Tag: Word of the Day Challenge

Doing It Again – 12th September 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

We’re making the mistakes all over again
It seems that we’ll never learn
Forgetting that setting the world on fire
Means you’ll have to watch it burn

History won’t help if we soon forget
The lessons it helped us learn
Don’t be afraid to let the past go
When it’s someone else’s turn

6th Nov 2024 – Shared with Word of the Day Challenge – vote

Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.

Jonathan Heidt, The Righteous Mind

Today I’m grateful for:
Amy’s mum and dad coming over in the morning with jump leads so that I could start my car and get to work before my first class. Also to Fui for supplying a new battery with a minor discount.
The best thing about today was:
Being with my lovely annoying students again. I love them all in their own ways.

I took this picture because Tangmo is a lovely smelly droopy-eyed dopey dog who loves to come and visit to get strokes and biscuits.

Spice Of Life – 27th August 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 4 Comments

*Luxury requires the gathering
Of many miseries and anxieties*
Yet our well-being is right before us
Living well has many varieties

Using the gifts of nature
Counts amongst the greatest things
Once given up the chase
Feel the contentment that it brings

*Seneca
13th Oct 2024 – Shared with Word of the Day Challenge – luxury

We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.

Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion

Today I’m grateful for:

My old friend Jenny from Sydney contacting me and saying she will try and come and visit in October. I really appreciate the fact that she might consider doing that.

The best thing about today was:

A lazy late afternoon nap as a dull dark day of threatening clouds forced my tired eyes to rest.

I took this picture because Tigger can be amazingly cute when he wants to be. This is just one of three pictures I took at the time and makes me smile.

Beat Up – 21st August 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 4 Comments

I love a beat-up book
With edges all creased
More than a clean fresh one
Just released

Passages often underlined
Notes along the margin
Give me a beat-up book
Gotten as a bargain

Well-thumbed and faded
But pages all intact
A beat-up book is the best
And that’s a fact!

19th Jun 2024 – Submitted to Word of the Day Challenge – beat
10 Jul 2024 – Submitted to Writer’s Workshop Prompts – beat

Money is numbers and numbers never end. If it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end.

Bob Marley

The Biggest Rug – 22nd July 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Now that news is entertainment
There’s nothing worth knowing
It’s there to serve a purpose
To prevent your knowledge growing

A movie star’s divorce
Is more newsworthy than war
When the injured are at home
And understand what the fighting is for

The rug is getting bigger
Where all the garbage is brushed
Tricked to believe in freedom
Whilst watching it being crushed

9th May 2024 – Submitted to Word of the Day Challenge – Garbage
26th Sep 2024 – Submitted to Weekly Prompts Wednesday Challenge – Supersize

We need each other to become ourselves.

Abraham Kaplan

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for our crazy passionfruit plants that are providing me with so much fruit to enjoy. Then there’s the crazy pumpkin that also may actually give us food that doesn’t get eaten by insects this year.

In The Woods – 12th July 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

The trees are listening, they hear your tears
Wept on your journies through a thousand fears
The fight never-ending, til its bitterness arrives
Waiting in the woods, a world no one survives

2nd Apr 2024 – Submitted to Word of the Day Challenge

The cosmic fate of humanity is somewhat mysterious, but we should act ‘as if’ what we do matters. This belief will then become a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to a good life.

Jules Evans paraphrasing Roosevelt

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to have little Kim come and sleep on me and next to me last night along with Cap sleeping next to my pillow. I’m not sure what brought on Kim’s sudden affection. She seems very happy.

Old Geezer – 30th May 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

We didn’t know it before
Why the dark clouds came
You just had to get on with it
With only yourself to blame

Then someone turns on the light
And it all starts to make sense
So begins the slow process
To down the shields of defence

Inspired by reading Mick Wall’s Black Sabbath biography and Geezer Butler growing up with undiagnosed depression, much like myself.
9th Nov 2024 – Shared with Word of the Day Challenge – sabbath

The feeling of having no power over people and events is generally unbearable to us.

Robert Greene

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that Kim was waiting in the bookshelf this morning as I couldn’t find her last night to put her in her room.

Slave Driven – 26th May 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Having walked through shadow and light
Seeing the slaves in misery and distress
Even those with strength and faith
Struggle to make sense of this mess

The apprentice, artisan and employer
The soldier, governor and king
All enslaved with submission
Of another’s tune to sing

Chained to the parent’s past
Urged to yield oneself to tradition
Words create empty echoes
When failed to express contrition

29th Oct 2024 – Shared with Word of the Day Challenge – faith

Certain types of persons are terrified even to poke a big toe into genuinely felt regret or sadness, or to get angry. This means they are afraid to live.

from The Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful I’ve managed to keep most of Amy’s indoor plants alive so far.

Preach – 25th May 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

There’s a gospel of prosperity
With riches as reward
Fall into the algorithm
Or risk to be ignored
Click, like and share
This message was meant for you
Fall into the matrix
Now dawns a new age anew

25th Nov 2024 – Shared with Word of the Day Challenge – preach

When you’re at the beginning, don’t onsess about the middle, beacuse the middle is going to look different once you get there…just get moving.

Chip Heath

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for ant spray. Those bastards get in everything. Now I’m eating them with my breakfast.

The Week That Was – 12th August 1979

The Scarecrow – 26th February 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

The crows are building
Nests under my hat
I’ve thought long and hard
About this
And I’m no longer scared
To be alone

Based on the titular Khalil Gibran parable. I found almost every one of his parables poetically inspiring. More coming, I’m sure!
8th Feb 2024 – Shared to Weekly Prompts Wednesday Challenge Scary
2nd Nov 2024 – Shared with Word of the Day Challenge – scarecrow

…a fraction of atoms cohered into the elements necessary to form the complex structures necessary for life…the tiny improbable fraction of a fraction of a fraction with which we have the perishable privilege of contemplating the universe in our poetry…

Maria Popova, paraphrasing Alan Lightman

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to have discovered Khalil Gibran’s parables and to be inspired by them.

Old Punks – 16th February 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Rolling around the floor
In a holy communion
Brothers in legs and arms are we
Ecstatic violence
In joint participation
All for one and all shall be free
United we stood
Until we made our divisions
And our power would no longer be
Nostalgia now remains
A past to reminisce
Something that belonged to you and me

21st Jun 2024 – Submmited to Word of the Day Challenge

Don’t ask me what’s next, tell me what’s next!

The alternative is to draw the map instead of reading it.

Seth Godin

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for a surprise holiday today. And the last two days of the week are sports days, so no teaching!

Fatman report