What a difference a year makes...

This time last January, I was on cloud 9 (or higher, depending on what’s the best.) J

I had quit my full-time job on December 31^st 2014, and was attempting to fly solo for 2015.  Life was beautiful.  Around the end of May last year, however, fear started to settle in.  I’d had a lot of unexpected expenses, also needed to see a doctor but couldn’t afford the Cobra payments and due to bureaucratic snafus with ObamaCare, I had no insurance (don’t get me started), and my daughter was accepted at the expensive college she applied to.  Right about that time, an opportunity came up in a company to work full time with a former boss that I really liked, so I took it and went back to working full-time on 6/8/15.

From then until now, it has been non-stop work and health issues. (I suspect working 60-90 weeks every week, working all holidays and weekends, might have something to do with the health issues, but who’s to say?)

I’ve basically given up my cover art work due to lack of time and energy, as well as the spasms that have developed in my back, right arm, and leg, which cause me to lose control of my limbs at some point nearly every day now. It started getting worse June (hmm… coinciding with the demanding new job… and keeps getting progressively worse.)  I saw a doctor who referred me to a neurologist, but since the insurance I have is awful and can’t afford all those tests, I haven’t been back.  However, the GP seems to think it’s from stress… go figure…

From January 2015 full of hope to January 2016 wondering what the heck I’m going to do now. L

So, since today is my birthday and I’ve been doing a lot of hard thinking the past couple of weeks, I took the day off to think about where I am and what I could change.  Came to the conclusion that self-care, a positive attitude, and daily meditation on all the things I have go be grateful for will help tremendously.  That is what I plan to focus on for the rest of the year. 

I also came up with a writing plan for the year.  Since the art is on hiatus until I can get my arm under control, I’ve installed Dragon dictation software on my computers and have been having fun training my dragon. J  It’s very helpful. In my insanity, I even attempted NaNoWriMo with it in November and made great progress.  Lost my voice for a couple of days, though, from all that talking. J

Am hopeful that with the dictation software and a good plan, I might actually get back to writing again and release a couple of books this year.

Fingers crossed… J

And to you who may be reading this:  I wish you and yours the best year of your lives for 2016.

Magical Mondays on a Saturday: Napoleon Hill and Encouragement

The past few days I have been listening to recordings from a Napoleon Hill workshop that I found here: http://archive.org/details/Napoleon_Hill_Rare_Recordings. 

What a blast! I love hearing his voice, and those in the audience when they called out the answers. Most importantly, it reaffirmed many beliefs by which I already live my life, formed by personal experience.

In short, that the power of positive belief, a willingness to go above and beyond what is asked of you, and the keeping of a constant, clear image of what you want (and always working toward it) will take you where you want to go. 

Many people throughout history have written and spoken of these things, so the message is not new.  In short, it boils down to faith backed by action. Imagination, determination, and work. Haven't all things created in this world been brought about by those things?

As I listened to the workshop, I was reminded of so many life experiences that I've had which illustrate the truth of his words, and have been sharing some of those with my daughter to encourage her. And over the next few days and weeks, I want to publicly share some of those experiences in the hope that they will encourage others as well. It has certainly been encouraging to me to reflect on them as I start moving in a new direction with my writing and life. 

I'll post the first one on Monday (9/24/12), and hope you'll join in and be encouraged, too. :)

Like night and day

Some of you know that it recently seemed all the technology planets were aligned against me: I lost the use of my car, cell phone, computer and alphasmart all in one blow.

Well, the mechanic to whom I had been taking my car for a while, and to whom I had already given tons of money, told me it was going to cost around $1200 to make the car safe to drive again. Told me lots of scary stories of why it wasn't safe to keep driving. Since $1200 is what I pay for rent each month, there was no way I could afford that, so I just had to let the car sit in the driveway and walk to the train station to go to work. 

Now, my daughter just came home from school last week, and bless her lazy little heart, she just couldn't go without a car, and wouldn't/couldn't possibly drive it with someone following her to the shop, so she called another shop and had them come pick it for her while I was at work.

They had it for a day and half and came back with the following verdict:  the noise it was making was from carbon on the pistons which they cleaned off; the front brakes were a little rusty, but still ok for now, and other than that, they said, nothing was wrong with the car. Total cost of repair: $45.00. They didn't even charge me for picking it up.

