Blog Archive – Page 10

Thursday October 15, 2015LifeView all 2 comments

There are a lot of advantages to being an adult. The other morning, I had cookies and three cups of coffee for breakfast. Was this a smart choice? No. Did it adequately nourish me for my day? Noooo! Did I feel sick later? Oddly enough, no. Did anyone yell at me and tell me to eat something healthy? No. That right there is the beauty of being an adult. I get to make my own choices. Good, bad or ugly the choice is mine. It also means that I have to live with the consequences of my choices, but I’ve been pretty fortunate in that I’ve either made good choices or, not suffered too terribly from my bad choices. I enjoy this aspect of being an adult. The paying bills and holding down a steady job, I could do without. It’s not horrible, but I’m not gonna turn down several million dollars to get out of that rat race if someone’s offering. The part of being an adult that I hate, is the moment when you realize that the shit has hit the fan and it is your job to clean it up. You are the one in charge, you are the one that everybody is looking to, and no one cares that all you want to do is curl up on the couch and binge-watch Criminal Minds. I expect parents feel like this all the time, which is one of the reasons that I do not have children. I have dogs instead, yet I find myself in that position right now. My baby boy just had surgery, and I’m facing down the barrel of six months of recovery time. He’s my baby, and I’d do anything for him – hence the surgery – but at the moment I’m feeling a little over-whelmed. I am the adult, yet I find myself looking for an adultier-adult.

Tuesday October 13, 2015Change, Live and LearnLeave a comment

I seem to have picked up the habit of not only resisting technological advances, but complaining whenever I am forced to catch up with them. For example, I recently had to upgrade my phone, because not even an old priest and a young priest could fix my old one. Despite the obvious necessity and the fact that having a phone that actually worked was a bonus, I fought the change. I put it off. I complained on social media (yes, I realize the irony of that). And when I was complaining, I adopted the hashtag – #GetOffMyLawn. Because despite the fact that I am in my thirties, I totally feel like the old guy yelling at the neighborhood kids whenever I get all uppity about updating my tech.

Flash forward two weeks, and I absolutely adore my new phone. It’s faster, has a longer battery life and the swipe feature still blows my mind. How the heck does that thing work? I have also realized, that since I now have a phone that works I am using it a lot more. Not to call or text people, that has remained the same. The amount of time that I now spend on email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or searching the net has skyrocketed. To a certain degree that’s a good thing. I write historical fiction and historical biographies, that entails a lot of time on the net. I also have to keep myself present and engaged on social media. But I was doing that before, when my phone didn’t work. So clearly, this extra time that I am spending isn’t productive . . . and if it’s not productive . . . then it must be wasteful. Yes?

I mean, how many times does someone really need to check their email in one day? To check their Facebook account? How many times in a day do I get something that needs immediate attention? Ummm, never. I can’t think of a single time. Now I get things that need attention before the end of the day, but I can take care of that by checking my email 2-3 times a day. A couple of hours isn’t going to make a bit of difference. Let’s face it, most of the time I read an email and then ignore it for a couple of hours anyway. Facebook or Twitter? Same thing. I can’t think of a single time that I got something that couldn’t have waited a couple of hours. Therefore, what the hell am I doing checking these things sometimes 4-5 times per hour. Seriously, that’s ridiculous!

How much time to I waste everyday by obsessively checking in on all of my accounts? Let’s do the math. I have two email accounts, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Let’s say that I spend one minute on each, each time I check, which is realistic if there’s nothing new to see. So five accounts times one minute, times four times per hour. That’s twenty minutes per hour minimum. If I sleep eight hours a day (ha!), that’s 16 hours awake, which is a little over five and a half hours per day checking to see if there is anything new on social media. That is almost an entire work day! What is wrong with me?

And that doesn’t count the time that I spend playing Mahjong, Yahtzee and Scrabble. No wonder, I’m not as productive as I’d like to be! Therefore, I have new goal. Hence forth, I will be embracing the grumpy-old-man-get-off-my-lawn side of my personality. No one needs to be on their phone that much, so my phone is going to get real cozy with the phone pocket in my purse. At home, it is no longer going to live right by my side. I survived growing up having to get up to answer the phone, so I can as an adult too. I’m tired of feeling chained to the damn thing. Therefore, get off my lawn, and don’t expect to get an immediate response from me. I’m disconnecting.

