Category: Ruminations and Crackpot Theories

Observations on life in general.

#Upbeat Authors: Optimism, Take 1

My dad joined the US Army and volunteered for active duty during the Korean Conflict. Instead, he was sent to Germany. He was in the Quartermaster Corps.

The way he tells it, they were always being asked to volunteer. “Who knows how to drive a truck?” Everyone would raise his hand, then be sent to dig ditches. “Who knows how to shovel out a barn?” Of course no one but Dad raised his hand, and Dad was sent off on fun adventures. He learned to volunteer for everything because the great stuff he got to do far outweighed the ditch-digging moments.

His optimism and sense of adventure served him well.

 

 

The Importance of Tribe

Apparently not everyone’s brain works the way a writer’s works. This was a shock to me. One of my writer friends told me a story about how her mother once commented that she was a weird child for always making up stories about her dolls. That blew me away. Of course one makes up stories while playing with ones dolls. Right?

I’ve been the odd duck out most of my life. I remember being in high school and not seeing things the way other people saw them. Mostly I tried to hide being different, but that usually didn’t work very well.

Eventually, there was the Internet, where I found out about Romance Writers of America. I joined the national organization. Several months later I called to find out if there was chapter in my area. They gave me the name and phone of the president of Central New York Romance Writers. I called. Turned out the president was Maggie Shayne, whom I knew from the Romance Foretold forum.

I went to my first meeting…and knew I’d found my home. These people “got” me. They understood me. They, too, saw the world in their own “off-kilter” way. Their world was a world I understood. Their world was the world in which I belonged. I had located my tribe.

Many (most) of the faces have changed since that September Saturday. Publishing has changed. The outside world has changed. The one constant is that remains is the sense of belonging. Of knowing I can ask a question about the fiction in my head and I will be presented not with weird looks, but with a helpful dialogue. Because my tribe “gets it”.

Quirk Question

One of life’s quirks that annoy me:

The 10-key calculator/adding machine has been around for a long time.

Touch-tone phones came around in the 1970s.

Why aren’t the key pads the same?

The numbers 4-5-6 and 0 are in the same position, but the others are not.

My guess is because alphabetic characters were assigned to the numbers on dial phones, so if you were an ORchard or GRanite exchange (old phone talk), you would still be 6-7 or 4-7.

But alphabetic exchanges were already long gone when touch tone (push button ) phones came to be.

Okay, I’m whining. I use the numeric key pad on my computer with one hand and make calls with the other. I am constantly mixing up my ones and sevens etc. because number pads aren’t standard.

Positioning of gas pedals and brake pedals on a car is standardized. Hot water faucets are on the left and cold on the right. Why can’t we make numeric keypads the same?

 

Hydration

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The last time I went to the doctor, he told me I was dehydrated. I try very hard to drink water throughout the day, but am not always successful. My solution to that is to keep several insulated containers of cold water at my desk. Doing this has helped.

At home is another story. I was swilling iced tea faster than I could make it and chill it, so I was holding back drinking, so I’d have something cold to drink “later.” I finally decided that was a bogus strategy, since it prevented me from drinking enough fluids.

I went on line and found my favorite iced tea pitcher and purchased it in several additional colors. Then I created a color-coded key and hung it on the fridge.

I like teas from Celestial Seasonings, especially their Cool Brew black teas. I order these by the case directly from Celestial Seasonings, as I cannot find them in stores around here. You don’t need to boil water to make them. I also like their fruit teas, especially the blueberry and acai mango.

So here is what the top shelf of my fridge now looks like:

I never go thirsty.

Just Me

I have a good life.  A good husband. Good children. Good job. Good friends. Actually, it is a great life.

I get to spend my non-day job hours writing. I have written books that editors have thought good enough to publish, which is the culmination of a lifelong dream. I have attained my goals. How many people get to say that?

My current goal is to be happy. Being happy, for me, is taking delight in little things: stars in a clear night sky; the colors of a sunny autumn day; an unkempt flower garden; good food; a song that moves me. I’m lucky in that if I want to buy a pretty planning calendar or a cool new computer bag, I can. So I do. But do I need things to make me happy? No.

I try to keep my social media presence upbeat. We all have downsides in our lives, because that’s part of living. That doesn’t mean I need to dwell on bad days. But if I can spin the bad into something funny, something to make someone laugh, that’s a good thing.

I don’t need to pat myself on the back for being a good person. I don’t need to build myself up by judging the choices of others. They do their thing; I do mine.

Life is organic. Go with the flow. Relax. Enjoy the ride.