Love Is In The Air

Rory has some great relationship questions for us today. I am going to respond to them for myself, not as advice. My experiences have informed my attitude toward this topic, so my answers will be unique to me. What works and doesn’t work for me probably has no bearing on anyone else’s situation. 😻

1. Do you think that ‘background checks’ should be more commonplace between couples who are dating and or those looking to marry or live with each other?

In my case, I would be extremely hesitant to proceed in any meaningful way with a man I didn’t know much about. I’m talking beyond finances into the realm of his relationships with other people ~ family, friends, coworkers. Is he negative toward a lot of these folks, blaming them for his lack of whatever? Major red flag! 🚩

2. Do you think love alone is enough to see people through everything?

Not if we’re defining love by fabulous sex, which I think is the major component of how many define it. If I don’t feel a strong sense of mutual respect, loyalty, and shared life goals with someone, “love” is definitely not enough.

3. What are your views on people getting married/living together too young – are you in total favour of that or not?

I have no opinion on what others do, as long as they are consenting adults. It might work out longterm for two 19 year olds, or not, same as two 39 year olds. Depends entirely on the people and their situation. I first lived with a guy at age 24 and that didn’t end well.

4. What do you think about people not getting to know their partners well enough – is it something that should be looked at more closely whilst you live apart or something that can be worked on when you are under the same roof together?

See my first answer wrt myself. I don’t want to find out that someone has a prison record on our honeymoon, but if you prefer mystery, go for it!

5. What are your views on couples who are teenage sweethearts and simply wish to get married and yet they have never sampled anything else of life, they have never had other partners and the list goes on … but they are willing to sacrifice their life for living with one person only believing they are the right person for them?

It’s fine. “Sampling” is overrated and is a euphemism for having sex with a lot of other people. In my case, I would do it all differently, if I could go back, so I certainly am not going to tell others they should sleep around! 😜

6. Finally, which is the best love ? The one we think is right or the the love that finds you by chance or the love we source out with intention?

The best love is the one who makes me feel loved and loving, is supportive and loyal (and I am too), and with whom I share life goals. We could meet via chance or intention… what difference does it make ultimately how it began as long as it ends with the right person by my side? 😍

That said, I have no hope of romantic love happening for me, which is a GOOD THING because hope has led me only to sadness and disappointment.

~*~

©️2021 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Good Riddance 2020

Welp, the last day of 2020 began fittingly. I went to bed early last night and then was wide awake at 2AM, so I doubt if I’ll be able to stay up until midnight tonight to kick 2020 all the way out the door unless I manage to take a nap. 😴

What a poopshow, amirite? Wish we could purge the whole thing from our memories, except for the part about my adorable grandson being born. I am not a fan of playing games over Zoom, though it’s better than nothing. Oh, somehow I managed to “lock” the keyboard of my new laptop, which sent me into a towering rage before dawn. I had to google on my phone how to unlock it, but that didn’t help, so I restarted. I don’t understand why turning off and on fixes stuff, but wev. It’s always the last thing I think of, even after all this time. I am typing this on my laptop now, so all is good until my next meltdown.😜

I’m no stranger to making resolutions, but like most people I don’t stick to mine, so why bother? The only thing special about tomorrow is the psychological aspect regarding the year number… nothing really changes. We are still in this plague, still have to wear masks, not socialize, not eat in restaurants, yada yada. I have flight credits, but they’ll likely expire before I’m all vaxxed up. 🙁

I made a new Facebook account in April after staying away for over 2 years, and while it’s nice to reconnect with peeps WHO DON’T READ MY BLOG, that’s the only thing good about it. So much repetitive bitching and boringness otherwise. I have never understood why people feel a need to link to news articles there or quote massively from them as if we can’t find CNN for our own damn selves. It’s not like the news isn’t in our faces 24/7 every time we log on to any device. It’s so irritating!

I have been trying not to read the political stuff on FB, or participate in it, same as on Medium and here in blogland, though sometimes it’s impossible to resist. Occasionally I retweet political stuff I agree with, but I don’t comment, even when trolled. It’s still a big waste of time. I guess if I were going to have a goal for 2021, it would be to read even fewer political posts and articles than I do now. There is nothing to be gained from it and every time I spend an hour reading that crap, there goes a poem that might have been written or read. I think of it this way ~ poetry can bring beauty into this world (or at least attempt to do so), while political jabber only ever takes away from beauty. It’s all stinky trash.

So yeah… the ending of this awful year hasn’t made me feel especially galvanized to take bold action to shake up my life. There’s really nothing much I can do at this point, except keep on keeping on. And you know what? That is good enough. I’ve long since abandoned the notion of perfection, as if that’s even remotely possible to attain, and while my habits can be tweaked for the better, I’m pretty okay with my mediocrity. I look forward to doing exciting things again, such as having a veggie quesadilla inside a restaurant at a table with friends and playing a board game in person afterwards. Yeah baby. Take me back to 2019, when we didn’t know how good we had it. I suppose that’s a “privileged” thing to say, but at least I acknowledge this.

