Journal: Week 1

(Thanks to Nova)

1. I’m most looking forward to making progress on my novel.

2. Three goals for this month: edit everything I wrote on my novel in November, exercise daily, blog daily.

3. Today is quiet and productive; wish I had Diet Coke.

4. Looking forward to seeing my grandbaby again soon.

5. I don’t want to forget how much fun I had over the holidays when my whole little family was together.

6. This year I’ll be going up to NorCal at least twice.

7. My top three priorities are: work, health, writing.

8. Places I have visited so far this year would be… home and work! Target and the gas station. Costco for an eye exam and to order new glasses and sunglasses. Oh, and the restaurant that didn’t have hot tea. 🙄

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The Mysterious New Math

A bouquet 💐 of thanks to Rory for giving me a Liebster award! I don’t keep track of these things, so idk if this is my first Lieb, or what.

Can we talk about the directions for a minute? (I’m adding periods because these are sentences.)

“Acknowledge the blogger that gave it to you and display the award.”

Okay, that’s clear enough.

“Answer 11 questions that the blogger gave you.”

We’ll come back to this one.

“Give 8 random thoughts about yourself.”

Kaaay.

“Nominate 8 other bloggers and notify them of their nomination.”

Meh. But even if…

“Ask your nominees 8 questions.”

Now, hang on. Does anyone else see the problem here? How the heck are you supposed to answer the eleven questions the blogger gives you when here it tells you to give the next pile of peeps eight questions? Is this the new-new math? No wonder peeps can’t make change without computers.

*

My 8 Questions

If vampires can’t see their reflections, why is their hair always so neat?

– Obviously they have a stylist on payroll. I heard it’s the same one Mooch uses.

If a kid refuses to sleep during nap time, are they guilty of resisting a rest?

– I’d take that with a grain assault.

If they weren’t called grapes and you had the opportunity to rename them, what would you call them?

– Blumps

If the grass wasn’t green what colour would you make it?

– Purple

Has your imaginary friend ever had an imaginary friend, or just you?

– She cheated on me way back, just like in the movie Her, which is why I have a cat meow.

So, dance in the rain, wallow in the mud or naked angel in the snow?

– It’s a marvelous night for a raindance…

Can you describe your blog to me without using the letters i and e?

– A crazy salad

What are you afraid of becoming?

– Homeless

*

Okay. Here are 8 random thoughts about me, which will also segue into 8 questions, should anyone care to answer them here or elsewhere. If you’d like to grab the award to display and answer the questions on your own blog, consider yourself tagged. Again, 8 =/= 11, in my world.

1. I love math, though I’ve forgotten a lot. I think it would be fun to take it all again, starting from geometry (my favorite). Is there any subject from school you wish you could remember more of?

2. I would love to be able to afford to quit working and get a masters degree, or just take poetry and other classes for fun. What would you do if you didn’t have to work?

3. Travel is not high on my list of priorities. This makes me an outlier, since most people are always going on and on about traveling. It’s just so expensive and disruptive to my routines. Plus, I don’t like to leave my kitty. 🐱 What makes you an outlier?

4. I’m very aware of time slipping away now, and each day that passes is one less I will have to spend with family, finish my writing projects, read the books in my queue, etc. This is why I’ve pretty much stopped watching TV and going to movies. What unfinished projects are on your list?

5. I live in an area I can’t really afford, and if for whatever reason I am forced to move from the affordable place I have now, I don’t know what I will do. I think about this all the time and there is no good solution. What is your top fear at the moment?

6. I get super annoyed when restaurants don’t have hot tea, or even offer to nuke a cup of hot water for me in their microwave (then I can use my own tea bag, which I always have a supply of). Is this so unreasonably difficult? Not talking about fast food, but normal restaurants. What makes you crazy irritated at a restaurant?

7. I’m trying to be healthier this year, which for me means exercise, but it’s really hard to get motivated to exercise when I’m constantly cold and achy, even if I know logically that (eventually) the exercise will help me feel less cold and achy. Do you have any circular issues of this nature?

8. Once you’ve broken a bad habit, it’s easier to break others ~ this is true for me! I gave up afternoon candy breaks. Then dating sites. Then Facebook. Somewhere in there I gave up arguing with people online (long, long time ago I gave up trolling for reactions). More recently I’ve begun simply blocking people on any forum when they annoy me, rather than reading their posts and gloating to myself about what an ass they are. That’s just more wasted time, as is reading the jerks who comment on Fox News’ articles. Time is too precious and it’s running out. Describe your thoughts on time and/or bad habits.

Fandango Made Me Do It

I thought I was gonna get away with just one post today because it was that long FTS thingie, but now Fandango accused me of saying his prompts aren’t fun, which I did not! If he still believes I did, I’ll issue a politician’s apology: please forgive me if you feel offended.

Now that I’ve bothered to begin more jabberish, I may as well shovel in the rest of the prompts. I hope you’ll all show me the proper amount of gratitude for that.

You may have noticed I’m spelling post the normal way. Getting bored with lolcat. It’s been a while. The dogs bark, and the circus moves on. (Look it up.) I don’t like to get too predictable, too trapped into a pattern of behavior. That stifles creativity.

