Pay It Forward II

Allyson Peterson, also known as Crazy Writer Girl gave me the "Stylish Blogger Award."  It's lovely of her to do and it gives me the opportunity to pay it forward and draw your attention to some wonderful bloggers.  Follow these people. Read them.  They are funny, wise and have provided me with a tremendous amount of support on this writing journey.  My online friends travel the road with me and I appreciate every one of them.


First, I have to tell you some things about me.

  1        I know the difference between boarding, roughing and cross-checking.

2.        I got a tattoo when I turned forty. It’s awesome, but I wouldn’t do it again.

3.        Sleeping annoys me. I fight it and do it as little as possible.

4.        My favorite guilty pleasure is Nutella right from the jar.

5.        I’m a bag whore.  I love totes, purses, clutches.  You name it; I love bags.

6.        I really like ABBA.

7.        I’ve been in more than one professional sports locker room.

Now for the bloggers.  I'm supposed to list fifteen...I'll do my best.

Patty Blount

Charissa Weaks

Linda Grimes

Helen Sayers

Julie Musil

Michele Shaw

Sierra Godfrey

Sandra Cormier

Tawna Fenske

Jessica Lemmon

Abby Mumford

Kelly Breakey

Muffintopmommy

Rebecca Lynn

Elizabeth Flora Ross

Whew!  Made it! (There are actually sixteen blogs)  Truly, if you need to add some interesting, clever reads to your day stop by these blogs.  They are, indeed, stylish!  Hopefully those bloggers I've mentioned will bring your attention to someone else by paying it forward.

New year...new commitment.

Hey, everyone.  I've emerged from my cave and I've decided the blog gets one last shot at life.  I will do this by posting once a week.  I'm thinking Sunday mornings, since I'm usually up at the crack of dawn while the rest of the house snoozes. And if I have to set reminders on my calendar to make sure the post gets done, that's what I'll do.

If this is going to be successful, it's going to be because of a routine.  You'll notice I didn't say anything about not having enough time.  I have time.  What I don't have right now is structure.

Routines helped me survive the years when my children were small and I was teaching full time.  By getting into a routine, the kids knew what to expect, and even better, my husband and I knew that week to week, we had things under control.

From doing grocery shopping on Friday nights to knowing Monday night we were having pizza for dinner, the predictability made our busy lives easier.  I do believe I need to get back to routines even though I don't have the little kids anymore.  When I slip into schedule chaos, I get nothing done.  I get frustrated and stressed, and right now, since there's a lot going on (family, work, school play, local RWA stuff, writing...) I need predictability.

So tonight we're having a sit down and we're going to figure out how to make life more manageable.  It can be done.  If I could do it when I had three children under the age of five, a full time job and a demanding graduate school program, I can certainly do it now.

So what about you?  How do you find time to write amid all the other things life throws at you?

Hiatus

I've suffered some personal losses over the past month and things have pitched out of control at work, so I'm going to focus, for the next few weeks, on my family.  


If I've learned nothing else, I know what's important--the people we love and those who love us.  So as we look back on this year, rather than focusing on things that have given us fits and sorrow, we should double our efforts to appreciate the gifts we've been given.  I know I will be doing just that.


I hope you all have a Joyous Christmas and a Happy New Year.  


Jeannie

Counting Your Blessings

Every once in a while, life hands you a personal epiphany.  You know what that is, right?  It’s a moment when you’re able to get your head around something you’ve been struggling with, or you understand something clearly.  There are epiphanies that come on gradually and the realization is like an alarm going off in your head.  It’s the “ah-ha” moment.  There’s another type, though.  The type you don’t see coming and the clarity hits you like a Louisville Slugger to the gut. 

This is not a gentle “ah-ha.”  This is a full-fledged assault on your current reality.

I had an epiphany last night.  And it wasn’t the gentle kind.

I've been in education for twenty-five years.  I'm proud of being a teacher even though, for the time being, we're perceived as a scourge on society.  I do good work, and my students are important to me.  Before I was a librarian, I taught English for ten years and the last four of those years I spent at St. Dominic High School on Long Island.  I taught seniors almost exclusively and developed some wonderful relationships with many of the students.  My last class graduated fifteen years ago in 1996.  They were a remarkable bunch--becoming lawyers, artists, social workers, Marines, teachers, moms and dads, executives, business owners, college professors...you get the idea.  They are successful people who are contributing to society and I'm very proud of them.

However, one of them just died.  She was thirty-three.  

I probably wouldn't have known if it hadn't been for the marvel that is social networking.  Because in reality, I lost touch with my students.   It happens, but Facebook has brought a number of them back into my life.  A year ago, Jennifer friended me on Facebook.  I remembered her well. She was a quiet young lady who was as gentle as a breeze.  She had good friends, a kind heart and a unspoken passion for everything she did.      

She had this passion, I believe, because she knew time was precious.  Jenn had Cystic Fibrosis.

It was a quiet battle.  She'd miss school, but she never complained.  She moved through her life finding a way to complete her education, making a large network of friends, loving her family and suffering the loss of her sister from the same disease.