Thursday October 08, 2015Live and Learn, Loss, Love, MothersLeave a comment

I would hazard to guess that when something bad happens, or something goes wrong the majority of people have the same thought, “I want my mom.” I’m basing this theory off the fact that this is the reaction of my friends, and it is also my reaction. The former makes perfect sense. Some of my friends have absolutely awesome moms. The latter makes no earthly sense whatsoever, because I didn’t grow up with a mother. Yes, I physically had a mother until I was twenty. There was a woman with that title in my life. However, because of her disease she checked out mentally and emotionally over a decade before she physically died. Therefore, when I was upset, sick or injured it wasn’t my mom providing comfort. I honestly do not have a single memory of my mother comforting me. The truth of the matter is that she was often the cause of the upset, and the comfort afterwards had to come from me, myself and I. So if MY first reaction is that I want my mom, then I have a feeling that the majority of people have this reaction. I think it’s a societal training thing. Society tells us that mothers = comfort, therefore even if that isn’t your own experience that is still what you want.

Then it occurred to me last night, that while I didn’t get that comfort from my own mother, I can vividly remember times that I got that comfort from my friend’s mothers. Mary Kay wiping the dirt off of my face after a fall instead of simply pointing me toward the bathroom. Tammy genuinely offering to help me set something right and giving me a big hug because she knew I was upset, and no one else seemed to care. Lori teaching me how to make a meal from scratch, so I didn’t have to serve a Hamburger Helper at my first ever dinner party. Deb understanding that I had an emotionally impossible decision to make, so she told me what to do so I wouldn’t feel guilty about the choice. Amelia telling me not to be stupid, if I had to have surgery I obviously would stay at her house until I got better. Susan telling me that clearly I got the crazy from her side of the family.

I don’t know if they remember any of these moments, but they meant a lot to me. I didn’t have a mother, I had several and it has taken me years to realize that. To realize that they are the ones that taught me what I need to know. They are the ones that I want when something gets scary and I want my mom. I’ve had a bit of a rough year, and therefore I’ve wanted a mom on several occasions. None more so than this week. My fur baby, Bubba, tore his ACL. Not just torn, but severed completely. Surgery or a horrible limp for the rest of his life are the only options on the table. In my heart, I knew without hesitation what I wanted to do, but my brain needed that reassurance that can only come from a mom, that I was doing the right thing. I didn’t call all of my moms, that would be a bit excessive, but I did call one of them. I wanted my mom, and I got my mom. So thank you to all of ‘my’ moms for filling in where my own had to be absent.

Thursday October 01, 2015LifeLeave a comment

This day does not need yet another blog post from me rambling about whatever happens to be on my mind today. What this day needs, is puppies and kittens.

And a unicorn barfing a rainbow and farting butterflies. For good measure. Tell the people you care about that you love them, and hug tight those that are close by.

Tuesday September 29, 2015Live and Learn, Theater, WritingLeave a comment

Over the years I have found myself surrounded with creative/artist types. Regardless of my job, or where I am living I eventually find myself amongst creatives. I guess there’s some validity to the adage about like-minded people being drawn to each other. Some of these people use hobbies for their creative outlets, and others have taken their creative endeavors and turned them into careers. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the hobbyists are less talented. In fact, there are a couple of hobbyists I know that fully have the potential of being a professional artist. At least from the stand point of the quality of their work. Which begs the question, what is the main difference between a hobbyist and a professional?

For whatever reason, this has been on my mind a lot lately, and I think I’ve come up with an answer. Follow through. Professionals got to where they are because they had follow through. I know that this is an incredibly complex question, but I really do think that it can be summed up to that answer. Follow through. However, this seemingly simple answer has a lot riding behind it. It means that you are not only willing to devote time to your work, but also to finding out what is standard in your industry. To finding out what is expected of professionals and taking whatever steps are necessary to make sure that you fit that criteria. It’s about networking and building relationships with people. It’s about putting yourself out there, which of course opens you up to criticism. Therefore, it is also about learning how to take and grow from criticism, instead of breaking and shrinking from criticism.

