Trust Your Journey II

I’ve written before about trusting your journey. Each writer’s journey is her own, and quite different. Yep, challenges are individual and unique. Today, mine seems to be my printer. I spent precious time trying to get it working after replacing a print cartridge. The print cartridge alone is so dang expensive and while I love my printer and I’ve used this brand forever, the cartridges are too dang expensive. I’ve tried every which way to limit my printing, but the fact remains I see my own booboos better on the page, not on the screen.

Now, I have a page of notes under the heading of Trust Your Journey and not one item on the list mentions printer or what to do about a willful printer. It mentions knowing happiness, strength, says to remember what you think you become. You don’t want to know what I’m thinking, right now, about the printer and trouble shooting and the little bumps in the road to be published. You just don’t.

I usually approach a problem with the idea that with patience and a little research I can figure things out. Today, I’ve come to the end. I’ve done everything I can think of and what the help function has suggested. The printer is working, just not printing in black.
Notes in Trust Your Journey:

• Trust your journey, despite challenges. I’m not sure this meant printer problems, but I am not going to cry over this.

• Use peace, strength, courage, love and gratitude-How? I like that last word. Apparently, I was just as frustrated when I wrote those notes as I am today. Lousy way to start a Monday.

• What you think you become. As I said, I really need to censor my thinking right now and yet, is there a life limit to a printer? Or should I just make it so?

• Know happiness. I was so excited to get to work today. I had a blog to write, a small portion of the last chapter of my novel that has to have a rewrite. I found a problem with one tiny scene, but it is a crucial scene, but I figured it out with my husband’s assistance and I’m feeling good about the way it fits in now.

• Know strength. This one was a challenge. I know strength. I have it, sometimes. I know how I’d like to use it, too, but I really don’t think it would help the situation and a grown woman on the far side of middle age jumping up and down on a printer in the middle of the road just doesn’t sound smart. Someone might think I’ve rounded the bend, or take video and put it on You-Tube, or...I didn’t do it. I thought about it once as I was having the dang thing clean it print heads—if it’s so smart, why can’t it heal itself? I thought about it again when I read this item in my Trust Your Journey notes, but I reaching for that peace and love thing, too. The conflicting struggle messed with the whole anger and decided I’d try to turn it off, unplug it and you know, sort of reset it…and me. I got myself a stick of gum. That’s when you know I’m at the end of my rope.

• Cherish the journey. My indulgence—Extra Dessert Delight sugar free gum-mint chocolate chip. I sat back and decided I’d just move forward—step over the bump in the road, grab a stick of gum and write this blog.

• Free your spirit. Now, that’s the challenge, isn’t it? Writing demands a certain degree of free spirit. I’ve been called that more than once and sometimes, not in a complimentary way. And yet, I’m a worrier and obsessive compulsive. Can those all live in the same body/mind? Yes, but it gets crowded. You know, it really is the little things that can trip you up, if you let it. I’m just not going to…let it, I mean. I think I’m just going to take five, sit on the patio, watch the Swallowtail butterflies, humming birds and say a prayer of gratitude about the Monarch butterfly, I saw this morning. (It’s been some time since I’ve seen one and we wondered and worried where they’d gone.)

• Inhale hope. I’ll figure this out, eventually.

• Exhale determination. I won't cry. Crying won't fix it. Might feel good, but it wastes time. I will figure this out.