Taken in early July during my one, and it seems to be my only hike, up to the proverbial top of Cedar Mountain. I say "only" because I heard a rumor that a homeless person made themselves home in the back end of the closed Cedarcrest hospital near the fenced off area of the mountain.
There are very few words/phrases that can immediately change the direction of a given conversation/situation, whether in fiction or in real life, the moment they are uttered.
For example, "no", is a complete sentence that always changes the course of a given conversation/situation. Same goes for the "F"-bomb (there's a popular meme that periodically makes an appearance that describe all the wonderful ways grammatically it can be used (e.g. noun, verb, adjective, etc).
But my favorite phrase that I love to use for a given scene in a story is but two words in length, which can be divided into two sentences that can instantly change the direction/tone of a scene in a myriad of ways is, "you lied". Or as I often like to use it, "You. Lied."
I absolutely adore that nifty two word sentence because of the way it can be weaponized to move a story along in ways that can be totally unexpected. But, I never had to use it in real life, because unlike using it in fiction, there can be actual consequences when you use it in real life.
Until now.
As most of you know, I can be quite provocative with my blog posts, sometimes to the point where in 2021 I caused a rule change in my now former FB writing group after posting it (it was political in nature). So from 2021 until now, I had refrained from writing anything political, on any level (local/state/federal) on my blog. But I was inspired to write last week's post about the US Constitution, so because I used my former writer's group to post weekly blog links, I checked two days prior to writing with the admins for what kind of parameters would be required to post it.
I spend the day conversing with one of the admins (he lived in the UK, so five hour time difference) and hammered out what I thought was a solid compromise: direct people to my profile for the post in question. For an added bonus, I posted a link to an 8 year old blog post from one of my previous blogs.
So I post the link and directed people to my profile and all is good. Right?
Wrong. I come back three hours later to find my blog post gone. I eventually find it a queue for admin approval, which really annoyed me, because I had no DM telling me that my post was pulled. So naturally I came to the logical conclusion that I was lied to. Or in modern parlance, gaslighted. And as an added bonus, when I decided to make my annoyance known prior to leaving (after deleting the post in question), I found that my post was put into the queue for admin approval as well.
So not only was my post pulled AFTER getting approval for it, I was suspended (at least it seemed that way to me) and no one was going to clue me in as to why I was suspended or why my blog post was pulled for approval after receiving approval nor why my last post complaining about their censorship needed approval. In fact, as of the date of this post, no one has reached out to me from that writer's group to explain their actions.
As most of you know, I have major issues in being censored/lied to for/about my writing(s) over the years, both in the digital world and the real world, so I have a tendency to get quite upset when people choose to shoot first and ask questions later.
In the short term, I am looking for another writer's group in which to participate, one that is consistent on having sensible rules, with the occasional exception, as well as being honest about what they say. In the long term, while I haven't burnt any bridges with the half dozen friends that I have acquired through that group, I am being careful on how I go about broaching this particular issue with them.
Presently, that scene from the original Star Trek show, where Kirk says to Norman that whatever Harry Mudd says is a lie. Harry Mudd proceeds to say to Norman, "I lie". Norman ultimately cannot reconcile what Kirk said and what Harry Mudd had said and blows a chip, is how last week has gone in regards to my blogging.
Here's to telling the truth and learning how to say "no" without being wishy-washy about it.