Tag: #writingchallenge

Posted in #atozchallenge, Challenges

C is for Cognitive Decline – #AtoZChallenge 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Theme: Aging and Associated Issues

#AtoZChallenge

We tend to associate aging with cognitive decline. Cognitive decline is just a fancy term for dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease. It can also refer to Mild Cognitive Decline which is not considered a form of dementia.

Age-related cognitive decline includes difficulty in finding the right word, slowness of thought, inability to multitask, problems with sustaining attention, and problems with retaining information. In this modern era, if a person exhibits the mildest of these symptoms, their family and doctors automatically jump to the conclusion that they have dementia. If you are worried about a loved one having some form of dementia, these are the symptoms they might be experiencing.

In my grandparent’s era, slowing down a bit mentality was just considered part of the natural process of aging. It was considered to be normal. Nothing to get excited about. Now, everyone wants a diagnosis, so they get slapped with a diagnosis of dementia when mild cognitive decline is, indeed, not dementia at all.

Here are some statistics to think about. Most people who are diagnosed with a form of dementia live in low to middle income countries. There are 55 million people worldwide who have been diagnosed with dementia with five million of those living in the United States. The country where the most dementia is present is Finland. The United Kingdom comes in second. Among developed countries, Japan comes in last. Dementia is on the rise particularly among disadvantaged countries and populations. The harder one has to live, the better the chance of dementia, it seems. People with chronic illnesses also tend to have more dementia.


Mild cognitive decline (MCI) is what most people experience as they age. Sometimes, MCI progresses into full-blown dementia, but often it does not. The symptoms of mild cognitive decline are brief problems with memory, judgment, and language. For example, you may forget where you park, forget your car keys. In the middle of a conversation, you may lose your train of thought or you may not be able to fully follow the conversation. You may get temporarily lost in a place you know well. Your judgment may not be as good as it has been in the past. These symptoms of MCI are nothing to panic about because they happen to almost all people who are aging, but you should report them to your doctor if they get to be particularly bad.

Posted in #FridayFictioneers, Challenges

Destruction – #FridayFictioneers April 5, 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Photo Prompt @ Sandra Crook

She never tired of this view. Every night, she came to the lovely, long pier on the bay to watch the sunset. The sky turned to watercolors. 

The sun was down now, but she stayed on the pier for the companionship of the locals and to watch the nighttime water birds. 

It was her last night on the island. She thought she would be back next winter. In the coming summer, the hurricane made a direct hit on the island. It caused destruction to both the island and to her. She knew she would never see the magical island again.

*I cheated a little this week. This is a true story slightly fictionalized.

Thank you to Rochelle Wisoff for hosting #FridayFictioneers!

Posted in #atozchallenge, Challenges

B is for Boredom – #AtoZChallenge – April 2, 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

AtoZChallenge

Boredom: Is boredom a problem in retirement?

Those of you not yet retired may think that I’m crazy for mentioning boredom in retirement. You may look forward to sleeping late, doing what you want, and perhaps traveling. Those of you who are already retired are right here with me on the boredom issue. You’ve found out that there is more to retirement than sleeping late and being a free spirit.

When is boredom a problem in retirement? Often, in America, it is a result of spending most of your working life putting in long hours under a great deal of stress. It’s important to develop hobbies and leisure activities that you enjoy as you will rely on those pursuits when you’re no longer working. Unfortunately, twelve and sixteen hour days leave us tired and stressed and many of us don’t have the time or energy for much leisure or any hobbies. Once the novelty of retirement wears off, we have all those hours in the day to fill.

So what is a retired person to do? At 65 or 70 years old, we may not have the curiosity we once did and we probably don’t have the attention span we did when younger. If you don’t allow yourself to be curious about things you aren’t familiar with, it’s going to be a long retirement. That leads to attention span. You can lengthen your attention span through curiosity.