Obviously, my trust had been misplaced in an opportunistic and unscrupulous shop ower who saw a single woman walk in and went, "Ca-ching!"  Unlike Frank Pasquesi, who didn't try to take advantage of the situation.

But there was more to come in my tech-challenged days.  Not  only did Pasquesi Auto prove themselves to be angels in a time of need, so did Evan Marshall and Edie Ramer.

When I lost my computer, I lost downloaded software, one of which was the Marshall Plan Novel Writing Software.  I sent Evan Marshall an email, and he quickly responded, freely replacing the software for me, and was very supportive and kind.

When Edie heard that I'd lost my Alphasmart, she immediately mailed me hers since she was no longer using it.  It was (is!) a huge help, and I'm very grateful. 

So, thank you again Edie Ramer, Evan Marshall, and Frank Pasquesi!

Has anyone recently proved themselves to be trustworthy, kind, and worth their weight in gold in your life?

Wow, Really?

Has it actually been four years since I started this blog? I just looked back at my archives and saw my very first post was July 30, 2006. Amazing how time flies when you're having fun. :)

Over the course of that time, I've seen lots of commenters, very few commenters, made new friends, been out of commission for while, and come back again. Thank you to those of you who have stuck with me - getting to know you through this medium has been so rewarding. It's like visiting favorite family members and friends that you don't see often - always happy to see you.

Words of Wisdom from My Bus Driver

"A closed mouth doesn't get fed."

So, your assignment this weekend, should you choose to accept it, is to get out there and ask for what you want. :)

Magical Mondays: Songs from the Subconscious

(Or, alternately titled, "Whereat Kate Gets Her @ss Kicked Again, But in a Good Way")

Magical Mondays started as a way to share some of the unusual and sometimes sublime moments of intuition and unexplained phenomena people experience on occasion. Sometimes the events are striking, sometimes subtle. The past two weeks have been the latter for me.

A week ago, I took a few minutes a day to ask my subconscious to tell me what I really wanted. After a few days, it suddenly showed me a clear picture.

However, over the past two weeks, I've also been experiencing a great deal of stress at work and have had several "aha" moments where I've realized that I've let other people walk all over me my entire life. Then, during the past couple of days of peak stress and aggravation, I started asking myself: Have I done something to contribute to these people thinking they can be such jerks to me? Am I enabling their condescension? Is there some part of me that really believes I deserve it?

But then I kept thinking that, no, I truly didn't believe that they were better than I am, so what was the deal? Were they simply buttheads and I was innocent of any fault? But if that was the case, why did they bother me so much?

So, once more I put out a call to my subconscious/higher self/universe/guardian angel/collective unconscious/god/higher power/whomever (as Wayne Dyer says, you can call it "Louise" if you like), and asked, what am I missing here?

After asking again before I went to bed last night, I had the following dream...

I had gone into a cellar to get some rope then saw that it wasn't a cellar, but it was my grave. Even though I was still alive, I knew the future me was dead and buried in there just behind a door to my right. There was mold all around and it was pretty creepy. I was both fascinated and scared by my own grave, but realized I shouldn't be in there just yet. As I walked out of it and shut the door firmly behind me, a song started playing very loudly, and these were the words:

It doesn't matter how young or old you are.
It doesn't matter what you do.
It doesn't matter what they think,
If you matter to you.
Do you?
Do you matter?
Do you matter to you?

I woke up suddenly from the dream with the song still playing in my head, and knew it really doesn't matter what those supercilious sh*ts think. I DO matter to me, and they're about to find out just how much. I'm not ready to lie down and die just yet. :)

How about you? Anything feel particularly empowering lately?

I Get by with a Little Help from My Friends...

So, how is everyone out there? It's been a while, huh?

I've been under the weather for so long (and in Chicago, that's some pretty bad weather!) that I sometimes wonder if I'll ever dig out (literally and figuratively). Nevertheless, I wanted to log in and say "thank you" to those of you who've stuck with me, and get caught up on some of the good news around the blogosphere.

I'm still making the rounds, but here a few items of note:

Lana Gramlich's talent seems to grow every time I visit her blog. Her photography is incredible, as are her paintings. And her husband, Charles, (also extremely talented) has a short horror story on the (also very talented) Sidney Williams' new podcast.

