Tag: free as a bird

Running Away From Home

Published on by Janet Sunderland1 Comment

cropped-road2.jpgI’m running away from home–well, actually I’m running to my childhood farm home and away from my home home with computers and phones and demands and EMAIL. I’m going where service is not an option, six miles from the nearest paved road.

I like my home home, really I do. I like that my writing room is six steps away with all the books, papers, and memory-jogging journals I need or want. I like that my Internet connection is up to speed and effective (well, effective except for the times of Coronal Mass Ejections which hurl great and glorious explosions of universal matter that mess up everyone’s electronic gadgets but create wonderful Northern Lights). I like it all, really. The work I do and the connections I make and the poetry and memoir and email and board meetings and business meetings and being included in the renovation planning of the old Walt Disney Studio on 31st Street. Really I do. And I like the WordPress community I’ve been a part of and received blog renovation advice from. Which, in part, still need renovating. I like my Facebook community. I even liked tarring the leaking parts of the back porch roof. I just need to do nothing for a couple of days and renovate my life.

As I said to a friend, or posted on Facebook, or something, my life is like a cement mixer – one two or even three days of smooth pouring and then the rocks are tossed in. Yikes! Enough with the rocks!

So I’m going MIA: missing in action. At least until Saturday night when we return and it will be time to dig out from everything that’s left over or will come in while we’re gone. But I’ll think about that, if not tomorrow, Saturday night.

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The Daily Post: Back of the Queue

Published on by Janet Sunderland2 Comments

Is there something you’ve always wanted to do, but never got around to starting?

What an interesting question, let alone prompt. It came out on July 1st, and I grinned and shook my head. No. There’s nothing I haven’t wanted to do that I haven’t done.

I’ve made visual arts and movie arts and writing arts. I’ve lived in Hawaii and Mexico and Europe. I’ve run businesses and I’ve failed at some. Succeeded at others (never could make visual arts work but I have made movies and writing successful to one degree or another). So what haven’t I started.

Well, for one, I’ve not taken the first step in walking the Elysian Way. I’m not even sure it exists anymore. Walking through Ephesus would be cool, however, and I’ve not gotten around to that, either.

Courtesy Wikipedia

 

 

I’ve wanted to climb the white layers of Santorini, and visit the monasteries on Mount Athos, but only men are allowed on the Holy Mountain and a sex change seems a step I’m not likely to begin.

Courtesy Wikipedia
Courtesy Wikipedia

In fact, traveling the Aegean Coast is still on the bucket-list. But that dream may go the way of my mother’s dream to travel to Africa. She traveled a lot, too, but never made it there. She did, however, manage an ocean cruise in the Pacific. So there’s hope. I did make it as far as Dubrovnik in Yugoslavia (when there was still a Yugoslavia and Dubrovnik a beautiful city) but not to Greece.

And if we’re talking travel, I’d like to “do” northern England and see the land where the Sunderlands came from. Oh, and Warsaw. That’s Poland, not Indiana. Cliff’s family is from Warsaw.

So, yeah. I’m pretty fortunate in the doing category. But as you might guess, doing everything you’ve wanted to do usually means, or at least it means in my case, never having a full-time job. Never having a full-time job means you’re short on the dollar category and long on dreams. Traveling to fanciful lands usually takes dollars. Dreams are free. Ergo.

That is what, dear readers, keeps me from following up on those to-dos.

But there’s always miracles.

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