But now, let’s be realistic. If you have worked all your life, you may feel out of sorts and useless, at least when you first retire. You may be lonely for your co-workers and friends who were related to your job. Your social activities may plunge. You may literally not know what to do with yourself. These things are why you should make a plan before you retire. A plan will help you avoid boredom.

It seems that travel is at the top of everyone’s wish list when they retire. Stay tuned! Travel and associated topics are coming right up and you may be surprised!

Posted in #atozchallenge, Challenges

Aging – #AtoZChallenge – April 1, 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

A to Z Challenge 2024

Theme: Aging: Slices of Life Past and Present; Aging Issues and Financial Concerns

Aging and Aerosmith

Welcome to The Write Scribe, my blog, where I will write about issues related to aging, along with slices of life past and present, during the 2024 A to Z Challenge! I look forward to reading your blog posts and enjoying your theme during this Challenge. You can find my A to Z 2024 Challenge posts under the Challenges category at the top of the front page. I invite you to read the posts as you wish and I look forward to your comments.

Since my theme starts with an “A,” I thought starting off with some general comments about aging, and more.

There is only one alternative to aging and we know what that is. Since I’m not done in this world yet, I’ve had to accept this fundamental truth and move on with this aging business. I’ll have to tell you that I’m doing it kicking and screaming and not very graciously.

Younger people ask if, as you get older, you feel any different? I guess my answer is that it depends. If you can stay well, you might answer this question in one way, but if not, your answer might be different. Anyone at any age can become ill. However, it gets more likely as you move into your 60s and 70s. Speaking for myself, I don’t feel much different than I did at 35 except, perhaps, a little (or a lot) wiser. If only the young could have the wisdom of the old! I’ve wished that for my younger self many times.

As you age, you feel like you become invisible in the American society. Other cultures take better care of their elderly. In America, it’s all about youth and the concerns of the young. The elderly, at least in the modern era, are pushed aside as irrelevant and just a bother by many. Some of that changed during the pandemic. Employers discovered that they could depend on older workers and since the pandemic, that opinion has remained, at least to some extent.

Most people who are aging want to stay in their own homes and continue to pursue their own interests without becoming a burden to their children. To me, it’s a shame that parents have to feel like a burden although if aging parents can stay in their own homes, that is often best.

There are a lot of people who are aging who feel lonely. By the time you reach your mid-60s and early 70s, you have lost much of your family and at least some of your friends. You may be widowed. You may not be interested in socializing as much as in the past because your interests have changed. Add that to the likelihood that your friends interests have also changed and there is loneliness.

Some of my interests have changed, but basically my core interests have remained the same. For example, I still love the same music and don’t really enjoy the music of recent generations. Aerosmith, a famous rock and roll band that began in the 1970s, is still going strong, and is still one of my favorite bands, now as well as when I was younger. Steven Tyler, the lead singer, is a talented musician who has lived a long and colorful life. If you’ve never heard Aerosmith and Steven Tyler, listen to his song “Dream On” and see what you think. It’s pretty indicative of the baby boomer generation and how we grew up. Conservative parents, more liberal friends, and lots and lots of what seemed then like innocent fun. For the most part, it was!

Posted in #weekendcoffeeshare, Uncategorized

#weekendcoffeeshare #158 – March 30, 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson
green tea on green background

Hello, everyone, and welcome to #weekendcoffeeshare #158. Help yourself to one of several brews or a cup of green or black tea. Grab your beverage, have a seat in my writing room, and we’ll catch up!

As Natalie points out, it’s the end of one entire quarter of 2024! I can’t believe three months of 2024 are already gone. The older you get, the faster time flies! If we were having coffee this morning, I would tell you that this last quarter has been one of the busiest I’ve had in a long time. I’ve had several projects that I’ve tackled but not necessarily finished.

The first quarter has been my time to break back into to blogging and I’ve surely enjoyed blogging with all of you. My fiction skills were rusty (or non-existent) and I’m trying to hone them a bit by writing for the excellent Challenges here on WordPress. I’ve also written a few non-fiction pieces on topics near and dear to my heart. My Appalachian series, for example. Stories here and there about other non-fiction topics, rescue dogs and hunting dogs. Politics. A little travel writing. These areas in which I write will continue on into second quarter 2024.

