A Time For Everything

 

It's my birthday and since I did posts about all my kids on their birthdays--I'm gonna do me. :0)

These pictures are in no particular date order--just the order in which they were selected...

Happy 55th birthday to me--here's to 55 more!!

Have a super week!"

 

 

My emotions, of late, have been a bit a lot like a roller coaster. It's been quite the year and it stands to reason that I'd be feeling a lot of things.

Some of those emotions, in no particular order, are: sadness, relief, overwhelm, resentment, frustration, and longing.

Add in the current on-going saga of the dog with cancer...

Add in misc (minor) health issues...

And the end of the year is not going the way I thought it would, either from before Mom died or after she passed.

I'm looking ahead and forward to 2023 much like many of us did after the first year of COVID as well as after the second...

As if the transition of one year to the next will magically mean better things. If nothing else, it means leaving behind the drama and/or trauma of "last" year.

Some of it is mental, absolutely -- the old year passes and the new year equals a fresh slate.

That mostly works for me. My fresh start goals each January are for the new / current year.

Doesn't work so much for emotions. They aren't ruled by the calendar as so much of life is.

Some of my current emotional disquiet stems from Rayna's illness, and some of it stems from a general worry over the economy and global strife.

Eventually, I'll find my emotional footing and things will look a bit rosier.

But for now, I'm not 100% okay. And I know it's okay to not be okay for a bit. :0)

I'm giving myself grace, but it is time to start thinking seriously about my goals for next year and beyond.

Take care and have a great week.

On May 4th, I wrote about the state of Jen. I vaguely remember the things that were weighing me down at the time, except the weather which I mentioned specifically.

I've moved on and things have gotten better mostly. The weather has warmed and turned sunny (and humid) and is better for my general outlook on life.

The one major thing that happened is still there. At the time, I was upset and angry and scared. I've had time to process the issue. I talked with a friend, did a little more research, and I was able to get a better grasp of what the issue really is. Unfortunately, there's not much I can do at the moment but work around the issue. So work around it I will.

Another issue is... I haven't written much for months. As I've said more than a few times, I should be writing...

BUT

I've also said that this is my journey. A Facebook friend (a person I have met in person) and fellow author recently wrote a post reminding all of her writer friends that our journey is indeed unique. It doesn't matter if you write fast or slow. If you publish 1 book or 5 or more in a year. We each have real lives to work around. Jobs, partners, children, pets, extended family, and on and on. And we each have to accept that about one another. Unless we walk a mile or spend a day in someone else's shoes, we cannot know what's best for that person. We cannot judge.

I have author friends who seem to be chained to their computers a lot and they seem miserable. I've never wanted to be that author. Also, unlike many, I'm not trying to make a best-seller list and I'm not trying to make a living. The only pressure I want is the pressure I put on myself for the right reasons--I'm ready and willing to get the next book written, edited, and published. The wrong reason is that much of the publishing world says I need to churn churn churn.

I'm going to turn fifty years old tomorrow. I want this time in my life to be as fun as I can make it. That means I write when I'm damn good and ready to do so. I make no excuses when people ask. I made the choice and there are consequences. Here comes the pressure though: I need and want to get back to it soon. I do enjoy it and I have a conference to get ready for.

Of course, now I have a proofreading job and a series-guide-updating job and several clients for whom I do website updates and places to go and 4th of July coming up. *sigh*

It is what it is, I guess. Better get to it.

Have a great week.

There just hasn't been much to tackle via blog this week. But for the sake of a post, let's see...

Book six is trickling into existence. It's not coming as quickly as I'd like, but I average about two pages a day. It's not as much as it could be, but I'm gonna be happy with that over a big fat goose egg.

Hockey is mostly quiet right now. Most of the big trades across the league seem to have taken place and the Stars look good for the upcoming season. A few players are starting to train again. Pre-season starts end of September. I'm super exicted.

My cruise and all its attendant costs has been paid for--thank you DH and thank you fireworks.

