This is a big week for me. On Tuesday, the Spring Semester starts, and I will find myself a full-time student again for the first time in 13 years. This will not be my first experience as a ‘non-traditional’ student. In 2009, at the age of thirty-six, I went back to school to get a CIS degree. But that was while I was raising young children full time and […]
I hardly ever look at my sales dashboard on the kdp site. I maybe check in once a week (or less) It’s not that I don’t care, its that looking at it too often drives me to despair. But tonight, I took a look to see how 2023 went. I’m not going to use specific numbers but focus on comparing this year’s performance to previous years (no one needs to
I didn’t watch as much television this year as I did years before. Actually, that’s not true. When my boyfriend (now Fiancé) Jimmy moved in with me back in March, we needed to synch up all of the shows we wanted to watch together. So, I’ve rewatched a lot of previous seasons of shows along with watching new seasons. As far as new stuff, I watched 33 complete seasons of
My Favorite Television Shows of 2023 Read More »
The end of the year always makes me reflective, as you can probably tell from my last few posts. Today the subject came up on a podcast: what truths did you learn the hard way? Which made me think about that issue for myself. I’ve learned most things the hard way. I think that’s just part of life for nearly everyone, and these five things are probably not revelatory to
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When this year started, I set myself a challenge on Goodreads to read 100 books. Currently, I have read 159 books, so I guess you could say I overperformed. Those are print books, eBooks, and audiobooks. I make no distinctions. There’s nothing on the list under 100 pages, either, so I didn’t really count individually published short stories, though I did count the collections. I love books and I love
My Favorite Books of 2023 Read More »
As the year ends, I find myself in a time of transition. Some things are good. Great, even. On December 5th, which was the first anniversary of our first date, my boyfriend, Jimmy, and I had brunch at the same place we’d first met a year ago. He’d invited my mom and dad to join us. And after we’d eaten, he asked me to marry him. I said yes, of
Congratulations I’m Sorry Read More »
It’s amazing how you think you have yourself figured out, but then something will happen that makes you understand you had everything wrong. You didn’t know yourself, and that’s a little bit scary, but it can also fuel your own sense of wonder. If you maintain the capacity to surprise yourself, your life will never be boring. I had myself pegged and an easy-going free spirit. A real ‘go-with-the-flow’ type
Confessions of a Control Freak Read More »
I’ve had to get real about some bad habits I’ve developed. And it’s kind of funny that I’m posting this a few days after my social media post, but that’s probably also part of the problem. Basically, I’m on social media too much. I hesitate to call it an addiction, because I don’t know if it meets the same criteria as regards to what is actually going on in the
A note about something I’m struggling with Read More »
Twitter used to be the place for artists, writers, journalists, and other professionals to hang out online. It had great discoverability, and people built huge followings seemingly from scratch. People sold books, connected with agents and editors, and became (sometimes unfortunately) celebrities based on the pithy comments they posted about matters both serious and inane. At its height, it had over 528.3 million monthly active users. If you wanted to
Social Media Showdown Read More »
A while back, when I was going through the process of restructuring my life in a way that would allow me to be productive, I did a deep dive into habit formation. I read a bunch of blog posts, as well as James Clear’s Atomic Habits and Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. All of this was instructive, and I did look at my habits and
The Truth About Habits? Read More »