Getting back on the horse

Apologies for the radio silence last week. The US holiday weekends always throw me off my rhythm, and I never realize how much of a creature of habit I am until my routine gets disrupted. The plan is to be back on track now, so we'll see how long that lasts.

Speaking of getting back on track...I freely admit that I've been neglecting my stories woefully. Without something like NaNoWriMo to give me a goal to aim for, and without a group of like-minded creative types to bounce ideas off of, I apparently just let things drift away. While I am self-motivated in many other areas in my life, evidently I need to do some more work when it comes to creative ventures.

I wonder, on occasion, if I'm just fooling myself with this whole "I'm going to be a writer!" plan. Imposter syndrome and I know each other very well, and it's never more obvious than when I'm trying to be creative in some way. Who am I to think that people will want to read what I have to write?

In my line of work, I encounter a lot of books that, if they'd been passed through a publishing house, would never have seen the light of day. Self-publishing has become a haven for people who have things to say, and want the world to read it, regardless of what a traditional publisher might feel is commercial enough. Now, I freely admit that there's a lot of content that isn't all that good out there. But even when it's terrible - maybe especially when it's terrible - the author has been brave enough to put the words out there into the world. Even better, some small portion of the world will read those words.

I'm not going to be famous. There aren't any awards that will be coming my way. But I do have a story to tell, and maybe - just maybe - someone will be interested in knowing what happens next.

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Wanna Hear Me Talk?

I mentioned in my last post, but now I'm doing the official promotional thing. I'm going to be doing a couple of presentations at the Flights of Foundry convention next weekend! Specifically, I'll be doing a game demo for Rolling Realms on Saturday, September 28 at 1pm Pacific. On Sunday, September 29 at 3pm Pacific, I'll be doing a panel presentation on copyright and public domain basics; finally, also on Sunday, September 29 at 5pm, I'll be on a panel sharing my handwork (specifically my crochet, cross stitch, and blackwork) with a few other fantastic people. This is my first time doing this kind of presentation, and so I'm a wee bit nervous. Still, I'm super excited, and the fact that it's all online means that I'll at least be in my home, and the cats may or may not make an appearance on camera. So! If you're interested in what's looking to be a fabulous online convention (that's FREE!), come join us next weekend!

Calm Your Mind with Needle and Thread

I was fortunate enough to be able to host a workshop at GeekGirlCon last weekend, which went extremely well. My friend Erin was in town for the convention and was kind enough to co-host the workshop with me, which worked wonderfully because she was able to answer some questions that I didn't know how to answer, and also keep us on time (she's a professor, so she's experienced with dealing with classrooms full of people). I thought it would be a good idea, for my own benefit if nothing else, to document the first part of the workshop, which was a talk about embroidery and mental health. I've made the PowerPoint and list of resources available on a separate page of this blog ( here ). I don't know about you, but the last few years have not been especially kind to my mental or emotional health. I discovered early on in the pandemic that going back to something I learned when I was a child, cross stitch, was something that could help ease my anxiety and give me somethi...

Hope is a Four-Letter Word

I've been bouncing around with this for the last few weeks, ever since I read a couple of quotes from the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The book overall had some interesting ideas about reframing the idea of trying to get everything done. Even though there were a couple of things that made it clear the author was not approaching things with an eye toward neurodivergence (his discussion of distraction, for example, only talks about the "choice" to be distracted, and not how some people's brains simply don't focus the same way others' do), I was feeling generally positively toward the book until I got to the last chapter, and read this: "Hope is supposed to be 'our beacon in the dark,' [environmentalist Derrick] Jensen notes. But in reality, it's a curse. To hope for a given outcome is to place your faith in something outside yourself, and outside the current moment - the government, for example, or ...

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