We have a Proser with a birthday today. April 1, 2003 (his time), the world didn’t know it then, but the world became a little bit of a better place to be.

In 2003, a gallon of milk was $2.95. College tuition: $14,500. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini was the most popular novel. Top movies: Finding Nemo, Lost in Translation, Pirates of the Caribbean. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl, and oddly enough, 18 years later, they did it again. Also born on this day: Storm Reid – Greta Thunberg but along with these, came another living, breathing soul that I feel is destined to change the world—one written word, one spoken thought at a time.

The title is a bit misleading as I have come to think of him over the last several months as a young adult, not a boy.

If there were ever one such as he to have the biggest heart, the most honest and open way of expressing himself, his views, how he explains himself when he comments on someone else’s posts—well, I just don’t see too many purer souls other than Chacko_Stephen.

I have never told him this, but I have considered Chacko to be the son I never had, and one of the truly best friends I have come to love for him being who he is. No pretense. Just an honest and sincere guy you can’t help but like.

So please join me in wishing CS a Happy 18th Birthday!

(All virtual gifts for Chacko can be left in your comments to him.)

CS: This is for you -- https://voicespice.com/Player.aspx?c=p&h=F266B35C&j=25479E

Party Time -- https://youtu.be/JTVufaGeXms

A Little Something Extra: https://youtu.be/PGcu2XTusC4 and https://youtu.be/j5hVj1pfrE4

Greetings fellow readers and writers. It’s been some time since we last updated Prose. Today we’re excited to provide a peek behind the curtains and give you a glimpse of what we’ve been working on. 

Over the years, as we’ve added features and functionality to Prose, the app and its codebase have become increasingly unwieldy. As such, we decided to reimagine and rebuild Prose from the ground up. It’s still the same site you know and love, insofar as a Toyota Camry is just as much a car as a Porsche 911. 

We’ll have more exciting announcements in the weeks to come; but for now we hope you’ll give the new site a test drive and let us know what you think. You will find the next chapter at beta.theprose.com and we encourage you to share your thoughts at info@theprose.com.

Hey! I just wanted to let everyone know that I am no longer staying away from Prose! (Yeah, it's like, that ridiculous mosquito coming back to disturb your serene sleep ^-^) The exams, which I had been eating away my brains for, were just postponed. And I covered most of the portions too. [Or more like, devoured most of the textbooks :)] I mean, that's bad news for me, yes. But, staying away from the grid any longer doesn't make much sense. So let me try and come to a point-I am back!!!

And that means I might occasionally (more like, frequently) pop up in the notifications. Don't be alarmed! My mental stability, though it was always questionable, has not gone worse (yet ^-^). And the number of notifications that I would have to catch up with have clearly shown that this place was cheerful enough. Maybe lacking a bit, but do not worry, now that I am here, we are about to go crazy! Put on your seatbelts, people. This might be a roller coaster journey! Missed you guys! Love ya!

#nonfiction I mean, of course, it is!

Seated at a banquet

Points made to fly

Forever on a blanket

Stars fill the sky

A star will sometimes stumble

A star will sometimes fall

And down the star will tumble

Till nothing is left at all

What do they do you may ask,

“What do they eat?”, you say

They never dream of doing a task

But dance the night away

So, I was thinking. I have only two months of school life left. The exams are all approaching soon. And this result has quite an impact on deciding my future. So, maybe I should consider staying away from some things for a while-From Facebook to Youtube, and maybe Prose.

I mean, for almost a month, I was not able to finish a single post. And I don't think I really would be able to do that in the coming months too. So, maybe instead of attempting and failing in multitasking, again and again, I think I should focus on one task right now. And considering the current circumstances, the top priority should be learning, of course. So, this is almost like a short goodbye.

