Whose Bright Idea Was This?
I’m starting to get the feeling that whoever is behind these Daily Prompts is reading my journal.
I assume we’re talking about inner growth, not waistlines, which makes this conversation considerably easier.
If you’re into astrology, you’ll understand when I say that as a Pisces, I’ve been told 2026 is a year of integration and rebirth. According to the stars, this is the year I’m supposed to shed old versions of myself, embrace new beginnings, and emerge wiser, stronger, and more authentic.
I want to speak to management.
Because so far, 2026 feels like I’ve been going through the longest birth canal known to humanity.
Growth sounds beautiful when you’re reading about it in books or watching inspirational videos on Instagram. It’s all butterflies, breakthroughs, and uplifting quotes written in fancy fonts.
Actually growing is a whole different experience.
It’s questioning things you’ve believed about yourself for decades. Setting boundaries that make people uncomfortable. Letting go of relationships that no longer belong in your life. And perhaps hardest of all, discovering that some of the stories you’ve told yourself your entire life aren’t true.
Exhausting doesn’t begin to cover it.
That’s the funny—not funny haha—thing about growth. When you’re in the middle of it, the last thing it feels like is progress.
It feels more like a home renovation.
You start out replacing a cabinet, only to discover a plumbing problem. While fixing the plumbing, you uncover electrical issues. By the time you’re finished, you’ve remodeled half the house and can’t remember why you touched the cabinet in the first place.
A year ago, I volunteered to become the president of my community’s HOA.
Talk about stepping out of my comfort zone.
Since then, I’ve found myself navigating conflicts, making difficult decisions, speaking up when I’d rather stay quiet, and learning lessons nobody bothered to include in the orientation packet.
There were days when I felt like I’d been tossed into uncharted waters with nothing more than a pool noodle.
More than once, I found myself bobbing along with my head barely above water, wondering, “Whose bright idea was this?”
Apparently, mine.
What surprised me wasn’t the challenges. It was discovering that I could handle them.
Not perfectly. Not gracefully. Not without occasionally questioning my sanity. But I handled them.
Today was another one of those moments. I had to stand in front of a room full of people and speak into a microphone.
Lord, have mercy.
My body immediately transported me back to fifth grade and Sister Geraldine’s classroom. We had to give oral presentations. I was terrified. Halfway through mine, I started crying.
“SIT DOWN!” she barked.
Not exactly the compassionate response I expected from a woman who worked for Jesus.
Later that week, I had to try again. As I walked to the front of the room, a boy named Daniel McDevitt looked at me and said, “Are you gonna cry again?”
And just like that, a moment was born that would follow me around for the next fifty years.
Amazing, isn’t it? A few careless words from a ten-year-old kid. One humiliating moment. Fifty years of self-doubt.
All week leading up to today’s presentation, my mind and body launched a full-scale self-sabotage.
I was convinced I had a fatal disease. A heart attack seemed possible. Maybe a mysterious neurological condition. Anything, really, that would excuse me from standing in front of that microphone.
The timing was suspicious. Every symptom seemed to appear whenever I thought about the meeting.
Fortunately, my sister wasn’t buying it. I called her. I’m looking for sympathy.
Instead, she gave me reality.
“So let me get this straight,” she said. “You only feel like you’re dying when you have something big coming up? Wow. That’s convenient.”
Well.
When she put it that way, it did sound a little ridiculous. And that’s when I realized something.
Growth isn’t becoming someone new.
It’s recognizing the stories you’ve been carrying around for decades and deciding they no longer get to run the show.
It’s realizing that the frightened fifth grader and the woman standing at the microphone are the same person.
My voice shook as I started, so I stopped and told the room to be patient with me, that speaking in public was difficult.
And guess what? They were. For the next hour and forty-two minutes, nobody laughed. Nobody told me to sit down. Nobody asked if I was going to cry.
I simply did the thing I’d spent fifty years believing I couldn’t do.
The difference is that one of them finally learned she could do hard things.
Which, now that I think about it, sounds suspiciously like integration and rebirth.
Maybe the stars knew what they were talking about after all.
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Dandy & the Rose
What’s the best way to build self-confidence? It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times.
The simple answer is to believe in yourself. The harder question is: how do you do that when you’ve spent years believing something else?
I spent decades living in the shadows of family members, friends, co-workers, and complete strangers. Why? Because that’s what I was taught, and therefore what I believed.