To a certain degree, that may be the biggest aspect of follow through. Learning how to receive criticism and move on unscathed. That is of course the ideal, I don’t know if it is actually possible to ever move on unscathed. Perhaps the goal should be to move on stronger instead of unscathed. Because when it comes down to it; that is what criticism should do for you. It should make you stronger. Praise will help your self-confidence but it won’t do anything for your work. To improve your work you need someone to point out the flaws, the cracks in the façade, the places where it doesn’t make sense. After all, if you don’t know where it’s weak, how can you fix it?

I would love to say that I am brilliant, calm and cool while taking criticism. That would be a lie. I am pretty good though. However, every now and then I start to get all bristly and defensive and I have to remember to take a deep breath and stop. Bristly and defensive isn’t productive for anyone involved. Neither are hurt feelings. I have had people ask what I thought and then wind up with hurt feelings when I gave my honest opinion. Guess what? I’m never giving feedback to that person ever again! Disclaimer – I did work as a theater critic for four years, so I have honed my critical eye to a fine point, so to say. Therefore, when someone asks for a critique from me, I let them know my background and what to expect. Only after they’ve acknowledged and accepted this will I give my full opinion. Otherwise I smile and genuinely tell them good job.

That being said, probably my greatest asset in becoming comfortable with criticism myself, was by working as a theater critic. Over my years of critiquing plays, two things became blaringly obvious to me.

A critique is simply one person’s opinion. True, sometimes a group of people have the same opinion, and true, some opinions will be worth more than others. However, at the end of the day it is still an opinion, and chances are if you look, you can find someone with an opposite opinion. So take it for what it is. If it helps you, great. If it doesn’t, move on.
Critiques are not personal. In the four years and hundreds of plays that I saw, at no point did I ever think, “Wow, that’s a horrible person who did this piece. They really suck!” Not once. Why? Because I didn’t personally know any of those people. I can guarantee that I gave rave reviews to raging assholes and panned shows done by some of the kindest and most wonderful people out there. And I can guarantee that the opposite happened. How do I know this? Because horrible people can do good work, good people can do bad work and vice-versa. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they’re not even related. Therefore, while your work may feel like the most personal thing you can possibly release out into the world, it only is to you. To everyone else, it is simply a piece of work, and that is where the criticism is coming from. It’s not personal.

I don’t know why this has been on my mind so much recently, but there you have it. Thanks for letting me brain dump. Follow through. Focus on following through.

Thursday September 17, 2015Live and LearnLeave a comment

I am convinced that there are two types of people in this world. Those who thrive living in small towns, and those who go bat-shit crazy. Now I’m not talking a small suburb of a major city. I’m talking out in the boonies, you only have mom and pop shops and you probably live on a dirt road, small. This is where I grew up. Technically speaking, Grand Lake isn’t even a town, it’s too small. Its correct categorization is village, and while we’re getting technical, I didn’t live in the village itself. Technically speaking, I grew up in the suburb of a village. It was tiny, and believe it or not, this was bigger than the place that we had moved from. My parents were clearly in the category of thriving in a small town environment. I, on the other hand, firmly fall into the latter category. There is a reason that I now live in the second biggest city in the US and love it!

However, despite driving me absolutely nutters, there are a few things that I learned from that upbringing that I do not find amongst my friends who grew up in cities. Namely my tendency to try to fix everything at least twice before I will give in and throw it away. My roommate is from Orange County in California. She does not do this. In fact she generally looks at me in awe whenever I fix something and calls me MacGyver. She has learned to always check with me first before throwing something away to see if I want to try to fix it. She has also learned to wait until I get home before calling our property manager as I know how to do things like unclog a toilet or take the u-bend off a sink to retrieve an earring.

I have always taken all of these things for granted. After all, where I grew up, if something broke the options were generally fix it yourself or go with out for at least a week. There was no such thing as a 24-hour plumber. I’m pretty sure that the only thing in the county – notice, county, not town or village, in the entire damn county – that stayed open 24-7 was the emergency room – notice the emergency room, there was only one – and the 911 operators. Any service-type company closed at 5 or 6, and everything else at 9. So if your pilot light went out, or your toilet clogged or overflowed, you better know how to fix that yourself! If your coffee maker broke, you tried to figure out and fix whatever was wrong, because to replace that entailed a four hour round trip to Denver or three hour round trip to Silverthorne. Now I love me some coffee, but even I would wait until the weekend to go get my replacement!

