Life With Words on the Side

Stepping Back to Move Forward

two brown rabbits — Photo by Jim Long on Pexels.com

On the morning of July 4th, I went outside to check on my garden. No sooner was I on the back step when I noticed a rabbit had hopped into my garden again. Rabbits have been abundant this summer. To my dog, they have become the new squirrels. Instinctively, I shouted at it, “Out of my garden, Bunny!” my tune changed quickly when I actually got to the garden. The rabbit I had yelled at had retreated to some nearby bushes, but she hadn’t been alone. There were four newborn bunnies laying in a weedy patch near my peas.

“Omigod, omigod, omigod,” I said. “Don’t worry babies, I won’t hurt you.” I felt horrible for shooing their mother away. My daughter and grandson were visiting, and I quickly called to them that newborn bunnies were in the garden. The bunnies started wriggling. They were still bald and blind, but they made their way through a small hole in the ground. By the time my daughter and grandson made it outside, the last bunny was making its way into the hole.

That afternoon, I saw a couple more adult rabbits, but now adult rabbit sightings are down considerably. I saw one of the babies today, just a face with some fur, and I think a sliver of an eye. From what I’ve read, it isn’t unusual for baby bunnies to be left home alone. Often, they are only fed by Mom Rabbit at dawn and dusk. Mom mixes her fur with grass in order to leave her scent and keep the bunnies protected.

I am still hoping my peas stay safe. There is one of my bell pepper plants that appear to have vanished completely, and there are plenty of bites out of my strawberry leaves. It’s the second year on my strawberry plant. There was nothing edible last year, at least not by humans. Tomatoes are slow, but finally, all the plants are at least flowering. The only thing edible has been a few pea pods, and they are delicious. I’m trying to let most of them grow into full-sized peas. Bell peppers are still pretty little too.

Waiting for Progress

it is hard for me to wait for progress. Of everything in my garden, I think it is my yellow tomatoes that I obsess about the most. A few years ago, I suffered from Vocal Cord Dysfunction and a serious case of GERD and was forced to cut down on acidic food dramatically. Yellow tomatoes have far less acid than red ones, so I can eat more of them. They are harder to find in the store, so I grow them. I really want a decent harvest. My biggest plant is my Golden Boy tomatoes. It was the last to flower. It is the only one of five plants I have not found any mini tomatoes on. I stopped staring at it for a few days, and the flowers finally came.

It took spring and summer a while to come to Minnesota, and I am hoping that I get plenty of ripe tomatoes without having to resort too much to tricks, like placing them in paper bags with other fruit. I hadn’t seen the bunnies for a few days either since they wiggled into their hole, and it was good to know they were growing.

Managing the Slow Days

I’m progressing too with my writing, but had my own little setback. I finally got curated on Medium, which means the powers that be started reading and appreciating my stories, but after a mini-windfall of curation, I saw a couple pieces get passed by again. That’s okay, though. I blame no one.

The last couple of pieces had less punch to them, and I took some extra time off from writing. It stunted my growth a bit, but I am ready to build momentum. Eventually, I will have things recognized again, and I’ll grow into who I want to be as a writer.

My garden will catch up too. There is still a lot of summer left. My little yellow flowers will become tomatoes. My pea pods will fill with peas. I might even get a bell pepper or a strawberry by season’s end — if the bunnies don’t eat them first.

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story links in italics are “friend links” and can be viewed on Medium with no membership restrictions

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Gretchen Lee Bourquin obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Literature/Creative Writing in another life, and worked in disability care, customer service, and education administration — and as a single mom of two, now grown, kids- before delving into freelancing as a content writer. She’s enjoying the opportunity that Medium provides to get a little more personal and put the creativity back in her writing. Follow me on my Facebook Writing Page, Twitter, or WordPress

Appreciating the Little Wins of Life

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Right now, I am feeling a bit better about how my writing and life are going than I did a week ago. In the grand scheme of things, the changes aren’t that dramatic, but they still feel important. It’s been just over a week since I was first curated on Medium with the piece Self-Diagnosis and Dr. Google. Since then four more pieces were curated, which means they are visible as people search topics in the first page of results. They aren’t viral, by any means. I have a decent following considering the relatively short time I have been there.

