Life Tips

I admit it. Summer break messes with my writing work that I work shorter hours, blog less and write fewer online articles. While I have one kid old enough to fend for herself (driving) and another going to day camp, summer still disrupts my schedule. For one, the day camp doesn’t start until 9am. By that time, I’ve worked at least two hours during the school year.

Between breakfast and the two younger kids talking to each other, it affects the quiet time I love during the school year. Although I’ve adjusted to start my morning with administrative work and social media catching up, how I start my day sets the tone for the rest of the day. Plus, one kid stays home all day and interrupts me at unexpected times.

Here are the rules I’ve set to be as efficient as possible:

1. No TV downstairs. The noise distracts me. Sure, I can turn off my cochlear implant — but that silence differs from room silence. Plus, turning it off prevents me from hearing the door, the dog or hurt children.
2. Make your own lunch. If I am in the kitchen making my lunch and I’m good about eating at the standard lunch hour, I offer to make lunch for the kids. But if they’re hungry before then, they can make their own.
3. Do interrupt when it’s health-related. I want them to know that getting hurt or not feeling well is important and I need to know ASAP — not at the end of the day.
4. Schedule afternoon appointments. I’m most effective in the morning, so I make all non-work appointments in the afternoon — when I have the choice.

The rules work, but I still get a few interruptions daily that aren’t important. But I won’t impose more rules on the kids. So that’s why I limit blogging and social media time in the summer. I use that time to get client work done. (Heh. Just interrupted because son said he can’t remember how to write a couple of cursive letters.)

Whether you have children at home, there may be other times of the year that become more disruptive than the usual. How do you manage during those times of the year?

Y’all know I love my books. They’re cheaper than gadgets (I love them, too) and reveal all kinds of wonderful stuff. My seven-year-old’s book shelves overflowed that I couldn’t straighten it anymore. His shelves were the culmination of Mom’s pre-children collection, big sister’s outgrown collection and big brother’s dumped collection.

He let go of many picture books (Aw, I’m proud since it means he wants to challenge himself with harder reading material) and then I reviewed his 250+ books to see what I wanted to keep. This task scared me as I feared I would hold on to too many. Well, I managed to select no more than 20. Proud of myself. Repeat with older son’s books. Survived again.

Plus it’s summer time. You know what that means? It means I start watching Style, Food Network, Bravo type stuff with shows like Clean House and Hoarders. These also motivated me to dump a lot of stuff. I’m even trying to find a home for my precious Theatre World Annual collectible books. These I won’t just give away.

The local Friends of the Public Library is having its annual book sale this month. Debating whether to go. Do I really need to haul in more books? Of course, it won’t be 100 books — I don’t think I’ve ever bought more than 10 (used much restraint!).

Another openin’, another set of links…

Brain food…

• How to Simplify When You Love Your Stuff: When I came across this the day after the great Snave (read it backwards) book clean of 2010, I knew what to write about in this post.
• “No!” Is a Complete Sentence: Fabulous post from Anne Wayman. Y’all know how it is to say, “No.” But Do you continue on with an explanation or do you stop there? Lori Widmer refers to Anne’s post and adds another important factor — the client’s reaction. Put these two together and you’re golden the next time you need that n-o.
• Winners of Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest: “A whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.”
• 5 Reasons to Title Your Art: While focused on artwork, it can apply to many things. When I see “Untitled,” I move on and don’t waste my time with it.  [Link: Marcia Yudkin]
• Ultimate iPhone Apps for Writers: 30+ Productivity and Creativity Boosts: I still use a BlackBerry, but own an iPod Touch. I don’t know that I’d ever want to make the switch to an iPhone because (1) I type faster on hard keyboard than on screen keyboard, and (2) iPhone / iPod Touch has addicting time-wasting apps that having it with me all the time could be harmful to my time management efforts. (I don’t have iPod Touch with me very often.)