Edie Ramer is in the finals of the American Title V contest - go, Edayyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!! Here's hoping she wins that publishing contract!

Zoe Winters was a finalist in the Better Sex Erotic Fiction contest, and won a "hot new author" prize.

Cynthia Eden keeps pulling in the publishing contract. Yay, Cindy! :)

Now, those are just a few highlights. I'm still making my way through my favorite blogs, so I'm sure I'll come across many more.

On the home front, I reviewed The List I made some time ago, and found things are still coming true. I definitely needed that pick-me-up. Among other things on the list, my daughter is now happy in acting classes, and I finally got a website started to help raise money (selling folk art paintings & sculptures) for a worthy cause.

I also created a new pseudonym and finished a short story that I'll submit tonight under the new name. (Sorry to be a tease, but this came about with a little help from another friend whom I promised to not mention, so...my lips are sealed.) ;) It's the first thing I've finished in quite a while, too.

So, to those of you whose blogs I haven't gotten to yet, feel free to post all your good news. :)

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day. Hope your day (every day) is filled with laughter and love.

Magical Mondays - Timeless Advice

(Ok, it's Saturday, but I've got so much to do this weekend, I'm afraid I'll forget by Monday! LOL)

I leave you with a message from Napoleon Hill. The ending is really special.

Magical Mondays - Gifts and Gratitude

Please forgive me because I know this will ramble. Forgive me also if I've posted about some of it before.

The original blog plan today was to write about the gifts we sometimes give and receive without realizing just how timely they are when we're in the process of giving them. However, there were some other things that happened today that caught my attention as well.

For instance, Lana mentioned driving around with a scanner she'd planned on giving to Goodwill, but when she spontaneously asked some friends if they'd like one, she discovered they'd just been discussing how much they'd like to have one right before she showed up.

Recently, Edie also spontaneously received the gift of a laptop from which she can print her manuscripts just when her computer went kaput.

When I was moving from IL to AZ a few years back, I experienced a couple of those moments from the giving side. On one of the days before I was due to leave, I was running out of time to get rid of everything I had so I drove several miles to drop off a large number of very nice coat hangers to the Salvation Army, only to discover they didn't want them. As I drove home, I wondered what the heck I was going to do with them, and hated to throw them away.

I drove past a Wendy's when I had a sudden urge to pull in - not because I was hungry or thirsty - I just felt like I should. I didn't even understand it at the time. I asked myself why I had pulled in there and decided to just get a drink from the drive-thru. The woman at the register commented on all the coat hangers I had, so I jokingly asked if she'd like to have them. She said, "Oh, yes, please! I never have enough hangers for my or my kids' clothes and I can't afford to buy them."

A few days after that, I was distraught because I couldn't get a charity to pick up the furniture I had and I didn't have time to sell it. (The charities wouldn't pick it up because my apartment had four steps they had to go up and down - they said I'd have to move everything outside.) I was practically in tears wondering how I'd manage that with no help, but I managed to drag a desk up the stairs and to the curb. Since that hurt my back, I also worried how I'd manage to clean everything later.

But as I started to turn away from the curb to go back inside, a van stopped and two women got out. Only one of them spoke English, and she asked if I was throwing the desk away, and if so, could the other lady have it. I said sure, and she told me the other woman had nothing - no furniture at all. I told her I had an apartment full if they could just pick it up.

I took them inside to show her and the woman started crying. She and her two little boys had been eating and sleeping on the floor for several months (they were recent immigrants). She was so happy, she not only helped me finish packing what few things I was taking with me, she also came back after they picked up the furniture and cleaned the whole apartment for me. It turned out to be a blessing for both of us.

Now, on to the gratitude ramble...

I'm ashamed to say that lately, I've been feeling ridiculously sorry for myself for one reason or another. Today, though, I had a couple of rude awakenings.

I work as a curriculum writer in a hospital, and I had to interview some of the radiologists today to go over their workflows in preparation for a new electronic record system that will go live in June. (I'll be writing the manuals for it.)

Well, first of all, the poor radiologists don't have the best of working conditions - it was dark, cramped and miserably hot where they were. I thought I was going to pass out from the heat. I felt bad for having complained earlier about it being too warm in my office. It was nothing compared to what they're working in.

