Five Minute Friday is a weekly writing challenge in which hundreds of people participate. Everyone writes for five minutes on one word issued every Friday at 12:01am. Unscripted. Unedited. Real.
The challenge for me is not the first five minutes of writing. It is to abandon perfectionism in the minutes that follow…
Talk.
Chat.
Meet up.
Do lunch.
Grab a cup of coffee.
Connect.
Visit.
The word visit immediately makes me think of my Grandmother. Visit is what we do when our family gathers together. We swap stories. We laugh. We eat. We drink iced tea. We laugh some more. (I come from a family of freakishly loud laughers.) We hug. We hold hands. We hold each other’s babies. We graze over pecan pie and fudge. We let cousins play for hours. We catch up on each other’s careers, families, and ailments. We repeat family stories with the same punch lines, and laugh uproariously like it’s the first time we’ve heard them.
And for an entire afternoon if we’re lucky, we visit.
In a world that demands us to be ridiculously productive in order to be valued, and to be electronically engaged 24/7 in order to be productive—it’s like a mini-vacation for the soul to disconnect from the world and connect with the most important people in our lives…
To just sit and visit.
Hmmm…I believe I’ll call my Grandmother today and just visit.
Great post! Makes me want to join your family!! I love loud laughter…such good medicine!
Yeah! Makes me want to plan a “visit” today! There’s no place like home. Thanks for stopping by, Brenda. I enjoyed your “empty-nester” post today as well. 🙂
I love how you described visits as “a mini-vacation for the soul”! That’s exactly how I feel about them. Hi from a fellow FMF writer. 🙂
Thanks, FMF-Jen! 😉 Yes…and my soul needs one. Thanks for “visiting.”
The three day weekend gave my husband and I reason to throw caution to the wind, pack our bags, and head off to Florida (just down the road) without reservations (literally). It was the best thing we could have done. In spite of the fact there wasn’t a lot to do but eat some of the best clam chowder we’d ever had, it was enough to refreshen us and give me loads of pictures to revive my writing spirit.
Wow, Shelley. That sounds lovely…to disconnect with the world and fully engage with what matters most. Making moments and memories. It does wonders for our hearts, our spirits, our relationships — and our creativity. I can absolutely relate. What do you write?