Sleepless Nights & Cranberry Wishes…

I’m trying to get back into writing daily, even if it’s just in blog form. Not that writing daily in a blog makes a person less of a writer. That goes back to the last topic. A lot of people make a lot of money blogging (that’d be a wish come true for yours truly). Seriously, how awesome would it be to work from home && do nothing but blog. *wiggles eyebrows* Anyone hiring?

As wonderful as I could write this whole thing about my wish to be a work-from-home-blogger, today’s mind rumble isn’t that. It’s a simple question I have been asking on and off for years: how old is too old?

I am told and hear people say a lot, “you’re too old for that!” Or even just a simple, “I’m too told for that.” I catch myself often saying that, to be honest. Whether it’s about going out Friday && Saturday nights drinking until you can’t stand up or if it’s a conversation about someone who hasn’t changed since they were seventeen and I just figure I’m too old to deal with their crap.

In five days *shivers*, I will be thirty-two years old and it makes me think a lot. Not about life stuff, although, they do sometimes cross my path. But I get told I’m too old for certain things and I wonder if I am.

I still watch cartoons, SpongeBob being my favorite. I still color with crayons and I still play hopscotch. I still like wondering the streets to find Christmas lights and I play board games. All of which I have been told that I am too old for. Why?

What age do you wake up and think to yourself okay, I’m too old for things I enjoyed as a child, I must stop doing them? Is there such an age? I’ve asked people older than me, the ones who seem a little extra boring – they all have different answers. I guess, basically – I’m trying to figure out what age people are when they feel like an adult. Some say once they had their first child or their third. Some say when they moved out of their parents house and some say when they turned twenty-five.

I’m about to be thirty-two, remember? I don’t feel… I don’t feel like I should at my age. I feel the same as I did when I was sixteen versus twenty-seven versus today. I don’t feel like an adult. Sometimes, I still want to call someone older and ask for advice and see what they think.

Maybe the reason I feel like I do is because I didn’t move out of my parents house and I didn’t really “grow” up. My mother passed away when I was fifteen (she was forty) and my dad was gone when I was twenty-four (he was sixty-four). Then I chose to live with my brother and his family for a while until I finally just decided I needed to move out. By twenty-four, with no parents, shouldn’t I feel like I should be on my own?

Yeah. I never felt like that. I had no problems living with my brother I just figured I shouldn’t be. (Although, I do have a friend now who is in her 40’s and still living with her brother so it made me feel a little better.) Logically, no matter how much I thought living with my brother forever sounded, I knew neither him or I could have the lives we want. Because, seriously, if I had met a guy while living with my brother, did I really see that lasting? (I did try to date while living with The Brother and no, it didn’t end well – most thought he was frightening. He isn’t.)

I also wonder, do I feel like I do because I don’t have children. I hear that one a lot. “I didn’t feel like an adult until I had children.” I have nieces and nephews which gave me the thrill of children without actually having them and having the ability to send them home full of sugar and giggle when the mom && dad calls complaining because they won’t sleep. (Yes! I’m THAT aunt. *winks*) Me, personally, never thought of my life needing children. Even as a child, when most girls are thinking about the future, I never pictured children. I don’t think I need them to feel fulfilled – maybe to feel like an adult, but not fulfillment.

I do the adult things. I have a full-time job. I am buying a house. I pay bills. I buy groceries. I cook every night. I clean the house. I have animals. But at the end of the day when I’m just sitting around the house, or playing games, or talking to people – I don’t feel like I should be turning thirty-two in five days.

So my question: How old were you when you started feeling like an adult &&& did you give up your childish ways?

&&& I was like, “whatever bitches”…

Angel reruns, a banana popsicle and making tator tot casserole for dinner made my brain rumble. Actually, no, what made my brain a rumble would be me reading Gabriel’s Inferno again – for like the, 1,000th time. (So many times a friend asked if my book was still together: which it is, by the way.)

What makes a writer a writer?

I have been asking this question to myself a lot lately. Not because I doubt what and who I feel – but because – am I allowed to call myself a writer? Are you only considered a writer if you have published a book? If so, are actors who write autobiography’s writers? Are chefs who have twenty cook BOOKS, writers? But can you consider a person who is always thinking about writing, but doesn’t write daily; who stares at blank word documents and sighs because they words won’t flow out of her fingertips? Someone who can read book after book and get so many ideas for a novel, but cannot seem to get passed the first sentence to make anything happen? How about the girl who has actually written a novel, but can’t seem to finish editing out the crap parts without dousing it in gasoline and lighting it on fire?