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 12 Unbelievable Mosaics: These artists have unbelievable patience.
• Clients from Hell: Hope you don’t recognize anyone here.
• Over 15 Very Funny Posts and Other Links to Make You Laugh About Freelancing: See comments for a few more.
• Time’s Best Blogs of 2010: Lists a few that I love like Cake Wrecks, The Oatmeal and GeekDad. I discovered a few cool ones I hadn’t met like PostSecret, S___ My Kids Ruined, Information Is Beautiful (How did I miss this one when I have this info visualization collection?), Shorpy (Reminds me of browsing through my grandparents’ photo albums… just something about black and white photos from the early 1900s) and more.
• 28 Minimalist Movie Posters: I used to collect Broadway show posters. Actually, having the posters paid off as I held a Broadway-themed party and put them to use. Anyway, enjoy the neat tour of these minimalist movie posters — some excellent and some eh? Love Shawhank Redemption’s poster.
• Login is not a verb: What do you think?
• Re-imagining four common products from 2010 as if they were designed in 1977: An MP3 player, laptop, mobile phone and handheld video game system. Geeks will love this tour of what a flash from the past would look like had these existed in the ’70s.
• Dream Chronicles: Book of Air (affiliate): Dream Chronicles games consist of breathtaking scenes and lots of challenging puzzles. The cheaper standard edition is out. This could be how I’ll spend some of my weekend especially since it looks like a rainy one.

How do you manage your book collection?

4th of July Bits and Pieces…

4th of July in 2007

Shirts. Grandma (my mother) loved to buy Old Navy Independence Day shirts for the grandkids (my kiddos). I don’t know how many we have, but they came in handy two years ago. My second child had a little thing going with a teacher one year where he’d earn points for wearing an American flag shirt. One time, he wore at least three them to have fun with his teacher. This isn’t the kind of kid who likes school — quite the opposite. It warmed my heart to see him having fun with a teacher like that. I also have a daughter — the oldest of the three — but never got a pic of her in a flag shirt. She was usually away at camp.

4th of July in 2004

Living in DC. Living in Washington, DC had one cool benefit — July 4th. Husband and I didn’t fight the traffic or try to go to the Independence Day celebration on the capitol lawn. Instead, we went to a special spot next to the Anacostia River and caught the fireworks there. No traffic. I lived in DC the year that Patti LuPone did the show — man, I would’ve loved to see her in person. Me + crowd = disaster.

Traditions. On 4th of Julys while growing up, my family went to a good friend’s house with a huge backyard, swimming pool and gazebo. Sadly, my family doesn’t have any Independence Day traditions. Our town has a parade every year, but kids don’t care to go. We went once and that was that. At least, we experienced it.

To celebrate our country’s 234th, we’ll probably grill some food, swim and go to a parking lot that has a good view of the fireworks without the traffic.

Cool Mental Floss factoids:

• “AEGILOPS is the longest English word spelled in alphabetical order. In a sentence: ‘Wow, the letters in Aegilops are in ABC order!’” It’s a genus of plants.
• “In a 2003 Deloitte survey on business speak, ‘leverage’ was voted the most hated word, followed by ‘bandwidth’ & ‘touch base.’ I always try to find other words to use besides “leverage” and those aren’t great options either — “maximize” and “make the most of.” Ick.

LOTS of links this week since many folks are taking a long weekend.

Brain food…

• Ask Not What Your Novel Can Do For You: Fabulous tips for authors on blog tours. [Link: Elizabeth Craig]
• Features and Benefits Are So 2009. Sell To Driving Emotion: I love the hole / drill analogy. This tells me I need to finish reading Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion [Amazon affiliate link]. Keep getting busy with book club books.
• Memoir Tip: Lose the Play-by-Play: Superb advice. It is hard to avoid I did this, then this even if you tell it like a story. [Link: Jane Friedman]
• Summer Reading Picks from various authors: Not your usual or expected reading list from Harvard Business Review. I read Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning [Amazon affiliate link] in college. Maybe it’d have more meaning today as I’m older and not facing a thousand pages of required reading per week. Of course, I have Brenda Ueland’s If You Want to Write [Amazon affiliate link], but haven’t read it yet. And of course, a newly revised edition came out in May after I got my copy.
• 50 Things You Can Control Right Now: We experience days when something throws a wrench in our plans that we think our lives are spiraling out of our control. This is a great list to review whenever you feel this way. [Link: Susan Fletcher] And 50 Things to Love About Life That Are Free.
• 57 Power Words for Writing Brilliant Headlines: Organized by theme, too.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 10 of the Weirdest Soccer Goals of All Times: In honor of World Cup even though USA lost.
• Passion and Imagination in African Football: Incredible and moving pictures. [Link: Nieman Story]
• Imperial Tea Time: Just an awe-struck photo of two Darth Vaders during tea time. Or perhaps, you prefer Star Wars Lego Foosball Table?
• 15 Hilarious Dogs in Costume: Oh my gosh… some creative ones there.
• Gorgeous Red Color Inspired Photography: I love red.
• How 7 Summer Barbecue Staples Got Their Names: Hamburgers were not originally made with ham.
• Name All the States That End with “A” in four minutes. Dang it. I missed six <pout>.
• 8 Countries with Fascinating Baby Naming Laws: ‘Cuz I love anything names.
• 10 Hilarious Amazon Reviews: Gotta applaud these folks for creativity.

