An Introvert’s Introspection

I was a shy and lonely child, a loner by every definition, who preferred to spend countless hours in my room either reading, writing, or fantasizing, to being outside playing with friends.  I didn’t have a lot of friends really, a handful at most, and they were mainly my go-to people when I was forced to spend time outside because I never felt that I fit in with people.  I was a dreamer, plain and simple, and if I could have found an isolated cabin somewhere, that would have suited me fine.

It was a sad existence but I had nobody else to blame but myself.  Sure, there were problems in my family, which family hasn’t got them, and there were the neighbourhood bullies who liked to pick on me because I was different, or maybe because I thought I was, but I had zero social skills back then and I’m the one who chose to isolate, wasn’t I?  I was more comfortable living in my mind than living in the real world, and somehow, I didn’t feel deprived.  In my mind, I was happy.

During my second go at high school, I had quit for three years and started back in the tenth grade, things changed.  Somehow during my three-year sabbatical from high school, I matured and overcame my debilitating shyness, and for the first time, I made some real friends, friends that I enjoyed spending time with.  I moved slightly on the introvert scale towards the extrovert side, and then I alcohol entered the scene and my extrovert side took over, not always in a good way I assure you.

Alcohol became my new best friend and took me to places I would have never dared to go, one drawback though, it also turned me into an asshole.  My romance with alcohol lasted about eleven years and while it had been fun in the beginning, near the end of my drinking my introverted side resurfaced and I became a closet drinker, drinking myself to oblivion in the privacy of my own home.

I quit drinking on August 8, 1991, and for a while, recovery carried me back to society and taught me how to live without drinking, and I had a social life again, I was having fun.  Once an introvert though, always an introvert, and I find myself isolating again, not as bad as in my youth, but isolating just the same. 

Reading, writing, and learning has become my thing again, when I’m not working or sleeping, I’m actively engaged in one of those activities, and I’m comfortable with it.  I have a few good friends that I connect with regularly, and I’m active in my Union, and they provide a welcome distraction but the fact of the matter is that I’m an introvert, that’s who I am, and that’s okay.

I can say in all honesty that my life is good today, I have a good connection with my Higher Power, and I am doing the things that I love to do, what else could a guy ask for.  Who says that being an introvert is a bad thing, it has its drawbacks of course, but it has also provided me with a rich life, no, not financially, and has fulfilled many of my dreams.  I am absolutely grateful for who I am and what I am!

Love you all!

Luc   

A Learning We Will Go

As passionate as I am about writing, I am also quite passionate about learning, any learning at all, and I am always actively involved in some kind of course or another, most of them free thanks to Creative Commons and Open Learn.  You’d be surprised at what you can learn on the world wide web, and I lap as much of it up as I can.  Of course, I also spend considerable time studying books about writing but the mind needs a break from writing every now and then, and it’s time to follow a different course of study.

I recently received a Diploma in Mental Health Studies from https://alison.com/ , my favorite learning place for free courses, ranging from computer studies to languages, to health, and so many more topics.  Be forewarned however that while the courses are free, the parchments aren’t, but the courses are great quality, and purchasing the parchments, if you are so inclined, helps to keep this great resource free, and it is not necessary to purchase the parchment to study there. Parchment purchase is in Euros but can be converted to your currency.

Another fantastic resource, or resources really as there are two different ways to learn through them, neither are free but I find them reasonably priced, are http://www.thegreatcourses.com/ and https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/ both by The Teaching Company.  The Great Courses offers individual courses in Science, History, Literature, Hobbies, and even cooking.  Each Course is a series of lectures by top notch professors from top notch Universities and organizations.  The courses go on sale frequently and that is the best time to buy the courses which are available in both audio and video formats in both standard and digital versions.  Each course comes with a comprehensive User’s Guide which comes complete with questions and assignments.  If you are an avid learner, like me, a better deal is The Great Courses Plus which is a subscription service that grants you unlimited access to a great selection of their courses.

Another great choice for free learning is the free learning branch of the Open University http://www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses# where you can find learning materials on such subjects as Psychology, Sociology, UK History, etc., all worth checking out.  There are no teachers, no grades, just an opportunity for self-study.

https://www.oercommons.org/ is another great place to find self-study materials.

Finally, if you are looking for more detailed self-study which comes with a reading list and lecture notes, you will find that most Universities and some Colleges have an Open Learning department but these may be a little trickier to navigate and some courses have extensive reading lists which can set you back a few dollars.  Try the following: https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm , https://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning-initiative , http://oyc.yale.edu/ , and https://www.edx.org/school/oxfordx .  You can find more free open courseware courses by browsing at http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses .

The learning possibilities are endless, chances are that by using these resources, you will find a course that is well suited to you.  Happy Learning everyone!

Love you all!

Luc

Suicide - Be a Fork in the Path

It’s tragic, really, all these suicides we are hearing about these days, what’s even more tragic is people’s response to them.  I’m deeply saddened when I hear people referring to victims of suicide as cowards because suicide is far from a cowardly act, it takes a lot of courage to reach a point where you actually take your own life.  They are victims just as certainly as if someone had taken their life from them, because they slipped through the cracks of society, of a broken mental health system that is hard to access, and of their own mental health issues.