Am I considered a writer or am I a wanna-be writer who dreams of it, but won’t let herself have it because she can’t center her brain enough to do it? But in the same sense, how can I consider myself a writer but not the girl next to me who writes poetry in her basement wearing all black with candles lit and Nightwish playing in the background? What makes me a writer and not her? Are we both considered writers?

I feel like a fraud at times. I’m probably just overthinking things – like usual – but how can I be something if I won’t allow myself to be it? I feel like a fraud because I only think about doing something. I did it, once, but now I’m stuck and afraid. I’m afraid because what if my story that I wrote is as bad as I feel? I mean, it cannot be too good if I can’t bring myself to read it to edit it – can I? &&& I don’t want to ask someone else to edit it, right now, because I know how bad it is.

I bought a indie writers book – she self-published &&& one of the authors I enjoy reading was promoting it. So I bought it, why not? It was only 1$. As I was sitting at work reading it on my Kindle all I saw were errors. Spelling errors. Sentence errors. Run ons, and paragraphs that made no sense. I even read through a part that sounded like the character in the book was a pedophile. I eventually stopped reading it because it went on && on &&& on &&&& on about absolutely nothing. At one point I couldn’t figure out what was happening. That’s what I fear. &&& I know for a fact that a part of my story is exactly that. It’s rambles. It’s nothing. It’s pure crap.

When I started writing Frost, I read how long people think romance novels should be and I went with that. So instead of going for content I wrote for numbers. Page numbers. Word numbers. I was trying to reach 100,000 words without realizing just how much garble I had. So now, when I edit it, I’m trying to take out the garble and leave the story. The content. The thing that will bring readers back. But when I sit to edit the garble I get sad because of how much there really is.

I swear I have a chapter where one of the characters is making dinner. I wrote paragraph after paragraph him making dinner and their thoughts and their crap. It LITERALLY has no place in the story. No one cares that the character likes spaghetti or that they know how to make it. I could have simply wrote “before she arrived he busied himself in the kitchen, making the only dish he really knows: spaghetti.” But no, I wrote how he put the water in the pot and salted the water, and how he boiled the noodles to perfection and made the sauce and poured the wine and she watched. The other character just watched him do it without them ever saying a single word to each other. Instead I could have wrote “he pulled out her chair and poured a glass of wine, living in a small town he doesn’t know much about fine wines, but the lady at the store recommended this one. She took a drink and smiled, showing her affection for the wine choice. She has never been a fan, but knowing that he picked and offered it, today – she loves wine.” I went on to say how he made the plates, put down the spoon and fork, sat in front of her, and then went on to talk about how they ate it. HOW THEY ATE IT! When I could have said “he was no chef, but when it came to spaghetti, he felt it. He gently sat a plate down in front of her. ‘Do you want some cheese?’ Her nerves collided with her brain, but nodded and smiled. He smiled, thinking it was cute every time she blushed, and grated some parmesan on top. Not a lot, but enough to top it right off. She looked around the table at the spread and felt like a queen. It had been a long time since she was offered so much and was allowed to sit at the table and enjoy it with someone. He is going to spoil her, was the only thing she was thinking.”

But here I am. My story isn’t written like that. Maybe I should stop complaining. Complaining doesn’t get me anywhere or do anyone any good. It doesn’t get the story edited or completed. It doesn’t help me in publishing it or allowing someone to read it. What I NEED to do is just get back to it – open the story back up and finish it.

But how do I get passed my irritation I have with the story to actually finish it? I still love the idea, the concept, but a part of me doesn’t like the characters. That’s the problem – I think – I don’t like the characters I built &&& that’s something a writer must do. When I read interviews or listen to authors talk – the one thing they all say, “I love the characters and I loved watched them grow and build into something great!” I have changed and rearranged and renamed and rebuilt my characters so many times – that I am just fed up with them and all they are about. I keep thinking about things I have to have in my story and I keep screwing it all up. I don’t NEED a gay character. I don’t NEED a suicide attempt. I don’t NEED guys being animals. I don’t NEED girls being damsels. I don’t need half of what is in it, but I Have it, because a part of me thought it had to have everything in one. If I put everything into one story then I will have nothing left for my other twenty novels I want people to read.

