.

When I was outside watering my lawn, a neighbor stopped by to visit. We chatted a bit, then I asked him if he was still strong enough to wield a hammer. (Maybe not a tactful question, but it’s something I am aware of, both for myself and other not-young folk.) One corner of my raised garden planter was pulling away from the rest of the boards, and though I tried, I couldn’t hammer a nail through that thick, two-inch board. It turns out that he could do the hammering, but unfortunately, the support post was all but rotten. Anyway, he worked on that planter for quite a while and finally was able to strengthen that corner so the weight of the soil wouldn’t keep pulling it out of whack.

Meantime, to my delight, a friend who I haven’t seen in ages stopped by to visit. She followed me around while I finished my watering and admired my flowers.

By then, the neighbor had finished doing what he could, so the three of us hung out in my gazebo to chat awhile. After he left, my friend stayed a couple of more hours, so we were able to get caught up. Such a joy that was!

After she left, I spoke a bit with a different neighbor. Then later I had a long text conversation with my sister. It was good to get caught up with her, too.

For sure, yesterday was a special day, and it wasn’t just the company after a long stretch of aloneness that made the day a good one, but the people themselves.

Today, I’m back to my normal hermit-y self, but I still am feeling the glow of friendship from yesterday. Maybe the remembrance of the day will make me more conscientious about keeping up with friendships, but who knows. Sometimes overcoming the inertia of aloneness to make plans seems insurmountable, which makes yesterday’s gift of companionship even more special.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in gardening, home, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 9 Comments »

In Ten Years

April 13, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
View all responses

Where do I see myself in ten years? Alive. I hope.

My mother died at the age I will be in ten years, as did her mother, which makes me wonder if that’s an age written in my genes. My father’s family was long-lived, so that might be a mitigating factor, but I take after my mother more than I do him, so we’ll see. Of course, life might have other plans for me, so that ten years might not be a given. Still, I have what I always have . . . today.

Oddly, we don’t seem to be able to project the view of ourselves into an aged, weakened state, so the way I truly see myself in ten years is mostly the way I am today: knees that don’t always cooperate as well as they did when I was younger, foods that don’t always agree with me, but for the most part, my body works well. My mind, too, works well (at least as well as anyone can judge their own mental workings).

I see myself still living alone, still working in my garden, still grateful for my house, and still grateful for my life.

I can only hope that I really will be as I see that self. I’m to the age where the body doesn’t recuperate as well as it once did, and so minor ills will tend to add up to an eventual fragility, but I can’t “see” that. I suppose it’s a good thing we can’t even imagine what we will feel like and what we will be like when we are very old — it would make life feel . . . frantic, maybe, as we try to fit in everything we want to do before that decline. Or perhaps it would make life feel defeating as we try to overcome thoughts of our end.

So, unless there’s a blog prompt asking me where I see myself in ten years, the overriding factor is that I can’t see myself that far in the future. I don’t even bother to try.

I’m just glad I can see myself here today.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in being me, dealing with old age, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 15 Comments »

Literary Tragedy

April 12, 2026 — Pat Bertram

The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss was supposed to be a trilogy, but to date, no third book has been published. Although rumor has it that the author is still working on The Doors of Stone, it’s been fifteen years since the publication of the second book, so who knows if the third will ever be available.

Though some people think it would be a tragedy (in the common sense of misfortune) if the trilogy were never be finished, I’m not sure I care. There’s an underlying feeling of doom in the two published books, which leads credence to the author’s warning that Kingkiller Chronicle is a tragedy (in the classic sense of a hero being destroyed by his own “fatal flaw”). If that’s the case, I’d rather leave the story in limbo, where he isn’t exactly happy, is tormented by his past, and yet is still alive, rather than have so much of the foreshadowing come true.

Unless . . .

The catharsis of a classic literary tragedy is supposed to be in the minds and emotions of the audience or reader, coming to terms with the inevitable downfall and dealing with the buried emotions the tragedy brings to the fore. But what if, in this case, the catharsis is actually experienced by the hero, and so he’s allowed to somehow come to peace with the actions that led to his downfall?

But then, it wouldn’t be a tragedy, though authors are allowed to subvert traditional story forms.

Still, that feeling of doom, of the hero falling for his own legend and often acting impulsively, leads me to believe that the hero won’t survive. Oddly, there is an irony inbred in his impulsiveness. Although he often acts without thinking (meaning rashly) and so brings about disaster, he also sometimes acts without thinking (meaning intuitively) and so brings about victory.

If the book ever comes out, I suppose I’ll read it. Knowing ahead of time that the hero will die would make it easier to handle the tragedy, especially if he comes out of his self-imposed exile to write whatever wrongs he committed. (Oops. I’m getting the writer and his self-imposed exile mixed up with his hero’s exile.) What I meant, of course, is that a tragic ending will be more acceptable if the character rights his wrongs.

I don’t know which would be more tragic, though — to get the final book and learn of the character’s death or not get the final book and miss out on the experience. Either way, the books I have were well worth the dime I spent for each.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in books, fiction, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »
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