Tomorrow is writers group and I'm so looking forward to seeing my core peeps whom I haven't gotten to see en masse since April. There will be a lot of chatter tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

Have a great weeknd!

Well, I was a bad blogger and didn't post on Friday. I don't have much of an excuse because I was up early and at the gym, but then DH and I got sucked into TV before we had to head south for our Thanksgiving celebrations. We had a delicious (as always) dinner at my in-law's house and just sat around and visited for a couple of hours before heading back home for a low-key weekend.

I did break out some Christmas decorations...garland and the strings of snowflake-tipped lights that go around the front window. I busted out the winter/Christmas votive holders and tea light candles too. I put up the tree, too, which took all of twenty minutes because the tree is only 18" tall. There's still more stuff I want to put up, but it's start and I have to find the rest before I can do anything.

Oh! I'm happy to report a weight-loss break-through. I finally dipped below the 132.8 lb. mark I haven't gotten under that in forever. I know it won't hold, but I broke the plateau, so I've got incentive to keep pushing until I can get below the 130 lb. mark once and for all and stay there. The biggest obstacle is going to be the weather now that it's getting colder. My warm cozy bed is going to be hard to leave each morning once the temperatures get below the 50s overnight. But I can the light at the end of the tunnel, so hopefully, I'll keep reaching for the light.

On the writing/publishing front, things are going mostly well. Book one is ready to go, with cover art and everything. Book two is with the content/copy editor and on her schedule starting tomorrow. No cover art as of yet. That's scheduled for end of January. Book three is in progress and I need to get my act together and finish it. Book four is done and ready to go to the content/copy editor and ready for cover art (end of February). Book five needs to be read and revised. Book six is in the planning stages. I have characters and a premise and some scene ideas, so once book three is ready for it's 2-to-3 week deep freeze (when I don't look at it in order to re-read with fresh eyes), I can juggle books five and six. I'm mostly on track. I'm not stressing because I am self-publishing, so I can push back deadlines, but I really, really want to keep my original goal of publishing on my birthday in June.

Hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend! Tell me what you did.

And it's lovely temperatures. It's time to get out the winter blanket for the bed, too.

How an update on me? I mean, it is my blog right...

Okay, so binge-watched the last half of season two of Madam Secretary. Some interesting twists and turns and now I can catch up on season three, which is airing this TV season. Discovered that there's very little fan fiction for the show as a whole and none for my favorite character, Blake Moran, the Secretary's personal assistant. Not that I need to be reading or writing fan fiction for another fandom, but I might dabble a little bit when I need a break from writing my books. :)


I am also following Stars hockey closely this season. The boys aren't doing so hot at the moment. They had a couple of back to back losses as well as some unfortunate injuries. And in support of my new sporting fandom, I bought this...

...also because my trusty duty travel mug is on its last legs with a crack on the inside and hole on the outside from two separate drops. Oops.

My work PC was updated to Windows 10 this past weekend, so I will slowly have to re-download all my usual pieces of software and applications. I have to get all my background and options and tabs re-set too. That's the part I hate the most...getting my little environment all set back up the way I like it.

Workouts are going well, too. I'm still not losing the weight like I want, but I know I'm building muscle and (hopefully) eliminating fat. Which might account for some of my struggle. I also binged carbs yesterday, so that may be why the scale is being ornery. I did good last week in general though and cut way back. I also resisted the urge to buy cereal and milk when I went grocery shopping the last two weeks because I cannot resist a bowl of cereal to save my life. But overall, for 48 years old, I think I'm doing rather well.

Hope you had a lovely weekend, and here's to a decent work week. See you Wednesday. :)

Working mostly.

My responsibilities at work have increased exponentially, so I actually do work most of my day. Yes, I used to have a lot of free time. Not so much any more.

And since I actually work all day, I'm pretty pooped by the end of it, so I read to relax and wind down. What am I reading? Mostly Sherlock fic. Tons and tons of it.

