Hello friends. A lot has happened and is happening, so grab a comfy seat and I’ll catch you up Clocking Out to Concentrate on the Work On Friday the 3rd, I logged off of my work computer, shut down the monitors and began a two week writing retreat. For the first week of my retreat,…
Sad News As many of you know, tragedy struck my household about a week ago. Percy, our sweet fluffy boy, was hit by a vehicle and killed. We only know that because of the kindness of strangers who gathered him up and took him to Animal Services. Because he had a chip, I got a…
I was probing my mental status this morning and trying to find a word to describe how I’ve been feeling for the last week and it came to me – doldrums. I’m in the doldrums. My mental ship has been becalmed. The thing about your ship being ‘becalmed’ is that it is not calming. Doldrum…
Brené Brown ends her Unlocking Us podcast with a rapid fire set of questions for her guest. One of these is, to paraphrase, ‘When you are full of fear, about doing something, what do you do?‘ Tell me if this situation sounds familiar, at least from pre-COVID times. You’re somewhere in a group. Maybe it’s…
Last year I read 33 books. This is well shy of my goal of 50, though I am pleased with the quality of what I read. I’ll share my list and some of my impressions. I’d love to hear what your favorite reads of 2020 were. Sandman Vol. 8, Neil Gaiman, et al. On Earth…
I am in the midst of the second draft of the novel I created during NaNoWriMo. My goal is a chapter a week. I started during the first week of January and I’m got three chapters into second draft, so it’s going well. It feels like a good pace, a pace I can sustain. The…
I’m watching The Stand on CBS. I read the book way back in my early adulthood. I also watched the 1994 TV series. The story made an indelible impression on me. The haunting and revolting image of 99% of the population dead, unattended and rotting. The idea of a world almost empty of people (plus…
I found out about Elizabeth Lesser’s book Cassandra Speaks through Brene’ Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast. The book intrigued me because it promised to speak to the parts of the human story – history – that have been silenced, suppressed or unasked for. The subtitle is ‘When women are the storytellers, the human story changes’. I…
I was listening to a song and got a familiar longing. The song described a place where the singer wanted to go fishing, and watch the sun go down over the hills. Something in the combination of the music and the lyrics struck a cord in me and had me thinking of places I longed…
Since I moved on June 10, I’ve been settling into my new home. I had a friend with a house painting business paint the living and dining room with vaulted ceiling and adjoining kitchen. I’ve painted my bedroom and recently finished painting my office. Once the office was painted, I was able to move the…