I grew up with a sister who was put on a pedestal for just about everything she did. There’s an entire photo album to prove it.
We were born at a time when taking photos required effort. You had to buy film and flashbulbs, have the film developed, pick it up, and pay for every single picture.
In other words, photographs weren’t accidental.
So when there’s an entire album documenting your sister’s life before her first birthday, it says something. At least it did to me.
Apparently, I was also baptized, celebrated my first birthday, and received my First Holy Communion. I know because there is evidence.
No album. Case closed.
When you’re a kid, you don’t see the whys; you see what’s in front of you. Or, in my case, what wasn’t. To me, this was proof.
Proof that I wasn’t special.
Proof that she mattered more.
Proof that I should cheer from the sidelines where I belonged.
Then I packed up those beliefs and carried them to school, where they were reinforced by the adults I feared most.
The nuns.
My sister was two years ahead of me and had apparently left quite an impression. Every teacher seemed to know exactly who she was and exactly how wonderful she had been.
Then I arrived. The disappointment when they realized I wasn’t a carbon copy was impossible to miss.
“Your sister sat in the Rose Aisle. I don’t understand how you’re a dandelion.”
A freaking dandelion.
For those keeping score at home, Dandy the Dandelion endured twelve long years of that nonsense.
The strange thing is, I was never angry at my sister. If anything, I admired her to a fault.
I spent years talking about her accomplishments while barely mentioning my own. She was the smart one. The talented one. The successful one.
At least, that’s how I saw it.
Ironically, she was the one who got frustrated with me. Why?
Because she saw something I couldn’t. My value.
When she tried to talk me out of getting married at twenty, I assumed she was jealous.
When she encouraged me to take college classes, I assumed she wanted me to be more like her.
When she told me I was smart, talented, creative, and capable, I dismissed every word.
Why would I believe her?
I had already built a mountain of evidence proving otherwise.
There was a missing photo album.
The nuns.
The comparisons.
The labels.
The years spent cheering from the sidelines while everyone else seemed destined for center stage.
By then, “not good enough” wasn’t just a thought. It was my identity.
Looking back, I can see what I couldn’t see then. My sister wasn’t trying to compete with me or change me. She was trying to convince me of something she had known all along. That I belonged on the stage, too.
The problem wasn’t that nobody believed in me. The problem was that I had spent so many years believing everyone else’s opinion of me that I never bothered forming one of my own.
And that’s the thing about self-confidence. It isn’t built by becoming smarter, prettier, richer, or more successful than everyone else. It’s built when you stop letting other people decide your worth.
Talk about childhood baggage. At sixty-plus, I’m still unpacking.
Wait. What was the question again? Oh yeah.
How do you build self-confidence?
You stop believing the stories other people wrote about you and start writing your own.
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An Infant Choosing Centerpieces
How much time do you have?
The list of dos and don’ts is endless.
I cringe when I think about 20-year-old me. Ugh.
Picture a young woman wearing the thickest pair of rose-colored glasses known to mankind. A girl who had no clue who she was while trying on wedding dresses. Someone who didn’t know her own worth, hadn’t discovered her talents, and was still trying to figure out where she fit in the world.
According to my birth certificate, I was an adult.
In reality, I was an infant choosing centerpieces.
I believed with every fiber of my being that getting married would somehow fix everything. Tell me, what else, other than a wedding band, could possibly erase my people-pleasing tendencies, quiet my insecurities, and magically bestow the wisdom I’d somehow missed out on during my first two decades on Earth?
What was I thinking?
Oh, that’s right. I was 20. Delusion was my middle name.
It seemed perfectly logical at the time. I’d spent years believing in happily-ever-after endings. Naturally, I assumed that once I walked down the aisle, exchanged rings, and kissed the groom, a transformation would occur.
The music would swell.
A bright light would shine from heaven.
And the insecure young woman standing at the altar would instantly become a confident adult with healthy boundaries, excellent judgment, and enough self-esteem to stop giving second, third, fourth, and fifth chances to people who hadn’t earned the first one.
Including the groom.
I’ll pause while you laugh.
Back to the question at hand. If I could sit down with that young woman today, I’d tell her this:
You’re not fat.
Everything will work out.
Trust yourself more.
You’re enough.
Follow your ambitions.
Use your voice.
Say “no” more.
You don’t have to earn your worth. You already have it.
Learn the difference between people who support your dreams and people who merely tolerate them.