I fit in a bit of housework here and there as well as keeping tabs on a few fandoms, mainly Sherlock and Harry Potter. Yes, Harry Potter. Not as crazy busy as back in the hey day of books and movies, but still active.

Speaking of fan fiction, I'm co-presenting a talk on how writing fan fiction can improve your writing in general to a group of 11- to 19-year-olds at one of our local libraries. I'm actually doing it to help a high school aged Girl Scout achieve her Gold Award. You know how I love fic, so a chance to talk about it seemed like a no brainer!



Have a great weekend.

Well, it's two weeks since I said good bye to my boy. Early days were tough and I still get misty-eyed every now and again. Sonshine called this past Saturday and seems to be fine. I missed his call, but he talked to his dad...

DD has also been gone more often than not, so the house has been very, very quiet. It's not unpleasant.

I'm still working from home with a couple of trips to the office per week, so that's a good thing.

This past weekend, I spent time getting my back yard cleaned up. After the crazy storm we had a couple of weeks ago, the back yard was pretty rough around the edges. So I mowed and raked and cleaned up the patio and the whole thing looks rather tidy now.

All I have left is to get the chainsaw out and cut the fallen limbs into truck-bed lengths to haul to the dump. I have a lot of yard waste to haul to the dump. At least, two loads, if not three...

Oh, wait--I also need to trim the holly and the wild hedge out front. Which will no doubt add a trip to the dump.

But it's fall y'all and fall is my favorite season, so I'm enjoying all of this outdoor work. I love it when the trees look like this, although that means it's colder than I like.

So my purse arrived last Thursday! A day early, even, which was nice because I needed a little pick-me-up.


Anyway, I love it. It's a bit bigger than I expected (which is good, considering what I paid for it) and has only one large compartment. There're a pair of small pockets on one side and another slightly larger zippered one on the other, but they aren't really large enough to organize my stuff.


So back to the 'Net I went and bought a purse organizer! The only thing left that I need more than want (that second purse) is a wallet. But I need to work a few more proofing jobs before I can splurge on that.

Aside from the short excitement of the new purse, I feel as if I'm in a holding pattern right now, and I'm not really liking it. I can't seem to get anything done, I can't plan anything, and all I can do is work on the same two major projects and I'm feeling as if they'll never be finished. I know they will, eventually, but still.

DD was supposed to move out soon, but the two houses she and her roommates were looking at didn't work out. So now it's back to the drawing board for them. But you know, now that she's dangled that carrot, I'm ready for it all to be said and done. One more thing I'm waiting on...

My brown-eyed girl is definitely moving and will be living about four hours away by car before March is over. On the bright side, she'll finally get her driver's license on Friday, and once she gets to where she's going, her living expenses will be cut in half as she is moving in with her boyfriend.

Sonshine is a few short months from graduating high school. Wow. I remember taking him home from the hospital like it was yesterday. And what's he going to do with his life?? Good question, he's changed his mind three or four times just this year. Monday he said he was joining the Army since he really didn't know what else to do with himself right now.

We're one step closer to me being able to work from home. The biggest hurdle was me being able to answer phones as that is one of my primary responsibilities. We now have phones that work over the Internet and they're really cool and have some neat features. Unfortunately, one of those huge projects requires me to have access to all our paperwork, which, of course, is all at the office. But I'm hoping that I can start with, say, one or two mornings a week and build up. I think that's a few weeks out yet though.

One of my biggest issues with working from home is going to be distractions. I struggle enough at the office, so I've been practicing keeping my focus on the task at hand. I make a list every day, and I've created a master list of everything I do in general, including those quarterly things like filing 941 returns and the once-a-year kind of things like filing 940 returns. The next thing, I think, is to make a loose schedule and start implementing it at the office before I make the transition.

The celery and peanut butter is working out great so far. I haven't gained poundage back that could be linked to the higher calorie snack (just the other bad choices). I even started making a second set for DH to have. Now if only I could get him to eat at regular intervals.