1. My lover, darling, best friend (all in one) -  to chat with him through the night and to cuddle with him in the morning.
2. The song “Wire to wire” by Razor Light (yup, after all these weeks I still turn the volume up on my radio!)
3. Writing poems, even though I feel rather leached out after the Poem a Day challenge. And of course writing in general…
4. My guinea pigs as they gave me a reason to open my heart again in my darkest times and for making my laugh on a daily basis! Guys, you are hilarious!
5. “Isolde”, my harp, who (!) sometimes can be a bitch but most of the times lets me play wonderful music.
6. Osteopathy: a weird but wonderful medical treatment and after 2 sessions I already feel soooo much better! Ever had your liver pushed around??
7. The new Star Trek movie! I always loved Spock in the classic series when I was a kid but Zachary Quinto blew me away. I was skeptical as I thought I would keep seeing him as Sylar from Heroes (where he was awesome, too!) but I completely forgot about that character. He really does look like Spock. I have to watch it in English to hear his real voice…
8. While I am at it: re-watching the classic series. Just got myself the first half of season one and can’t stop watching it. I am in total regression, cuddled in a nice blanket – but no, I am not sucking my thumb!
9. Reading books I normally wouldn’t read. I am in the middle of “Heart of the Night” by Barbara Delinsky – pure romance, but well written (more thoughts about that later). The next book I will read is “Three Men in a Boat” by Jerome K. Jerome – another book not typical for me but it sounded fun and I really want to broaden my literary horizon.
10. The internet – so much information on my hands, I could browse for days!

Is it just me or this the way such a challenge works? I can definitely feel a change in my writing after this first week. I put more thoughts into the poems and start constructing them. Before that I merely wrote them down as they came up in my head. I don’t know yet if that change is a good thing, and I neither can assess if my poems are becoming better now. But I have fun and will get on with the challenge. I am really keen on experience where it will take me! Maybe I should participate in the novel challenge in November, hmmmm.

It’s only the second day of the Poetry challenge, but I can feel my creative juices flowing as they haven’t done for a long time - at least poetry wise. Normally my poems are a bit of a by-product. I might have a word or even a line in my head and simply start writing. That’s how I have done it for the last 20 or more years. The last prompts for poetry I had back in high school – and at that time of course in German. But I seem to need this kind of challenge as I can feel more and more word rising up within me – all in English. That’s the poem I wrote last night – outside the challenge (and how adequate that todays challenge was “outsider”):

I am sorry
for some of the things
I said
for some
I am not

still
I don’t regret anything
that I said
that I did

I was
No, I am
true
to myself
and that’s
what counts
in the end.