Unless you’ve personally walked the path of major depression, you just can’t understand that suicide is not about the break-up, about the financial collapse, about the loneliness, or about the fear of facing something, it’s about walking an endless path of despair, looking desperately for that fork in the road that may lead to some comfort but the fork never appears.  Suicide is never about one let-down, it’s about a series of them, it’s about intense pain brought on by the act of living, and about believing, delusional or not, that nobody cares.  I know, I walked that path and I reached that point, but fortunately for me, it didn’t end in suicide.

I am absolutely grateful, and always will be, that a benevolent soul recognized my suffering and put a fork in my path which led me out of despair and into the arms of people who cared.  I still suffer from depression today, but I was given tools to help me cope with the bumps in the road, and for the most part, I have a pretty good life today.

Suicide is preventable but only if we put aside the stigma of mental health and reach out to people instead of pushing them away, don’t tell people to get over it, help them get over it, and be an active part of their mental health treatment.  Be that elusive fork in the path for someone!

Love you all!

Luc 

Writing In the Language of the Soul!

I’m a selfish writer, I write mostly for myself but I’m willing to share most of my writing with everyone.  I am not dismissing the importance of the reader in my writing, the reader is always at the forefront of my mind when I write, but in all honesty, my writing could never satisfy a reader if it can’t satisfy me.  When I write, it’s important to me that I stay true to myself, that I write what I like to read, and that whether it is fiction or not I put elements of myself in it.

The thing about writing, for me, is that it’s just as important as breathing, it’s something that I must do, that I can’t stop doing even if I tried.  In a way it’s like endless therapy for me, it allows me to reach deep into the pit of my soul, find emotions that I have locked away there forever, pull them out and express them in my story though usually not verbatim but in its essence.  Every story that I’ve written so far has captured that type of personal emotion and/or feeling even though the stories themselves are fictitious.

An example of this would be the story Mercy Adams from my book, Heart Strings.  I’ve never been an orphan, and I’ve certainly never been adopted, but there was a time in my young life when feeling sorry for myself no doubt, I imagined that I had been adopted and that my natural parents would be coming for me soon, they never did because they were never real.  I just didn’t feel like I fit into my family back then and it was easier to just pretend that I really didn’t belong there.  Those feelings were stuffed deep inside me along with heavy emotions that accompanied them, and I eventually forgot about them but somehow, they festered every now and then, and I could fish them out as fuel for Mercy Adams.

I’ve written two books that way, The Flash Zone – A Collection of Short-Short Stories, and, Heart Strings – A Collection of Short Stories, and by all standards but my own, neither would be termed successful, although they are to me.  You see, it doesn’t matter to me that each book sold just enough copies to break even, what matters is that over a hundred people have purchased each of them and that they enjoyed them enough to give me great feedback.  I believe in the quality of my writing and of my stories, and I know that I could have sold more copies if I had the marketing skills needed for self-publishing, I am working on that as we speak.  There will be another book, and hopefully another after that, and I will keep writing, and publishing for as long as there is a breath in me, because that’s who I am, and what I do.  I am a writer dammit, I write!

Should you be into stories written from the heart which capture the human emotion, sometimes in a humorous way, sometimes in a gut wrenching way, then my books may be for you.  Links for ordering them in any format are available under the Books Tab of my Website https://lucrivet.ca/

IF NOBODY’S TOLD YOU YET, LET ME BE THE FIRST

I’m not afraid of death, I’m certainly not coveting it but I’m not afraid of it.  Don’t get me wrong, I value my life and I want to go on living but should death come calling sooner rather than later, I’m not disappointed.  I’ve had my share of struggles, and solutions, but in all honesty, I have had a pretty good life so far.

I still have dreams to fulfill, things I would like to accomplish, and people I would like to meet but I’ve lived enough and fulfilled enough dreams to consider my life complete, if it comes down to it, but that’s not to say that I would die without regrets, there would definitely be some regrets.

My biggest regret would be that I have no children, nobody to carry on with my legacy, that’s regrettable but circumstances are such that it could not help but be a reality.  Another regret would be all the time I spent isolating myself from people in my younger days and during my depression, because I love people and can only imagine the wonderful connections I missed out on, missed opportunities to meet some wonderful people.  One last regret would be all the chances I didn’t take, the adventures I never lived, and the journeys I never took.

I learned back in 2007 that you never know when your time will come to an end, fortunately, I was given a second chance at life, I also learned how important it was to let people know that you love them before it’s too late.  Life is precarious and it’s important to live it to the fullest, and that has been my motto since November 30^th, 2017.

As much as I’m not afraid to die, I’m not afraid to live either.  It’s important to me that I celebrate each day that I am allowed to exist, that I live my dreams, and honour my friendships.  It’s also important to me that I stay away from negative situations, negative thoughts, and negative people.  There is so much negativity out there, and I used to allow myself to wander there, as a result, my monkey mind, as Natalie Goldberg calls it, got squirrely, and I missed out on some fantastic opportunities.

