On How Holidays Evolve Over the Years

Declaration of Independence (1818) - John Trumbull

I think I've realized a little something about Independence Day over the past week or so, planning for it and all. It's just not the same holiday to me that it used to be when I was a little girl. The majority of the reasons why are a mixture of personal and general. The rest may just be about having grown up a little bit over the years. It doesn't seem like anything much is exactly the same to me at 45 as it was when I was little or even just still young. 

To begin with, a lot of what made the 4th special is just plain off the table for us at this point for reasons beyond our control. With the way climate change has made wildfires such a massive issue in the summers here, the city doesn't do fireworks displays anymore. It's been decades since I actually went anywhere specifically to watch the fireworks, but sometimes I could still see them in the sky over the back fence. I didn't mind sitting outside with Seth a while when I was in the mood, trying to catch a glimpse of the pretty colors, smelling the cordite, and reminiscing about how magical the 4th of July seemed when I was a kid.

We almost always used to grill, but we don't even do that anymore -- also because of the fires. I used to love the smell of a barbecue grill, a wood-burning fireplace, or things burning in general. Now when I smell something -- anything -- burning, it no longer signals thoughts of coziness, fun, safety, and good times. It means danger. It makes me scared I'm going to have to spend the next week or two checking for evacuation alerts every two seconds and barely being able to see without the lights on because the sky is weird and orange in the middle of the day.

I've Realized I'm a Happy Person at Heart

That's not something I would have been able to say about myself for most of my life. I spent years of my life thinking about what was wrong with the world, judging people who didn't live the way I thought they should and obsessing over the ways I didn't think my own life measured up to the status quo. But I've noticed things have been different for me lately.

It's not that my life changed. I still have the vast majority of the problems I had before and could well be stuck with some of them for the foreseeable future. I just have a better attitude than I used to. Some of that seemed to come with age, but the rest really was about a simple perspective change. It's a change I'm grateful for, as life is just better this way. After all, I only get one of those... a life. I don't really want to waste mine griping, complaining, and judging. 

Life's never going to be fucking perfect.

I used to think that I couldn't be happy until I got specific details of my life in line. When I was an awkward teenager, I thought being prettier would do it. Later on, I thought meeting someone would be the answer. Or finding a way to run a business out of my home so I wouldn't have to spend so much of my time at an office or behind a cash register somewhere. Then I met someone, got married, and still wasn't happy with my love life, so I got a divorce and started daydreaming about the day I'd meet someone better. Once I had a business, I wanted a better one doing more exciting work. 

There's always going to be something else -- some other part of your life that downright sucks or something monumental you finally achieve only to realize your life still isn't the way you want it. And the vast majority of those solutions you thought were going to solve all your problems come with brand new issues of their own. If you wait to allow yourself any measure of happiness or contentment until everything's perfect, you're going to be waiting until you drop dead.

Reflections on Life After Watching Disney-Pixar's Soul

I finally got to see the new Disney-Pixar movie the other night -- Soul. Being the giant, overgrown kid-at-heart I am, I get very excited about new Disney films as a rule, but I was extra eager to see this one. Not only does it have a Black lead and contain many references to Black culture -- something I'm happy to be seeing in more media -- but jazz music is an integral part of the film's theme, as well. I've come to love jazz, especially as I get older and increasingly excited about different kinds of music.

I liked the film very much in general. Still, I especially enjoyed its primary message about the concept of life purpose and how it addressed many common questions people have on the subject. 

• What does it mean to have a life purpose?
• Is your purpose about your profession of choice or something else entirely?
• What does it really feel like to finally realize your most significant, dearest goals in life?
• Where do little pleasures and daily experiences fit into the picture?
• Is it possible not to have a purpose, and what happens if that's the case for you?

At nearly 45, I've managed to answer many of those questions for myself, but it took me a while. Joe was my favorite character, so I'd love to say I was just like him -- maybe a little misguided, but always sure of what I wanted to do with my life. I'm really the spitting image of Soul 22, though. 

Like 22, I believed that I didn't have a life purpose for an extremely long time, especially when I was younger. While everyone else my age seemed to know exactly what they wanted to do with their lives, nothing seemed to resonate with me at all. I did know I enjoyed being creative -- drawing, writing, playing piano, and the like -- but there was no way to turn those things into stable livings that actually appealed to me back then. I didn't want to put on a suit and design logos for some soulless corporate entity or settle for teaching schoolchildren about the things I wanted to be doing myself. I especially disliked the idea of having to commute to an office every day.