And for the love of all things holy, take off those rose-colored glasses!
At 20, don’t be so desperate to grow up and figure everything out. Take your time.
Life isn’t a race to the finish line. It’s a series of lessons, and trust me, you’re about to earn a PhD in learning things the hard way.
The good news?
It was all worth it.
You survive every one of them. And someday, you’ll look back at that confused young woman with a lot more compassion than embarrassment.
Because she didn’t know what she was doing.
But she kept going anyway.
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Catholic Guilt Strikes Again
This is impossible to narrow down to one song. I’d feel like I was cheating on all the others, and my ingrained Catholic guilt would never allow it.
Two songs immediately popped into my head: Shiny Happy People by R.E.M. and September by Earth, Wind & Fire.
I’m not surprised they were the first to appear in my orbit because no matter when or where I hear them, I’m not only moved to groove, but I also find myself smiling.
Music is powerful that way. It has carried me through some of the best and worst moments of my life.
I can’t listen to Betcha by Golly, Wow by the Stylistics without thinking of a lying, cheating boyfriend. And I can’t hear Everybody Hurts without being transported back to the day I learned of a friend’s suicide.
Music has a way of bypassing logic and heading straight to the heart. Somehow, a three-minute melody can bring memories to the surface that we thought were long gone, leaving my 60-plus-year-old self with the urge to slash the tires of that lying, cheating boyfriend.
Then there are the songs that take me somewhere I’d gladly visit again. The moment an ’80s Madonna song comes on the radio, I’m young again. The windows are down, my tan is fresh, and my girlfriends and I are singing Holiday at the top of our lungs without a care in the world.
I can forget hand soap on my shopping list twice in one week, but if Funkytown hits the airwaves, there I am, reciting every word, and reliving every memory from the Summer of 1980 at the Jersey Shore.
Songs are time machines, comfort blankets, celebrations, and wounds. Sometimes all it takes is a few notes, and we’re right back where we were, laughing, crying, dancing, grieving, or falling in love, or out of love.
That’s the power of music!
So, no, I can’t just pick one song.
I’m positive the songs I left behind will forgive me, but that Catholic guilt never will.
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Mr. Bliss
I’m going to roll with Ignorance Is Bliss, because I believe it is.
But only for the ignorant person.
Let me explain.
Everyone seems to know someone who is the human embodiment of this proverb. A person who drifts through life without a care in the world and, coincidentally, without a single gray hair on their head.
The heads around them, however, are white.
Why?
Because the rest of us spend our time worrying about things like rent, food, bills, medical care, and other inconvenient details required to survive.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bliss, who may or may not be my brother-in-law, has a serious case of COPD and continues to smoke.
Naturally, I asked if he’d seen a pulmonary specialist.
“No,” he said. “I get steroids from Mexico online.”
Which led to the obvious follow-up question.
“How do you know they’re steroids?”
Without missing a beat, he replied, “Because I can breathe better.”
Suddenly, my fear of taking two Advil seemed a little excessive.
Years ago, he lost an eye and ended up with a prosthetic.
His eyes are brown.
The replacement was blue.
Of course, I asked why.
He looked at me as though I were the unreasonable one.
“Because women like men with blue eyes.”
I considered explaining that women generally prefer two matching eyes, but decided against it.
Now, before you get too distracted by the blue eye, I should mention that the blue eye was later stolen by a roommate.
Yes, stolen.
No, I don’t know why.
And yes, he simply ordered another eye online.
Which somehow led him to explain that you can’t trust things that come from China.
This is from a man who orders replacement body parts through an internet search box.
Just when you think Mr. Bliss has exhausted the list of things that could cause his family concern, it turns out he has lost his dentures.
Lost them.
A full set of teeth.
Naturally, questions followed.
Where did you leave them?
How do you lose an entire mouth?
Why weren’t they in your mouth?
For once, I was relieved by the answer.
“I don’t know.”
What I wasn’t prepared for was the next step.
He ordered replacement teeth online.
Apparently, there is an entire corner of the internet devoted to body-part replacements that I never knew existed.
The teeth that arrived were tiny.
Not slightly small.
Tiny.
Like doll teeth.
Do dolls even have teeth?
As I’m writing this, I can feel new gray hairs forming.
Which brings me back to the proverb.
Ignorance Is Bliss is absolutely true.
It’s just important to remember that the bliss belongs to the ignorant person.
