Creative Writing Attempt No. 2

*‘My Curated Thoughts’* by Amber Sweeney.

If you read my blog last week, you’ll know that this is something I want to do weekly to tap into a different creative outlet. A few minutes ago, I sat down staring at my computer and thinking to myself ‘what on earth should I write about today?’

Google - Creative Writing Prompts

Results:

Write about the first conversation you had of the day.

Write about your evening routine in vivid detail.
Imagine you're best friends with your favorite book character, and write about what a day with them would be like.

No one wants to hear about my evening spent popping NyQuil, or how my day started with my son requesting a cup of milk at 6am. The book character suggestion, well that’s not something I would find pleasure in writing at all…

Google didn’t have the answer for me this morning, maybe I should’ve tried ChatGBT.

But suddenly I knew what I wanted to write about - ‘kindness’. And not just kindness, but slowing down from this fast paced life, and the simple acts that can sometimes make the biggest difference.

My kids are both suddenly school aged, but for the past six years it was rare for me to be able to attend anything by myself. I know first hand how the daytime business hours are more typical, and therefore there’s a reason I haven’t been able to do much by myself in the last few years, my kids almost always being an extension of any errand or appointment I’ve had to attend.

Just over a week ago, I decided to cross something off of my list that has been on there awhile. Stop in at our local Service Ontario (this is where we go to renew our license, health cards, etc), and I was finally going to get my son’s health card fixed. His most recent health card was issued with the wrong code entered, and every time we check in for a medical appointment he gets flagged, because he was registered as a ‘female’. Anyways fast forward, as that’s not an important part of the story - it has now been fixed and Connor now registers as a male at his appointments again.

Where am I going with this story?

Well you see I walked into the Service Ontario, with no exact timeline in mind, knowing sometimes you can wait a few minutes, and other times you can wait an hour. I picked my number from the machine, and sat down and waited with lucky number 65 in my hand. Looking at the 58 on the big screen, I anticipated I would likely be around 20 minutes (or so I had hoped). Sitting down, chatting with a few others about breakfast spots, or new local restaurants that were worth trying, I thought to myself this is so much more relaxing than trying to come with my kids. If my kids were with me one of them would most certainly be complaining about their boredom or requesting snack #1993850924 of the day. It was easy to see that running errands by myself was in fact all that it was cracked up to be, and so much easier to do solo than with kids (sorry for all of you that are still running them with kids constantly, I promise it gets easier).

So we are now at number 63, and coming up to about an 18 minute wait time, and I’m thinking to myself - yes, there’s an end in sight, I’m almost there. But then a child walks into the waiting area, followed by another child, a woman, and wait… another child. This woman walked in smiling, shuffling 3 young children and taking her number and sitting the kids down to wait their turn. I looked around the room, and looked at the big number 63 on the wall, and I asked the woman what number she had pulled. ‘Number 70’ she replied, ‘it shouldn’t be too long of a wait.’ I gave her my number 65, and took her number 70 and thought what’s another 20 minutes in my day.

That woman walked up to the counter minutes afterwards with the three children, and when she left she thanked me again for switching with her. I share this story because more often than not, we could all slow down and make a difference in someone’s day with a simple small act of kindness.

My mom taught me the power of smile years ago, and while growing up she taught me how much a simple compliment can truly change somebody’s day. Our day to day lives are often busy, we live in a fast paced world, and it is easy to get caught up in that constant rush to and from anywhere we go. My sitting and waiting for my number to be called without kids with me, left me feeling reflective because it’s a very new experience for me. It’s likely part of the reason I didn’t hesitate to give her my spot, because I fully recognized her situation. But I want to challenge that, and remind others that whether you can fully relate or not, slow down every once in awhile, take in your surroundings, and ask yourself how can I ensure there is a little more kindness in the world.