Esther’s Weekly Writing Prompt — The Block Editor

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Esther Chilton’s Weekly Writing Prompt this week is block.

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Do you remember about six or seven years ago when WordPress started to discuss migrating to the Gutenberg editor, now referred to as the Block editor?

I vigorously resisted this whole migration to the Block editor. I didn’t see why, if the developers at WordPress were so thrilled with the new Block editor, they couldn’t offer it as a “new and better” option, while continuing to support the (mostly) beloved Classic editor.

In the iOS app for iPhones, WordPress gave us the choice to write using either the Classic editor or the Block editor. I continued to use the Classic editor because I found using the Block editor on my iPhone be very difficult. It was not designed for use on the relatively small screen of a mobile device. Maybe it worked well on a laptop, but it was shit on an iPhone.

I resented feeling that if I wanted to continue to blog on WordPress, I’d have to do so on a laptop because the Block editor was close to impossible to use on an iPhone. I figured that if the day ever came when WordPress no longer offered the Classic editor on iOS, that would be the day I would either find a different platform for my blog or I would just stop blogging.

That day arrived when WordPress removed the option on the iOS app to compose using the Classic editor. It was the Block editor or the highway. I chose the highway.

I set up a blog on Blogger. I didn’t like it. I tried Medium. I tried Substack. I didn’t like them either. So ultimately I capitulated. I figured I had to either embrace the Block editor on my iPhone or stop blogging altogether.

Once I made that decision and forced myself to learn the Block editor, I found that it wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, I quickly began to appreciate the Block editor and now I can’t imagine going back to the Classic editor again.

Who knew?

My Last Photo — June ‘26

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Brian, aka Bushboy, posted his monthly Last on the Card prompt, where he asks us to…

  • Post some of the last photos from our camera’s SD card or the last photos from our phone taken in the month of June 2026.
  • No editing — who cares if it is out of focus, not framed as you would like, or the subject matter didn’t cooperate?
  • No explanations needed — just the photo will do.
  • Create a pingback to Brian’s post or link in the comments.
  • Use the tags “The Last Photo” and “#LastOnTheCard.”

Every night at around 10 pm, I take our dog into our backyard for her last opportunity of the night to take care of business. I have a headlamp that I wear so I can see if she does anything and, if it’s poop, I can scoop it up into a poop bag.

The night before last I saw her stop on our patio to sniff something, so I swooped in closer to see what it was and I found this creature that was about five inches long.

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I wasn’t sure what it was, as I’d never seen anything like it before. So I snapped this photo and asked ChatGPT to tell me about it. Here is what it said:

This appears to be a hawk moth caterpillar (family Sphingidae), commonly called a hornworm. More specifically, it looks very much like the caterpillar of the Achemon sphinx moth.

ChatGPT added that “It’s actually a fascinating insect, and despite its snake-like appearance, it’s completely harmless.” Further, it told me that “they often wander across sidewalks, driveways, or patios looking for a place to burrow into the soil, where they’ll pupate and eventually emerge as a large, fast-flying sphinx moth.”

Here is a short video I took showing its caterpillar-like, undulating movement.

As a reminder, the photos posted herein were taken with my iPhone 15 Pro Max, and have been resized (shrunk) to make them load more quickly and take up less space in my WordPress media folder.

Six Sentence Story — The Trap

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Written for the Sunday Six Sentence Story prompt from Girlie on the Edge, where the prompt word is “plan.”

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The rain‑slicked alley curled behind the bar like a bad memory, and Detective Fred Morrisey stepped into it knowing the night had sharper teeth than usual.

The woman in red had slipped him a note with just a name and a time, and now every shadow seemed to whisper both.

A busted streetlamp flickered overhead, carving his silhouette into jagged pieces as he approached the rendezvous.

He heard the click of a lighter before he saw the man, a thin flame blooming to reveal a face he’d hoped never to see again.

Seeing that his plan had worked perfectly, the man smiled, smoke curling around his grin like a noose tightening.

And Morrisey realized, too late, that the note wasn’t a warning, it was a trap, and he’d walked straight into its hungry jaws.

Graphic novel-like image conjured using ChatGPT.