One project is a novella, perhaps an e-book, that I’m working on. The genre is fantasy which I’ve never written before. I find it fascinating and quite difficult. I have enjoyed the world building phase a great deal. I’ve found that fantasy is challenging. My novella is set in a particular time and I want the details of that time accurately depicted. It’s required a lot of research and I’m still not quite there yet, but I’m gaining on it! This WIP will extend into the second quarter of 2024 and probably beyond. What’s your latest WIP that will go on for some time this year?

On a personal note, busy is an understatement. It’s just barely the beginning of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere. That means outside work like cleaning up the yard and flower beds. I love in the forest so no vegetable beds, I’m afraid. We get our spring, summer, and fall vegetables from local farmers’ markets. We are starting, but just starting, to see signs of spring here. We’ve had warm weather early and I’m afraid my plants will be killed back by frost. Our last frost date isn’t until May 15.

These crocuses and ferns will be fine if it frosts, but I have peonies, iris, clematis, and hostas that may not be fine.

On another subject, my husband has spent the last six months dealing with medical challenges. We hope that he is now stable and maybe even getting some better. We’re had a lot of medical paperwork and doctor’s appointments to attend to.

Another activity I will be involved in during the second quarter of 2024 is dog training. Our German Shepherd, Sophie, is both obedience and protection trained. She just needs some brushing up on her skills. If our Corgi, Hazel, can stay well, she needs obedience training. Hazel doesn’t understand (yet) the concept of obedience since she has been sick. She seems to be getting better!

The only travel we have planned, to date, is short trips to Kentucky State Parks. We take Sophie with us and she has a blast. She always gets a hamburger on the way home.

What is everyone reading? I am reading the new novel by Kristen Hannah, The Women. It is about a girl in her early 20s, back in the 1960’s, who is a nurse and volunteers in the Army to be an Army surgical nurse in South Vietnam. Believe me, it is worth a read. If you weren’t around during the Vietnam War, you’ll learn a lot. If you were, you will remember a lot.

Thank you so much for coming to my #weekendcoffeeshare #158 this weekend!

Thank you to Natalie the Explorer for hosting #weekendendcoffeeshare!

Posted in #unicornchallenge

The Glory Days – Unicorn Challenge March 28, 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

She liked bars. She didn’t drink or smoke. She didn’t go home with strange men. She was simply a people watcher and some of the best opportunities were in bars, but these were the boring 2020s. Everything was so politically correct, so sanitized that nothing was fun anymore.

Back in the 70’s, when rock and roll and women’s rights were shiny and new, everything was fun. There was no such thing as political correctness. Men and women were busy experiencing live music in bars and relating to each other in a way that had never been possible. They were high on life. The downside was that they were high on other substances too. They didn’t know much yet about the downsides of those substances, including liquor. Those were the Glory Days.

She looked around this bar stuck in a corner of the airport. Bright lights, men only except for her. She couldn’t hear the music over the intercom because it was too soft. The men were quietly talking to each other, but certainly not to her. They even looked like they were practicing political correctness. She preferred to laugh. She didn’t think she’d have much fun people watching in this place. 

Even people her age had bought into the whole new sanitized world notion, except when it came to politics. That was where you found the passion, but none of the fun. The entire world was at stake. 

Time to go. She would put on her headphones and drift away.

Thanks to Jenne Gray and CE Ayr for hosting the Unicorn Challenge.

Posted in #JSWChallenge, Challenges, Fiction

Hope -JSW Challenge March 26, 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Elena, a victim of recent unimaginable loss, came from her home in the mountains to visit her aunt. The hope was that she would start to heal. On the second day of her visit, she saw a copse of trees nearby. She started up the wide path to explore. The landscape seemed so flat and boring to her.