I mean, I would come back, of course. This place is now a part of my life. I am not leaving this place (At least not anytime soon. You see, life can be unpredictable ^-^). So, I might not be around here for a while. I might be busy devouring textbooks. So, I will miss you guys. But I will be back soon ^-^

PS: And the day I return, I am announcing my arrival by taking down this post, lol. It seems far too emotional for my type ^-^ So until someday halfway April, keep this place cheerful, won't ya ^-^

Dusk had fallen, and Laurene was finally able to shed her deep cloak and peel off her gloves. She could feel the intense burning pain along her right cheek and forearm, where her alabaster skin had been exposed for just a moment too long to the harsh sunlight of the spring afternoon. The trees here weren’t as thick as the black canopy of the ShadowWood, and rays of sunlight pierced the foliage like little streams of fire. She was running low on the clay cream she needed to protect her face, and had been forced to wear the gloves and hood all day; better the blisters from stiff leather than from the acid-like sunshine on her bare skin.

Serynah had looked so happy, standing in the sunshine and the breeze, that Laurene hadn’t had the heart to say anything about the small burns she had gotten today. The worst part of it was she herself loved the daytime—the vivid colors and fresh clean scents that rode the warm breezes. Sometimes she thought the price of her family’s magecraft inheritance was too high.

The four young women made camp in the deepening twilight, and after building a small fire for the party, Laurene sat down on a mossy log. Next to her, perched on a rock with her legs dangling just above the dirt, Serynah sat with her butterfly harp in her hands, and she began to play.

The music started softly, and Serynah added her sweet voice at just above a whisper. Slowly the volume of both harp and girl rose, and somehow she was able to blend the sounds of the instrument with her singing, weaving the two of them into a rich and vibrant tapestry of music.

Feather approached from where she had tethered their horses, and the short artist was actually quiet for once. Her normally sarcastic grin had been replaced by a smile of pure joy, and it made her plain face into something that was almost pretty.

The other girl, seated across the fire, still intrigued Laurene the most. As a Beacon-in-Training, Kahlessa should have been her mortal enemy. They were opposites in almost every way.

Kahlessa had ebony skin, stood almost three rods tall, and—as the future voice of a Goddess—was the embodiment of the Sisterhood of Light. Laurene, with her flaming red hair and pale skin, would have stood out next to her, even without the swirling tattoo covering the entire left side of her face. As a magewitch, she was usually shunned, and often feared, by those in the Sisterhood.

Somehow despite this, she and Kahlessa had become friends. In fact, that friendship was the only reason Laurene had decided to join this quest. Serynah was here with Laurene, but that was to be expected; the two had sworn a life-oath, vowing to stand together forever. Their union had even been blessed by the Goddess Freylonda, through the tall dark-skinned girl who now sat listening to the music floating on the evening air.

Still playing, Serynah leaned over, and quietly said “Show them, please?”

I hope you are right about this. Laurene pulled back her sleeves, wincing a little at Serynah’s expression when she uncovered the angry red welt that was just starting to fade. The younger girl played on though, and nodded; her excitement at the coming show apparently outweighed her desire to scold her partner.

The redheaded magewitch gathered and focused her thoughts, bit her lip drawing a small drop of blood, and uttered a single word under her breath. Using this combination of Will, Blood, and Word, she forged the spell she had been working on. It was mostly a gift for Serynah, and wasn’t much good as a weapon, but she needed to judge the other two girls’ reactions.

Without warning, her right hand burst forth in bright light, almost painful to look at. Swirls of prismatic light spun into small orbits around her hand as she lifted it high into the air, the firelight paling in comparison.

Then, in time to the music, small bits of dust and dirt gathered into spheres, and begin to swing around her hand—a miniature star with planets spinning as they circled.

The night grew darker around them, and stars came to life in Laurene’s hair and somehow deep within the tattoos that covered most of her face. She needn’t have worried about Feather and Kahlessa. They both sat, their expressions of rapt wonder and awe warming Laurene’s heart, and she knew Serynah had chosen correctly—their small band would be alright, even if Jazzlynn and Micah never returned from investigating the temple ruins.

© 2019 - Dusty Grein

It seems that happiness has always been one of the fundamental pursuits of humankind. Our founding fathers thought that this pursuit was as important as life and liberty, and they included it among the tenets we based our war of independence on.

The problem is, they got it wrong.

Happiness—like success—is not a goal to be pursued. It is not the prize at the end of the journey, but is rather a state of mind, and can be found in the journey itself. In your life, you can set out on the road to adventure, to wealth, to fame . . . and as you travel this path you can, and will, be as happy or as miserable as you choose to be.