&&&& who said I had to have 300 pages? If I don’t make it to 300 pages, that’s fine – that just means it’s a shorter book. But of course, I wanted words and length so I wrote and wrote until I had such and such amount of crap and garble that now I have to… you know.

&&& now I’m sorry for the rambling but I think I’m just mad at myself. In 2012, when I began this story, I really believed all of this. Now, the 2019 me is trying to fix the crap that 2012 me wrote. It’s aggravating…

Once upon a time…

Once upon a time there lived a boy who had way too high of hopes for his deranged girlfriend. This boy, who most people refer to as Potato Foot, was a handsome fella, and played a lot of video games. His girlfriend liked to sit behind him and watch as he played Players Unknown Battleground like a crazed maniac. His girlfriend like to attempt to know what she was talking about, but usually he had to correct her because she is a bit of a ditz.

The Boy was superhuman and could pick up a house and toss it feet, if not miles. The Boy has never tossed a house, but the Girlfriend is pretty sure he could if he wanted to. She has noticed that when the Boy puts his mind to something, he usually achieves it.

The Girlfriend, however, cannot seem to even write a sentence anymore. In the past, she could write && write &&& write, but now, when she opens her laptop, all she finds that she does is stare at a blank Word document. Sometimes she thinks that her ability to write, has gone down the toilet. Just flushed, swirled down and now is in the sewer with all the rest of the crap.

The boy, being his loving boy self, tries to tell the Girlfriend that her writing isn’t crap. But she cannot believe him since he has never read anything she has written. But in his defense, The Girlfriend doesn’t usually share her writing – with him, or the neighbor, or the best friend, or even the cats… especially the cats – those mean little I’m going to judge you animals.

The Girlfriend had so many dreams && sometimes she feels like they were washed into a gutter and now the rats are chewing them. This made her sad – not because her dreams are trash and unrealistic, but because – rats.

The Boy laughs sometimes at how silly the Girlfriend is and thinks and talks and walks and chews and…. Okay, maybe not – it’s not the point. He just seems so perfect, being able to shoot fish in a barrel, but her – nothing. She cannot even fail properly.

The Girlfriend tries to accomplish new things but in the end trashes it to the floor in a small pile of crinkled paper. It’s not that she doesn’t want to achieve greatness, she just doesn’t think she is worthy of it. What makes her better than the next person who wants wonderful things to happen? Her dream is to be a writer of books. She wants to be that person that has a book that touches a soul – even if it is just one.

The Boy is always telling her she can do anything if she puts her mind to it. But the Girlfriend knows you’re supposed to use personal experience and likes and loves and feelings and relationships to build stories off – but what happens when the writer hasn’t done anything to build from? What if the things the writer has been through, they are tired of writing about?

Once in a world she could write and write and write and write about feelings, and experiences and death, but now with her Rainbow and Butterfly mind she wants to write love and happiness and finding a way to smile. She wants to make someone feel as if they’re floating in thin air from just the words she chooses.

But words – what if her words aren’t perfect and her paragraphs are dirty, and her sentences are thirsty? How can a writer have issues with wording and grammar and still write a book that pleases all the senses?

She will ask people, a lot, about ways to write more and their answer is always the same – to write more you need to read more. What happens if you’re in a reading slump and every time you pick up a book you begin yawning and fall asleep? Not because the book is boring but because you just don’t feel like it. Kind of like when people tell you to drink more water, but the more water you drink the more boring the taste is. Then you wonder how people can drink the water because it doesn’t actually have a taste and when they give you some line like it’s refreshing, and you think ‘so is Dr. Pepper if you drink enough of it’.

The Boy, however, doesn’t seem to have these kinds of problems – at least the Girlfriend doesn’t notice this. He laughs things off and carries on his merry way. He grabs controllers and plays video games forgetting troubles for a few. The Girlfriend used to use writing for that – just jump in headfirst and live through characters a life worth living. But does that mean her life isn’t worth living?

She is happy and enjoys life. How many people can say they have fallen in love twice in a lifetime with the same person and finds themselves falling more and more every day? She can. How many people can say that by thirty she would realize that she has lived longer without parents than she did with them? She can. But how many people can say that by nineteen they had figured out exactly what they wanted to do with their life and just needed to put it into action? She can.