Therefore, you learn to fix things. You learn to improvise with whatever you have on hand. Hence the nickname MacGyver. One time at work – where I met my roommate – I fixed the front door with a ball point pen and a paperclip. Everybody else had resigned themselves to waiting until the owner finally got around to calling the handyman in. I thought that was ridiculous, so I fixed it. Growing up in such a small community, I never realized how much I had learned to be self-sufficient until I moved to a big city. Even with things that I can’t fix, my first thought is never to call a professional. It’s always, “Who do I know that would know how to fix that?” Again, growing up in small town that was how things worked. You knew what everybody was good at, and you called upon them when they were needed.

The best part was that this was perfectly acceptable. You helped out when needed, and you knew that others would help out when you needed. I am still in contact with several of my friends from my youth, and even today when something breaks, or there’s a dilemma, we’ll brainstorm to figure out who knows how to fix it. So despite the fact that I will never live in a small town EVER again if I can help it, I do appreciate what it taught me. So does my bank account, as so far this week I have fixed a stand fan, a K-cup coffee machine and tonight I’m working on my swamp cooler. That one I might need some help for, we’ll see.

Thursday September 03, 2015Humor, LifeLeave a comment

Today at lunch a friend of mine asked me what I thought of her hair. As this is a friend that I see on a regular basis, I knew that that this question had to be because she had just done something new with her hair. Which of course meant that my brain went immediately into panic mode because I hadn’t noticed anything different. I started through the checklist. New cut? Don’t think so, it’s still the same length. Did she style it differently? Nope, that looks the same too. New color? Not that I can tell, but I have my sunglasses on, so maybe that’s hiding the new color. Crap!

Is there a subtle way for me to look at her hair with my sunglasses off without letting her in on the fact that I have no idea what she’s talking about? No, not really. Besides, I tend to be about as subtle as a brick to the teeth. So I decided to go with blunt.

“Did you do something to it?”

She explained. Yes, she had colored it! Now that the subtlety option was gone, I lowered my sunglasses to get a better look. Nope, still couldn’t tell the difference. So I listened to what she had done and why she had it done, the whole time trying to call up some sort of memory of what her head used to look like before this new color job. Maybe if I had a time frame!

“When did you do this?”

Again she explained. Last week, and then a fix last night. Holy crap! No wonder she was asking, that’s two dye jobs in two weeks without word one from me. I’m the worst friend ever! Okay, not the worst friend, but definitely the most inobservant friend. Again I listen and get a bit of a glimmer of what she’s talking about as she describes the reason that the fix was necessary. I nod my head as I listen, but then she stops. It is clearly my turn to say something. I can’t really agree with her that the fix was necessary, because hell, I didn’t even notice the change in the first place! I decide to go with the truth.

“It looks really nice, I like it.”

Then I hold my breath. It does look nice, I do like it, but is that going to be enough of an answer? God, I really hope she doesn’t want me to discuss the differences in blond highlights vs red highlights in terms of washing people out. Not because I don’t care, but because I have nothing to say on the matter. I’ve never once thought about it! And I’ve especially never thought about the differences that you have to do with your make-up to compensate for the different colors of highlights. Truth be told, most mornings I don’t even look in a mirror while getting ready. If I do, it’s an afterthought, or to check to see if I have food stuck in my teeth. Make-up and hair is sooooooo not my thing! At this point, I’m fairly certain that I am failing at hiding the look of abject horror on my face. I smile and repeat myself.

“I like it. It’s pretty.” She looks at me for a moment and then, takes pity.

“I really need to ask a girl.”

“Yes! Yes you do! Because honestly, unless you dye it blue or chop it all off, I’m not going to notice.”

I would notice this too.

And then she laughed. Oh thank goodness! And thank goodness for friends who realize that my inobservance of all changes in appearance have absolutely no bearing on how I feel about them as a person. This is why every time I’ve ever played Battle of the Sexes, I have to team with the boys.