But what got to me the most wasn't seeing where they worked, it was seeing what they were working on. I was surrounded by images of patients' brain, lung, breast and stomach tumors. I saw the horrendously curved spine of someone who couldn't breath without a tube in his throat because the curvature of his spine caused all his internal organs to shift. His lungs looked like they were laying sideways.

I wrapped up my tour not long before I had to catch my train. Seated in front of me on the train, was an obviously agitated man. When his cell phone rang, I overheard him say his aunt and uncle had just been killed in a car accident and he was on his way to handle the arrangements for them. He received several phone calls where he had to explain to people why he wasn't at work and where he was going. After one of those calls, he just broke down and sobbed.

He couldn't see me, but I started crying with him. He was a big, rough looking guy and it was just so heartbreaking. I searched for a tissue to give him, but didn't have one. I wanted to hug him, but thought it might make him uncomfortable. In the end, I had to settle with touching his shoulder on my way off the train and telling him how sorry I was for his loss. He looked stunned, but then he smiled and seemed genuinely grateful that someone had expressed an interest in his well-being.

My heart goes out to him and his family, as well as to those patients and families dealing with life-threatening illnesses. I hope they will find peace, health and happiness, and that their needs are met in ways that cause them to feel blessed.

I realized again today that I have much to be grateful for. I hope you do too. What are some small or large blessings for which you are thankful?

Boggarts

A month or so ago, my daughter and I were discussing the boggarts from Harry Potter - monsters that take the form of what you fear most. We were trying to figure out what our boggarts might look like, but couldn't immediately come up with an answer. You'd think that it would be simple, but it wasn't.

Some things seemed obvious - what if something terrible happened to my daughter? But then again, what if something happened to me before she was old enough to be on her own? There's no one I can trust to look after her. Or what if I went completely broke, became homeless and couldn't care for her?

Well, soon after, I got sick and it was a scare for her and me (though I'm doing better now, thanks) then the payroll department at work messed up and didn't process my FMLA as sick leave, so I was out of a paycheck at the same time my ex decided he didn't feel like paying child support and is now two months behind - JUST when the people I've been subletting from said they needed to come back and I have to be out by the end of the month, and have no clue where or how I'll move. I'll not only not have the finances for it, but I also won't have much physical help packing & moving. My daughter has been fainting for some reason lately and hit her head on some bricks when she went down the other day. We spent 4 hours in the emergency room, where fortunately her EKG and CT were normal, but she does have a concussion. (She still has follow-up appointments with her doctor, but they seem to think it's probably just low blood sugar and nothing too serious, thank goodness.) Plus, this week she received all day detention every Saturday through the end of the school year for skipping so many classes.

So, let's see here... what did I say my biggest fears were?

That'll teach me.

But in spite of it, I'm surprisingly hopeful that things will work. I've only gotten tiny tastes of my biggest fears lately, and while they were nerve wracking, I'm grateful it wasn't worse.

I used to think one of my biggest fears would be revealing too much about myself and appearing foolish. I also used to fret over what people would think/say about my work. You know what? That's nothing. Barely worth giving a second thought.

Stewart blogged today about looking for that delicious thrill of fear that he used to get from horror stories or his own imagination, but which no longer have much effect. I think it's just that real life has so many boggarts hiding in every cupboard that ghosts and ghoulies are child's play in comparison.

What does your boggart look like? Have you ever used it in your writing?

An Attitude of Gratitude

I took another suggestion from the book "Write it Down, Make it Happen" and wrote "Thanks!" on the memo line of bills I paid today. Surprisingly, it did make parting with that money a little easier. :)

For example, when writing a rather large check to pay my electric heating bill, I thought about how hard the people work to make sure my place is warm - the electric company men & women who come out in all weather & all hours doing the best they can when the electricity goes out due to storms; the people entering the data from my check so that my bill gets paid on time and my electricity stays on - for you, I'm grateful. :) I'm also grateful I for the fact that I had the money to pay it with in the first place, and for the people working at the bank who process the checks too. So when I wrote "thanks" on the memo line next to my account number, I meant it. I still had to pay the bill, but at least it wasn't quite as painful. :)

I hope I can remember to be grateful more often.