What I've Learned About Fitting a Major Writing Project into an Already Tight Schedule

I officially take back everything I ever said in the past about fellow writers who couldn't manage to stick with their NaNoWriMo projects all the way to the end of the event. Back when I used to win NaNo all the time, I didn't have anything close to a full line-up of professional and personal responsibilities to manage the way I do now. It's an entirely different ballgame when you do, as it takes more than just discipline and an iron will to keep all those balls in the air. Hats off to anyone who can make it work.

That said, I'm hanging in there pretty well this year myself. I've been staying on par with my NaNoWriMo word count every single day without exception. Keeping up with everything else writing-related I have on my plate was a challenge last week, so I spent a lot of this week playing catch-up with things like my Medium posts. I've figured out a few things along the way, though. May they help those of you who will struggle in the future to add an additional project to your writing schedules when you're already busy like a mo-fo. 

You don't find the time. You make it.

I've written some Medium content about how to optimize your ongoing schedule for maximum productivity. I'm repeating the gist of what I said here because that's how important it is that you get it. I hear people continuously talk about wishing they had time to do what they want to do because they're just so busy. 

That's the thing, though. Everyone's busy -- everyone -- and I can assure you a lot of the hyper-productive people you know are a lot busier than you probably are. They have the same 24 hours to work with every day that you do. They just got super serious about streamlining their schedules, so they're not wasting time on a bunch of bullshit, is all.

On How Retail Prepared Me for My Career as a Writer

Le Principe du Plaisir - Rene Magritte (1937)

A friend of mine was posting on her Instagram earlier all about the twisty, winding path she's taken in life to get where she currently is. Today, she has her own highly successful wedding photography business, but years ago, when I first met her, she was a waitress.

In her post, she talked a bit about why she was a waitress for so many years despite hating the job -- the easy money and the way food service requires you to "hustle" a bit for your supper. She also touched on how being a waitress back then prepared her in many ways for what she's doing now, as the two businesses are a lot more alike than they probably seem at surface value. 

It got me thinking back on the many years I spent in retail. Aside from an extremely brief period of less than a year where I worked as a vet tech, pretty much all of the traditional time clock jobs I've had were ordinary retail jobs that are a dime a dozen. Like my friend, I absolutely loathed what I was doing, and just thinking about doing it for the rest of my life depressed the shit out of me. I don't know that I'd be as good at working for myself (or at writing) as I am without that as part of my background, though.

The Peace and the Stillness of It All

Things slowly appear to be drifting back into "normal" territory as far as all the quarantine measures go. This is although COVID-19 hasn't actually gone anywhere, nor have people stopped contracting it or dying from it. No vaccine has been developed, nor has any concrete plan been put in place to avoid a second wave. It's almost like the government and everyone else more or less decided to shrug and go "oh well". 

That makes me nervous. You'd think it would be making other people nervous too, especially if they work outside their homes or have to interact much with the general public to earn a living. I am exceedingly grateful that I don't have to and, to be honest, this whole pandemic has shown me just how right I've always been to simply be my naturally reclusive self to whatever extent I can. At this point, something about me others have always thought of as a personality flaw might literally mean the difference between life and death.

This has given me some food for thought in regards to how other people's minds work as well. I don't think I realized just how dependent others are on being highly interactive with the rest of society. They apparently count on others for everything, so not being able to go out and consort adds up to a complete disruption in their lives.

For instance, I don't think I realized just how many other people -- especially other women -- don't manage their own grooming routines. I knew I was unusual for insisting on cutting and coloring my own hair, but I don't think I fully realized everyone's also paying people to do their nails (even if they don't wear acrylics), groom their eyebrows, extend their eyelashes, keep their bodies free of unwanted hair, and so much more. No wonder everybody complains about being broke all the time.  

On Regrouping and Looking Ahead to the Future

How we're already nearly halfway through January already, I'll never know. Don't even get me started on how an entirely new decade has up and started while I've been busy focusing on other things. I spent the rest of the time leading up to Christmas and New Year's continuing to focus on my professional and public-facing writing. Part of that involved continuing to build a presence and establish myself on a couple of the newer platforms I'd signed up with. The idea was to have turned those outlets into viable places to earn money on an ongoing basis before I was officially off the roster at BKA and really needed that income. 