As part of my recovery, my reclaiming of my time and my own goals, I have not been Ms. Hospitality. I can’t be. In order to do all my paying work, take care of my health, and focus on my writing, I’ve had to cut back dramatically on entertainment. I no longer go to movies or meetups. I don’t date or chat on FB. I don’t watch the newest stuff on Prime and Netflix. I accept very few social invites and issue even fewer. Etc.

I do, however, blog and tweet, since I find both of these communities conducive to writing. I was going to join a book club, but that didn’t work out, which is probably for the best. I do try to read a few books per month, except for November when I NaNo. Because family is everything, they get priority… but luckily they’re mostly too busy for me!

One-Liner Wednesday

This quote illustrates my basic philosophy of “perfection is the enemy of the good.” We can do good if we don’t worry about being perfect, whether we’re talking about personal goals or global ones.

Sometimes I get the sads when I think about all the kitties I can’t save… how I’ll never be able to afford a big house so I can adopt lots of shelter cats and donate gobs of money to kitty charities. But I saved one kitty, and every day he gets plenty of food and a safe and warm(ish) place to live, which means everything to him, even if he doesn’t know, lol. 🐱

I try to keep the philosophy in mind to stay upbeat when things don’t go as perfectly as I would like.

~*~

Prompt from Linda

Quote from Goodreads

Staying Positive 🎉

I’m taking a cue from Revolutionary Musings and calling my plans for 2019 “goals,” not “resolutions.” When I think about the word resolution, it makes me feel I’ve done something wrong and need to improve. There’s the constant worry and pressure that I’ll fail ~ and isn’t that what so many people say? They’ve failed to keep their resolutions. Or they don’t even make any because they know they’ll fail. I want to be more upbeat this year. ☀️

Goals are positive. Even if we don’t reach them completely we can say we’ve made progress, and progress is good. Last year, I wrote/finished two new poetry books and they’re up for sale now on Amazon, and I completed the NaNoWriMo 50K word challenge. I’m proud of myself! 😀 Did I complete all my 2018 goals? No. But I don’t feel like a failure. I’ve made progress and will continue to do so.

For 2019, I want to finish my novel Ghosted. A novel is harder than poetry or a book of short stories, since when working full-time it takes an immense amount of focus day after day crammed into bits of free space. If I break my concentration for a couple weeks to “have a life,” it’s difficult to get that focus back. But this is the plan and I anticipate finishing my novel by the end of the year.

I also want to exercise more, which is a thing I say every year, and each year I feel worse and do less, but that doesn’t mean I should abandon the goal. This past year I was not very active at all and though I can’t do a lot, I can do a little, and I want to do that little bit. Realistically, there will be days I can do nothing but slog through from morning to night and congratulate myself for simply existing with chronic pain, but every day isn’t like that, TG. Those better days are days I can exercise.

Forex today. I planned to take a long (for me) walk to start the year off nicely. But I awoke with a migraine ~ not from booze, lol. I don’t drink alcohol. But I stayed up very late and it’s crazy windy too, both of which are triggers. Anyway, I’ve taken meds and later will exercise to a video instead of going outdoors. This is just how it is ~ I have to accept it and work within the parameters instead of giving up. 👊🏻

Regarding blogging. It brings me great joy, both writing and interacting with people who love to write. Those last three words are key though. I’ve culled some blogs from my list recently that weren’t much about the joy of writing and only about getting us to click links. No thx.

But there’s more. I like participating in the prompts; however, I don’t understand why some of them require so much kooky hoop-jumping. Linking back to the prompt post should be enough. I have created a few new tags for my faves, okay. But I’m not going to click frogs or create more tags or follow a pile of arbitrary rules just to bring more readers to the prompt host. In the end, it’s the host who gets the clicks, let’s remember this. ✅

My goal for 2019 is to get more reading and writing joy out of every minute I spend immersed in the world of words, so things that contribute to this goal have a solid place in that world… and things that don’t or that gobble up more time than they’re worth, do not. 👎🏻

Going along with this goal is reading less news. Most of the “news” isn’t really news ~ it’s tabloid type crap and a waste of my time, more of an addiction really. He said/she said, insults, rehashing, garbage about celebs and the royals, blah. It’s only going to get worse with the 2020 election coming up. 👿 I don’t need to read every scrap of nasty gossip and all the hot takes on what someone else said and who is banned from where. It’s simply tiresome.

I may begin doing some photos again, with a catch ~ they’ll be new photos. No more spending gobs of time trawling through old albums taking photos of photos. Bleh! If I happen to catch a shot of something that goes with one of the City Sonnet themes, cool. This aligns with my goal of having fun blogging and interacting with bloggers, but not wasting time doing boring, obsessive stuffs.

Onto forming happier, more productive traditions!

Happy New Year!

The Haunted Wordsmith had a great idea to post some songs for the transition into 2019. Here are some of my fave uplifting tunes to start the year on a positive note!

May your New Year be awesome! 🎉🥳✨

2018 Wrap Party

This was an interesting year.