Merry Christmas #PoiMo

What a weird year. I can’t complain too much because my work hasn’t suffered, plus most importantly no one in my immediate family/friends circle has caught the thing. And though I miss my daughters a lot, I did get to see them (and my SILs and grands). My last visit with the grands in Los Angeles left a lot to be desired ~ brief, masked, outdoors. But still, I did get to see them, which is more than some can say. I feel for you peeps! I hope you are managing to find some joy in the season despite all the restrictions. 🎄

Tomorrow, which is today, since I’m writing this on Christmas Eve and will schedule it for the morning, my roomie and I will cook/bake some yummies and also do a painting. If mine turns out well, I’ll post it. If it sucks, we’ll forget I ever mentioned it. Gonna be hard to beat my rainbow tree! I’m really looking forward to all that and just having a chill day. Normally, I’d be seeing a movie (or three) in the theater this time of year, but instead I’ll search for something on Prime or whatever. Yesterday I watched Dear Viola, a romcom, and it was pretty cute and not too clichéd. If you like romcoms, I recommend it.

So, let’s talk about writing. Unlike some, my WordPress experience this year has been relatively GRRRR-free (so far). A few glitches have occurred, but none of the constant annoyances other bloggers have mentioned. (I hope WP straightens that stuff out for you ASAP.) I’m happy with my blog, the app, and the writing community I’m part of here. As I said the other day, my posts have changed a little this year, in that I’m trying to avoid being repetitive (so I’m saying it again) and want to present higher-quality fiction and poetry. I plan to continue my two prompts: Tuesday Story and Thursday Inspo. Posts for both have been scheduled through the end of February because I am the Empress of Efficiency and Organization. I hope you will participate in one or both, and if you have been participating ~ thank you! 😍

I have zero plans to begin writing a new novel or poetry collection or to finish up any of my romance novels in progress. Bleh. So out of that mood lately. I do have another novel (actually a collection of longish short stories) that I may work on again at some point. The whole thing is interconnected and complex, so it takes a lot of focus. It is within the realm of possibility that I can gather up the scraps of my wandering attention long enough to concentrate on editing what I have and adding to the collection. We shall see.

As mentioned, I’ve been writing on Medium. It’s an interesting experience. There is a lot of cool stuff there ~ I recently read articles about ants and prime numbers and election integrity, along with a great Christmas short story and a whole bunch of awesome poetry. It’s all so inspiring! Tons of the articles are meta ~ writing about writing, how to make money writing, tips on increasing your page views and follower counts, yada. I’m not too excited about most of that, although a few have been helpful. Mostly, I want to read and write fiction and poetry, as always. I do offer the occasional humorous essay, or at least I believe I’m slightly funny anyway. 😛

Alrighty then. Hope everyone has a good or at least tolerable day.

Outstanding!

The lovely Sadje has nominated me for the Outstanding Blogger Award! Thank you so much, Sadje. It’s nice to be appreciated. As per my award policy, I choose to answer the questions only.

1. How did the Covid-19 affect your life?
   I feel luckier than most. My work and income have not been affected (so grateful for this), and I have been able to stay pretty isolated from people and minimize my risk. The worst thing for me is that I’ve hardly seen my daughters and their families, and I miss them so much. I also miss friends/movies/restaurants, but that hasn’t been as big of a deal as not seeing my daughters in person.
   
2. What one special thing would you like to do for the world?
   Wave my magic wand and clean up all the garbage everywhere so we and the animals we share the planet with can have clean, healthful air, water, and land to live on.
   
3. It’s almost the end of the year, what one thing do you want to accomplish before saying goodbye to 2020?
   I have already accomplished my goal for 2020: finish writing my novel Ghosted and publish it on Amazon for Kindle.
   
4. What do you look most forward to in 2021?
   Seeing my family in person, selling the books I’ve written, becoming a popular writer on Medium.
   
5. What is your favorite song of all time?
   It varies with my mood. The ones that hold the top spots are “Hotel California” by the Eagles, “This Guy’s In Love With You” by Burt Bacharach (Oasis has a great version too), “If You Could Read My Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot, “Landslide” by Stevie Nicks, and “Into The Mystic” by Van Morrison (the entire Moondance album really).
   
6. What one book would you recommend to everyone?
   Where I’m Calling From by Ray Carver has something for everyone.
   
7. What one question would you like to ask me?
   Have you bought Ghosted yet? 😀
   
   

FPQ82: Self-Criticism

Fandango provocatively asks…

Do you judge yourself by the same standards that you judge others? If not, are you harsher or more lenient on yourself?

