Last week I had sat down to watch The View that I had recorded the day before. Taylor Swift was on that day. She has been making the rounds the past few weeks with the release of her new album, and a tour that is not yet released, but will be (as she said on Ellen).

She told the hosts that she had been spending time on line really reading all her fans tweets, Facebook posts, etc. She founds that there were many common denominators between her fans and herself.

She jokingly said that there are different sources for gossip, but the feelings are the same. That she finds out about herself at the check out line in the grocery store and others finds out other ways. You have to try to let go of the things that you can’t control.

I can agree with many of the things she was talking about first hand right now. It is human instinct to defend yourself when people have the wrong impression of you. That is easier said than done, yet some people are better at doing that than others.

Her words: “Let go of it. Get rid of it. It isn’t yours anymore”. Wise words from someone who is clearly wise beyond her years so far. It may sound trite, but it is truth. What is done is done, and all we can do now is move forward. The hard work is to stop listening to the white noise in your head and work through what you need to in order to move forward.

Her words: “you are supposed to surround yourself with people who will challenge you, motivate you and make you want to be smarter, stronger, better.” Very true. I think that I have groups of people in my life that challenge me on a regular basis. It does not come easy, it takes work.

I think that there are lessons to be learned in all types of situations every day. It is up to us to find the lessons, learn them and then pass on the knowledge. Knowledge is power.

For those of you who know me, you know that I don’t have children of my own. You know that I have two nieces and a nephew who I adore and would do anything for.

Before my family grew I had other ‘little’ kids in my life. Kids that I can say I was happy to be a part of their life. Spending Halloween with them, birthdays, Saturday nights. Arts and crafts, cookie making and more. I miss those times, and even though they weren’t really that long ago, it feels like so much time has passed.

Now both of those boys are growing up and so busy with their own lives, school and first and foremost – HOCKEY!

Today I went to watch one of their games. It was the first time in a couple of years that I went to a game. I was looking forward to it all week. It ended in a tie, but he and his team did not disappoint me at all.

Before the game we got to spend some time hanging out – usually when we hang out they want to play Jenga and now they want to challenge me to Monopoly.  Today was a new game – I was teaching him Gin Rummy. We used to play Go Fish and War, but he is almost 12 so he can learn Rummy. I knew how to play when I was that age. We didn’t get much time to play but I know we will come back to it soon.

I am telling you this short little story about taking time to share the little things in life. Time moves by very fast and I don’t think we take enough care in the way we spend time. Time is not something that we have finite amounts of. We need to choose wisely.

I am looking forward to more Sunday hockey games this winter. Hopefully more game nights at home, and cookie baking. You can never be too old to bake cookies, right? Of course right.

I will probably write a separate post about this, but I really would be remiss if I didn’t mention the loss of Sarah Watkin. She was a 7 year old #hero who lost a valiant battle last night. She will never know the impact that her gone too soon life will have. Her family will. Even today, through his grief, her father Mark, asked the facebook community to change their profile photos to a photo of Sarah today in her memory. It was sad, and sweet and touching to see my news feed full of Sarah’s beautiful face and the memories of photos that her family has shared through her battle with cancer.

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Of course most of us in the GTA and surrounding area woke up to a bit of the white stuff on the grass and rooftops this morning. Photos were all over facebook. The funny thing is that they were talking about it on the news every day last week that we would probably have snow for Halloween. Well, it only rained during trick or treating…the snow came later. I knew it was coming because the condo put the snow mats down on Wednesday. That is always my sign that it is here, and we can’t run away from it. (well, maybe in retirement when we can run south for the winter and escape it).

November is also the start of “mo-vember” where men stop shaving for the month to bring awareness to mens cancers. I think it is great, and hopefully like the ALS campaign this summer, brings not only awareness but donations to the cause.

For the writing community, it is also NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo which is National blog posting month (30 posts in 30 days) and National Novel writing month (50,000 words in 30 days).

How do I think about the blog posts I want to write? Sometimes they are very specific and have a direct purpose to them, and other times, as I have mentioned in the past I will sit down to write (type) and when I looked at the finished post it has turned into something different than my thoughts. That happens a lot. I am not sure if the non stop thoughts in my head are just because I am creative thinker or it happens to everyone. Maybe it happens to everyone but not everyone can (or wants) to write about their thoughts.

I started writing in 2009 just after my car accident. I told this story before about waiting at the airport to board a plane to New Orleans three weeks after my car accident. Alone in the terminal waiting for my flight I had tonnes of thoughts, but not even a pen and paper to write my thoughts.

When I got home from that trip, I started to write.

Thank you for always reading my stories, it means a lot. I am trying to grow my readership so if if you enjoy what I write, I would love it if you would share it. We live in a world of “shares”, “likes”, “tweets” and it would be great to have my thoughts shared with more people.

Have a great day and stay tuned for a lot more where this came from.

Cheers,

L