Belated Thanksgiving

Tags

Creative Writing, focus, join Nano, loss of focus, NaNoWriMo, new job, overwhelmed, sequel, studio, Thanksgiving, wellness, Writing

Well!  Here I am!  I tried desperately to write a post last week… to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving…

I failed!

Miserably!

I have now finished two weeks of the new job and have FINALLY just opened up three hours of available time at the wellness studio!

I also spent the last two shifts at Passport Health training someone new.

And through it all, I’m still trying to wait patiently to hear from the publisher about my book!

On the writing front it has mostly been attempts at blog posts and business letters and introductions for the wellness studio.

It’s supposed to be an exciting time yet I feel tired and uninspired.  I’m finding it difficult to focus on anything.

Last Monday we finished closing the pool.  Wednesday I took off to the trailer and the weather was fantastic!  I went to the beach and we had to turn the A/C on to cool the trailer down.  We never had to turn on the heat.  Had I actually worn my water shoes, I might have actually gone into the lake!  However, on Thursday we closed the trailer.  Summer, my friends, is O.V.E.R. and that makes me sad and gloomy too.

But that does mean Nanowrimo is right around the corner… full on writing for a month! At least I can HOPE.

If you’re thinking of joining Nano this year, now is the time to jump on the website and get signed up!

It might be time for me to work out the sequel to the novel that I’ve sent out to that publisher.  Sometimes forcing yourself to write 1,667 words a day is what it takes to get a story out of you and onto the page.  You have to work so fast that everything comes pouring out.  Then you can pick through after the 50,000 words are there and organize it all and see what you can come up with.  It works… it has worked for me many times and I hope that I have the time and patience for it to work again.

So, come on, join in the fun!

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Writing on my mind…

Tags

#PitMad, agitation, Creative Writing, every authors dream, fan the flames, fuel the fire, full novel, Ideas, interest, noted, publisher, stress, Twitter pitch day, what-if?, Writing

So I don’t know how much my stress levels have lessened vs. just changed source!  Despite all the stress I did feel from where I was I feel a different stress due to the change in schedule… as I’ve told people before, I don’t do stress well… I don’t manage it well.  Unless, of course, it’s something that I REALLY, REALLY want!

So in that regard, now that the job has changed, my mind returns to writing.  Like I said to someone yesterday, I get EXTREMELY agitated when I can’t write… either due to writer’s block or lack of time so, of course, you can begin to imagine where I’m going with this!

Add to that this next little tidbit and you will understand why I’m feeling like crawling the walls…

September 6 was #PitMad on Twitter… a pitch day for novels!  So I tossed up six of my novels.  Well, I got a bite!  I got a like so I followed the instructions and sent the first 50 pages and then last week they contacted me… they had read the first 50 pages and asked, if the book was still available, if I could send the entire manuscript!

So now I’m sitting on pins and needles waiting to hear from them again!  I can’t help it… isn’t this the one thing that all authors wait for?  I realize that it can still go either way but it’s certainly exciting and it serves as fuel to fan the flames of my greatest desire which is to write.

I played the what-if game yesterday… what if they come back to me and want to know if I could write a sequel?  What if they want that sequel in a hurry?  Can I do it?  I’m not asking that question on the true basis of can or can’t… as in ability but I ask Can I do it from the perspective of having the time and that spark of creativity at the moment that I need it?

So I am waiting… and I continue to wait since Sunday night I had to resend it because, for some reason, they couldn’t open the file… I might have been excited about sending the email and hit send before it completely attached.  It’s the only thing I could think of that made sense.  Of course there were some Higher Power thoughts there too but I’ll keep those to myself for right now because I don’t want to jinx myself too much!

So I started to flesh out some ideas just in case… because isn’t that what authors do?

The End of Chapter 12…

Tags

at my writing desk, Chapters, Creative Writing, emotional, job change, NaNoWriMo, new adventure, new job, sequel, the end, unsteady ground, wellness, Writing

Are our lives written as chapters?