My tendency is to be pretty harsh overall, both on myself and others, and I have an ongoing project to be kinder to both. What happens though is that while I may begin with the same standards for myself and others, it’s easier for me to give others a break. I can see why they made poor choices, while it’s really REALLY hard for me to forgive myself for mine. I get so angry when I make typos or forget a word, but I’m okay if others do these things (somewhat). I work to this day to quit beating myself up for my misplaced trust in people and failing to meet the “right” man on a dating site. I’m still mad at myself for not going to a better university when I had the chance (twice!). I wish I were a more talented writer, or that I could be good at something artistic. I feel so… ordinary, but I think it’s fine for others to be ordinary. Maybe that means I’m very egotistical ~ who am I to think I should have a special talent?! I’ll just muddle through life like 99.9% of the rest of people and leave nothing interesting behind. Not that my children aren’t interesting! But you know… they aren’t ME. What have I done? Meh, nothing…

Thanks for this question, Fandango. Now I feel even worse!😜🙃🤣

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Image credit to Fandango

Hostess Postess

Dr. Tanya asks…

What is the value of running writing prompts to your writing in general, and your blog in particular?

I host two prompts: the Monday Peeve and Thursday Inspiration. These prompts don’t do anything to help my writing ~ I continue them because they are fun! 🤩

The Monday Peeve is a feature that people enjoyed on one of my older blogs (gone now), and I decided to try it here. I’m really pleased with all the comments it inspires, plus the several regular participants who peeve on their own blogs. I think it’s my most interactive post, and I like that a lot.

Thursday Inspiration is the opposite really: I don’t get much interaction in comments, though usually it generates a bunch of likes. Some regulars post their take on the theme, and I look forward to reading those. But my main goal of hosting this prompt is pure selfish enjoyment. When I’m working on my Happy Color pictures, thinking of a theme song adds another layer of pleasure to my relaxation. 😍

What I don’t care about are blog traffic stats. Many prompt hosts appear to be motivated by them, but they mean nothing to me since my blog isn’t monetized and I’m too lazy to market my books… the idea being that increased traffic would result in book sales, pffft. I just checked my sales and they are completely flatlined. But I must have sold one a few months ago, since I was notified today about a minuscule payment.

~*~

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Ready [82 words]

It was nearly dusk and he adorned himself with jewels and feathers. Dancing in front of the mirror, he felt giddy with confidence. Surely they would see him tonight for the king that he was, instead of ignoring him as usual. The colorful accoutrements made him feel regal and powerful, bold enough to take on an army of detractors. Okay then! Onward with his new identity as a conquering lion…

He was ready to read his first poem to a live audience.

~*~

Written for Eugie’s Weekly Prompt.

©️2020 Paula Light and Light Motifs II. No unauthorized use permitted. Please check out Paula’s books for sale on Amazon.

Image credit – lovethispic.com

Housekeeping Fail

So I haven’t been around blogtown much today. That’s because I’m obsessed with a new task. No, it’s not real work or anything like that. I got the bright idea from another blog to delete all my “unattached” images that were taking up space in the media folder. I love love love deleting things, and this has bugged me for a long time. Yay! Found the place, selected unattached, and POOF all gone.

Well, guess what? Right. It deleted some attached images too. Obviously, I have to go back TEN FREAKING YEARS and fix every post. I mean, what else can I do? There are a ton of issues associated with this fixing…

1. Going back to the beginning and chronologically returning to the present is not easy. After a while, WordPress figures eh enough time spent in the past… I’ll just refresh now and pop her up to today. This puts me in such a rage I can’t even. I’ve also tried starting from today and going back, but the same thing happens. Pop!
2. When I began this blog, I had like 10 followers and I didn’t care at all about an audience. I wrote for myself, quoting poets, jabbering about books, and sticking up pics for Wordless Wednesday. Many posts had no images, which now I see makes them BORING. So, since I’m doing the thing, I’m putting images on all my posts.
3. I see we can’t have an actual outline here (2A, 2B, etc. ~ OF COURSE NOT!). Okay, so I don’t have the correct pics for my early posts and I’m not gonna spend even more ridiculous time googling them. I am just using what I have in my media library to get close enough. I’ve had to delete some Wordless Wednesdays completely because they are actually wordless and I don’t know what the hell was there (some still have pics and are fine ~ it’s random).
4. An issue that arises is… can I use an image I added to my library in 2018 for a 2012 post? What if it didn’t exist then? I’ve decided I don’t care. Well, I do, but eff it. POSTS NEED IMAGES!
5. I was worried about not doing “alt text” for these new additions, but I didn’t do that back then for any images. Consistency is important, so I’m leaving the alt text off the images (along with the copyright notice at the end of posts like I have now). Plus, I don’t always do it for current posts, especially for the Happy Color pics.
6. Here’s something completely maddening: searches rarely work in the media library. Go on, try it. You’ll get random stuff that isn’t what you want. Like say I want some sort of boat-in-water picture. I’ll search for boat, ship, water, waves, ocean, etc. But generally the pic I want THAT EXISTS IN THE FOLDER will not come up. Then I have to scroll through hundreds of photos to find it. I pretty much know what’s there and want to avoid grabbing new images because I have so many already.
7. Another issue is videos. I noticed that some were greyed out because I guess they weren’t permitted (I often use fun ones rather than the official ones). Naturally, I can’t leave them like that, but I’m NOT NOT NOT spending time YouTubing new ones. What to do? I delete the bad video and put a note saying so.
8. I’m not fixing my “poast” and other silly spellings to conform to how I write now, nor am I taking out the massive amount of cursing. That’s what I wrote, so it all stays. I am trying not to read the posts closely or else I’ll want to delete them all. I have a lot of gaps anyway because until the last few years, I only blogged once in a while, maybe twice a week or so. Oh, and I kept deleting my complaints about dating and such every time I went back on a dating site. Gah.