What country holiday traditions do you have?

I’d love to read more stories like these two. They provide valuable insight in human nature, perception and more.

The Executive and the Branch Manager

The first lesson is in perception. I caught this nugget in a New York Times article [Link: Jack Scharff]. It’s a valuable lesson involving a language barrier that applies to people with hard-of-hearing or deafness. I’ve run into this many times in my life.

The interviewee asked Robert W. Selander, retiring chief executive of Mastercard, “What are the most important leadership lessons you have learned?

Brazil is a big country. I was living in Rio and it’s like living in Miami. I was out visiting a branch in the equivalent of Denver. Not everybody spoke great English and I hadn’t gotten very far in Portuguese. As I was sitting there trying to discern and understand what this branch manager was saying to me, and he was struggling with his English, the coin sort of dropped that this guy really knows what he’s talking about. He’s having a hard time getting it out.

As I thought about the places I’d been on that trip, I realized this was probably the best branch manager I’d seen, but it would have been very easy for me to think he wasn’t, because he couldn’t communicate as well as some of the others who were fluent in English.

I think that was an important lesson. It is too easy to let the person with great presentation or language skills buffalo you into thinking that they are better or more knowledgeable than someone else who might not necessarily have that particular set of skills.

I can’t tell you how many times I open my mouth and see the expression on someone’s face change when hearing something different about my voice. If I should ask someone to repeat, I’ll get a similar reaction to the one Selander described. Is it any wonder I love interacting online and social media? It filters out my accent and voice leaving the “language” barrier behind. This allows me to express myself and thoughts without any interference.

The Friend and a Family

The second lesson is in energy. A friend went to a foreign country and had dinner with a family. The family, of course, spoke in their native language. My friend only knew a touch of their language and struggled to follow the conversation. She shared this story and told me how exhausted she was after the conversation. Little did she know she taught me a lesson that I hadn’t learned in over 30 years.

I thought I wasn’t a high energy person by nature. This has nothing to do with enthusiasm, but everything to do with being able to go, go, go — which I can’t, can’t, can’t. I’ll go, go, go when I need to. However, I try to avoid it.

Listening to my friend’s story helped me realize exactly why I don’t have a lot of energy and why I collapse after just one day at a conference. Even though English is my native language, I have to work harder than the average person with hearing to “translate” everything from lips to words. Not everyone’s lips are easy to read, thus my eyes and brain go in overdrive. (It’s true that lipreaders only catch one-third of what the speaker says. Imagine reading every third word in this post.)

While this second lesson won’t affect many of you — it offers unusual insight into my life as a person who is deaf. Maybe you’ll get a different lesson out of this story.

What lessons have you learned from foreign travels or talking with people whose native language isn’t yours?

Doreen Cronin with my youngest

What’s with the noisy title in this edition? Thank you for asking. I bet that those of you with young kids may have figured it out. We met Doreen Cronin, author of Click, Clack, Moo; Thump, Quack, Moo; Duck for President and Diary of a Worm (Amazon affiliate links) — to name a handful. I think a parents enjoyment of reading a book is a good way to measure the quality of a children’s book. You can bet I laugh lots when we read Cronin’s books especially the ones with the cows and duck.

I asked her what she was working on. She said it was the sequel of a chapter book that comes out in the spring. I looked up the chapter book to see if details were available — not yet. I think it’s a great move on her part because the kids — like my youngest – who know her duck and cows book best now read chapter books and beyond. My older son could have discovered her books when he was in the picture book stage — but we didn’t meet them until later.

Dallas Children’s Theater is performing a musical version of Giggle, Giggle, Quack. We hope to catch that one.