With the change of jobs after 12 years it makes me wonder.  It feels like the old chapter has closed and new one is about to begin.  I’ve never really thought of it that way despite being a writer.  Despite having sat to start writing my memoirs of writing a few years ago I never quite put life into the context of a book with scenes and chapters and sometimes even THE END followed by a sequel.

I am back in my room, at least for this post!  I carried my laptop upstairs last night and set it on the desk exactly for this moment.  How does it feel? Good actually.  This is my usual Sunday morning stomping ground, or it was until almost 2 years ago when I got the new laptop and I left it on the dining room table which then became my main workspace as the writing desk in my room became the new headquarters for recently worn clothing that may or may not need to be washed… you know the pile… you have one.  We all have one!

So Friday was my last day at the office.  This past week was very teary for me especially on my drives to and from.  The mood in the office was subdued and I had many of the patients that I had contacted ahead of time drop in for last hugs, farewells, well-wishes and even some parting gifts.  That’s not why I notified the 60-odd that I was departing, I notified them because I helped them in some way, and they left an impression on me too.  I know I don’t have to do it but many have also become my friends and I’d like to maintain contact even if only to help them in the future if I can.

So my new adventure begins on Monday, well, one of my new adventures.  I had written up, to the best of my ability, the descriptions for the wellness studio and submitted them for critique and editing but haven’t heard anything back yet.  That’s okay, with starting the new job I feel the need to postpone that, still.

As for writing, well, I do hope that I can get up and functioning for NaNoWriMo in November.  Hoping I can find some storyline that will help boost me easily to 50,000 words!

I feel like I am on extremely unsteady ground, or as in my favourite song, stormy waters.  I guess the question is “where do I go from here?”  “What happens from this point?”  I’ve spent 12 years with the same schedule going to the same place and now all that is changing.  It’s amazing how, as we age, we become less adaptable to change.  I know some of us have no issues whatsoever  but I do.  Maybe it’s simply because I had so much negative over the course of my life that the idea of change is a scary one.  After all I don’t like horror movies and the idea of scary!

So, I will go now and get ready for a party this afternoon…

 

One Week to Go…

Tags

CBT, changing, courses, Creative Writing, everything changing, Facebook, hope, life coaching, NaNoWriMo, new job, novel, practice makes perfect, short stories, slow down, street team, Writing

As a writer, my intention is to NEVER stop writing, like so many of us, however, as most of us are aware, that’s also not always feasible.

I’m in that situation right now… again.  I am getting frustrated because I keep going from one thing to the next and have been so incredibly busy that both my Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Course and my writing have paid the price and to what?

Well, I have one week of work left in family practice.  The place I have gone every day for the last 12 years of my life.  Where it was a home away from home for 11 of those years.  Despite starting to feel like it was time to go a few years ago that has intensified enormously in the last 17 months.  Now I’m making my move… well, moves, plural.

In the long run my writing is, again, what ends up on hold.  I scroll through Facebook and I read posts from authors I follow thanks to Street Team mostly and I read posts from the Practice Makes Perfect team which is all about my Life Coaching and CBT and I frown because I’m currently reading Medical Directives and trying to create descriptions of what I’ll be offering at the Enhanced Wellness Studio in the next little while.

All I can say is that I am hoping that things all settle down and become a little bit ho-hum again and not because I like things boring but the last couple of weeks have had me losing sleep and feeling stressed.  I want to get back to a routine and I want to get back to writing.  I want to SLOW down.  I want to be able to blog every week, or more again and I want to be able to participate in NaNoWriMo in November.  I want to be able to come up with some great story ideas and follow them through!  In some ways I don’t even care if they are short stories or novels right now.

So, my friends and readers, keep writing, as always… live life but SLOW down.

 

Back to IT…

Tags

bios, blog, changes, Creative Writing, new job, novel queries, pitches, queries, relaxing, to-do list, travel, vacation over, week off, wellness, work, Writing

No, I’m not talking about the movie (1990 or 2017 version), I’m talking about work…

But I need another week or so off!