Some of the personal bugs I had have now settled somewhat, and I feel grateful. I’m still glad I stuck up for myself, and am only sorry I haven’t done it a bit more often in other situations. More than ever, I think, I feel a right to exist in my space and have a voice. There is a power there, and at the risk of sounding corny, there is a responsibility, although I don’t fully understand what it means for me, I will keep paying attention. I’ll keep learning.

One thing that I have known for a long time is that life isn’t always fair. Some guys have all the luck, and some get the shaft time and time again. But being at the far end of either of these places is pretty rare. In a lot of ways, I feel like I do better with small wins rather than larger ones. In addition to my own work, and breaking through the curation wall, I have started my own publication on the site, Brave&Inspired, on Medium, I have felt braver, and I have certainly been inspired by several writers there for different reasons.

Whether someone is conquering their own mental health demons or raising their voice for a stronger sense of social consciousness, it is something that needs attention. We need knowledge that puts a bug in our ears to be more self-conscious, and to think about how our actions affect the world around us long term. I’ve been reminded of the obstacles I have overcome and the people who helped me overcome them.

No one does this life thing alone. Some assume writing is a lonely pursuit, but I believe that it is anything but. You expand your understanding of yourself. The more you let others in, the more you come to understand others as well. I have always worried about overstaying my welcome, but I have realized it is harder to do if you always bring a gift to the party. That’s the next turn my writing journey needs to take. Giving back. Little wins are wonderful, Their even better when others get to win too.

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story links in italics are “friend links” and can be viewed on Medium with no membership restrictions

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What It Means to be Recognized: Timing Your Transitions

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Where some people have Imposter Syndrome, I have an invisibility complex. I have lived my life trying to stay out of the way for the most part. I assume I am not fun enough. Not interesting enough. I get to know people and situations slowly. The ability to resonate in any given environment comes to me as a slow burn and a sudden ignition. When I am ready to be heard, I am ready to be heard now. When I’m not, I’m somewhere between angry and devastated.

Transitioning From One of the Little People

I feel like I have been standing in line for hours, but to the rest of the people in line, I just got there. Most of them probably never noticed my presence as the fly on the wall. Those who did probably only heard me as a faint buzz. A harmless enough creature as long as I stayed in my place. Then I fly in their face, and they understandably start swatting.

The thing is, when you finally raise my hand and ask for my turn, no one realizes how long I’ve been waiting. They don’t know that I’ve been watching carefully. They don’t know the knowledge and commitment I can bring on day one because I’ve been quietly doing my homework. They don’t know, because they have never looked.

Recognition on Medium, and Other Places

My Medium journey is one place where I am trying to make this transition, and one part of the journey is curation. Curation is a system of recognition. It gets your work noticed. It puts it front and center. Without it, your work only goes to your own followers, and wherever you can manage to promote your work on your own.

I had submitted dozens of pieces to Medium and got messages on nearly all of them that they were not read or considered by the curators. I got to the one piece that meant a little more to me. The one that said, “this one deserves something more.” And the same response happened. I was upset, more than I should have been when I got the same response as always.

It meant more, partly, because the piece was about another time I stood up for myself, and the impact it made on my life when I advocated for myself when I had an unexplained medical condition. It’s called Self-Diagnosis and Dr. Google.

Sometimes, You Have To Squeak

What’s that they say about doing the same thing and expecting a different result. I contacted support, explained how I had paid my dues, and asked for consideration. Not recognition, just consideration. I didn’t know if it would happen, but it did. A few days later my work got the recognition I believe it deserved, and I got a promise to be read more often in the future.