Tuesday September 01, 2015Live and LearnLeave a comment

My last roommate was a huge fan of the Food Network channel, and as such, I watched a good bit myself. In the end, I wound up falling in love with the show Chopped. For those not familiar, it’s a competition cooking show with four professional chefs competing. They have to make an appetizer in 20 minutes, then a main course in 30 minutes, and then a dessert in 30 minutes. However, after each course, the dishes are judged, by three other chefs, and a competitor is “chopped” or removed from the competition. So by the time you hit the dessert round it’s between two people. Now here’s the catch. Each round contains a mystery basket that contains 4 ingredients that must be incorporated into the dish. Sometimes they’re perfectly normal ingredients like rack of lamb or red wine. Other times they’re fun things like fruit cocktail or Cheetos. Half the fun is watching the look of horror on the chefs’ faces when they pull out the mystery basket ingredients. It’s good times.

Because of this show, I now play Chopped in my kitchen on occasion. Not with a mystery basket per se, but when I really need to go grocery shopping and have nothing left but random ingredients in my kitchen, I’ll pick out 4 and see what I can come up with. I usually wind up with something that’s not great, but it’s okay. The fact that I didn’t have to leave my house to go grocery shopping makes it even better. Occasionally I will come up with pure gold and the new dish enters my normal cooking rotation. But every now and then I create something that isn’t quite god-awful, but pretty close.

Whenever this happens I am then faced with an existential dilemma. On the one hand, I kind of prefer my food to taste good. Strange, I know. On the other hand, I really don’t like wasting food and I’m also not made of money. Therefore, do I toss the crap food and buy something to replace it, or do I suck it up, eat it and vow to never put those foods together ever again? Sad to say, the “not made of money” part of the equation gets the biggest vote, which is why I spent all of last week eating a very strange concoction.

Needless to say, I am all sorts of excited to go grocery shopping and have dinners that actually taste good this week. One of these days I will learn to go grocery shopping before I run out of food. Some day. Oh, FYI – rice pasta is NOT interchangeable with rice.

Thursday August 27, 2015Change, Happiness, LifeLeave a comment

For a long time I believed that happiness was a destination. If I could accomplish X, then I would be happy. If I could get A, B and C, then I would be happy. I was on this road and happiness was always just slightly out of reach. I always had to finish one more thing, climb over one more obstacle, obtain one more prize. In all honesty, it was a bit like playing Super Mario Brothers. I would get through all the levels and battle my way past Bowser only to discover that I’ve simply leveled up and there’s a whole new world of levels to get through. Only this one’s a frickin water world!

Seriously! WTF?

Happiness was also just out of reach. No matter what I did, I never got there. I saw other people that were happy. I guess I assumed they knew the super-secret-ninja-short-cut to by-pass all of the rigmarole. And they weren’t sharing the secret either! Then I realized that they weren’t sharing the secret, because there was no secret. Happiness is not a destination, just like life isn’t a destination (but that’s a whole other blog post). As it turns out, happiness is a choice. It’s that simple. There’s no secret handshake and no levels to clear. It is a choice. A choice of how we react to our surroundings. A choice of what we say to ourselves in our inner monologues. A choice of how we adapt to set-backs.

I’m trying to remember this right now in order to make the right choices. The choices that leave me happy, instead of the choices that leave me miserable. I’ve been sick, in one way or another, for almost two years now. I’ve seen my regular doctor and I’ve seen specialists, and they’ve all treated the symptoms that were in front of them. Without fail, those symptoms have either come back, or been replaced with new symptoms. I can’t seem to catch a break, or rise above the level of feeling “okay.” For the better part of this year, my weekends have consisted of me sleeping for the majority of at least one of my days off, if not both. It’s put a major damper in my productivity, and thus my mood.

However, I have been choosing to focus on the positive. I’ve been choosing happiness, for no other reason than I can. I have some truly wonderful people in my life, and despite everything else going on, that is reason enough to choose happiness. That being said, I’ve been having a lot of problems making that choice this week. Last week I saw a functional medicine doctor, and she is running more tests then I can count unless I take my shoes off. However, after getting my entire history and looking over my extensive list of foods that I can’t eat, she had an immediate gut reaction of a diagnosis – I’m allergic, or at least highly sensitive, to sulfites.

