Friday, October 8, 2010

Late Breaking Friday Challenge

First things first: What is a Friday Challenge? This is a challenge issued by Jan at her blog, Crazy Jane, to inspire creativity and thought in her readership. The challenges range from the goofy to the profound and no I won't tell you which is which because I'm sure it is subjective.

A Month of Fridays: If you go to my side bar and look under my list of labels you will see Friday Challenge has 30 listings   To celebrate a month of Fridays I thought I should do something different. I'm going to have a contest! To enter this contest you need to have done ONE of the challenges - explain why you did that one or why you've chosen that one out of the 29 you've done and make a comment including the challenge, why you chose it and what you produced, thought or did in response to it.

An Example:
I chose assignment: grab an old song out of the air and free fall with it - let yourself go for the pure joy of it - riff until you're quite done. There. Good.
I chose it because:  I love doing free falls and it was helpful in my writing life to practice the kind of bravery which comes from doing an emotional free fall.

What I did: the song I chose was Summer Time.
Are you sitting quietly thinking - oh, I best not stroke that nostalgic old beast that can live quite quietly thank you very much. I don't need to think about hot sultry nights when we'd all gather in the hotel and one of the women would start to sing summmer summmmmmmer tiiiiiiiiime and we'd be sort of boozily freaked maybe but still all was forgiveable wasn't it? And maybe we'd worked that day and maybe we'd wobbled instead because there wasn't any apple pie in the cook hall and anyway fire season was nearly upon us and we'd be out of work soon enough. The geo-duckers were due in town shortly with their great amounts of money and good dope and cool good looks - clean to the loggers' patina of sweat and dirt and tan. Then we'd all party. We'd all party at the hotel and play the jukebox and then wander down to someone's house and keep on partying. Someone would start some drama - some gal would kiss some other gal's fella and then the shit would fly. Or someone would dis some guy for not climbing the seniority ladder fast enough. But then we'd hear that song, 'and the living is eaaaaaasy' and we'd remember that these are the days, yes these are the days.


How to Win: I will take the names of all who enter and put them in a big straw hat. One of the chickens will pluck out the winning entry.

What do You Win?:  The winner will win a photo of mine that they choose from all those on my site. I will process and mail you a print in a nice fat size even if you live in say, India. There. I will also post as many as seems good if you say that I can!

And here are some pictures of a farm that I love because I want to get into the mooooooood!



6 comments:

Unknown said...

I chose assignment: I'm doing the 3 goals in 7 areas of life.
I chose it because: I really need to set goals, especially because my life is getting busier.

I did the assignment in my Daytimer so that I have it always. I think the family one made me ponder the most because it's the most important to me. Thank you.

CD

Liza said...

I did take a walk one of the last Fridays. I'm not sure if I'd read your challenge from earlier in the month yet. But I did it. I grabbed my camera and walked down by the lighthouse located in the next door town, but didn't take any pictures. I ended up sitting on a bench over looking the harbor and taking deep breaths. Not sure if it counts as an entry, but if felt good none-the-less. Hmmm, I'm thinking it would be a good idea to do it again today...if it's not too late.

Helen Ginger said...

You take fabulous pictures, so that's a great prize. It'll be fun to see who wins.

Talli Roland said...

Wow, great challenges, Jan! If I had an ounce of brainpower to invest in anything else other than edits at the moment, I'd enter, but...

Lovely photos!

Helen Ginger said...

I forgot to mention that I love that you'll let a chicken choose the winner!

Natasha said...

My sidebar tells me I did only two Friday Challenges, but the fact that I created a label tells me that I intended doing many more. I remember both the challenges I did, but the one that still stays with me is the one on Heart Work.
Your challenge was to ask us to determine our Heart work and make that a priority in our lives. That was a time of great turmoil for me- was trying to decide if I wanted to remain in the organisation I loved (but which didn't challenge me), or move to another, or part-time at both. It was also when I was trying to edit the novel which I now know should have been scrapped. And I was dealing with some stuff I would rather not talk about on the marriage front.
There were dozens of things clammering for my attention, but my heartwork was clear - my kids were my priority.

The last few months have been bad, but thanks to you, I have not neglected my priority. Time I could be writing, I spend reading with the kids - I have a lifetime to write, but if I lose this window they may never love reading. I often choose kids over a good long run, and my work choices have been made around what is best for the kids.

THANK YOU!