One-Liner Wednesday — America Then; America Now

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“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”

Vice President JD Vance while promoting his new book at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California.

Vance added that the 37th president [Nixon] was targeted by “deep state” forces “not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions” tried to do to Trump.

For those of you who don’t know or don’t remember, the infamous Watergate break-in was discovered in the early hours of June 17, 1972, when a security guard called the police and the burglars were arrested.

That scandal involved a break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters by Republican Party operatives linked to senior officials in the Nixon White House and then expanded into a cover-up involving the president himself. It ultimately led to Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974

The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in United States v. Nixon (July 24, 1974) forced President Nixon to turn over White House tape recordings, which produced clear evidence of his involvement in the cover‑up and made his impeachment almost certain. This loss of legal protection directly precipitated his resignation days later on August 8, 1974.

But the key point to be taken by what Vance said is that he’s right. Today, a crime like the 1972 Watergate break-in and the scandal of the cover-up that followed might not even make the front page of newspapers or much of a dent in social media.

That’s because 54 years ago, presidents were still held accountable for their illegal and unethical behavior. Because members of Congress — even those in the same political party as the president — were not afraid to speak out against presidental wrongdoing. And because the Supreme Court protected the Constitution and did not bend over backwards to grant to the president almost king-like powers. None of those factors hold true anymore.

Oh, how far America’s political system has fallen over the past fifty years! Can it ever recover?

Written for Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt. Apologies to those purists who might take me to task for having written more than one-line.

FOWC With Fandango — Energetic

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Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “energetic.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.

MFFFC — His Destiny

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A boy named Leo stood in the roaring dark of the arena, the night Bruce Springsteen came to town. When the lights dropped, the crowd surged like a living tide, and Leo felt something inside him snap awake. Springsteen hit the first chord. It was raw, bright, defiant, and for Leo, it was as if the whole world tilted toward possibility.

Leo watched the stage the way sailors watch horizons. Every lyric felt like a message meant only for him, every guitar riff a spark catching in his chest. By the time Springsteen shouted his final goodbye, Leo wasn’t clapping, he was seeing his destiny.

He went home, dragged his father’s old microphone from the garage, and planted himself in front of it like a soldier before a flag. He opened his mouth and let the sound fly, loud and unpolished, but honest. In that moment, he wasn’t just a kid shouting into a mic. He was a boy who had seen his future under stadium lights.

Leo practiced night after night until his voice cracked, until his fingers blistered and until the neighbors complained. He didn’t care. He had a mission now. One day, he’d stand where Springsteen stood. One day, he’d make the world tilt for someone else.

He kept singing into that battered microphone every night, chasing the echo of Springsteen’s voice like a compass pointing north. His parents thought it was a phase. His friends thought his ambition was a cute pipedream. But Leo knew better. He felt the future humming in his ribs.

Finally, the night came when Leo worked up the courage to invite his Mom and Dad, his sister and older brother, and a few of his best buddies to come listen to him perform in the garage. He even set up a tape deck to record his performance.

What came out was, well, awful. Not just rough. It was spectacularly terrible. Off-key, off-rhythm, off-everything. His friends all put their hands over their ears. Some groaned loudly. His siblings ran out of the garage, his mother started to cry, and his father just stared down at his shoes. Leo was stunned.

For the first time since the Springsteen concert, doubt crept in. Leo thought, “Okay, maybe acting is the way to go.” He went to his room and started drafting his Oscar acceptance speech.

Written for Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge. Photo credit: Jason Rosewell @ Unsplash.

WDYS — Who I Was Before I Became Who I Am

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I’ve been asked, more than once, whether I can remember who I was before the world told me who I should be. It sounds like the kind of question that assumes there was a quiet, untouched version of me waiting somewhere in the beginning — pure, original, unshaped. But the truth is, I don’t remember that person. I’m not even sure that person ever had a chance to exist.

From the start, there was always a voice. First it was parents, guiding, correcting, protecting. Teaching me to be polite, to say “please” and “thank you,” and to be seen and not heard.

Then teachers, with their red pens and structured expectations. Church added another layer with moral lines drawn clearly, and roles defined without much room for question or interpretation. By the time I understood the idea of choice, I was already deep inside a framework built by others.

