Hap..i..ness

She sat in her chair, surrounded by cats, as she watched Him play PubG on Xbox One, listening to sizzles come from the kitchen. It’s late, nearly ten o’clock at night, &&& she still hasn’t made dinner. Not on purpose, of course, she overslept and then had to go grocery shopping for dinners and Thanksgiving. It took longer than expected, but what did she expect? It is two days until Thanksgiving.

She didn’t plan for this && couldn’t find shoepeg corn.

Her mind ran rampant thinking about things – stressing && obsessing – not silently, either. Of course she isn’t quiet, she’s a female, with thoughts, things to do, buy && give to people. It’s okay that she worries, freaks out and falls apart because in the end she finds herself just in time to make the ultimate come back.

Holidays are still hard for her. A part of her believes that’s half her holiday blues. Yes! Even someone like her, who loves Christmas as much as she does, gets the holiday blues. This year seems worse than last and last year she buried a pet.

She dreams of happiness around this time but seems to find loneliness and despair. Not just her – but everyone: strangers, friends, co-workers, family. Her heart aches for people so much she finds herself stashed away.

She stashes herself away afraid of feeling empty musical notes or reading Christmas cards that are full of lies. You’re not happy – stop faking it – but who wants to read that?

Merry Christmas from The Grinches!
Our new year plan is to divorce because Mr. Grinch has been cheating with is 5’2″, 125 pounds, blonde co-worker who smells like fruit loops. Little Timmy pees himself when he’s nervous and Mya is seventeen, full of attitude, dresses like a hooker, && is about to flunk out of high school – oh! &&& they both want to live with their father, who coincidentally isn’t actually their dad, but they don’t know this. Their dad? Was a 47 year old drummer in a parody rock band. He’s dead now.

No one wants that to ring in the holidays. But that’s how everyone feels. Dark, hopeless &&& scared – but she’s here. (Imagine that she just tossed her arms in the air, smiled and is now Superhero standing in her underwear.)

Hope. That’s all anyone can hold out for. 2019 is almost over and everyone can look into the future.

2020 is fast approaching. She will clink her glass, smooch her boyfriend with dreams of fairy tales, new beginnings and finish the dream.

Dreams. She has decided it’s time to stop, put food down, and do what she needs to do to accomplish her aspirations in life. Everyone gets one life and no one can live it for you. It’s something you have to face with the “I CAN” attitude mixed in with the “I WILL” mental state.

Does this scare her?

Of course, but at the same time she knows it needs to come off the back burner and be treated liked a loved one. Nothing good will happen if you don’t jump in head first, naked, into a lake of piranhas. Don’t fear the rocks of the unknown. You’re going to hit them, she has accepted this and is purchasing a bunch of Excedrin, bandages, and antibiotic ointment.

The journey will be long, tiresome, and lonely at times. Whether you’re looking into the serpent eyes of divorce, sickness, starting over, opening a business or buying a house – the end will be worth it when you can stand on your own two feet and tell the world you did it; that you made it out on the other side and you have the proof.

Dinner is about finished and she is famished. She will be back around the bend soon to talk about how her life is, and what she has been up to. But for tonight, she’ll leave you with a thought: How will you make 2020 the best year yet?

Happy Thanksgiving All!

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…