A Time For Everything

I am a user of Chapstick. I have been for many years. I don't generally lose them before I use them all up these days, but I do have multiple Chapsticks in quite a few places at various levels of usage. To name a few:

• my bedside table drawer
• the car
• my purse
• my desk at the office
• my desk at home
• on the coffee table
• in the kitchen

These are the places where I obviously spend a lot of time with the exception of the car...but I can't be digging around in my purse while driving, so I need one handy. I also need them in my purse so that when I'm out and about, which I am upon occasion, I also have one handy.


And while I'm not upset to this degree when tubes of lip balm get shuffled...things are wonky until you re-stock the location that's missing its designated flavor. :0)

Are you a Chapstick/lip balm user??

I have met my soulmate. For an odd duck like me, that's not easy to do. I march to the beat of my own drummer and I have a weird sense of humor that can come off as rude if you don't get where I'm coming from and my world, geographically speaking, is pretty small. I live 12 minutes from where I work. I work for my husband and we have three employees. I spend time once a month with 30-odd other writers, six of whom are some of my closest friends.

And that's about it. I travel occasionally, like to the conference I attended last October, but I'm not the personality that jumps right into a group of people and charms them. I hang back, I don't talk much, I listen, I wait for invitations. It gets lonely sometimes.

But.

I recently switched online chat groups. Not because I didn't like the ladies I was hanging out with. I did. A lot. But one gal lives in Germany and her kids were getting home from school when I was just getting online, so rightfully so, it was time for her to be the mom and pay attention to her family. Her writing workday was essentially over. The other gal lives here in the states, but is more of a night owl and has various issues crop up and would just disappear on me, leaving me alone, which was not why I was in a chat room.

I had been getting emails randomly from another gal you might have heard of (Kristen Lamb) to join her band of merry creatives in a chat room for forty minute timed sprints. You can do anything during those forty minutes--write, edit, work your day job, exercise, clean house, whatever--and then come back and report your productivity, chat for a few, and then get back into another forty minute sprint.

So I went. I lurked the first few times, because, hello, nervous newbie here. But eventually I started chatting and reporting and then wielding the timer. Getting to know the core group as well as those who are more sporadic visitors.

And I "met" Jenn.

We clicked. We share a sense of humor. We share a lot of similarities. For example, anyone who knows me, knows I don't go anywhere without a travel mug of tea. Well--she takes coffee with her everywhere she goes. We like the same music. We're both writers. We're close in age. We're both moms. Anyway, as I said, we clicked.

It's been great. Also, I've become a text-er. I mean, we don't text all day everyday like teenagers, but our interactions are not limited to the online chat. We share stuff outside of the 9-5 workday. My love of hockey rubbed off and she decided to watch a hockey game to see what it was all about. We even Facetimed while we watched and chatted for most of the time she was able to watch. (She's on the east coast where it was later and couldn't watch the whole thing.) While she's not watching playoffs like I am, she does ask about the results of the games she knows I'm following.

Awww...

It's just that, throughout my life, I've just had so few people with whom I've clicked that much and that quickly. It's a gift at this point in my life and I'm so thrilled to have found her.

As an author, I'm supposed to be on various social media platforms so as to...

Be out there to connect with fans, to network, to help advertise my books...

I guess.

The problem is...unlike the gripes I hear from writer friends...social media is not a huge draw for me. Well, most platforms aren't. There are a few I can get lost down the rabbit hole, as it were, but those aren't the ones where my (potential) fans are.

Many moons ago, Kristen Lamb was the speaker at my group's annual/biennial conference. One of the things she said that stuck with me was: Find what you enjoy and do it. If you don't like the medium, it will show and could be counter-productive.

Facebook for me is a time-filler. I have no problem spending time there--if I'm bored. I'm rarely bored.

Twitter is another place that my writer colleagues seem to congregate. Twitter is mostly a mystery to me. I don't get it. Although, it's making a little more sense to me of late as I've had to get alerts from a podcaster I follow because he's going to be announcing an appearance in Dallas I want to attend. He tweets A LOT. How does he get any work done with the number of tweets he makes, not to mention the probable metric-shit-ton of tweets that he gets...? So I have it, but I'm a consumer.

I'm on Instagram too, but again, as a consumer of only a few--and I do mean only a few--other accounts. I do post on occasion, but only random or interesting images. I doubt anyone sees them, but whatever.

I have this blog of course. Why why why do I need more than a blog and a Facebook page? Quite frankly, I don't think I do. I don't offer a newsletter because--I blog three days a week (usually). If someone wants to know me, then can stop by or they can subscribe to the feed.

You know what sells books? Not social media. Not newsletters. Not blogs. The next book sells books.

Now if only I could write the next book and the next one as easily as I can spend time on social media. *sigh*

Now that I've reached a point in time (good weather, after a writers group meeting), it's time to get back on the wagons I fell off of. Those wagons are as follows:

a) the exercise wagon
b) the healthy eating wagon
c) the writing/publishing wagon
d) the prepping for my October writers conference

In addition to that, there are activities at work that require my participation, so that's a new wagon maybe?

a) I'm still not in the mood to hit the gym again really, so the home treadmill will have to suffice for calorie burnage. The plan for now is @ 26 minutes in the morning and in the evening to burn a total of 320 calories a day. That's on top of general daily calorie consumption and my thrice weekly walks to the post office while working from the office.

b) I purged the house last week of anything filled with sugar or carbs that is remotely tempting to me--by eating it. (I didn't get to grocery shop last week, so it was also eat or starve. I opted not to starve.) That included jelly beans, tortillas (despite being the carb-light variety), yogurt (except I left one at the office--darn, I'll have to eat it), and any remaining dried fruits. It's back to veggies and protein for a week or two until the jiggly puff of a belly I'm sporting recedes. Then we'll see.

c) This is going to be the toughest wagon to get back on. I'm not feeling the words. And while I'm not looking to be a best seller on any list and support myself, I still owe any new and/or loyal readers the next book at some point (sooner rather than later) and I do want to finish the series. Also a new book will keep the royalties steady--which I need for...

d) Conference expenses. I've registered and bought a ticket, but I'll need funds to pay for the hotel and food come October. In the meantime, I need to buy swag and order physical books. Swag is cheaper, but physical books are more important. One conundrum is which books do I get in physical copy and how many of each. I have six books as of now, hopefully seven by the summer.

e) DH aka Bossman is trying to better the company and take it to the next level, so we're reading a book, chapter by chapter and discussing it. This particular book also has audio to go with it, so I've got to find time to get started on the audio and make sure I'm prepared to discuss Ch. 2 today...


It's time shake off the lazies and get motivated.

Have a great week...

So that happened.

Each series is best of seven. The Vegas Golden Knights defeated the L.A. Kings in a sweep.

This is no longer just the best story in hockey this year, but probably the best story in all of sports.

No one had any expectations of a rag tag team of players culled from those not high enough in the hierarchy of other teams to be protected. They came together. They bonded. They rallied around their new home when tragedy stuck last October. And they won. Their first away game. Their first home game.

And won and won and won enough games to make into the playoffs. Not just sliding in as the second wild card team, but as the champs of their division.

And then this.

Not much to say, but GO KNIGHTS GO!