Everything came down the chute this weekend and I have been incredibly busy:

I had three likes on two different novels during last Thursdays #PitMad pitch day on Twitter so I had queries to prepare and send out;

Enhanced Wellness got in touch with the need for bios for me, and

Passport Health set up and communicated my email and other logins to me!

I also wanted to compose a farewell email for some of my patients, plus

I needed to finish my Instructional Plan for school!

My to-do list zoomed from 0 to 100 in 8 seconds!

I have managed to accomplish everything EXCEPT work out a schedule for Enhanced Wellness mostly because of the job change and the need to find some time for a training session or two as a refresher for the travel counselling.

Along the way I have started to develop another longer-term to-do list… mainly around my writing and I can’t help but wonder how much my writing will suffer with all this going on?  Or am I overthinking because my official start date for Enhanced Wellness is tomorrow, September 10, and my official start date at Passport Health is Wednesday, September 12.  All that means that I officially have three jobs–TWO full-time plus a part-time for the remainder of September.

YIKES!

Needless to say that on top of stressing about tomorrow my weekend has been FAR from relaxing as I have consumed myself in getting all this done!

So now I’m going to call it all quits and go sit down and chill out with a movie… and it might just be a Christmas movie!

News! News! Good News!

Tags

at peace, belief, day job, job offer, new job, vacation, work, work stress

Well everyone, IT has happened!  Unfortunately it’s not a publishing contract and nobody has commissioned me to write a series of articles.  It’s all about my sanity!

Whether you believe in God or some other higher entity or nobody at all, I have to be the one to say that though my faith has been tested, it has prevailed!

No, this is not a lesson and I’m not preaching, it’s merely me telling you that sometimes… just sometimes… really good things DO happen.

So after fretting like crazy about what to do about this part-time job I woke Friday morning with a migraine… a migraine to the point of nausea… I assume I’d had it all night to reach that point.

On Thursday afternoon I applied back to a travel clinic I had worked very part-time at about four years ago.  They had put up a post earlier in the week.

She had emailed back later that evening saying she really wanted to talk to me and asked me to complete a 30-minute questionnaire.  Well, before I spent 30 minutes on a questionnaire on Friday morning I wanted to know how part-time it was.  How many hours?  You get the drill.  So I emailed her back.  She wanted to call and I told her it was a great time.

I quickly cancelled the pick-up of the hiring package and waited for her call.

We were on the phone for 45 minutes… and it was amazing!  Oh my God (and I say that with utmost reverence)!  By the end of the call she had offered me the job at 32 hours a week and $2 more per hour than the posting because I’ve done this before and will require little training to get me up to speed!

I was so excited.  Even she said “I don’t know if you believe in God or a higher being but I sat here yesterday praying that the perfect person would come along and your application landed in my inbox.”

The other great thing is it doesn’t start until October 1st which means I am able to give that other guy a month’s notice.  I know most of you will say not to but trust me when I say that it’s being incredibly selfish ALL the way.  Despite him thinking it’s all about him and my respect for him (ha ha) it’s truly all about me!  I’m on vacation for another week so he has a week to digest it… he’s going to treat me like s**t anyway but it also gives him enough time to find and hire someone and that person should be able to start before I leave so there should be continuity of care for the patients that I will miss so much.

So for the weekend I have been at peace.  I am content with what has happened and I think it happened when it was supposed to for whatever reason.  Despite my lack of sanity at this point… where he has driven me to at this point, I can finally be at peace.

 

The Toughest Decisions…

Tags

Creative Writing, decisions, job offer, message, tough decisions, what to do?, what we want, what-if?, Writing, writing/not writing

I am supposed to be on vacation!  Bottom line!  V.A.C.A.T.I.O.N.  That means I should be resting, renewing, relaxing and I’m wound up tighter than a spool of thread (or to quote one of my all-time favourite movies “tighter than my aunt Gladys’s butt” as stated by Richard Dreyfuss in My Life in Ruins)!

