#WeekendCoffeeShare – 12/11/16

If we were having coffee, I’d invite you into the warm kitchen for brunch. We’d have a slice of south west quiche, a dish I learned from a lovely Mexican family when I lived in Oklahoma, and cups of Finca las Granadinas, a delicious coffee from Honduras. There’s a delicate balance between the spiciness of the quiche and the rich, bold flavor of the coffee. I think you will enjoy them both.

If we were having coffee, I would confess that we should have had this coffee and conversation yesterday, but my internet was down most of the day. We had an arctic blast come through here with high winds and below zero windchill. The company that my wifi is through had promised to winter-proof their system before winter actually hit, but some of their ‘optics’ (their word, not mine) still isn’t winterized. After huge gustings of wind that lasted several hours overnight, I awoke to no wifi. I have no clue what they are doing. I never had these kinds of internet issues in OK no matter the weather (unless power went out). I think this is a young company and they are going through a learning curve. I just wish they’d get up to speed, but since they have a monopoly here, they don’t have to hurry. They know their customers have no choice but to put up with their BS.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you how excited I am that 2017 is almost here. I’ve been working through writing projects for next year. I won’t make the same mistake I did this year. This year, I had planned major writing projects for every month except January. In the end, I only accomplished four projects. My big mistake was not giving myself time off and pressing myself to keep going. Along with some personal stuff, this resulted in a major depressive break. Next year, I plan on taking Jan, March, June, August, Oct, and Dec off from major projects. So hopefully by the end of next year, I will have completed six major projects. My plans include more Horror Tales in Feb, Poetry in April, StoryADay in May, a continuation of the Jack Diamond story titled Raised Stakes in July, a vampire story in September, and a completely new story for Nov’s NaNoWriMo (still working out what kind of story I want to write). I have three projects that I will be shelving until probably 2018 – Killer Tales (about serial killers that I began in June of this year and never completed), another addition to the Astraeus story and a project I began back in college in 1998 that I hope to complete this time. I have a huge list of writing projects that I want to complete, but I am realizing that I can’t do them all in one year.

If we were having coffee, I’d invite you to read my paranormal mystery, Seeing You. I’d planned to complete it for Nov’s NaNoWriMo, but I was plagued with illnesses all during November and I had to take some extra time to finish it. The last part will go live today around 2 or 3 pm EST. So if you haven’t read it yet, you will have time to catch up.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that I am mostly well now. Just a small cough left, but the doc said my lungs are now clear. No more pneumonia. Now I am taking probiotics from all of the antibiotics I had to take to get well. If I hadn’t been so ill, I would have eaten yogurt while taking the antibiotics,  but I couldn’t stomach it.

And finally, if we were having coffee, what would you like to share with me? Leave me a comment. Tell me about your day. Share something fun that happened, or something not so fun. 

This delightful coffee share is brought to you by Part-Time Monster and friends.

Creative Question 21 – Blogging Career

CQ 21 – Please share a brief history of your blogging career

Kate also left some questions to consider:

What lead you to start?
Has your motivation changed since starting?
What has the experience been like?
Have you learnt anything?
Has your writing style changed?
What advice would you give to a new blogger?
And please don’t forget to mention some of the highlights along the way – such as the people you’ve met, things you’ve learnt …

My “blogging” career actually began in the late 90s (97 or 98) although it wasn’t called blogging back then. The term weblog had barely become a thing and wasn’t sophisticated like it is now. I taught myself html and began creating my own website hosted by Angelfire where I posted a journal and my poetry. Everything had to be manually updated. The first blogging site that I joined was LiveJournal. I think that was in 1999 or early 2000. I briefly joined Blogger in, I think, 2002, but I never really liked the format (still don’t). Around 2003, I joined WordPress when it first came out and have had various blogging accounts here over the past 13 years. The account I have now, I began back in 2006, I believe, but I didn’t get serious about it until 2011 when I began the blog A Whispered Wind. My themes for blogging have almost always been the same – journal writing and a place to post my fiction and poetry.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that I have been using the internet for over 20 years and during all of those years, I’ve almost always kept some kind of account of my activities.  An online friend had a user board back in the early 2000s and gave each of us our own “room” on the board to write whatever we wanted there. I used Yahoo group boards and my personal manually-updated website during my Pagan Lake days on Yahoo Chat (2000-2005). And once upon a time, Yahoo had a section of your profile where you could have a journal of sorts. That feature (and Yahoo groups) was how I kept up with my friends in an online vampire game from 2004 until around 2007 or 2008 (I think) when Yahoo took that feature away. We used it to post story arcs for our characters in the game. Now, I just post here on WordPress – journal entries, stories, and poems. It’s funny… the technology has changed over the years, but nothing much else has for me and why I blog.