Brain food…

• Six Ways Authors Can Promote Books on Facebook: Authors need to take marketing into their own hands and here’s one way to do it.
• 15 Inspiring Home Offices: Kind of makes me appreciate mine more. These setups rock — I like not being against the wall.
• 101 Blogs That Accept Guest Posts: Love this list because it lists the more popular sites as well as the pagerank — but remember pageranking changes and plenty of lower pagerank sites are worth the guest blog post. I also accept guest posts as long as they meet my guidelines. [Link: @txwriter]
• The Cognitive Itch — From Earworms to Déjà Vu: Dealing with can’t get song out of my head, déjà vu moments and tip-of-tongue problems. [Link: Lydia Dishman]
• Become a Book Review Ninja: 10 Steps to Mastery: I’ve been sitting on an how to article for doing book reviews for months. It need spiffying and more storytelling. Well, this is exactly what I was looking for — don’t know that I would’ve used the ninja theme, but I knew a theme would work.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 16 Eye Popping Pixel Sculptures You Have to See: Ah, I remember the days of 8-bit graphics. Who knew it could be taken to another dimension?
• 25 Cool USB Drives: I use a boring basic one. What I need isn’t a cool one but a very short one because the one I have keeps getting hit because of the way it sticks out. Wax seal one brings back memories. Yes, I had one. [Link: Jessica Strawser]
• Beautiful and Funny Illustrations by Tokyo Go Go: Something different, colorful and fun to look at. [Link: @bkkmacdaddy]
• 10 Hilarious Yet Ingenious Solutions to Everyday Problems: I could probably use the t-shirt … but it’d help to make plans to travel to another country first.
• Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air: (Big Fish Games affiliate link) I love this PC game series because of its gorgeous screens, absorbing puzzles and captivating storytelling. Right now, it’s only available as a Collector’s Edition, but this gives you time to try the original, Eternal Maze and the Chosen Child.

Tell us about a time when you met an author in person or a celebrity.

It doesn’t cost you anything to lower some pain and better manage stress. In fact, you already own it. You may know it as noodle or the little gray cells. Meet your mind.

Since reading Healing Back Pain by John Sarno, M.D., I experience much less back pain than I have in the past. Sarno says that much of the pain we experience comes from our stresses turning into physical pain. Instead of the mind accepting and handling the stresses and problems, it shuts itself off and converts the stresses into physical pain.

Of course, we can’t solve all of our problems, or at least, not fast enough to avoid the pain. What we can do is learn to accept them and tell ourselves that we’re aware of the problem.

Studies Show Psychological Connection between Mind and Back Pain

Many studies from universities and published in journal have proven the following points that Sarno makes in his book:

• Many patients with cracks in their discs or thinning discs experience no pain.
• The source of many patients’ back pain has been psychological — in how they deal with stress.

To give you a specific reference from Health Psychology journal, a study led by Robert Kerns, Ph.D. shows that using psychological treatments (alone or part of a multidisciplinary approach) decreased back pain more than any other treatment. Search for back pain and psychological intervention, and you’ll see many results.

Stress affects your health. Our caveman brain deals with some problems in “fight or flight” mode. Instead of hitting or running away, we tend to experience hearts beating faster, blood pressure climbing, adrenalin hopping and body aching.

Put Your Mind to Work

I bring up this subject to share how it has helped my back problems and to share how I’ve been dealing with recent stresses.  A report from a standard checkup arrived in the mail requesting a follow up. At first, my stomach flipped and my mind wandered everywhere refusing to return to work. The report even says that the results turn out to be harmless for the majority of people who need this follow up.

I needed more comforting than that. The follow up doesn’t occur for another week — it was the soonest I could get in. Well, I don’t have time to dwell on this especially since it’ll be a few more days before I get results. So how do I refocus? I told myself that the medical staff wants to be on the safe side and double-check things. I also reminded myself that even though it means the pain of another appointment and more time away from work, I’ll rest easier knowing the results are very accurate.

After doing that, I felt less antsy and moved on with my week.

No Worrying Allowed… Not True

I’ve read Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Great advice. I put it to work. Still, I worry and dwell on things. It’s OK to get mad, sad, depressed, frustrated, whatever. The trick is not to let it interfere with your life for too long. Go ahead and do the woe is me routine for a little bit. While this routine may not bring progress, it helps us deal with the situation in a way that comes natural to us.