Why?

Well as I have made it well known, work is not easy.  I can’t give away the entire story but there are the cultural “servant girl” issues as well as all the mistakes and incompetencies that I keep correcting.  As an RN I’m definitely pushing the boundaries of my scope of practice!

So I have been looking, looking for just about anything to make an exit.  I got a job offer yesterday… retail, 32 hours a week at minimum wage.  I wasn’t expecting it, I was expecting a second interview request… a chance to ask more questions and then say “can I think about it?” at the end.

So since yesterday I have been freaking out.  I simply do NOT know what to do.  As I continue to think about it and do the math, I see everything I have worked for up to this point simply dwindling away.

I have been looking for work for almost 16 months and my mental health is starting to be impacted by this clown.  BUT… the bottom line, is just that… the bottom line.

For years I lived paycheque to paycheque and, I’ll admit, ended up taking cash advances off of credit cards in order to get through a month only to pay the credit card and do it all just before the interest was packed back onto the card the following month.  I can’t go back there.  Having my teaching as extra funds has created a small savings cushion for me.  Not as much as I would like and I do end up dipping into it at the end of each month but a cushion nonetheless.

I don’t think, with good conscience, no matter the impact of the stress, that going back to living that way is a good idea.  I think it would take its own toll on me and be far worse.  I have tried to compare it to having to take stress leave and ending up on 55% of my salary which would require me to basically give up my college pay but I think the unknown plays a big part in all of this.  I can plan all I want for this to be short-term… before the savings run out… but there are no guarantees.  I could end up there for a year and have to move back in with my parents!

Last night was a horrible night already worrying about the money… the lack of income.  I reminded myself that with my teaching pay this fall the one thing I do need to do still is get the kitten neutered something I have continued to put off in order to create a bit of a financial cushion.

I think I need to hold out for something that will be an improvement to the bottom line.  I know from church that it is wrong to worship money and from my Life Coaching course that money, though we should not worship it, IS a necessity in life and being comfortable with what we have, living within our means, leads to fulfillment.

I think the message to myself in all this is that I am going to have no other choice but to tell this poor manager who has been looking for floral help for a year that I just can’t do this right now.  That it’s just not feasible for me.

I will have to work harder at finding something else.  When I go back to work after my vacation the boss is supposed to be going away for three weeks… and then I’m off for another week… I think I can hold on for that long and, maybe, just maybe, something better will come along!

How does any of this relate to writing you ask?  Because whether you have read this far or not, writing this, put my feelings into words on the page, has calmed me.  It has provided me with more calm than I had all night.  It worked me through an issue and I think I have not only a valid reason to not take this job (that I would have killed though) but made me realize a number of things.

Hope From Despair–(True) Story

Tags

anthology, anthology piece, Creative Writing, sharing, short true story, submission, Writing

I was at home tucked into my bed recovering from a procedure I’d had hours earlier to remove a lesion of abnormal cells when I got the text that something was seriously wrong with my grandmother.

My first instinct was to go; I wanted to be there with my mom.  But I couldn’t go; I had to take care of myself.  I would be no good to anyone if I didn’t take the time I needed to recover.  I did my best by text to help mom manage the situation with the nursing home staff.

By the time I did get to the nursing home the following evening grandma was essentially comatose.  She would open her eyes and cry out in what we assumed was pain because soon after the staff gave her a morphine injection she would settle again.

We sat vigil for a week with this woman we all loved sharing stories, memories, holding her hand and praying she would go peacefully.

It wasn’t that we wanted her to go but she had endured much over her lifetime being a divorced single mom raising two children and being active at church on top of working full time.  She wore her heart on her sleeve.  She never said no.  She gave more than she ever got and we all loved her.  We were devastated when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and we watched helplessly as she slowly slipped away from us and, though we sometimes shared laughs when she was confused, we cherished even more the rare moments when she was with us and could join in the conversation.  It was a relief when she got a bed in long-term care because she would get the care she needed but we could visit and spend time with her.