My advice to new bloggers are as follows:

• Blog about what you are passionate about.
• Themes can definitely help you to hone down your passion into one or two things. (Even Randomness is a theme *winks*)
• Be consistent. Pick a few days a week to post or every day, if you are that ambitious.
• Read other bloggers’ blogs. Like and leave comments.
• Answer comments people leave on your posts.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned during all of these years of blogging is to have fun. Don’t stress about your blog or what you post. If you are building an audience, they will continue to return if you do those things above. When blogging stops being fun, it’s time to stop. Your audience will notice your lack of enthusiasm.

Happy blogging everyone!

The Daily Me (Journal) Out of Reach – 12/11/2016

Today’s prompt comes from 100 Inspirational Journal Prompts by Melissa Bolton @ The Mogul Mom

Something seemingly out of your reach

My dream, goal and aspiration, and they aren’t seemingly out of reach, they are completely out of reach. I’ve discussed this before. My dream has always been to be a college professor, my goal was to be a published novelist and poet, and my aspiration was to live in Maine. A financial mix-up in college cracked my dream. Severe depression shattered my goal and aspiration. If the depression hadn’t manifested, I may have been able to overcome the financial issue. It would have taken a lot of hard work and a job outside of my dream, but at the time, I was only 33 and could still have become a professor by the age of 35 or 36. I had the grades for it and the backing of a few of my professors. But that damn depression – I couldn’t easily overcome it. And so, I gave into it and allowed it to consume my life for the next fifteen years.

Now at the age of 50 and with my health issues, I know I will never obtain the dream, goal or aspiration. I’ve had a few people (friends and therapists) tell me to chose a new dream, create new goals and aspire for something more obtainable. They say, stop looking at what never manifested and look forward to new possibilities. And I do try to do that now. I know my limitations and try to work around them. Depression is still a major part of my life and probably always will be. I no longer have a dream and honestly, I cannot think of a satisfactory one. I do have goals. I try to write one or two major pieces of work each year, although I no longer attempt to be a published writer. I still write poetry when the muses strike. And I dabble with art now and again. I no longer aspire for anything great, like living in Maine. I am fairly content just to live in Virginia for now. My life has come down to simpler terms these days – make it through the day depression-free and write when my health allows. These are reachable.

 

My Daily Tarot – Four of Wands

I’ve decided to get back into practice with a daily tarot reading. Something I haven’t done in nearly two years.

12/11/16 – Four of Wands

You have achieved a satisfying goal. Take time to celebrate this. Be proud of what you have done. Be aware of dissatisfaction. This is not the time to be critical of your accomplishments. 

Well, that definitely hits close to home. I’ve been scheduling some of my posts for this upcoming week here on ATFWHI and I recall in one of them being proud for (nearly) finishing Seeing You (1 part left to go – scheduled for later today) and yet being frustrated that I hadn’t achieved every goal I’d set for myself this past year. I won’t go and change the post, but I will take a moment to have pride in my accomplishment.

I’ve said before (somewhere) that I won’t look at the lost opportunities from this past year as failures. Despite the illnesses and the depression, I still accomplished quite a bit this year – 29 Horror Tales, 26 Science Fiction stories (and one of them has turned into a serial collaboration with Keith Channing), and two novellas (over 50k words each) –  The Stacked Deck and Seeing You. I’ve also written some flash fiction, short fiction, drabbles (100 word stories) and poetry this year. So I can in no way say that this has been an unproductive year. I do have a lot to be proud of and I need to be celebrating!

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In case you are curious, I am using the Gilded Tarot. You can find it here.

The Sandbox Writing Challenge #67 — Can acceptance REALLY change relationships?

I am not sure how I missed last week’s challenge, but I did. Was this during my pneumonia bout? I think so. Anyhoo… Calen has give us another set of pondersome questions from Philip Simmons’ book Learning to Fall. 

How would accepting yourself for who you are change your relationship with YOU?

And thinking back to the person(or persons) you thought you could change, would accepting THEM for who they are change your relationship with them? How?

I’ve pretty much accepted myself for who and what I am. I’ve tried to change myself in the past for a few I had relationships with and all it did was end in misery. I have to be my authentic self, faults and flaws included. I think I am probably the most comfortable with my own self now than I have ever been in my entire life. And that’s a good thing since I mostly only have myself to talk to these days *laughs*

As for the one I tried to change, the estranged husband, I do now accept him for who he is. He is becoming a she and I think that is his authentic self. He hopes to begin taking hormone therapy next year and have the sex change in 2019. That will change the dynamics of our relationship a bit. For now, it isn’t a huge problem. If we decide to stay married, same sex marriage is legal. That could all change under this new presidency though and we could be forced to divorce. Our relationship at the moment is based on mutual respect. There is companionly love for now. We are no longer in love with one another and we are 1000 miles apart.

I think all relationships benefit from acceptance, of one’s self and of others. It keeps us from having to wear masks, be someone we are not, and then struggle with ourselves to be authentic. Unfortunately, too many people try to change others to suit themselves. What I find ironic though, once someone has changed you to be who they think they want you to be, the challenge is gone and some lose interest. I think that is why so many people cheat on their partners. They go out seeking someone like who you used to be so they can begin the cycle all over again. Such a sad state of affairs.