You may not be able to solve the problem right away (or ever, in some cases) or feel better, but you can move ahead with your business. This is where I do the “I accept the problem and I’m doing the best I can to work through it, so don’t you dare turn it into pain” routine. I get right back to work within a day. (unless it’s weekend, then I leave it until Monday.)

This thinking is how I dealt with tests back in my school days. I didn’t have confidence that I’d do well, but it never stopped me from studying hard and doing my best. I know that experts say that negative thinking leads to negative results and so on. But some of us can learn to let the thinking be while doing our best to achieve the opposite.

Funny — I just came across this tweet: “Don’t take negatively about yourself – you may just start to believe it.” @leadtoday. I agree that it can be true — it’s all how you manage it and what you do about it.

How do you deal with stress and difficult challenges?

I have an old, old (2001!) useless one-line post on creativity that search engines somehow love. I feel bad for the folks who keep landing on the post only to find nothing of value. Let’s see if we can stop torturing folks by listing  ideas for creative things to do. Some take a few minutes and some take hours. Some cost nothing. Some call for something you may have at home. Some may require a little shopping.

1. Write a song. You could do just the lyrics, just the music or both. Go crazy.
2. Create a paper airplane you’ve never done before. Most of us have done the basic style paper airplane. Alex’s Paper Airplanes provides how tos for all kinds of planes.
3. Make origami. Sick of airplanes? Get lots of paper folding ideas from the Origami Club.
4. Write a short story. Fiction. Nonfiction. Or fiction using a nonfiction memory. Don’t worry about perfection. Just throw it up on the screen or on paper.
5. Draw a picture. Use Crayons, paint, chalk (go draw on the sidewalk!), pencil, ballpoint pens, whatever writing instrument you have. Heck, use a graphic tablet.
6. Write a poem. Try out a new poetic form if you’re sick of haikus.  Robert Lee Brewer shares many, many poetic forms. Pick one you’ve never heard of and try it!
7. Take pictures. Walk around your neighborhood. Capture something. Go to a nearby park or intriguing place. Put those photo-taking techniques you read about to work.
8. Do ONE page in a scrapbook. Do you have scrapbooking materials that you have yet to use? I bought a package and never used it. The thought of trying to do a scrapbook overwhelms me, maybe it does for you, too. So go for ONE page. Pick three pictures and go!
9. Make up a dance. Love Dancing with the Stars or So You Think You Can Dance? You’ve seen lots of dancing, now try making up your own.
10. Build a website. You don’t have to be in a business to have a website. Create one for your favorite hobby or activity.
11. Create a Facebook page or group. Maybe your favorite nonprofit organization could use one. Love a band, hobby, activity? Before creating one, search Facebook to see if another group already exists. No sense in wasting time if an active group already covers the topic. Maybe you can narrow down the popular topic to create a niche group.
12. Rearrange your home. Change up the environment. Move or swap pictures, move furniture even to a different room, remove some clutter. A little change can give you more energy.
13. Paint a room. You can leave everything the same — just changing the color can make magic.
14. Paint pottery. Go to one of those paint pottery places and make something.
15. Make candles or soaps. I remember I had this arts and crafts book and I made a candle out of an egg shell. I was proud of myself especially since I have no eye for art. Lots and lots of resources for candlemaking help and ideas. And for soap ideas.
16. Produce a video. My daughter loves to do this for school projects. She impressed me with her creativity. If you already have a video camera, you’re golden. The web has plenty of free apps and software for editing and producing videos. What to make a video about? OK, I’ll be nice and give you one idea: “What is a hero?” OK, I stole it from one of my daughter’s video projects. Heck, you can search for “video project ideas.”
