Eleanor Roosevelt on Life

“Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can think bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.”–Eleanor Roosevelt (The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt)

Shared for the last nine words of the quote.

Eleanor Roosevelt (20 July 1933).

[Daily Prompt] Good Tidings: Positively Dickensian

Today’s Daily Prompt-Good Tidings:

Present-day you meets 10-years-ago you for coffee. Share with your younger self the most challenging thing, the most rewarding thing, and the most fun thing they have to look forward to.

This is my contribution!

Positively Dickensian

Two women sit across from each other at a table in a coffee shop. They take their tea the same way: Earl Grey, strong, two sugars. Turbinado, please, stirred clock-wise.

Their conversation goes like this:

2004 Mae: Hey, why are we blonde? We haven’t been blonde since we were seven, and we both know that was way more than ten years ago–yours or mine.

2014 Mae: We’ve met before, right? We’ve been radically altering our hair every few months since we were twelve. Some things don’t change. Wait until you get to 2012. That was a great hair year for us, even if we got sick of the Miley comparisons.

2004: Who is Miley?

2014: Never mind. We’ll know soon enough, and we’ll wish we didn’t.

2004: Oh, okay. Anyhoo, this is kind of weird. Why are we here, again? Do you have big news for me? Because I’m not sure that I want to know. Even if it doesn’t suck.

2014: Good, because I didn’t plan on giving you specifics, anyway.

2004: Well, what if I changed my mind? What if I want to know now?

2014: Too fucking bad. It doesn’t work that way.

2004: Did you bend time and space just to have tea with me? Honestly, that is kind of creepy. Is this some next-level Miss Havisham shit? Future me is so bereft that she finds a way to come back to a point when life was better? Oh, my god. Do I really turn into Miss Havisham? Seriously, is my future that pitiful?

2014: I’m not wearing a tattered wedding dress, am I? So, no. I forgot how kooky we can be.

2004: Wait. Wait! Do I-do we-become…normal? I’d rather be Miss Havisham.

2014: Haha, no! We’re amusing, too!

2004: Hey, don’t take credit for that line! I said it, so I am the amusing one. Continue reading

[Forgotten Gems] Free e-books Edition: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey

Cover of the Second Edition of Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 1823

Cover of the Second Edition of Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 1823

A Year in Books/Day 223: Swanson on Swanson

  • Title: Swanson on Swanson
  • Author: Gloria Swanson
  • Year Published: 1980/This Edition: 1981 (Random House/Pocket Books)
  • Year Purchased: Mid-1990s
  • Source: Antique Barn, Ohio State Fair
  • About: “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”-George Bernard Shaw. Every Hollywood memoir should come with the preceding GBS quote as a disclaimer. That, or the generic perception is reality. Either will do. With that out of the way, we could get down to the important business of enjoying good Tinseltown autobiographies for what they are: damn fun entertainment. Underneath the ego and the stage-managed pathos, these one-person exercises in reputation preservation usually contain heaping amounts of self-deprecation, humor, and memorable industry anecdotes, with the self-subjects somehow, through a strange, magical process, coming across as down-to-earth and larger than life; normal and privileged; lucky and talented; flawed and beautiful. Continue reading