If she’s correct that sucks BIG TIME! (For the record, I think she is. One of the biggest sulfite culprits is wine, and drinking wine is a habit I took up about two years ago. Coincidence?) If I am allergic to sulfites it will not only take my already extremely limited list of foods I can eat and make it significantly smaller, but it will also take away the one social device I have. When I go out places with friends, I often can’t eat the food, but I CAN share a bottle of wine. Or raise a toast. Now I will be able to eat even less, and I’ll be the one drinking water at happy hour. Not to mention, I’m an introvert with anxiety issues. Sometimes it takes a glass of wine just so I can relax enough to enjoy myself.

I haven’t even begun to truly dive into what that will mean to my diet, because quite frankly I started to do the research it made me want to cry. You wanna know what they spray all over bacon to preserve it? You guessed it, sulfites! Needless to say, I’ve been having a hard time this week choosing happy. True, I don’t have the definitive diagnosis back, but from the research I’ve done, a sulfite allergy explains a lot of my issues. So I’m also having trouble choosing hope at this point. However, I am well aware of what life is like when you choose miserable. So no matter how hard it is, I’m going to choose happy. I might need some reminders though.

Thursday August 20, 2015Live and Learn, WritingLeave a comment

I was asked by a fledgling writer if I was willing to share some tips on how to be a good writer. She enjoyed the answers, so I figured I would share them with you too.

Make sure you are clear on what you are trying to say. One of the top reasons that a section or chapter will be confusing is because you, the author, still aren’t sure of the point you’re trying to make. Until you figure that out, no amount of rewriting will make the copy clear.

When someone gives you feedback on a piece, don’t try to defend your words or your intentions. Stay open and ask questions to understand why they feel the way they do. Their interpretation of your work may open your eyes to something that you were unaware of, and in the end make your piece better. However, if you become immediately defensive you won’t be receptive to what they have to say, and chances are they’ll be less willing to read and comment on your pieces in the future.

Short of an editor or a publisher saying that you have to make a change before they will publish, remember that making changes based off of feedback is optional. Not everyone is going to like your work. Spend the majority of your time on the consensus feedback, but always look at the lone wolf feedback. Sometimes the lone wolves have the best insight, but not always. Trust your gut.

KISS – Keep it Simple Stupid! Big words are not always better. I am a huge fan of the thesaurus, but if you have never heard of the word it’s giving you, and after reading the definition you can’t use that word in several sentences, YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS USING THAT WORD! The odds of you using it incorrectly are astronomical and then instead of looking clever, you’ll look like an amateur.Thank of a thesaurus as a giver of suggestions, not answers. In the right hands a thesaurus is a powerful tool. In the wrong hands, it is a harbinger of doom. DOOM! Okay, not really, that’s being overly dramatic. Let’s just say that it won’t work out well for you.

If you consider yourself a writer or if you want to be a writer, then learning new words on a regular, if not daily, basis should be at the top of every to-do list you make. Words are the building blocks of your craft. The more you know, and the more intimately you know them, the better off you will be. Are they Latin or Germanic based? Is the archaic meaning different from their modern meaning? How many meanings does it have? With some words the answer may surprise you. It is an odd day for me if I haven’t consulted a dictionary, thesaurus, or both at least once. Do I use all of the oddball words that I know? Nope. Although I have a goal to work ‘defenestrate’ into a piece.

Another item for your to-do list: read! Writer’s read other writer’s work. At the very least you should be reading examples of your genre. Ideally, you should also be reading works that are far away from your genre. How do the different writers approach story telling? What are tenets that span genres, versus genre specific tenets? Which storytelling methods do you like, which do you hate? Why? What tricks can you use in your own writing? What pitfalls do you want to avoid at all costs.

Pick your battles – If you try to do 7-10 rewrites on everything you put out into this world, you will lose your mind. Or at the very least have low productivity. Know which pieces are your bread and butter and which are your throw-a-ways. Work the hell out of the bread and butter, give the throw-a-ways a once over and move on.

The only way to be a good writer is to write as much as humanly possible. Daily if you can swing it, and some of that writing needs to be put out for public consumption. Listen to your feedback, then write some more. Write. Write. Write.