Things worked out on that front a lot better than I'd hoped -- so well, I actually spent very little time writing for BKA in the second half of December. One of the two platforms I'm using regularly these days is a little more sporadic and less reliable as far as being able to go there and pick up extra work whenever I want some, but it's great for filling in my schedule here and there. The other has been working out well enough that it's definitely an appropriate replacement for BKA as far as my overall income goes. New work is posted there very regularly, so I've had plenty of things to work on. I've also managed to connect with some new regulars. The pay is really good. There's the potential to earn even more and gain access to even better projects if I work hard there as well. 

I'm hoping neither of those platforms suddenly goes tits up on me the way that BKA did because of AB-5, but I also feel like that becomes less likely the further into 2020 we get without it happening. It seems like most of the outlets that decided they wanted nothing more to do with California writers found it deeply important to give us the boot before the new year started and the new laws went into effect, so... knock on wood, and all that. 

On Holidays and the Malaise That Sometimes Comes with Them

Every time I randomly decide to blog after not having really blogged for a while, I wonder what my problem is as to why I'm no longer the consistent blogger I used to be years ago. I usually just blame the fact that I write professionally for a living because of the way it burns through so much of my creative energy for the week. And honestly, that probably is part of it.

Every so often though, I realize that it's probably more because I don't truly feel like my life is worth recording the way I used to. I don't do anything or go anywhere. I feel like I never have good news or exciting changes to report. I honestly feel like the only thing I really do with my time is work and lie around like a slug attempting to recover from work. While I definitely like being able to eat, I don't get any kind of personal fulfillment out of working for its own sake the way other people do, so it's a problem that that's the only thing I really have going on. 

I guess what I'm saying is I feel like my life kind of blows right now. When I feel like life blows, I feel very little urge to actually record anything about it. This is despite the fact that I've always found journaling to be therapeutic. I know I need to be taking back some of my creative energy for myself now and then, but it's not as easy as it probably should be.

Writing Lab: Do What You Love and Love What You Do

Prompt: "Is your career your passion? Are you in love with your job or your field of work?"

I think that I'm somewhere in between on this one, as I have mixed feelings about working as a freelance copywriter and ghostwriter. On the one hand, I would definitely say that writing, information, and language are things that I'm absolutely in love with and have been since I was a little girl. I also feel comfortable saying that if God really did have something specific in mind as far as what he wanted me to do with my life when he made me, it probably has a lot to do with being a writer. I have always been a writer in one capacity or another and I know that I will continue to be a writer until the day I die. It's too big a part of who I am for me to do anything else.

On the other hand though, I'm not a very service-oriented person. I have some great clients and I'm incredibly grateful to be able to earn my entire living working for myself out of my home, but I can't honestly say that I'm passionate about the type of writing people are actually willing to pay me to do. A good 90% of it is incredibly dry and boring -- mostly informative content meant for company blogs, brochures, and so forth. I'm very good at what I do, so I make decent money and have no problem finding steady work, but I don't really take a lot of personal joy in the actual work itself. 

Writing Lab: On Work Life Balance

Prompt: "Do you think you have a decent work/life balance?"

BlogHer's Writing Lab was so helpful to me last month that I think I'll continue responding to prompts now and then as we make our way into 2016. I may even start writing posts ahead of time and scheduling them to auto-post at later dates the way I used to. When I get in the mood to blog, I often feel like writing more than one post, but I don't always feel like updating more than one of my individual sites at a time. 

On that note, I can definitely see I'll have plenty to say about this month's theme -- balance. The tradition one kind of covered foreign territory for me, but I feel like my entire life has been about learning to understand balance and set appropriate boundaries, both for myself and for other people. This has especially been the case when it comes to my professional life.

I am about the furthest thing there is from a workaholic and I've always been that way. I very definitely believe in working to live, not living to work. When I'm working too much, I'm irritable and upset all the time. If I'm too stressed or too overworked for too long, I can also get incredibly sick -- mentally and emotionally, as well as physically. That said, achieving and maintaining a healthy work/life balance is of the utmost importance to me. It's also been easier said than done for most of my life.