I gave up both Facebook and dating sites early in the year. Spent 2017 depressed about both, ostensibly for different reasons but ultimately the same ~ I had devoted a huge amount of time to the pursuit of long-distance friendships and local relationships via both those venues and the end result was similar: meh.*

What’s that BS about how you get out what you put in? Yeah right.

Anyway, I decided to splurge on myself by reclaiming my time and emotional energy, and this was a great gift. I’ve been so much happier and more productive since. In April, I released a poetry book that I finally had time to finish… and yesterday I just released another one. I hope you’ll check them out: All She Wrote (April book) and Monochrome (December book).

In June, it was my absolute joy to welcome my new baby granddaughter to the world. She brings total love and sweetness to my life, and I’m thankful for all the wonderful family time I’ve had this year.

At some point during 2018, a WordPress prompt site closed up shop. Zillions of us who love to natter on about nothing had the big sads. A handful of bloggers stepped up and created their own prompts, which was very cool of them… but then a weird thing happened. Instead of popping over to the site, grabbing the prompt, and writing to our same audience, we began to actually interact with these new prompters and their followers. We started to play more writing games and follow each other and turn into a supportive creative community of awesome!

In October, I was lucky to be able to take a week off from work to help my daughter in NorCal. Also, I got to bond with her new puppy. Last week I had an amazing time with both my daughters, their hubbies, and the baby. Family rocks!

On Thanksgiving, I had a super fun time with friends at the LA Zoo, and yesterday we went up to Simi to visit the Reagan Library. I hope to visit more museums and local points of interest in 2019. Though I was into movies for a while, I find lately I’m feeling rather indifferent toward them.

I have tons of books to read! Not literally, since most are on my Kindle. And now it’s time to begin integrating the mess I wrote on Ghosted during NaNoWriMo with my main novel document. Oh fun. After that, I have to write “the ending,” by which I mean the last third of the book.

And to wrap up the wrap, for the past 7 years, I’m beyond lucky and grateful and thankful that I get to share my life with this amazing lil dude. ❤️🐱❤️

*I treasure my friendships that transcend FB. Not talking about you great folks.

Upswing

The Haunted Wordsmith asks us to use page 192, line 6 of the nearest book as our prompt. I’m going to the next full sentence and gonna make you smarties guess which book and author.

“Life, for J. R. Isadore, had definitely taken an upswing.”

Upswing. That’s a fine word. Seven letters, good for a bingo. I still think about stuff like that even though I no longer play WWF or any phone games. Serious me mode. The otter day I was searching for the calculator on my Mac and I found chess. Naturally, I had to open it. God, a brand new pristine game, soooo tempting! Luckily I wasn’t allowed to start playing until I downloaded a microphone (huh?) and agreed to some new gobble, so I declined all that and the chess went away. Whew. Remember when I downloaded spider solitaire on my poor ice-tea’d Lenovo and disappeared for a week? Well, I remember. I was trapped in that game web and couldn’t escape. It was nutz! In any case, my commitment to writing is paying off cuz very soon I will have a brand new poetry book up on Amazon that no one will read, hurrah!

I’m on an uproll.

One-Liner Wednesday

This has always been my philosophy, even though I’ve pushed it aside at times when trying to navigate relationships, especially romances. But since I’ve given those up, I feel much freer to live my life on my own terms. I may appear to be “normal” and blend in with the crowd wherever I go, but the older I get the more of an oddball I am. For example, I just had four solid days off from my office job and spent quite a bit of that time at home (my preference), but I did not once turn on my TV.

“It’s not you, it’s me.” <– That’s what I say to the offerings on Prime and Netflix, plus to my own library of unwatched DVDs. Lots of good stuff in there, but I’d rather read and write. As I said, I’m an oddball. But I can’t make progress as a writer if I zone out in front of the TV like the rest of the world. And writing is simply a higher priority to me than watching another show, however enjoyable it may be.

Most nights, I don’t eat dinner. Omg! Yes, I know: I’m a freak. But I like to stay slim (and given my family history, I believe it’s important), and I have a slow metabolism from being older and not exercising much. I like to eat breakfast and lunch (not huge meals for either), and have only a small snack at night, such as a banana, with a cup of tea. Obviously I make exceptions for getting together with peeps for dinner (I skip lunch those days), but usually this is what I do. I find this way of eating to be extremely helpful in keeping me more alert during the day and getting better sleep at night too.

I’ve been so much more productive since finally flinging off the shackles of what I should do to “be normal” vs what works for me in terms of progress. You can see how none of this would be conducive to a dating type of relationship where a guy would want a real dinner every night and then need to snuggle with me in front of the tube. Been there, done that. Thank u, next!

~*~

One-Liner Wednesday

In Other Words: Done

This year is almost done and dusted, and I must say it was a big improvement over 2017. My heart finished healing from past emotional injuries and I was able to get back into writing in a major way again. I kicked NaNoWriMo butt and wrote 50K words on my novel in November. My latest poetry collection is almost ready to roll out. And best of all, I experienced the absolute joy of meeting my first grandbaby!

~*~

From Patricia’s Place