The trees were very sparse compared to the forest where she lived. She found something compelling about them. She started walking up the wide path thinking that it was curious her mother and father had never brought her here to visit. They didn’t like to be gone from their home for very long. It turned out that was a wise decision. She had just lost them both, at the same time, to a terrible car crash. Tears started streaming down her face at the thought and she could hardly see where she was going.

Elena reached the tree line and immediately felt more at home. There wasn’t far to walk and remain under the trees. Ahead, she could see a grassland. She was crying so hard that she stumbled. As she picked herself up, she noticed something odd. Near her, there was perfect circle made up of mushrooms. Inside the circle, the grass was dying and looked as if it had been trampled. Even in her grief, it dawned on her what this was. It was a fairy circle.

Elena turned to go back to her aunt’s house, and she heard something. She felt a sort of noise and vibration that seemed to come from underground. Then, she heard, very faintly, singing and she realized the vibrations were in time with the singing. 

The fairies were singing and dancing under their circle. The only word she could decipher was, “Hope.”

Thank you to A Writer’s LIfe for hosting the JSW Challenge!

Posted in #FridayFictioneers, Challenges, Flash Fiction

Trapped – #FridayFictioneers March 29, 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Photo Prompt @ Dale Rogerson

She felt like she was strangling, suffocating in the drab, gray house. She imagined how it must feel in a mausoleum. It was emotional death to be trapped in this house. Someone from the outside would eventually find her, wouldn’t they?

He had made it palatable from the outside with the beautiful mural and bright floral colors at the entrance. Couldn’t they see the rudimentary wire gate?

She was locked in a small, sound-proof room, but she had almost pried open the lock. The lock clicked and she was free. When she reached the wire gate, he stood there laughing.

Thanks to Rochelle for hosting #FridayFictioneers and to Dale for the photo.

Posted in #FridayFictioneers, Flash Fiction

The Mirage – #FridayFictioneers March 15, 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

She ran along the water’s edge on the private island, her tanned legs pumping hard. Suddenly tired, she sat on the beach near the water to rest.

When she looked up, she saw him wading in the shallow water. She looked twice because he was a dim, gray image of himself. “Everything will be all right,” he said as he smiled at her.

He started walking away through the shallow water. As he got farther away, he became increasing dim and gradually disappeared. She didn’t understand. Her father had been dead for 20 years. Then, she realized she was smiling.

Thanks to Rochelle and Friday Fictioneers for the challenge and the photo prompt.

Posted in #JSWChallenge

Hot Commodity – JSW Challenge 3-12-2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

They thought they had concocted the perfect plan. The smaller of the two men, Dave, was a hot air balloon enthusiast and entered the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA almost every year. His partner in crime, Bill, was just along for the ride and had helped Dave transport the stolen gold bars as far as the balloon festival. 

The balloon fiesta was in the fall of the year in warm, dry New Mexico. As Dave and Bill approached the venue, the skies were blue and there was a slight breeze. Dave’s balloon was already secured there, deflated, but ready to be aired up. Dave had made plans to steal the gold bars and then transport them to his secret place in Mexico using his balloon. 

Dave had stolen the gold from his supervisor’s home vault while she was on vacation. He had lucked into finding the combination for the vault by hacking her laptop.

They aired up the balloon and gradually loaded the gold bars into the wicker basket. Then, they were off. Dave thought the balloon was a bit sluggish as it tried to get off the ground, but he blamed the calm wind. The balloon gradually rose, but slowly and not to the height that Dave expected. As the wind further calmed, Dave became alarmed since the balloon started losing altitude. Dave suddenly realized the problem was the weight of the gold. 

Below the balloon, they could see the Rio Grande River. The balloon was falling rapidly no matter how much hot air Dave pumped into it. It slowed and plunked down right in the middle of a shallow in the river. When Dave and Bill looked up, there was the Border Patrol on horseback on the bank, just waiting for them.

Thanks to the JSW Challenge and A Writer’s Life!