expectations

MFFFC — Above and Below

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The water was cold and dark, but as it enveloped Carol, it felt like a velvet blanket, keeping her warm and muffling the world above into silence. She drifted downwards, her knees folded and her eyes closed, as if she had surrendered to a dream rather than to gravity.

It was the noise, the ceaseless clamor of voices, expectations, and demands pressing against her that drove her into the water. It beckoned her, an escape from the questions she was expected to answer, the role she was expected to fill. All she sensed now was the rhythm of her heartbeat echoing in her chest and the rise of bubbles slipping free from her lips.

As she sank deeper, the tug of panic began as Carol’s body started its natural clamoring for breath. But she willed herself to hold still. She wanted to feel the edge between control and surrender, the razor’s line where time slowed and choices blurred.

A part of her knew she could push upward, break the surface, inhale the sharp air again. Another part wondered what would happen if she didn’t. If she just let herself give in and dissolve into this blue silence entirely.

Then, in the shimmering dark, Carol saw a flicker of light appearing above. It wasn’t just the surface, but something else. A promise, perhaps. Her hand rose toward it, fingers trembling in the water. She wasn’t ready to vanish. Not yet.

With a sudden kick, she broke the stillness, rising through the liquid night toward breath, toward life, and toward the fragile hope of something different waiting for her just above the water‘s surface.

Written for Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge. Photo credit: Engin Akyurt on Pexels.

OMIMM — No Expectations

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The smartphone lay face-up on the bedside table, its screen black in slumber. Beyond the window, a bluish dawn started to seep into the room, carrying the hush of a world not quite awake yet. The nightlight threw a faint orange glow across the metal edges of the device.

It hadn’t rung all night.

Marcie had set it there deliberately, silenced, its screen dark. No alerts. No vibrations. No excuses to break the stillness. She told herself she was done waiting for messages that never came, for apologies she no longer believed in. But as the hours stretched thin, her eyes kept sliding toward it.

Outside, the world breathed frost onto the glass. Inside, the air smelled faintly of old furniture polish. She reached out once, but then quickly drew her hand back. Some decisions, she knew, could only be made in the space between impulse and restraint.

When the first sunlight spilled across the table, it caught on the phone’s edge, turning its outline into a blade of gold light. Marcie closed her eyes, trying to delay the inevitable reality. By the time she opened them again, she had already decided she wouldn’t look to see if he had called. Or texted.

Not yet, anyway.

Written for Mike Jackson’s Only Murders In My Mind Weekly Writing Prompt. Photo credit: no attribution.

Sunday Poser — Blogging Expectations

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For today’s Sunday Poser, Sadje wants to know:

What were your initial expectations when you started your blog? Have you been pleasantly surprised by it or disappointed?

When I started my first blog back in 2005, I didn’t know what to expect. A friend of mine told me about his blog on TypePad and that he used it whenever he wanted to express himself about a particular topic. While I enjoyed reading his blog, he wrote a lot about his religion, and not being a religious person, my first thought was that maybe blogging wasn’t for me. He asked me what I was interested in and I said I like sports so he said to write a post about sports. So I created a blog hosted by Blogger, and my first ever post, dated October 10, 2005, was about the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

My second post, two days later, was titled, “If a tree falls….”

In that second post I wrote:

I’m new to this blogging thing. My initial impression of blogging is that it’s an egocentric exercise and that all who blog have this self-centered belief that they have something worthwhile, interesting, and noteworthy to say and can do so in an articulate, intelligent, and entertaining manner. Even more amazing is that they seem to think that others besides themselves will have some fascination in reading what, based upon a small sampling of blogs I have read, appears to me to be idle — and often boring — personal ramblings.

Nonetheless, being a sort of techno-junky, I thought I’d give it a shot. Even Business Week devoted considerable space in a recent issue to the blogging phenomenon and how blogs are changing the whole nature of the Internet. I don’t want to be left behind if everyone else is busy blogging. So here I am, feeding my very own ego.

Of course, I have no expectation that anyone, other than me and my ego, will ever read anything I post to my blog. And I really don’t care.

I continued writing about sports, politics, religion, and whatever else crossed my mind on this first blog until December 5, 2008. And then I started blogging on TypePad in early 2009 for a while before moving to WordPress in July 2013.

I never had great expectations about making money blogging. And until I moved to WordPress, I continued to post about sports, religion, politics, whatever else crossed my mind and nobody, besides me and members of my own family, read my blog. I was always thrilled when, on rare occasions, I received a comment from someone I didn’t already know in the real world.

Two important things happened when I started blogging on WordPress. First, people started reading my posts, liking them, and commenting on them, and that’s when I discovered the wonderful WordPress community. It’s that community, with its support and encouragement, that has kept me blogging through thick and thin.

Second, I discovered writing prompts at WordPress, both from WordPress and from individual bloggers. And it was in response to these word and photo prompts that I first started writing flash fiction.

So here I am, almost twenty years after I first started blogging, and while I haven’t made a penny from blogging, I have made friends with other bloggers from around the globe and I have honed and hopefully improved my skills at writing flash fiction.