The army didn’t ask who I was; it told me who to become. Discipline, order, identity, where to be and when to be there. It all came issued, like my uniform.

And when that chapter ended, the workforce was waiting with its own script: be productive, be reliable, fit the culture, climb if you can. Every phase came with instructions, and I followed them, sometimes willingly, sometimes not.

Society told me how to be a good husband — to love, honor, and obey — and how to be a good father and to teach my children well.

So when I’m asked to look back and remember who I was before all that, I come up empty. Not because I’ve forgotten, but because there was never a clear before. There was only a continuous shaping, a steady layering of expectations, roles, and responsibilities.

Maybe the better question isn’t who I was before, but who I am underneath all of it, or if there’s even an “underneath” left to find.

Maybe identity isn’t something that existed before the world spoke, but something pieced together from everything it said.

This post was written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt. Photo credit: Sadje.

Fandango’s Story Starter #253

Fandango14 Comments
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It’s once again time for my Story of Starter prompt.

Here’s how it works. Every week I’m going to give you a “teaser” sentence or sentence fragment and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to build a story (prose or poetry) around that sentence/fragment. It doesn’t have to be the first sentence in your story, and you don’t even have to use it in your post at all if you don’t want to. The purpose of the teaser is to spark your imagination and to get your storytelling juices flowing.

This week’s Story Starter teaser is:

The auctioneer smiled and announced that the next item for sale was my future.

If you care to write and post a story built from this story starter teaser, be sure to link back to this post and tag your post with #FSS. I would also encourage you to read and enjoy what your fellow bloggers do with their stories.

And most of all, have fun.

FOWC With Fandango — Labor

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Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “labor.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.

Second Chance: Beyond The Sea

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I read this post that I wrote eight years ago today and when I read it this morning, I had to ask myself, “Did I write that? Damn, that’s pretty good. I should repost it.”

Some of you may remember it if you were on WordPress eight years ago. But if you don’t remember it or if you weren’t on WordPress back then, well I hope you enjoy it this second time around.

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Jason and his daughter, Abby, sat on the rocks watching the waves gently kissing the shore as the tide was going out. “Daddy, where does the water go when the tide goes out?” she asked.

“The water is drawn by the moon and follows it across the sky,” Jason said. “But the water doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s just that the gravitational attraction to the moon causes the ocean to bulge out in the direction of the moon.”

“But it’s daytime,” she said. “I don’t see the moon.”

“That’s because it’s still light out, and it’s easier to see the moon at night when it’s dark,” Jason explained. “But just because you can’t see it, that doesn’t mean that the moon is not there.”

“How big is the ocean?” Abby asked.

“Very big,” Jason said. “More than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is water.”

“What’s on the other side of the ocean?”

“Other countries.”

“What other countries?”

“Can we go there now?” Abby asked.

Jason chuckled. “No, sweetie, it’s very far to the other side of the ocean. In fact, it’s so far that it’s already tomorrow in those countries.”

“If you got in a boat and headed in that direction,” Jason said, pointing to the west, “you’d end up in countries like China, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.”

“It’s the future there?” she asked.

“Well, it’s not exactly the future,” Jason said. “See, there’s this thing called the International Date Line. On this side of that line, which is in the middle of the ocean, it’s today. But on the other side of that line, it’s tomorrow.”

“There’s a line in the middle of the ocean, Daddy? Are you sure?” Abby said with a childishly skeptical look on her face.

“It’s not actually a physical line, sweetie,” Jason said. “It’s more like an imaginary line that exists so that people know what time and day it is around the globe.”

“You’re making that up, aren’t you, Daddy?” Abby said, smiling up at her father.

Jason was tempted to pull out his iPhone and Google “international date line,” but he decided that it was time for a little distraction. “How about if we head up to the boardwalk and get us some ice cream cones?”

“Okay, Daddy.” Abby said. “And when we get home, I won’t tell Mommy that you bribed me with ice cream so that I wouldn’t tell her that you were making shit up again.”

Written for Sue Vincent’s Thursday Photo Prompt.