Many people are so caught up in trying to get to a place where they will be happy, that they fail to see this basic truth. Happiness is available to all of us, at any time, if we truly want to be happy.

But don’t we ALL want to be happy?

Hmmm . . . that may just be the ultimate question. I sometimes think that a lot of people either feel guilty for being happy, or they are so busy looking for a magic formula that they forget this one simple fact:

HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE.

I’m not the smartest guy I know, but I do know this:

The only thing in life that you have complete control over is how you respond to what happens around you.

Read that again . . . it’s THAT important.

How you respond defines you, and sets the foundations for everything else that follows each event in your life. You cannot control your spouse, your children, the stock market, the fall TV lineup or the weather, but you CAN control how you respond to any and all of these things.

Do I get upset when things don’t go my way? Sure—but I don’t let that emotion dictate my response. After all, even though my team lost, next week there will be another game (and hopefully those blind ref’s will make the calls RIGHT), the spinach will wash out of the baby’s hair, and that bad lasagna I ate, well, like all the other bad things . . . ”This too shall pass.”

Happiness is NOT a lack of sorrow

I’ve heard it said that courage is not a lack of fear, but how you react when you are afraid. In much the same way, happiness does not mean you don’t have sorrow, grief, anguish, and pain in your life. Life is not fair, and we all experience a lot of pain and heartache along the way—but again, we can ALWAYS choose how we respond to the negative events in our lives.

Does being happy mean that I don’t hurt and cry? No . . . It simply means that even though I hurt, I choose to focus on the good. As I cry the tears of sorrow, I try my best to smile; after all, the only people who don’t feel pain are those who feel nothing at all.

When my grief for loved ones lost, or my sorrow over bad decisions I’ve made, lies heavy on my heart and mind, I let myself cry—for there is no better pain reliever known to man than tears. Once my tears have washed away a little of the harder edges of my pain, I choose to smile, for life is far too short to spend it being unhappy. We all have a finite and limited number of minutes to spend with our loved ones, and I choose to keep the percentage of my time spent negative, as small as possible.

I may not be pleased with some of the things that have happened to me in my life, nor with all of the choices I’ve made—but I prefer to respond to these negatives with a positive outlook. Far too many people walk around in a gloomy mood, wearing either sad ‘feel-sorry-for-me’ expressions, or with anger boiling just beneath the surface of their faces, and subsequently, their hearts. I decided long ago, that I would rather get better, than be bitter.

A Challenge

The next time you are upset, or angry, or scared, or sad, I challenge you to try this little experiment. Find someplace private, and look into a mirror. Now make yourself smile. As hard as it may be, really make yourself smile into a mirror . . . I will guarantee that you cannot remain negative while smiling at yourself, for more than about 5 minutes, before the sheer silliness of your expression makes that smile become real.

Once you realize that happiness is truly a gift that only you can give yourself, you will be well on your way to living a much happier life. The next step towards fulfillment comes when you learn that smiles are as infectious as yawns, and that you’re happiness can go a long way towards helping others allow themselves to be happy too.

Smiling at others feeds one of the basic emotional hungers we all have. Nothing will improve your ability to experience happiness more than making a conscious choice to spread happiness to as many people as you can, simply by smiling at them.

In the end, the amount of love, laughter and happiness that you have in your life, is only determined by the amount you let yourself experience, and that choice is yours and yours alone to make. Choose to be happy, and then let it happen, every day, as often as you can. You might just be amazed at the differences you will see in everyone around you.

Happy New Year!

A couple quick updates to start off 2019.

Challenge of the Month

We're working our way through the entries for November and December's Challenge of the Month. Due to the holiday, giving every entry a fair read and determining a winner is taking a bit longer than anticipated. Keep an eye out for an winner announcement in the next couple of days, as well as January's prompt.

New Feature - Email Notifications

We've added email notifications. You'll now receive an email when somebody likes, reposts, or comments on one of your posts. You'll also receive a notification when somebody follows or messages you. If you don't want to receive email notifications, you can disable them here: https://theprose.com/settings/notifications. We're now working to restore functionality for mobile push notifications on iOS. Stay tuned!

We wish you all a fantastic 2019. Great things ahead.

Prose.