Putting it to action is her problem. She has a memory card with thousands of writings – beginnings – no middle and no end. She finds herself sometimes going back and opening her old writings and trying to finish them, but she can’t. There is no ending. Her writing seems to go on forever, but the forever isn’t a good thing, because it turns into crap. Then when she finally does write a full story, whether it is short, middle or long, she shreds it to pieces before she can stop herself and ends up with the dog ate my homework writing that makes no sense at all.

The Boy tries to help her the best way he can by supporting and telling her to start writing and saying how their future could be great – if she would only write more. Finish what she has started and do something great! Greatness, she wonders, was it ever in her future to begin with? People her age seem to have already gotten what they want out of life, family, career, but she sits on her throne staring off into the distance of an unwritten world of greys and whites covering a rainbow that was once thousands of colors.

Where did her colors go? Where can she find the colors to pull them back into her life so the rainbows, and unicorns, and cotton candy comes back into her eyes?

But even in the bleakness of rainbow-less worlds of soggy sandwiches and stale potato chips, she can still find a small hole in the fence and write something. Maybe nothing touching or excellent but something – small and ordinary. She finds her wording sometimes to be dramatic and wholesome and perky. But parts, in the same writing, would be swollen and contemporarily empty.

She blinks back the thoughts of quitting and moves on down the wet pavement to the stop sign and stares emotionless for a while before she turns back around and goes home. Home, a place of solitude and happiness. Home, a place where she can put her feet up and know that no one is judging her, except for maybe her cats. Home, a place she can close doors off to people and things and other worldly beings and pretend she isn’t home. They can knock and ring the doorbell and peak into the windows but all they’ll see is empty space. Home, a place where dreams and aspirations live in the air where they’ll be plucked and hidden in a box deep into the abyss of what is known to her as a closet. The closet holds secrets that sometimes need to be spread around, so people know what they are up to. Cleaning out the closet is a real thing and maybe she needs to open hers wide open so the world can swallow her whole.

She doesn’t know where life will take her if she is barefooted all the time, but she does know wherever it leads, the Boy will follow on the back of a fedora wearing horse with a cape yelling “GO GIRLFRIEND!” She knows out of the whole world that he will be her cheerleader, the one person that she can count on, and know that when it rains, it’ll pour – but he’ll be holding the umbrella getting soaked because his ball cap that he wears backwards doesn’t block the rain.

Just let me mope…

I have spend years trying to think of that one thing in life that brings me joy. I narrowed it down to writing and cooking – writing first, cooking second. It’s how it has been for the last few years. You know, it’s not like I don’t talk about it enough.

But lately – neither of them give me thrills like they use to. I don’t feel like cooking and when I do cook I’m grump, and uncomfortable. I haven’t made anything new or interesting – it’s basically what’s quick and easy. Writing has been worse. When I sit and try to write I barely get anything wrote. In fact, this is the longest thing I have written in months. I can’t edit Frost, and I can’t seem to write anything new.

I thought maybe I had a writing slump – sometimes that happens. Then I thought I had a cooking slump. I’m afraid, however, that I am in a life slump. I just don’t have the oomph to do anything and it shows. Lately, I don’t even want to go to work. Give me short term and just let me mope about at home. &&& what makes it worse, I have no idea what’s wrong.

The last time I felt like this my brother ended up shipping me off to Texas to stay with my grandfather for months. &&& now we can’t. I can’t go anywhere. I can’t do anything. I’m just blah and have to keep trudging forward. I just wish I’d stop taking it out on the boyfriend before he gets sick of it. Although, I did tell him beforehand, that I get moody for no reasons && usually can’t figure out how to fix it.

I need a vacation. Doesn’t everyone, right? Or maybe just a harmonica and I can play the blues. Does that actually fix anything? Probably not…

I should be asleep…

I was laying in bed messing around on my phone and came across the app for this site and I realized it has been quite awhile since I last wrote – so I thought I would write a little something. I’m not sure how this will end up or what I’ll talk about.

But something…

I want to say that I haven’t been writing because my life has been busy and hectic and I honestly didn’t have any time to write. But that would be a lie. I wish I could tell you that I have had my nose deep in writing and that I am near completion of the book I’ve been writing since 2012 (Frost is the title, don’t forget – one day.) But that would be a lie. If only I could tell you that I have this wonderful new job and I have been wanting to work hard and be helpful to everyone around. But that would be a lie.