I know you’re all wondering where the eye went, who stole it, why the teeth are doll-sized, and whether those mystery steroids from Mexico are actually Tic Tacs.
But sometimes we’re not meant to get answers, because they just create more questions.
At this point, preserving my hair color is more important than solving the mystery.
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Just Call Me Rosie
I’ve already been disappointed by things I wanted to see in the future.
When I was a child, I firmly believed I’d be flying to work in my personal aircraft, walking my robot dog, and coming home after a long day to see Rosie the Robot cooking and cleaning. That’s the future I thought I was promised.
Well, here we are, more than half a century later, and I don’t have any of it. I’m still sitting in traffic. I’m Rosie, and the closest thing I have to a household pet is my vacuum cleaner, which I seem to fight with every time I use it.
So, when I read this question, I have a question of my own: how far into the future are we talking? Because I was already supposed to be living in the future at this point, and that prediction was missed by half a century. After patiently waiting 50-plus years for The Jetsons’ lifestyle to show up, and getting nadda, forgive me for not putting too much excitement into forecasts.
The problem I see with looking too far ahead is that we miss what we can do today to make change a reality.
As with most things in life, I believe that getting back to basics will create a better world for my grandchildren. Simplicity goes a long way, just ask every kid on Christmas morning who has the time of their life playing with a piece of wrapping paper.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped waiting for flying cars and started paying attention to the things that actually improve people’s lives. Most of them aren’t complicated. They’re the basics: kindness, responsibility, respect, common sense, strong families, good neighbors, and communities that look out for one another.
Technology has given us remarkable things, but it hasn’t solved every problem. In some cases, it has simply replaced old frustrations with new ones. The words Press 1 for can send the strongest of wills into a frenzy.
My interest in futuristic gadgets has faded over the years. The older I get, the more attracted I am to the character of the people who will inherit the future. After all, character is the foundation of any future worth having.
Back to the question at hand, I want to see some basic human qualities in the future.
Of course, this answer isn’t nearly as exciting as those flying cars and automated homes I dreamed of 50 years ago, and I know my younger self wouldn’t have been impressed at all, but it’s the one I believe in.
The future I would love to give my grandchildren is one with a little more kindness, responsibility, respect, and common sense. I’ll consider that a far greater achievement than finally getting my flying car.
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The Even Steven Method
I’ve become a big fan of minimalism over the past few years.
It started when we moved from our home of 30-plus years.
Packing up a house has a way of forcing you to reconsider your decision to hold on to things that haven’t seen the light of day in decades. Suddenly, every keepsake comes with a question: Do I really want to carry this into the next chapter?
I’ll admit, some things did linger on the line between old and new chapters and made their way into the truck and straight to the attic of the new house.
It took a minute, or a few years, but the more we settled into our new home, the more bothered we became by those old keepsakes.
Slowly, they were sold or donated, ready to start a new chapter of their own outside the boxes stored in the attic. I often imagined them being released from prison for a crime they never committed.
With that mindset, we began decorating our new home with used items that still had plenty of life left in them and could brighten a room.
I draw the line at sofas and chairs, but everything else, including artwork, is secondhand, often made when things were built for quality rather than designed with a two-year shelf life.
My sister-in-law refers to us as Amish, and I’m okay with that label, especially since she’s one Amazon order away from being featured on Hoarders.
Now I have a system that seems to work. If something new comes in, something old has to leave. I call it the “Even Steven” method, and it’s worked well for us. It forces us to make purchases with purpose rather than impulse.
The truth is, we don’t need much. We just happen to live in a society where the line between need and want has become increasingly blurred. Before long, wants start masquerading as needs, and we convince ourselves that one more purchase will somehow make life better. It doesn’t.
These days, I find more satisfaction in the space between things than in the things themselves. A room feels calmer. A closet feels lighter. Life feels less cluttered.
That’s not to say I’m driving a horse and buggy. Every now and then, something follows me home that probably shouldn’t. Old habits don’t disappear overnight, and Home Goods is a mile away.
What I’ve learned is that possessions don’t become valuable simply because we own them. Their value comes from being used, appreciated, and enjoyed. If they’re spending their days buried in a box in the attic, they’re not doing much for anyone.
Maybe that’s the real appeal of minimalism. It’s not about owning less for the sake of owning less. It’s about making room for what matters and letting go of what doesn’t.
When I think about the things we’ve sold or donated over the years, I like to imagine them finding their way into someone else’s home, where they’ll be used, appreciated, and given a purpose once again.
