Today I Will Not

Introduction

Yesterday I published three challenge entries and shared them in various Facebook Groups including Vocal Social Society (that I administer) and Great Incantations (where I just make up the numbers)

The music is "Temptation" by New Order, one of my favourite songs of theirs.

The challenges I entered were sort of short form so I think that I was actually being lazy because in these I didn't, in theory, have to put in too much effort (although actually, they did take a bit of work to get over the line.

These are those three so you can check them out and see if I was being lazy.

Resisting Temptation

I resisted the temptation to enter the "Dancing With Distraction" challenge with this villanelle, though there is no way that a villanelle could be fused with a defined acrostic.

We do not always have to resist temptation; sometimes it is right to give in. You may be walking somewhere, and there is a straight, short route which is quite mundane, but the other route is beautiful and would be much more satisfying to take. I suppose in this example, I have already introduced two forms of temptation. Which is the greater, to get to your destination quickly or to take the longer route, enjoy the beautiful scenery, and take longer to reach your final destination?

I was originally thinking that if there were a threatening gang on the short route, you could risk getting beaten up, but the temptation would be to take the longer route to ensure that you reached your destination in safety.

The thing is, there are times when we are tempted to take the easy option but morally that is the wrong route to take. If you saw someone lose something, picked it up and then realised it was extremely valuable, it would be morally wrong to give in to the temptation to keep the item. The right thing would be to return it to the person who lost the item.

You can then start building lots of extras to make the situation more complex to deal with. What is the person who dropped the item had stolen it, but you didn't know who from? I suppose the answer would be to hand it to the police in the hope that they could find the real owner, but at least you would not have given in to temptation.

As I am writing this, Grammarly is giving me some very odd suggestions, but I am resisting the temptation to switch the damned thing off. So you see, temptation is thrown at us, almost every minute of every day, and sometimes it is right to give in, and other times it is wrong to give in.

Halfway to Resisting Temptation

Well, a bit further actually. It is almost three o'clock in the afternoon and I have not entered a Vocal short-form challenge. I may give in tomorrow and there are four long-format options, though the "Painted Prose" one is the only one that I feel I can write for.

One of the ways of resisting temptation is to remove yourself from it, so I went out for an hour's walk to remove myself from the ability to enter these challenges. I actually composed two "Dancing With Distraction" poems in my head, but they were a bit dark and whiney so it is best that they did not see the light of day.

I feel that I might write a couple of non-challenge poems for my close friends, as I haven't written one in ages, and a title came to me while I was out walking.

So temptation has been avoided .... for the time being