Along with my great affinity for obsession with pens and all accessories that go with pens (including inks, paper, journals, wax seals), I love to write.
No big secret there. I’ve talked often about writing (NaNoWriMo anyone?). I journal (occasionally). Hey, I have to justify buying new journals somehow. And of course, I write blog posts. (Or at least I do when I’m not being a big slacker).
But there’s something magical about writing an old-fashioned, handwritten letter.
Recently, I have been mega-stressed, frustrated, and generally down. Being furloughed and not getting paid for 4 weeks because of the shutdown tops the list of reasons why.
Then as I’ve found, misery breeds more misery. Once you get on the misery merry-go-round, sometimes it’s hard to get off. When one major thing goes cattywampus for me, I then tend to find more and more things to get upset about. It doesn’t help that every time I turn on the television/read the news/scan social media, the messages all seem to be negative.
Miserableness, mega-stress, negativity are all bad for you. Bad for your physical health. Bad for your mental health. Bad for your emotional health. All of which cycles back into more stress, more misery, more negativity. It can be a vicious cycle.
This is the 5th (and probably final) post in my New Year series. And today I want to talk about the importance of taking time to celebrate.
Day 4 of the New Year series focuses on expectations and how we sometimes need to reexamine and reset our expectations when our expectations don’t mesh with life.
Continue readingAfter a rather long hiatus, I’m on a roll this week with posting. I decided to write try an entire week of “New Year” posts. (This also helps me meet my 500 words per day goal for the winter writing festival.)
Continuing on the New Year theme, today’s topic is New Lessons or Why I Should Stay Out of the Kitchen.
At this point, I’d like to clarify here that I’m not really learning “new” lessons per se. It’s more that I’m being reminded of things I already knew, but because of brain freezes, inattention, or just general stupidity on my part, I clearly needed a reminder.
Continue readingAfter writing and publishing yesterday’s post, I feel refreshed and newly inspired. So taking a page from my own advice and letting go of things I cannot control, I turn to things I can control—reading and writing challenges!
Although I didn’t finish all the challenges that I signed onto in 2018, I enjoyed the process of going through the various challenges, learned a lot, and completed more than I would have otherwise.
Yes, there can be success in failing.
But this is a new year, so that means new challenges. And I’ve already signed up for a few.
Continue readingHappy 2019!
(Hey, I’m only a week late. Of course, we won’t mention the fact that I haven’t posted anything since the beginning of October. shhh!)
But I have a good excuse. The past few months have been a roller coaster. A rather crazy ride of ups and downs with job interviews and the inevitable waiting, second interviews and more waiting, holidays, the shutdown, and getting ready to move across the country. So see? Good excuses.
Continue readingIt’s that time of year again! No, I’m not referring to PSL season (or really, pumpkin spice anything and everything season. It’s actually gotten a bit out of control IMO). And no, I’m not referring to the pre-pre-Christmas nonsense (why am I already seeing Christmas things in the stores?).
Tis the NaNoWriMo Prep Season! It’s the season to get ready to write like mad!
We all play the “what if” game. What if we had gone to a different school. What if we had taken that job or turned down another. What if we had turned left instead of right.
I believe that it’s human nature to imagine life differently than what it is. To speculate how our life would be had we taken another path. Imagination is a good thing. It can spur change, make us reach for something we might not otherwise have tried.
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With the completion of Born In Ice by Nora Roberts tonight, I have officially achieved my 2018 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal.
