I’m That Weirdo

December 11, 20193 Comments

Well, I’m sick. And not just in the head this time. But the nose and throat and my eyeballs feel like heavy marbles sitting in their sockets. Does that sound weird? Because that’s what it feels like when you’ve contracted the plague and are DYING. It’s really not the plague. It’s a healthy combination of self-neglect and self-induced stress with a side of erratic weather. I over-worked myself while neglecting to feed myself, and it’s Florida, so I never know what’s going on outside, and I ended up making myself ill. Or “maybe I caught it” for all you non-believers. Either way, my eyeballs seriously feel like marbles and as weird as it sounds, it’s accurate.

*Everything hurts*

I actually called out of work last Thursday. I only brag because I don’t ever call out (even when I am sick) because I’m that weirdo that worries about work when I’m not there. All the emails I’m getting. All the requests and little red flags waiting for me when I sign in again. It drives me nuts, especially when I have vacationed planned. But I’ve worked myself up to those days. I’ve prepped, and put on my out of office so everyone understands the emergency of me not responding to their email ASAP.

But if I call out? (And no, I don’t have one of those jobs where I’m important enough to log into my work email from home. Separate worlds, my friends.) How will people know? Will it all be okay? Will the world keep from imploding???

Turns out, it will. Friday (only slightly better) I returned to work and found it did not actually crumble. And, had I been playing hooky or doing something that required any amount of intense brain power, I would’ve spent the day wondering about all work coming in, and the guilt over not doing it. But, as it was, Thursday provided very little brain power and I spent it watching Drive and Tangled. And sleeping. A lot of sleeping. This plague has stretched to today with my marble eyeballs and hoarse throat, but hopefully it’s on its way out. Then again, it’s the holidays and we pass that shit around like hot potato, so… who knows?

How do you feel when you miss a day of work? Have you caught any bugs going around, or gave yourself one?

First Come the Cardholders

January 16, 20198 Comments

I know I said I wouldn’t talk (much) about writing here, but I have to show you:

LOOK.

Look at these AMAZING card holders I found at work. 😊 😊 😊

I was grabbing a bottle of water from the break-room and there they were, just sitting there all alone on the counter, abandoned. I checked to make sure they didn’t belong to anybody (even let them sit for a couple hours) but when they were still there at the end of the day, I figured it was safe to call it – and I don’t feel bad AT ALL. These two beauties have inspired me to:

Get going on my branding, because I want some sweet-ass cards to fill them
Visualize my table when I finally attend a book expo as an author (gotta put my cards somewhere, right?)
Realize I might need two different card-holders for a reason (details coming soon!)

So there. That’s it. This post was mostly about me getting a bottle of water from the break-room and then stealing stuff I found nearby. It just happened to be cool, amazing, super-inspiring, career-developing stuff. That I found next to a refrigerator. This is my life.

There are other, more exciting things that are happening, but I’m not at liberty to discuss. Actually, I can—I just don’t want to. Not now. Right now is the time for celebrating people who leave unwanted goods for lower totem-pole employees to grab and keep. And to use for inspiration to one day book a table at an author/writer/book convention/expo.

You know what they say: first come the cardholders. Then come the fans.

P.S. Shut up. They say this. And if they don’t, they will 😉

P.P.S. If you read AW and want the scoop on how the first draft of RTD is going, check out my Patreon page where I post snippets of my progress. That’s right, baby. Sneak Peeks of first draft crap. How are you not already there reading it?

Seeking Brain Cells

April 4, 2014April 4, 20141 Comment

I haven’t written a lot this week. It may be because now that I‘m at the end of the first draft, it means going back to the beginning and really putting the thinking cap on. Before, it was just write to write. To get it all down so I’d have the story outlined and then it could Frankenstein itself alive. With a moving corpse, at least you have a place to start. But now I have to go back and start having it all make sense. Everything is basically there, but now it’s time to color it in, to take the blurry and sharpen the focus. To put a top hat on my cadaver and teach it to dance with Gene Wilder, so to speak. Okay. Maybe that’s a bad analogy, but going back to the second draft is sometimes harder than the first. Because now you really have to start making it better. And, I don’t know… maybe I don’t have enough brain cells to make it better. Like this post, for instance. I’m writing it on notebook paper at my job when I’m technically supposed to be working. It’s all chicken-scratchy with letters that aren’t really letters and it’s all pouring out of me, fueled by the free coffee from the break-room that I simply *must* enjoy. But when I go home and type this up, I’ll have to take an extra second and make sure everything written is like, coherent. Most of it is rambling, I know. But I still want it to make sense. So you’re not like “what the hell? I’m un-following her because she’s a bag of crazy tarts.”

And I am.

Anyway, back to the point—I haven’t written much this week because Hollywood keeps stealing my focus with Captain American and movies with Christan Bale. It’s like they sense my defenses are down and I’m looking for a reason not to use my brain cells. Alright. If I *have * to watch the first forty minutes of Captain America to see how he’s transformed from skinny geeky non-soldier to America’s finest specimen, I guess it’s not that big a deal. But while my brain thanks me for taking a few days off, my characters shake their heads in disappointment. You’re ditching us so you can be mindlessly entertained? Yes, yes I am.

I’ll get back to it again this weekend. Maybe tomorrow or next Tuesday. I’m not worried. I can only fall off the wagon for a few days at a time. After that, I get the familiar urges and start scratching again, my fingers itching for the feel of a keyboard.

Thank God writing is legal.