It was time.

We all slept with our cell phones turned on that week.  We shared tears over our imminent loss.

One week after that first text she took her last breaths.  She passed away with her two children and me at her bedside.  It was a relief but it was still incredibly sad.

I lost my grandmother, a woman who had been an anchor in my life.  We had always shared a love of music and musicals and had been single, working mothers generations apart and I would always be her nurse.   She had babysat my brothers and me and then she babysat my daughter.  She was special.

I had the opportunity to speak at her funeral.  I didn’t think, at first, that I could get up and speak without breaking down.  I did it and have no regrets.

Her death, a cancer scare and the loss of a much loved boss of eleven years all in the course of three months does change a person.  Change in life is inevitable and unavoidable.  When we’re young we don’t realize how much change we will endure in our lives.  We will suffer loss and we will grieve those losses.

It is what we take away from the loss and grief as each teaches us a lesson even if we can’t see it right away.  We will make decisions that will have a ripple effect.  I went on to choose, in light of some of those abnormal cells being malignant, to have a major surgery to eliminate a future of anxiety and the threat of the cancer returning.

I have only now, a year after her death and four months after my surgery, with the small green tips of my daffodils beginning to peek through the soil in my garden, begun the process of change and renewal in many aspects of my life.  It has all helped me to better define where I go from here.

I feel hopeful again.

Too much or too little…

Tags

anthology, challenge, Creative Writing, Guideposts, mysteries of the past, Mystery in the Attic, sharing, Too many ideas?, vacation, what I have written, work, Writing

I’m finding, now that I’m on vacation, that it’s a bit of a struggle because yesterday I ended up fumbling around and not getting any writing done because my mind kept bouncing between work in progress!

First my mind was on the Mystery in the Attic sequel and then it was on the third installment of the Mysteries of the Past series and finally it was trying to create something separate altogether!  That does NOT add to productivity!

So I read through that little anthology that I had been published in and I cried when I read what I wrote once again.  It made me cry, again.  I realized that I wrote and posted The Letter and haven’t posted any of my writing since.  I obviously didn’t get accepted for the Guideposts Writing Workshop either so there’s another story that has been written and is now just that… an unseen story.

My challenge is… what do I do with them?  As soon as I post them to my blog they are considered, in most circles, previously published… I can’t use them again.  But I would love to share them with the world and, maybe, get some feedback.

Since the Anthology really isn’t available for purchase (at least I can’t find it) I think I will post that piece!

It will be in my next post!

Vacation!

Tags

Creative Writing, creativity, de-stressing, going to the beach, headaches, life coaching, no work, passion, perspective, Reedsy, trailer, vacation, Writing

I have finally, FINALLY made it my vacation my friends!

It has been one hell of a long haul to get here.  And I’ve had headaches all weekend.  Yesterday’s headache was so bad I took a pharmacy of meds before it finally went away.

I don’t know if that is all the stress pouring out of my body or if it truly was the impact the weather was having.

So much has been happening and as I now sit back and put more perspective onto my writing, I am finding that, once again, I want to write!

I finished the Life Coaching program this morning and I now have my certificate.  I am a Certified Life Coach.  In finishing the work I did the 50 Questions for finding your passion and Writing was repetitive for me throughout.  If going through the program taught me anything it’s that it’s incredibly important to go after what it is you want.  Yes, finding who you are and your core values is incredibly important because it gives you direction and teaches you not to settle.

I have had an overwhelming crashing of writing ideas in my mind over the last 12 hours or so and I’m struggling because I suddenly need to do something about it.  I got some excellent story starters Friday from Reedsy and a number of them I could put to good use.

This is what my vacation is about… this is what my de-stressing time is about.

Next weekend I’m going to the trailer come hell or high water.  I hope to get some me time for writing… we’ll see.

For the time being I have to run with what’s on my mind.

For you… try this:

While sorting through some old keepsakes, you find an envelope with your name on it that hasn’t been opened. You recognize the handwriting.