Truth is – I have writers block so bad that I can’t unscramble my thoughts. Boyfriend && I have decided to buy a house (thoughts are glued to that so bad that I have actually forgotten to pay bills.) I don’t work any more or less than I have in the past eight years. So basically, my lack of writing is pure laziness on my part.

So, with that in mind, I opened the laptop today to at least write a small something or another.

I have been thinking about starting a YouTube channel. I have actually been thinking about that since 2015, but I chicken out. No, I wouldn’t say chicken out – it’s more about how I would come across to people whether they are in my life or complete strangers. I could never come up with a topic – YouTube channels have ‘topics’. Most of them are gaming, make-up, or tutorials. So I broke it down – I am not a gamer. I can not even do my own make up, let alone try to teach people to do it and I have no talent to explain how to do something to strangers. So that’s where I was at until earlier this year. Well, a few months ago, to be exact.

I find myself just messing around on Facebook a lot, not really doing anything, just looking. One night while Boyfriend played PUBg, I was watching videos on there and came across Mukbang’s. (Before you think, oh no, not another one)… I do not plan on starting a Mukbang channel. But what I did realize is that my love of food could be a channel – but for cooking. So that’s there – I don’t know if I’ll ever actually do it – I’m not sure if I have the face for videos.

It’ll probably never happen – It is probably a very stupid idea.

>subject change<

On the buying of house, that you’re probably wondering why I’m not talking about more – it’s… still in work of progress. I’ll talk about that more at a later date, but it’ll happen.

>subject change<

“Frost”.. isn’t any closer to be finished, but it’s there – always on my mind. Stalking my mind like a crazy man wanting a date. I have faith that one day I’ll finish it. I was hoping it would be by the end of this year (yes, I know, the year isn’t even half over… oh wait, this is the sixth month – so it’s half way over. But yes, I know I still have six months before the year is over; I’m just basically getting prepared for the inevitable.)

So yeah, that’s where I’m at – not on top, not on bottom. Just somewhere floating around in the middle. But it’s after two in the morning and I should be sleeping… Hopefully I can write more and stuff and other stuff and more stuff and less stuff and crooked stuff and side ways stuff and stuff filled with more stuff covered in stuff.

Until that stuff happens…

I don’t measure.

I have been wanting to make a cookbook. (Not published cookbook – but one for me. Something that I can keep all my foods in order with.)

Recently Boyfriend &&& I bought a notebook so I can finally make that cookbook. I took it out tonight to start writing in a few recipes I could think of right off hand. But as I was writing in it I realized something…

I don’t know measurements.

Why? The answer is simple. I don’t measure. I add things in by taste and sight. I have been like that since I began cooking. Every cookbook I have ever read has always had measurements (not that I follow them) and not just a bunch of ingredients and ramblings about how to make it.

But here I am. A big cookbook loser! I’m kind of faking it but there are things I use in recipes that I don’t measure that if you tell someone, “Just pour until you think it’s enough”, they’d think you were crazy. But that’s where I’m at.

Olive oil. For an example – I never measure it. Not because I don’t know how, but because I use sight and taste. I’ve always figured that’s just as good. Is it, isn’t it? It’s worked for me, anyway.

Seasonings. Pepper, salt, paprika, etc… No measuring.

Liquids… sometimes, okay, most of the time. I just pour. Taste. Taste. Season. Taste. Taste.

Meh. I think I’ll just write what I want to write and just deal with it. (I just laughed to myself.) It’s not as if someone else will ever see it. I have no one to pass it down to, so it’ll just decay when I’m gone. So I guess it technically doesn’t matter.

Then why am I complaining? Am I complaining?

Nightmare -vs- Bad Dream

I have been having horrible dreams off and on since I was fifteen. They always varied from not able to find my brother during bad times, to shooting my grandfather, to finding my mother pulling a butcher’s knife on me.

Yeah, I know that those kinds of dreams are usually triggered by something traumatic – mine was burying my mother. I buried her at fifteen and the dreams started.

However, they have been non-existent for a while now &&& I was hoping I was done with them. Today, a day I don’t work, I’m awake at 4 o’clock in the morning thanks to a bad dream. This one – was about possession.

It wasn’t really scary – I didn’t have my moment like the people in movies and television shows where I roll around in bed, sweating, moaning, and then JUMP really high breathing heavily trying to figure out what was happening. No. I am a quiet bad dreamer, if you will.