Whatever you do, there is a good chance that a lot of other people are trying to do it too. Many of them are working hard, like you. Many of them are good at what they do. Some are not as good as you and will be recognized. Some are better than you and will never be recognized. If you simply lie down, the bus will run you over. Believe me, I’ve got the tire tracks to prove it. But I am learning, finally. I am learning how to squeak enough to be heard, but not so loudly that I get accused of hysterics. It is a difficult line for me, a learning curve to be sure, but I’ll keep working on it.

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Growing With The Garden

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Growing things is hard. You have to prepare the soil ahead of time. You have to judge which plants can go into the ground as seeds, and which need to grow in a sheltered place for a little while before you transplant them.

Life is like that too, especially if you want to grow. That applies if you want to help your children grow, or if you just want to grow yourself.

When I stepped into the world of the site Medium, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Much like my blog here, I know I wanted, and needed, a place to express myself yet. When I was on my blog alone, the time was not quite right. The soil was not quite ready. I got a few posts, but not much became of them. I wasn’t organized. I didn’t water. They didn’t get enough sun, and they slipped back under the soil of the Internet until I dug them out again. The garden here is disheveled. It is going to take a lot of work to bring it back.

In the beginning, I was still finding my roots, planting my seeds, looking for what might grow on the site. What would encourage others to take a second look? Grab a taste of what I had to offer. One of the first posts that didn’t seem to go anywhere was on prepping the garden. I started by literally taking what I was doing in my life, and weaving it into my post and my life. But I wasn’t even a seed yet. I was the thought of a seed. Thoughts are quiet.

Today, I wrote about gardening again. It was supposed to be this blog post, but it turned itself into a poem — funny how words do that sometimes, shapeshift into something you never intended for them to be. But sometimes, you have to let them have their way if you want them to grow.

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My Medium Movement Towards Meaningful Writing

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Organization is not my strong suit, or at least maintaining an organizational system isn’t. It has been months since I wrote in this blog despite all good intentions. But things are different now. I think. In some ways they are exactly the same. I’m still doing content writing. I am still striving to spend more time and energy on finding and maintaining my creative voice. Right now, I am in the middle of multiple pieces on Medium that are in my drafts, but a temporary glitch is preventing me from accessing them. I’m trying not to obsess. I assume all will be well soon enough and I will be able to access things and post to the site again.

What is Medium?

Medium.com is an online reading and writing platform that is membership based. It’s filled with publications of varying sizes and circulations, as well as sample content from well-known publications including The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, RollingStone, and more. Much of the content exists behind a paywall — which means you need to pay their $5 monthly fee in order to have unlimited access. Without the fee, you can still read a few “stories” each month. And if you are sent a “friend link” you can access the content with that link whether you are a member or not.

The writing side centers around the Medium Partner Program. You can write stories behind the paywall, and when paying members read and engage in those stories, a small part of their membership fee is distributed to you on a monthly basis. There are a handful of people that earn several hundred or even thousands on Medium this way.

Most seem to be more like me. I sputtered through my first month making $1.56, and buckled down the 2nd month and made $20. I’m on track to get a little more next month, perhaps even double. it’s not a lot, but the fact that I can make something writing what I want in my own name means something, and it has been motivating. And now that I have earned back my initial investment, I have the momentum to keep going and reach for a little bit more week by week or month by month.

My Early Strategy

Being part of a reading and writing community my initial strategy was pretty much “Throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.” So far what seems to have stuck the best are posts about the challenges that come with depression, anxiety, and ADHD, memoir-esque essays about noteworthy life events, and poetry. Much of the poetry posted is actually older, from days when I did not write for content mills, but there’s a bit of new stuff there too. I’m also looking to ease back into fiction. I’m studying my ADHD- inattentive type closer, and am looking at more of the emotional aspects that can be overshadowed by the societal pressures to stay focused and produce.

How I’m Working in My Blog

Earnings on Medium are cumulative. You might earn anything from a few pennies week by week, to several dollars, depending on how popular the piece is on the site. While this blog is posted in full on my site, in the future, I plan to work Medium Pieces that have fizzled out, and provide snippets and a friend link on the blog for select pieces. If you wish to take a look at more of my work, check out my Medium Profile for a better sampling of my work.