The whole thing is a gigantic pain in the butt, but I’ll feel good once it’s done. I should have been cleaning up older posts all along, so it wouldn’t be such a monumental task all at once.

Image originally found at Pixabay.

TSAONGAF 1

TSAONGAF is the abbreviation for Mark Manson’s self-help book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. I’ve read MM’s articles with some regularity, and last week I read his bestselling book. It was a great experience for me and I learned a lot. As I said earlier, I’m going to blog about some of my thoughts on his various concepts.

What does MM mean by not giving a f*ck? He points out that most of us are wrapped up in caring about so many things that we feel perpetually entitled to a perfect world and freak out when things don’t go how we want. I guess you could say that our giving f*cks too freely has turned us into a bunch of whiny Karens. MM suggests we drill down to our basic values (and change them if they aren’t working for us), and then find the few, important things to focus on. “Let the little things go.” We’ve heard that before, right?

Obsessing over way too many unimportant details has been a huge problem for me my whole life. I can’t simply decide not to and that’s that. “Don’t do that” is a negative statement, and when you focus on a negative, well, you know what happens. “Don’t eat potato chips”… now all you can think about are potato chips. I’ve been trying to substitute the negative statements with positive ones. Focus on work. Pay attention to family. Engage in self-care routines. Get more sleep and exercise. Read more books.

Focusing on these positives has had the effect of pushing some of the trivial crap away. It really does work. I don’t have time (or the inclination) to engage in social media arguments (a huge source of past stress) when I’m in the middle of a good book. If I’m filling my time with pleasurable activities, I’m less inclined to click on a new dating site “just to see.” I know that leads down a bad path. I can step back now. It’s a bit harder in some areas, such as driving ~ I still get enraged when someone does a dangerous maneuver. What does MM say about that?

It’s okay for life to suck sometimes, is what he says. We are not entitled to a perfect life, and there’s no need to feel inadequate when something fails to be perfect. So I had a frustrating drive to Los Angeles. That’s just how it is some days and it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me or the way I’m living my life. Sometimes traffic is sucky and frustrating. That’s okay. I literally had this ridiculous conversation in my head the other week. I was so stupid for letting my daughter go to UCB. She had a full ride to UCD and wouldn’t have met her future husband there probably. I’d have more money now and wouldn’t have to make this horrible drive when I want to see her. God, I’m so dumb!

But then I got to her house (a half hour later than expected) and had such a great time with my family. I’m not “dumb” because there was a detour and some other drivers were being rude and awful. It’s okay for things to suck sometimes. I’m not entitled to perfection. It’s hard though to keep that mindset all the time… I’m constantly reminding myself to stay positive and not dwell on small annoyances. Being positive is more of a habit now than it used to be though, so I am improving. Slowly.

Okay, that’s the end of this PoiMo. I’ll do more MM musing another time. 🙂

Image originally found on Pixabay.

30 Day Book Challenge 5

I did this challenge in groups of 6 and this will be my last post in the series. It was a lot of fun!

25. A book villain I actually love would be Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones. I mean, come on, the guy is a total creep, banging his sister, and throwing a little kid off a tower when he witnessed them. But except for those minor details…

26. I’m not big on “shoulds,” and I also can’t recall reading a biography–they were all autobiographies. Born Standing Up by Steve Martin was probably my favorite. I do recommend it for his fans. Papa John by John Phillips was also interesting.

27. I don’t reread books yearly, but Where I’m Calling From, a short story collection by Ray Carver, is a book I’ve read a few times.

28. Watership Down by Richard Adams is a classic on my to-be-read list.

29. I love the cover of Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things and the stories inside as well.

30. The book I’m reading right now is Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. I’m about half done and it’s fantastic. Wish I had read it sooner because I’ve already learned a lot.

Great challenge!

Image stolen from Sandmanjazz.