About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write. Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground. Kiya's gift. I love it!
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"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself."
CHARLIE CHAPLIN


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Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

David Whyte


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This is my supplementary blog in which I will post entries written for prompts.

November 26, 2014 at 12:45am
November 26, 2014 at 12:45am
#834864
Prompt: If you had lived 100 years ago, what kind of job would you have had?
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The year is 1914. World War I has just started and the jobs vacated by men are now open to women. I have been a part of the suffragette movement already, having successfully fought earlier against the corsets and the consumption of liquor.

With the onset of the war, I have trained as a nurse and am staying in that position for life. Besides, other jobs might not be available after the end of the war. Nursing is the best opportunity to continue working unless one could manage domestic service. Yet, domestic service may not be as rewarding due to the whims of the employers.

Working in the jobs held by men when men go to war has given a bigger hand to the women in the financial and economic sense and also greater confidence in their own capabilities. I watch all this, and rejoice inside myself, for I don’t want to give up my newly found freedom when the war is over. That is why I am going to stick with nursing. Besides, tending the wounded and the sick gives me an enormous satisfaction. I am so glad I chose this profession. I plan to stay in it until the day I die.

My strength comes from a gifted mentor, my mentor. She is Clara Barton. Even though I haven’t met her, I have been told so many stories about her dedication during the Civil War. I keep her words inside my waist-pocket. The paper is twisted and crumbled in time, but her words will always ring true for me and light my darkest hours, and I'll keep on reading them over and over to regain my courage.

Clara Barton said: “You must never so much think as whether you like it or not, whether it is bearable or not; you must never think of anything except the need, and how to meet it.”

Nursing is the fever in my blood now, and it will never go out of my system, although the hours are long, the work hard, the pay not enough, and the energy required is immense. If I could only stop taking every death so personally…




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