17. Learn how to knit, needlepoint, quilts or some other sewing craft. These projects can range from short to long. Take your pick. I used to do latch hook kits. Loved doing them and they’re so easy. I made a big Donald Duck picture and framed it for my dad that hangs in the office in my mom’s house (Dad passed away). @BJMuntain says, “Besides writing, I cross stitch. Great for people with patience and good attention to detail, like librarians or archaeologists.” I wish I had the ability to put together a quilt made of shirts. I had someone take all my old shirts and swetashirts and turned them into an awesome, memory-filled quilt.
18. Decorate a plain picture frame. Find a fun picture and create a fun frame to go with it.
19. Play chef. Create a new recipe. Do a twist on a favorite. Make candy, cookies, cupcakes or cakes and apply a new decorating technique. Turn on a food TV channel and you’ll be inspired that you want to make something. Or make a gingerbread house or something creative and use candy to decorate it. I just saw a roller coaster candy challenge where the winner added silver to peppermint patties and used them as rivets. Brilliant.
20. Make jewelry. I’ve done the macramé thing in scouts, lanyard thing at camp and made bracelets. Go to an art supply store and you’ll find plenty of trinkets, beads and charms to motivate you.
21. Learn a new craft technique. Try stenciling, stamping or etching.
22. Make something with florals. I loved the centerpieces at a recent event. It was a small glass vase filled with clear gelatin. Put two little lights in the gelatin and then fill the vase with three short flowers. Simple yet elegant.
23. Build a bear. Sure, it costs a pretty dollar, but it’s fun and you’ll feel like a kid again.
24. Work on a book. Novel, nonfiction, whatever you desire. Don’t pressure yourself. Just do it here and there. From @KevinFenton: “Work on a novel. Craig Ferguson, who’d been working in film, called it punk rock –– you can do what you want with cheap supplies.” Love to draw? Do a children’s book with pictures.
25. Create a photo show. Why wait until a special occasion when you’ll be too busy with the event? Create a photo show now while you have the time.
26. Create or grow your garden. Plant flowers, herbs or vegetables to add color and personality to your yard.
27. Put together a model plane, car or boat. I loved doing this as a kid. I chucked Barbie for model kits and race car tracks.
28. Do a wood project. You can buy precut wood shapes, so you don’t have to start from scratch. I’ve made little signs and painted them. I made a wood napkin holder with my parents’ initial.
29. Make pillows or blankets. Not all blankets call for knitting or quilting. A friend took two large pieces of material and tied them together into a perfect blanket for my first son. My mom had a pillow made out of my dad’s old ties.
30. Organize yourself. I love building bookshelves and other organizers from kits that you get at Ikea or the Container Store. Not only you do something with your hands, but you also clean up.
31. Play designer. Watch those shows (Yes, like Trading Spaces) where designers have a very small budget and do lots of crafts projects to change up the room’s look. It’s amazing what they come up with that even I can do.
32. Design a shirt, bag, sneakers or other clothes. One of my proudest projects ever — painting a sweatshirt. That sweatshirt is on my quilt. It’s a sweatshirt of many logos from musicals. I couldn’t believe how precise many of the logos turned out. Oh, there’s a mistake in there, but I covered it up nicely.
33. Explore other people’s works. Go to Etsy, Martha Stewart and similar sites with handmade products. You’re bound to get creative ideas you want to try yourself.
34. Solve a problem. People invent things to solve problems. What annoys you? A shoelace that keeps coming untied, but you don’t want to double-knot it? A shirt tag? Bet a couple of ideas come to your mind.
35. Create geek art. Turn an old mouse into a holiday decoration. Keyboard useless? Recycle the keys into art: earrings, cuff links, necklace, etc.
36. Recycle old items. Instead of trashing useless items, turn them into something else like geek art.