This morning the boyfriend was wandering around the room and so I just sat up, normally, and looked at him. Eventually grabbing paper and drawing what the “demon” looked like. My Boyfriend – LOVES scary movies – so I figured if I drew it for him he might tell me where I saw it, heard of it, or maybe just passed by it.

He looked and brought up Jeff the Killer – but his eyes were wrong. Plus, in all of my years, I have never heard of “Jeff the Killer”. It might be half because I am not an artist, in the least, but I think I did pretty well for someone who did not inherit any form of drawing gene from anyone in my family.

I don’t know, it may have just been random. I have yet to find anything important from my dreams. Except maybe the ones with The Brother – only thing I could think of, anytime I REALLY needed him, he wasn’t anywhere around. Now, you have to keep in mind I stopped having dreams about him when I was around seventeen. Him &&& I are as close as ever, so the dreams have stopped.

Most of them stopped – actually. Once The Boyfriend came into my life. I have had a couple in the past five years, but nothing that made me stop && think, what just happened? Until now, of course.

There is more to the demon dream, but as a writer, I just cannot bring myself to share it. Never know, one day you might wander through this world and come across a short story all about Mister Demon. That is, if I can connect to that side of my brain.

If I could go the rest of my life without having another nightmare/bad dream, it would be too soon.

Once in a dream…

When I was younger I had a dream. It seems silly to me now, but as a child, it’s what I aspired to. I dreamed about what it would be like to stand in front of a crowd, chanting my name, holding lighters up wanting more.

I wanted to be a rock star!

I didn’t want to do it for the money or even the fame. If I wanted that, my choice would have been to be an actor – I just wanted to sing – to be on a stage.

That’s half the reason I chose to be in band – the other half, because I love music. Being in band (I played clarinet) gave me the opportunity to be on a stage multiple times a year. But it wasn’t enough, so in middle school I signed up for the talent show. First year I sang a Britney Spears song, yes, seriously, I was in middle school in the early 2000’s. The second time I sang an ‘Nsync song. (It may be the other way around – I’ve slept a lot since then.)

I may have lost both years but it was by far the best moments of my life. (That’s sad, right?) I probably would have kept entering it but thanks to a group of guys and their screamo, they stopped holding it. They eventually started again, but it was after I dropped out. (That’s for another day.)

As I have gotten older the feeling has calmed however the feeling still appears. My job has an event center which of course has a large stage. Sometimes we’ll have classes and I’ll space out staring at the stage – daydreaming.

The feeling has exploded but not exactly for the stage. I may still get that fuzzy feeling for the stage, but now I get that feeling for the printed word.

I was told once, “If you’re meant to do something you’ll always be thinking about it. When you go to sleep, wake up, and in between.” When I was younger it was singing, performing; anything dealing with the stage – that I thought about all the time. As I’ve aged my thoughts have changed and it’s always thinking about writing.

When I’m not writing, I’m thinking about it. That’s, I think, why I get so frustrated when I get “writers block”. It’s also why I get so angry at myself when I think about ‘Frost’.

I know I question whether I’m supposed to be a writer or not a lot, but it’s not because I don’t want to, but rather – shouldn’t it be easier? Is it normal for someone to take over six years to write a book? I mean, technically, I ‘finished’ it back in 2015. Since then I Have been attempting to edit it – all I seem to do is change things. I basically rewrite it, become aggravated, stop writing for months just to pick it back up – starting over at chapter one, to begin rewriting it again. I swear I have rewrote ‘Frost’ at least thirty times.

I’m never happy with it. I even know that I’ll always be my biggest critic – so why do I do this to myself?

I have this plan! My plan! A great plan! Since I am my biggest critic, and I will probably never like my writing, I decided that after it’s finished – COMPLETELY – I would offer three people the chance to read it and tell me what they think. People I know won’t sugar coat it, or lie because they don’t want to hurt my feelings. I know it’ll be rough, most first books are – I am not going to be the next Jane Austen (I find her work hard to read). I just want to find my voice, my way – be the best Barbara Hightower I can. That’s all I can achieve. I can’t try to be another writer – just me. Because I know, if I am not, I’ll always be disappointed in myself and that’ll be a crappy life.

But first – I must finish ‘Frost’ – which I say a lot. For most, that’s a simple request, but for me – Queen of Procrastination – not so much.

