50 WORDS

Letting Go of Unnecessary Things

Thrifty Word Challenge #22: Guilty

A friend sent me a cute meme last week; it showed a grid of twelve photos with actions you can choose to let go of feeling guilty about. These included putting your own needs first, saying no, and letting go of toxic people. I shared it with a couple of friends who I thought might appreciate it, including a new dad who’d told me he felt guilty if he didn’t reply to every phone message that came in from friends — even though he was hardly surviving on 4 hours sleep a night.

Personally, I have no problem ignoring messages if I get busy. I figure if anyone really needs to speak to me, they can telephone. But I can still get uncomfortable about having to ask for my needs to be met…

What sorts of things make you feel guilty? Or is that an emotion you’ve managed to erase from your life?

Tell us all your guilty (or non-) little secrets, but make them thrifty.

Guilty, 50 words — GO!

Submission Guidelines

TBI loves to promote our writers. If you would like your 50 Word stories pushed like inner-city heroin, please leave your social media handles at the bottom of your piece. Feel free to follow us on Twitter @TheBadInfluenc7. Follow the editors of Thrifty Words Theme Challenge, Jonica Bradley and Marla Bishop on Twitter here @lynn_jonica and @tulipchickuk

Remember, in order to be considered for the challenge, you need to write exactly fifty words (contractions such as ‘you’ll’ and ‘y’all’ count as one, as do articles ‘a’ and ‘the’ ‘and all 23 auxiliary verbs ‘am’ ‘is’ ‘are’ etc. Hyphenated words count as one word.)

Please use the kicker 50 WORDS and ‘Thrifty Words Challenge #22: Guilt’ as your subtitle and submit by 12 pm EST / 5 pm GMT on Friday, 29th January 2021. All stories submitted by the deadline will be released the following morning at 12 pm EST / 5 pm GMT.

A reminder: we will only publish one story per author to the roundup. If you submit more than one story, it is most likely that the first story submitted will be chosen for the roundup. You may submit 50 Word stories outside of the theme challenge anytime. They will be published in the Thrifty Words section but not included in the theme challenge roundup.

Need inspiration? Here’s the roundup of last week’s challenge.

And the one song that hits the spot…