I didn't have a lot of contact with her over the past year, but it was hard to avoid seeing all she'd accomplished.  I learned she'd had a double lung transplant which offered hope and trials at the same time. She worked for others with CF and always carried herself with a mantle of hope. Two days before her death, she posted a status on Facebook that thanked her father for his military service and thanked the family of her lung donor for the gift she'd received.

And then the people who loved her, lost her.

I cried when I saw the post on her wall, made by one of her friends, saying good-bye.  I cried and then I had my epiphany. It happened as I was about to whine to someone about my rejected manuscript.  As I was about to complain about having too few bathrooms in my house.  As I was about to work myself into a frenzy about some petty little thing.

Yeah.  I felt really stupid and this is where counting my blessings comes in.  This loss has has put things in perspective, and I hate that it often takes something tragic for people, like me, to have a wake-up call.

So here goes...My children are healthy and successful.  My husband is a kind and gentle man who adores me, although sometimes I don't know why.  I have a career that allows me to make a real difference in the lives of children and I have some wonderful friends.  My novels may never be published, but because of my writing, I've come in contact with talented and generous people and I've challenged myself in ways I never thought possible.  I have a lot to be thankful for and very little to complain about and Jennifer reminded me of this fact.

Jennifer was one soul who touched many lives.  I can't say I knew her the way others did, but she was courageous and she will be missed.  She is also just one of a handful of my former students who left this world too soon.  All left behind people who loved them and lives full of potential.  

I thank God I knew them, just as I thank all of the kids who've crossed my path for the things they've taught me.

With luck, we'll all keep learning from each other.

            

50,000 words. 30 days. No problem.

As I look at the title of this post  I feel like screaming, "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"  Because I do have a problem.


Tomorrow I, along with tens of thousands of other writers, will embark on the month long writing sprint called NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month.  Now that this particular brand of insanity has been named, let me tell you my plan for the month.


Here goes...


I have no plan.  Nope.  No plan.  Nothing.
Okay, I have a character list.  And I have character sketches.  And I have backstory.  However, the plot structure is weak, at best, and I have no doubt I will write myself into several corners over the course of the month.


So why am I doing this?  That is easy.  Even if I'm not writing my best work for the entire month, if I come out of it with 50,000 words, I have 50,000 words I can work with.   Additionally, there is the community, the bond, the knowledge that I'm doing something hard and that other people are struggling and fighting for every word the same way I am. I did Nano last year and reached my 50K word goal.  The book is pretty much done and would have been finished sooner, but my big revision threw off my time table.  I'm editing last year's Nano novel now and I'm ready to start another.
So, while I may not have a real plot going into tomorrow, I do have a loose plan.


1. Stock up on coffee.


2. Plan to write at lunch.  That's 40 minutes every day to write.


3. I'm giving myself permission to write crap.


4. I'm going to seek out encouragement from others.


The last one is big for me and exciting.  I wrote on my own last year.  This year, I have buddies.  People who will encourage me when I'm procrastinating or doubting myself.  The writing network I often blog about is heading to Nano in November.


We're in this together and that's pretty awe inspiring.  So how about you?  Are you jumping into the Nano pool?  Ready to write 1700 words a day? Come on in; there are a lot of us here and we'll keep you from going under.

Book Review: Hamlet's BlackBerry

It’s a rare person these days who can keep the digital world at bay.  As I write this post, there are three applications on my computer that demand my attention.  There’s a message on Facebook, there are a dozen tweets I could answer and I’m sure there’s something in my inbox.  I heard the chime on my smartphone signaling that I have a text message.  We tweet; we e-mail; we instant message, text or BBM.  There’s Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.  Everywhere we turn our attention is drawn to someone who needs us and is letting us know through technology. For most of us, the draw of a smartphone and the ability to stay in touch with everyone at all times is hard to control.  We are in personal information overload and the book, Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, by William Powers gives us a look at how we are becoming hyper-dependent on the digital feed and how all this dependence could be a result of us being hard-wired to respond to new stimuli.

Powers, a former staff writer for the Washington Post, delves into several areas. He looks at past technological revolutions as far back as Guttenberg and the printing press and how all technological advances were criticized for pushing forth too much change.  Just as we are being warned about the all-consuming addiction of social media, Powers reminds us of the warnings that came with the development of radio and TV and how with each new thing, humans adapted.  He also looks at how this new wave of change is taking so much more out of our day and intruding on time that we used to spend with ourselves. 

However, we may not be able to help it.  Research done recently supports the theory that the new stimuli cause a reaction in our brain that produces a little high.  So if you remember how excited Meg Ryan’s character got when she heard those little words “You’ve got mail,” her response may be grounded in fact.  Scientists have discovered that we get a little shot of dopamine every time one of our technological tethers tells us someone wants our attention. 

But, hard-wired or not, the revolution is cutting into time we would normally take to think and recharge.  Powers is sometimes redundant in his warnings, repeating over and over how the over-connectedness needs to be managed. Fortunately, he does present strategies we can use to combat the “techno bind” we find ourselves in today. 

Hamlet’s Blackberry is an interesting read.  The book puts this new frontier in proper historical context and gives those who are interested ideas on how to manage the constant demand the new technologies place on our time.

Words to Live By

I'll write more for my weekly post, but this quote is perfect today:

"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. " 

~F. Scott Fitzgerald

Everyone have a great weekend.