WordPress Daily Prompt: The Zone

Tell us about your favorite way to get lost in a simple activity — running, chopping vegetables, folding laundry, whatever. What’s it like when you’re in “the zone”? 

Photographers, artists, poets: show us LOST.




These two pigs were definitely lost when my Mr. Swiss met them. He was on the way home on a country path when they were trotting along as if nothing had happened. Probably the great escape from a nearby farm. I do not know if they found the way home, but I did not read in the local newspaper that two pigs had been found, whether anyone lost them.

Otherwise I am losing myself all the time these days. When you hair gets a little greyer, you do not run any more to get the bus, and picking up something that falls on the floor is more an adventure than a simple exercise, you realise that things are not what they used to be. I lose myself in simple activities all day long, but sometimes it can be fun.

Not that I am a perfect housewife, but once I go to work with the hoover and the mop I am lost. I have one thing in mind, to finish the job and admire the result. I actually like cooking. Once a plan has been made what to cook, I am lost in my spices and ingredients. A simple salad sauce has unknown possibilities to drift away. Out in the garden cutting the herbs, mixing the ingredients; chopping the onions, crushing the garlic and putting in the spices. The final touch with the olive oil and wine vinegar is a triumph and the creation is finished. I just find that no matter how hard the task is, if you get lost when doing it, it is no longer work but a rewarding pastime.

We all have our hobbies and favourite things to do and with time I have found my little zone(s). I am retired the kids are no longer kids, so when the “have to’s” are done, I can do the “want to’s”. I love writing. I do not care what I write; sometimes when I get a prompt I do not even know what I want to write about. As soon as the computer is all systems go, I switch into Word and just start. It then starts flowing and it all seems to take shape. Sometimes I dislike the daily prompt, it is not my sort of subject and I have to think about it. Afterwards, when it is finished, I ask myself what the problem was. I wonder how you all manage with the ideas for these prompts.

I have a reading zone. Give me a book and I am lost. I read almost everything. Generally in the evening when the TV is running I am lost in a book (Kindle version). I do not have clue what the TV programme is about when I am reading. To be quite honest I make a couple of exceptions watching a soap called “East Enders” on a British TV channel, or perhaps a cooking programme anywhere in Europe.

Another zone of forgetfulness is photography, but there I have to be very careful. Armed with my camera (either the Panasonic Lumix or the Nikon D7000) I am lost in looking and clicking. Here there is a small problem. I am accident prone, like putting my foot down in the wrong place, which could be a steep unexpected curb or slippery surface, resulting in an accident, in the worst case accompanied with a sprain or a few broken bones – been there done that. When you are concentrating on a photographic image with thoughts on winning a Pulitzer Prize for the perfect photo, I am alone in the world. I see only the image and everything else disappears. This sometimes results in the image being blurred as I lose my balance and fall. Needless to say when I go out with the big camera, everyone is happy to see me again when I arrive home in one piece.

So I have finished my daily prompt, wrote a load of zoney stuff which sort of flowed from my typing finger tips. Now to save the whole thing in Word, transplant it into Word Press and afterwards do a copy/paste in Blogger. The third step is cross post in Facebook. The Twitter bit does it all by itself.

I sometimes wonder (another zone) whether one day when I am in the eternal blogging grounds, whether my efforts will be discovered by a future generation