JUST WRITE FOR AN HOUR the Substack version is back! Join me in a fun creative writing exercise. It is simple. I give you a writing prompt, you write for a hour. The goal is to get some ideas down on a page to shape and craft into a finished work later. If you would like to participate, watch the video to get the prompt, and go baby go!
Below, I am going to post what comes out of this hour for me. It will be rough, but if I am feeling it, I will polish it up and post in a new Substack at a later date. Isn’t that fun? Have a look at the video, grab a pen and let’s go!
Here is what came out of my hour. Full disclosure… I forgot to use the object! And please don’t forget, it is ROUGH!
Jen’s Just Write for an Hour:
I feel oddly at ease as I sit here, in my new compression sleeve and glove. Something I will have to wear for the rest of my life because of my altered body, my damaged left side, my struggling lymphatic system. The woman who measured my arm for the fitting today likened it to driving on the 405 in traffic. The sleeve will get it flowing again. All I could think was when does the 405 ever flow? I have hit traffic jams on that thing at 2am that were as nasty as the 4pm rush hour.
This is a birth of sorts, a reluctant one, one that was forced on me. I have no choice now but to let go of something I have been wanting to shed anyway. Vanity. I haven’t gotten entirely rid of it. I’m not going to start parading around shamelessly in cargo pants or anything. But I have been letting go of the parts of vanity that stoke fear. The fear I felt of an altered body not because of limitations or mortality, but because of the possibility I would stand out (or be overlooked). Be stared at. Be pitied. Cause repulsion.
I have mourned the changes. I am mourning the changes. I miss the bony prominence of the knuckles on my left hand. I miss being able to always straighten my arm without the fear of a sharp pain shooting up it. I miss full range with no tightness, no limitations. But in this newborn old body I now have, the revisions truly are minor. I am lucky. The sleeve squeezes an arm that can still type and move pretty well. And in the words of my favorite YouTube exercise lady, I am “grateful to have a body that can exercise.” I can still walk and more importantly, hike. I can move this reworked body through life.