It’s not about you, it’s about me.

I thought that I’d make this a catching up post before I move forward.

#30daywritingchallenge

Since I completed my #30daywritingchallenge, I accomplished a few things and the ones that I haven’t, well at least I have valid reasons that have nothing to do with lack of time or procrastination. I’ll get to sending out my long overdue newsletter AFTER I’ve finished a “newsletter” course that I bought a while back and didn’t get an opportunity to finish. And that outline I said I would tackle? It’s still marinating.

Second wave

I no longer watch the news but I do know that my city has gone from green to yellow.  Before we slip into orange, I’m hustling to complete my “pre-second wave” shopping. God only knows what the next few months will bring coupled with flu season. Yeah, my pantry chock-a-block full of vitamins, non-perishable items and I even bought a mini-freezer. All that is left to stock up on are flu and cold medications and cleaning supplies.

I’m not being an alarmist but I do prefer to be prepared. This paranoid lady (um…me) is NOT going to be standing 6 feet apart from fellow shoppers outside during winter in -30 Celsius weather in a snowstorm trying to score toilet paper.

Different theme

The other day, I remembered that I have access to Premium themes so I decided to play around and fortunately/unfortunately I hit “Activate” and changed my theme to one I didn’t like. Then, when I tried to get my “Adelle” theme back, lo and behold, I discovered it was discontinued. At first, I was not a happy camper but quickly realized that it was indeed time for a change. Do you like it?

Another blog?

For a really long time, I’ve been toying with the thought of another blog space where I could simply write random posts unrelated to my fiction writing side. I tried once before but found it complicated to marry my main blog with the other creative non-fiction side of myself so I dropped it. I’m thinking about giving it another go but this time, it would be completely separate from my main blog and focus much more on building community and engagement with like-minded folks…And it would be a place to share great posts from others that I have read.

What have you been up to these past weeks? How are coping these days?

M xoxo

 

 

 

 

How the hell is it September already?

I still can’t believe that it was 7 months ago that I was terrified of getting my a** stuck in London, England the same weekend that the Orange Man started banning flights from abroad.

Sometimes those 7 months feel like yesterday. And at other times, it feels like I’ve been “cleaning groceries”, grocery shopping at night, ordering necessary and unnecessary sh*t from Amazon and stocking up like I’ve been a professional doomsday prepper all my life.

During those early months, like many of you, I was stressed out and had no energy to do anything. I couldn’t even get through a few pages of a book or much less write.

But when my 9-5 gave the green light to start working again and from home, at least there was something to distract me.

And I was oh-so looking forward to summer – you know, maybe finally building those raised beds or finding where my writing mojo had gone.

But no…none of that happened.

I never talk about work and I won’t start now but I will say this – all of those recent incidents in the USA have had a ripple effect on my professional life. I’ve been working overtime trying to make Herculean requests possible.

So yeah, my summer basically disappeared and now that it’s September, I’m a little p*ssed.

Who do I need to call to about re-starting summer???

How was your summer? Share with me in the comments.

Before I take a break from WP…

I’m frustrated at the hundreds of weirdo comments in my Spam folder, finding my content on other blogs without asking my permission and/or without my name attached.

This is like the umpteenth time in the past few weeks that I have found my stuff on sites that are WAY OFF from who I am as a person and I’ve had to less than “politely” request that they remove my content.

As I write this, I’m still waiting for one site to remove my content from their blog.

Anyhow, this is what I decided to do:

1. remove the Reblog button on my future posts to avoid those “all-I-do-is-reblog” sites;
2. disable automatic Pingbacks (thanks to @bikurgurl for this idea) and will approve them manually; and
3. remove any (new) followers (which have suddenly increased) that look like “bots” and “fake” followers to me. I care about real followers, not the number of followers, I purged a bunch of suspect sites. Sorry but that’s just how I roll like.

Yeah, time to shake things out a bit…

Bisous,

M xoxo

Well, my 30 days over and I made it!

I would like to say:

• Thank You Pam for inspiring me to do this little challenge. Be sure to check out Pam’s blog here for some great reads and the next challenge she is working on;
• Thanks to all of you who have followed and commented on my posts during these last 30 days – your words motivated me to not fall off the wagon;
• Thank you to all who started their own challenge – I hope that you enjoy as much as I did.

If you would like to keep in touch, feel free to sign up for my newsletter here and Instagram since that is the social I use the most.

I’ll be taking the next few weeks to regulate some of the goals I talked about in a past post and then I’ll be back with a QUIET yet DETERMINED plan but first, I’m  going to find out what all this Beyoncé LION KING fuss is about. 🙂

Thanks again for sticking around, take care, stay healthy and keep positive!