As my blogging buddy Descartes said,

Image credit: me, ChatGPT, and Meme Maker.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — August 27th

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Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 27th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on August 27, 2014.

Age is Just a Number

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Last month, one of the WordPress Daily Prompts said “age is just a number” and then asked whether it’s a number I care about or ignore.

I responded to the prompt with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek post about the wonderfulness of senior discounts. Don’t get me wrong; senior discounts are great. But I avoided answering the question.

What I am finding out is that, while age may just be a number, it is also a label. It labels me as part of a group. I’m a Baby Boomer. I’m a Gen-Xer, a Gen-Yer, a Millennial, a Gen-whatever.

I’m a child. I’m an adolescent. I’m a young adult. I’m middle aged. I’m a senior citizen. My age categorizes and classifies me as something. But is that really what I am? Is that all I am?

Okay, so based upon my age, I actually am a “senior citizen.” But what does that tell you about who I am? What I believe? How I’m supposed to behave?

One blogger on whose posts I comment frequently was blown away when he found out how old I am. He had no idea that I wasn’t around his age — and he’s a whole lot younger than I am. I mean, seriously, a lot younger.

That made me feel good, but at the same time, it saddened me. I guess the expectation is that because I’m a senior citizen, I’m supposed to act and sound and even write my age — simply because I am that age.

But while my hair may have turned gray and then fallen out never to return to its former glory, and while my vision isn’t as good as it used to be, and while my hearing is not as acute as it used to be, and while I have wrinkles where my skin was once smooth, and while I can’t run as fast or sleep as well or eat all the crap I used to be able to eat without repercussions, in my mind I don’t feel a day older than I did when I was a “young adult.”

But because of my age, because I’m identified as a senior citizen, people’s expectations of me are different from those for people who are a different age than am I.

And I guess, just as I do with my tinnitus, my failing hearing, and my balding head, I will just learn to live with it.

Age is what it is — a label to which people attach meaning.

Friday Fictioneers — New Horizons

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My family had a small farm in a rural part of the state. Everyone expected me to work the farm with my dad and ma and to learn what I needed so that one day I could take it over. That was my destiny.

On my 18th birthday, I showed my folks the train ticket to Chicago and told them I was leaving to seek new horizons. Fighting back tears, they wished me well.

Now I’m sitting in the train looking out the window, watching and wondering if the new horizons will look any different than the old ones.

(99 words)

Written for the Friday Fictioneers prompt from Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. Photo credit: J Hardy Carroll.

Tale Weaver —Doing Enough To Get By

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F43E6E98-F799-4F52-9E65-99B249580648Larry walked up to Doug’s office and handed him a poster. “We’re having a new motivational program, Doug. And I’ve got some good news to share with you.”

Doug took the poster and tossed it into the trash can. “Doing your best? Seriously? What is that, another stupid slogan for Melania Trump to promote?” Doug said.87543BF4-4F7F-4F73-941B-72454134825D“Management just wants people to do the best work they can,” Larry said. “Don’t you always try to do your best?”

“Come on, man,” Doug said. “Doing your best takes way too much effort and is highly overrated. I remember about ten years back, you know, when I was young and naive. I really worked hard and did my very best work. I was burning the midnight oil, working weekends, not taking my earned vacation days. I was dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s. And then, my friend, it came time for my performance review and I got ‘meets expectations’ and a two percent salary increase.” Doug paused and took a deep breath.

“So I said to myself, ‘fuck this shit.’ That next year I left the office every day at 5 pm. I didn’t take any work home with me, didn’t work on weekends, took all of my vacation days, and did the bare minimum it took to get the job done. And do you know what happened, Larry?”

Larry shrugged his shoulders.

“I’ll tell you what happened, Larry,” Doug said. “Come time for that year’s performance review, I got ‘exceeds expectations’ and a four percent raise.”

“No shit,” said Larry.

“Damn straight, Larry,” Doug said. “So forget all this ‘doing your best’ and ‘be best’ bullshit. My advice for you, Larry, is to keep your head down and do just enough to get by.”

“Interesting,” Larry said. “Oh, I almost forget. You know that good news I mentioned? Well, I just got a promotion. Turns out that I’m your new boss.”

Written for this week’s Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Tale Weaver prompt, where we are asked to “explore the notion of doing your best.”

#100WW — Shattered Expectations

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59FF5B76-8203-466E-BA93-9EE70701922B“This is not what I expected,” Linda said.

“I knew you’d love it,” Ronald said.

“Where’s the sand, the tents, the camels, the nomads? All I see is a big city with skyscapers and highways,” Linda said. “When you said you got a job in the Middle East, I thought we’d be stuck in some shithole country. This looks more like New York City.

“See that tall building?” Ronald said, pointing out the helicopter’s window. “That’s the Burj Khalid’s, the tallest building in the world.”

Linda sighed, “I don’t think this is going to be the adventure I was anticipating.”

(100 words)

Written for today’s 100 Word Wednesday prompt from Bikurgurl. Image credit: Roman Logov.