I figured I would end this with a poem –

Silence! I scream loud!
A void, I feel deep, expands,
Forming frustration.

Until next time!
Peace. Love. && Fried Chicken.

PROOF! That I am in fact, editing Frost. Was able to get two chapters done yesterday.

Goodbye 2018 : Hello 2019

2018 – was horrible.

I’ve noticed a lot of people seem to agree with me on how horrible last year was. I honestly cannot think of anything good that happened – just bad. Buried my grandfather && a close cousin. I watched as the days passed showing me nothing but grey skies and sadness.

But as I sit here, January 2, 2019, I am hoping for a better year. I would say it couldn’t get any worse, but that’s not true. It could get 10x worse, but I refuse to allow that. Hopefully.

2018 I made one resolution. One I honestly thought I could fulfill. I did not – so I am keeping it for this year too: finish Frost. Completely.

But for 2019, I am adding a new one: to get healthy. To be a better me. What it will take? Only time will tell.

For now, my top goal is my book. It may never be published through a big company, and be found on every bookshelf worldwide, but at least I can say that I finished it. Wrote it. Something that I have wanted to do since I began.

So, that’s where I sit. 2018 was crap. 2019 HAS to be better. 2018 I accomplished nothing. 2019 I HAVE to accomplish something. 2018 was not my favorite year. 2019 shall be the first of great many years to come. 2018 was not my worse years (that would be 2003 && 2011.) But it is up there. 2019 – please be better.

Night Owl to Early Bird…

As the alarm clock blares its music at four o’clock in the morning, I hit snooze and wonder how much longer I can sleep before I’m late for work. I have to be there by 5:30, so it doesn’t give me much time to continuously hit snooze. But I do – over & over again. The alarm blares again, I stare at the time: 4:30; crud! That’s all I think. I need to get up, I’m sure there is SOMETHING I have to do before leaving for work. Shower – maybe?

I fling the blanket off of me but I don’t move. My legs are glued to the bed with memories of sleep dancing around my head. I wiggle my toes trying to get the determination I need to get up.

I sit up and stare at the wall. My bedroom is still dark, && dark means sleep – so why am I not still sleeping? My feet hit the carpet and they begin moving around the bedroom and into the bathroom – I leave the light off, it’s still too early for lights. (At this point, I still haven’t put on my glasses, because glasses means it’s time to get the day rolling, &&& I’m not at that point yet.)

To move around my bedroom I have to pass my bed multiple times && each time it gets a little harder to not get back in it, cover up, and pretend the world doesn’t exist. But I tell myself – Barbara, you only work three days a week, that’s it! Three! You can do this.

Yes, that’s right. I work three days a week, Saturday through Monday – So I’m off Tuesday through Friday. Sounds great, right? It is! I love these days, I have been doing it since 2011, so I must like the job. I do like my job – would I rather be a full time writer that sits at home every day writing the next novel that people carry with them in their hearts/souls and tells everyone they must read it?

Well, duh!

But I have to be logical about this whole thing. If it’s something I want, then I have to work for it, and until I actually finish Frost, that’ll never happen. So it’s this job. I began working this job in 2011, but I worked nights. 5:30 PM – 6:00 AM. I’ve always worked nights. Never had a reason to not work nights. I was single, lived alone – it didn’t bother people if I came in at weird hours. But now – eight-ish years later, I’m not single and I don’t live alone. Nights still wasn’t a problem. But I recently changed my hours, this year – August. Now I work 5:30 AM – 7:30 PM. Why would I do that?

I’m pleading insanity. People do it all the time. Go to sleep around ten o’clock at night and wake up at four in the morning. People have been doing it for a long time. So why do I have such a hard time with it?

The boyfriend && I both work in the same department here. So we cannot work the same shift (I wouldn’t even if I could, wouldn’t be able to do it. I’m too much of a worry wart.) He was given the chance to go full-time, which means overlapping into my shift. Then an opportunity to go full-time led me to another shift.

Its 8:28 in the morning as I type this && I feel like I need a three hour nap. Maybe 12 hours.

But as I finish up getting dressed, packing my lunch, walking to the car and making my way to work – I’m already exhausted. So I drew up a sticky note to put on the computer screen I sit at to help myself make it through the day.

I find myself staring at it at times, hoping it’ll give me that boost. It hasn’t worked yet, but I’m leaving it there as long as I can. (All of the shifts share computers.)