Bisous,

M xoxo

 

Aren’t we all grateful for the same things?

The love of family, friends and/or those we consider family? Being in relatively decent health? A roof over our heads, food to eat and a few dollars in the bank?

Yeah, I’m blessed to have these so I’ll pick five others that are less important but that speak to these current times.

I’m grateful that I am childfree. I never thought that I would be as grateful as I am for this right now. I admire the strength and patience of all of you who have had to juggle having your young children at home all the time or older children who are having difficulties following the Covid-19 practices.

I am grateful that I left my home office alone. Due to the confidential nature of a previous job where I had to work from home a few days a week, I had set myself up with a home office at my own cost – cotton candy green walls, 2 desks, proper lighting, a good quality corded hands-free phone, an old-school landline, a second monitor for my laptop…Luckily, when I changed jobs, I kept my cute little set-up so when we were told to work from home as of March 16th, I had no issues. While my colleagues were scrambling to work from kitchen tables, uncomfortable chairs and running out of minutes/data from taking work calls on their personal personal cells, I was sitting pretty in a pretty office. 🙂

I am grateful for the stability of having my own place. I know so many people who have had to either move in with others or have had to leave home. I even provided refuge to someone who needed it for a few months (without compromising myself and/or health). The challenge and sacrifices of having a place of my own has been more than worth it. Me, myself and I don’t have to deal with being under someone else’s roof, others who are not respecting protocols and even better, no one can tell me to leave their home.

I’m grateful that my parents are safe. It was downright frightening to see so many people unable to visit their elderly loved ones in facilities and then losing them to Covid-19 (the situation of those in eldercare facilities was beyond horrid). I know of someone who lost both parents, in two different facilities, within 14 days of each other. Yeah, I’m grateful that they are safe and sound in their own home.

I’m grateful that I’m learning to take off my cape. I’m not Superwoman and no longer have the energy to do it anymore. If I plan to do something but find myself too tired, I say it. No hiding, no excuses. “Sorry but I need to lie down and take a nap” has become my go-to phrase with people around me. I’m grateful for finally speaking this truth.

What are you grateful for these days?

Bisous,

M xoxo

My head may be spinning with all the goals I could have but if there’s one thing that I’ve learned, I know that I have to keep my list short and doable.

Right after this post, I’m actually going to write them down in my agenda that I have barely touched since the beginning of these pandemic times.

So what are my few (writing-related) goals?

• Send an email to my email/newsletter distribution list. I started a list way back when but found it difficult to keep up with since I haven’t been writing much. I need to let them know a few things about the projects rolling around in my brain;
•  Unsubscribe/streamline the sh*tload of writing-related Facebook Groups that I have subscribed to and never visit. A few Groups related to my genre of writing, others related to readers of my genre of writing and the others that are related to other Indie writers (you know who you are);
• “Clean” up all my social media accounts and the auto-post options on some of them. I’m not sure if I want my Worpress posts to appear on Twitter and/or my Facebook Page.
• Figure out how to really use different social media for different things; and last but not least;
• Draft an outline for my passion project.

Have you got any goals lined up for the next 30 days?

Bisous,

M xoxo

 

Funny how a little 30 day challenge can get the brain juices flowing again.

So what have I learned from this challenge since I began?

A bunch of things but I’ll just name a few:

• I really miss the interactions with you all that comes with blogging. But I also know that if I want to concentrate on fiction writing, I will somehow have to come up with a plan to blog less but maintain the exchanges;
• I am pantser who is afraid of writing an outline for the couple of stories I want to complete first. Even back in my university days, I hated writing outlines. I know that it’s the best course of action for a story but I also fear that I may sit down and all those scenes in my head will not make a clear-cut story;
• Writing is a stress reliever. Since I started writing these little posts has proven that to me again. Some people run, smoke, drink or do others things to relieve stress but writing really does take my mind of things;
• Writing every day is important, even if what I write is crap and/or not posted on my blog;
• Listening to podcasts and scrolling Instagram posts about writing is a form of procrastination for me;
• I was able to pin down who my ideal fiction readers would be (niche audience). I kind of knew before but now I’m crystal clear. It’s not to say that I will exclude anyone who isn’t part of that niche but I will raise certain topics that they can learn from; and
• I refuse to leave this world without telling some of my stories.

I’ve also learned a bunch of other things mainly due to our global pandemic situation but I’ll leave that for a future post.

Have you learned anything new about yourself in the last 30 days?