Every morning, I start my day by posting a positive quote on Facebook, accompanied by an upbeat good morning message which always ends with the words, ‘love you all’.  That morning ritual is important to me because I really do value my family and friends, most definitely including my Facebook friends, and I want those words to be my loving goodbye to each and every one of them should my time come.

The same goes to all of you who are reading this post, I love you all, regardless of religion, race, creed or belief.  I may not always like what you do, I may not believe as you believe, and I may not always trust you, but be certain of one thing, I love you all, and always will!

With Love,

Luc

IF IT FEELS SO WRITE, IT CAN’T BE WRONG!

As strange as it seems, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t write.  Don’t get me wrong, I know that time existed, a time when I didn’t even know what a pencil was, let alone know how to use it to form a letter, a word, or even a complete sentence, but that time is so far away that I can’t remember it at all.

From the moment that I learned the art of composition in grade school, I fell in love with writing, and pencil and paper became my best friends.  I would sit alone for hours on end in my bedroom scribbling away on anything and everything that an eight-year-old boy could possibly be interested in scribbling about, and to be honest, most of what I wrote back then was gibberish, certainly nothing that would be worthy of praise, let alone publication in a second-grade newsletter had such a monster existed back then, but I kept writing, and I got better at it.

Pen and paper are still my favorite medium for writing, even though I have a top of the line laptop and an assortment of writing software on it, something about pen and paper brings out my creativity.  My home is cluttered with notebooks, binders filled with loose leaf paper and journal books, some of them full, some half-filled, and others barely written in but I would never dream of disposing of any of them even though some of them go way back to my twenties.

Writing is my passion, there’s no doubt about that, and though the time I have available to write is limited by the time spent at my full-time job in the Addictions Field, and other life commitments, I value each minute that I get to spend writing.  I have somehow found the time to self-publish two books, a collection of flash-fiction, and a collection of short-stories, neither of which was an overwhelming success because I’ll willingly admit that I suck at self-marketing, but I sold enough copies of each to break even, and that’s all that ever really mattered to me.

Now, I know that I’m not an excellent, star quality writer, even though a few of my readers have politely stroked my ego a little bit by implying that I might be close to it, I love them to death for that, but I do know that I am a good writer.  If I didn’t know and believe that, I wouldn’t be writing because the point of writing is to keep bettering yourself, and I know I have done that, besides, I’ve gotten good reviews from the hundred or so readers who have read my books, some from as far away as the United Kingdom, yay!

Even though I’m not a best-selling author, yet (knock on wood), I trudge away at my craft as if I were, and that is the only path I know to success.  I think it’s important for people to follow their dreams, and the best way to do that is to get out there and do it.  It doesn’t matter if your dream is to be an artist, a writer, a ballerina, an actor or an athlete, you’ve got to get out there and do it, even if you suck at it, until you reach a point where you don’t suck at it anymore, and it doesn’t even seem like work anymore, and you’re a star even if others don’t readily see it.  That’s how I approach my writing, and I can honestly say that it really isn’t work anymore, it may be hard as hell, but it’s hard fun.

Get out there and DO IT, no matter what IT is!

Love always,

Luc Rivet

DIGGING UP BONES, A WRITER’S QUEST

Okay, so I’ve got Microsoft word ready to go and I’ve set a timer for twenty minutes, now I sit down to write non-stop until the timer goes off, maybe longer than that.  This is called Freewriting, or writing practice as Natalie Goldberg calls it in her book, Writing Down the Bones, and it’s become my salvation, the end of writer’s block, hopefully forever.

The point of Freewriting is to write non-stop for a set period, without editing, and without caring about spelling and punctuation, I will edit before posting however, and to let words flow freely to the page.  I have become addicted to Freewriting and do it at least three times a day, most days it’s closer to six times.  Depending on how I’m feeling, sometimes I’ll set an alarm for twenty minutes, other times just ten, but I am faithful to the process regardless of the time I spend doing it.

When I sit down to write, I never know where my mind is going to go, and that mystery is part of the excitement of Freewriting.  I’ll be honest with you, not everything I write in the allotted time is fit for publication but it always supplies an idea worth developing the next time.  After three or four rounds, I’ve usually developed my idea enough that I can sit down without a timer and start writing a story.  I have a few stories on the go as I write this but I continue to put them on hold to do my Freewriting. 

I have a free writing journal now, and I add the date and time of my writing practice, when I’m stuck for writing ideas, I read through the journal and start freewriting from one of the entries in it and it becomes a fun writing cycle. 

I can’t help but think that it would be a valuable tool for students as well.  Wouldn’t it be great if instead of telling kids to write about their summer holiday, the teacher would encourage the student to write freely for fifteen minutes, unconcerned about spelling, punctuation or subject, and after which, would use the student’s writing in a grammar lesson by encouraging the student to edit their own work.  Call me an idealist but I think this would be an enriching experience for students and would cultivate a love of reading and writing among a younger generation that for now lives for video games.

Thank you, Natalie Goldberg, for getting me started in this.  If you are an aspiring writer or would like to learn to spill your feelings out in a journal, I would definitely recommend, Writing Down The Bones, by Natalie Goldberg, and I would definitely recommend Freewriting/Writing Practice.