Sometimes, I dust my second-hand table, whispering, “I wish you could talk.”
After all, some stories deserve to be told.
And some things spent enough time in prison for a crime they never committed.
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Girls Just Wanna Have Sun
It all depends on the genre. I have a little bit of everything in my collection: horror, Hallmark backdrops, rom-coms, thrillers, and, most of all, comedies. I’d love the chance to be part of a Marvel project someday. As for superpowers, I’d choose either invisibility or the ability to fly, but I digress.
Hmm, let me think, since we’re heading to Summer, I’ll share something from that season.
Many moons ago, at the age of 19, I made a decision that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. I wore a bikini to the beach and doused myself in baby oil.
What could possibly go wrong after exposing my skin from the depths of winter, directly to the sun’s surface, with oil?
Have you ever seen a female body painted pink, except for the private parts? I have.
After a doctor’s visit, multiple applications of baking soda paste, and missing a week of work. This 19-year-old genius made another wise-at-the-time decision to go drinking and dancing with a large group of friends.
There were a few obstacles, and a lot of determination to make this happen. The problem: I was still unable to wear undergarments due to the now-blistering sun poisoning.
Now, for reference, this was the 1980s. Thongs weren’t mainstream, “going commando” wasn’t a thing, there was no Google, and there certainly wasn’t social media to crowdsource solutions to my predicament.
All I had was my older sister.
“Wear Mom’s underwear,” she suggested.
“Okay,” I replied.
Out the door I went with underwear that served as an adult onesie.
The dance club we went to was called “Rocky’s”, yes, like the movie, with a raised dancefloor that looked like a boxing rink.
While drinking and dancing my sun poisoning away, Sister Sled’s “We Are Family” came on. At some point, someone came up behind me, grabbed my waist, and started forming a chorus line.
What I didn’t realize was that somewhere during all the dancing, my skirt had completely detached from my body and was now lying outside the dance floor.
What I did notice, in glorious slow motion, was my sister spraying her drink across the room while my friends pointed and laughed.
Still in slow motion, I turned around.
Mouths hung open.
People stared.
And there I stood, center stage, wearing nothing but my mother’s enormous underwear pulled up to my chin.
Then, as if scripted by Hollywood itself, I heard the DJ’s voice crackle over the speakers:
“Will the girl on the dance floor in her…”
pause
“…underwear, please sit down?”
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Breakfast With a Bodyguard
I’m not sure what’s going on here, but it certainly caught my eye.
It reminds me of when my husband waits in the middle of the parking lot while I put my shopping cart back in its carrier, as if something dramatic might happen in that 10-foot stretch that will require him to jump into action.
The bluejay on the bench is carefully watching his significant other having breakfast. Maybe she’s been sitting on eggs and needs more nutrition. Maybe he’s just being attentive. Who knows?
Whatever the reason, he seems determined to stay right there, keeping a watchful eye until she’s finished.
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Ass U Me
I’m not sure I could define any advice I’ve been given as “profound,” but there have been things said to me over the years that have stuck like glue. If that’s what qualifies as profound, then I suppose it counts.
That said, if I’m being honest, the list for the question, “What profound advice were you given but didn’t take?” would probably be much longer.
The one that has stuck like glue came from my boss, at my first “adult” job, when I was 18 years young. He brought me into his office, wrote the word “Assume” on a piece of paper, and asked, “Do you know what that says?”
Being 18, right off the boat from an all-girls Catholic high school where I was trained not to trust my instincts, this question didn’t land with simplicity. Instead, it created a rush of more questions. Was it a trick question? What am I supposed to say? Should I say anything?
After what seemed like days, I responded, “It says assume.”
Well, let’s just say I was not in the least prepared for the sequel.
He proceeds to break the word down into sections. Ass U Me.
Get it? I’m happy for all of you, I really am.
I’ll admit it took me a minute. Fear took over the link between my eyes and my vocal cords, leaving me suddenly speaking in tongues, until the lightbulb went on.
I have no recollection of why this lesson took place or what mistake I made that led to it. What I can tell you is the lesson stuck.
Here I am, 5-plus decades later, still catching myself mid-thought before making an assumption, before saying something out loud, before jumping to a conclusion. This one word has followed me through my entire life.
Does something that still packs a punch 5 plus decades later warrant the title “profound”?
If so, you have your answer.
Life With The Top Down 
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