What other creative things can you do?

Paul & Meryl in Hawaii, July 1998

Blackjack years ago today, my husband and I said our I dos. We still very much do. He still makes me laugh and laughs at the right time when I try to say something funny. Does being married for 21 years make us officially legal as a couple? Yes, that was an oxymoron.  Wow, in 10 years of running this blog (as of June 1), I never shared the story of how Paul and I met. Would you believe I was embarrassed to tell the story until about ten years ago? I’ll let Paul tell you the story as he recently wrote this.

“The advent of home computer opened the world up for Meryl. In fact, you could call Meryl and I the original online daters. Back in the early days of home computing (pre-Internet), people joined bulletin board systems (BBSes). Meryl and I belonged to several of the same BBSes and we traded many messages back and forth.

“We finally met in person at a picnic that the SysOp (system operator who ran a BBS) held for his users. After meeting, we went back to posting back and forth and it wasn’t until months later that we actually started dating. (Two days before her 18th birthday… yes, I robbed the cradle.) Our first date was watching Tootsie in her room. It was one of the few movies at the time that were closed-captioned.”

For a long time, I told people we met at a picnic. (True! Since it was our first in-person meeting.) At the time, BBSes weren’t cool and I didn’t want to look nerdier than I already did.

The photo comes from our 10th anniversary celebration and one of the most amazing vacations we’ve ever taken together. Technically, it was our 9th anniversary. I was three months pregnant and we knew that we would prefer to stay home with the baby the following year. (That baby would be our recent 5th grade graduate.)

Brain food…

• One Week Down, A Bit of Hindsight: Allison Winn Scotch shares her experience one week after her book’s launch. Just received my copy of her latest, The One That I Want: A Novel. Now to find time to read it between club reading and business reading.
• Freelancing During an Illness: Who wants to think about such things and curse ourselves? Better to be prepared. Sometimes you can prepare when you know you’re having surgery like I did and provided 10 tasks to prepare for time off.
• 50 Fancy Words That Stump NY Times Readers: Here’s the list in PDF. Surprised to see “overhaul” and “hubris.”
• One-sentence Summary Critiques and Tips: You may think you wouldn’t do this — but sometimes we’re too close to the work.
• Sleep and Your Productivity: Count on me being asleep between 10 and 10:30pm CST every night. It’s a habit I’ve had since the first job. Oh, sure, I’ve stayed up past that and learn fast why I don’t do it often. Going to bed one hour later than normal can throw the whole next day upside down. I feel fatigued with strained eyes before I even look at the monitor. I take longer to finish tasks. The only downside is attending special nighttime events. As much fun as I’m having, it can be tough to make it past 11pm. When I threw a big family celebration in 2007, I could not function after everyone left. Thank goodness I had some wonderful family members used to staying up late who helped with cleanup while I played zombie.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 5 Unusual Stickers for Your iPad: Pac-man is my fave. [Link: Aaron Lee]
• 10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling: Love this from the Oatmeal. Almost enough to buy the poster, but hey I got young’uns in the house. Oatmeal’s How to Use an Apostrophe and What Your Email Address Says about Your Computer Skills also rock. [Link: Josh Hanagarne]
• Another 10 Far-Out Father’s Day Gifts: Father’s Day is next week… some ideas.
• The Most Magical Paper Craft Castle in the World: Breathtaking especially with the lighting.
• The 25 Most Unfortunate City and Town Names in the World: Gotta be a fascinating story behind most of ‘em. I’ve been to Hell in Grand Cayman and did the tourist thing sending a postcard home from Hell through its post office.

Writers tend to be  an insular lot. Let’s face it, we work on our own, stuck in our own headspace, most of the time. We sit in front of our computer, or if we’re particularly old school, typewriter, and venture nary a toe into the outside world. (Sometimes all day, sometimes all week!) As a result, we also tend to rank pretty high on the pasty scale (oh, sunshine, how we miss your warm embrace and supply of vitamin D).

Most of us choose to work from home because we think it will give us freedom to lunch with friends, go grocery shopping early, hit daytime classes at the gym and so on. But how many of us do these things? If you’re like me,that would be zero. I find that writing from home has only allowed me the freedom to shower (much) later than I used to. I now sit in front of my computer all day long, waiting for the next job to come in. I even got a laptop so I could work outdoors, but I never do. So what’s the problem?

Thou Shalt Be Creative… NOW

As writers, we are, by necessity, creative. In fact, we often need to be creative on command. This grows tough over time. After all, we don’t often inspire ourselves. The things that make us creative usually come from an outside source and if you’re stuck playing the me-and-my-computer game, you are going to hit the limits of your ingenuity. You may counter, as I have, that you can get all the outside help you need on the internet, but it’s not true. Writers need to get out of the house, not only to improve the quality of their work, but to improve the quality of their lives.

For one, you can only focus on a task for so long before you need to reboot your brain with a break. The brain suffers from energy drain just like a battery. Sitting in front of a computer for hours leads to work that is boring, repetitive and sloppy. I know, I’ve done it. And it’s usually followed by a request for a rewrite.  A simple grabbing coffee (or insert beverage of choice) with a friend or reading the paper in the park rejuvenates your mental facilities and ready to work again.

Humanity Demands Social Interactions

Besides that, we are social creatures. Even the most introspective people crave human contact and interaction, so don’t let yourself fall into a funk and neglect your social yearnings. Join a class or make ongoing dates to meet with friends, and do not cancel! Look at the time away as your reward for hard work and make every effort to enjoy it to the fullest. Freedom is the best reason to work from home, so take advantage of it. Do you know how many people would love to set their own schedule instead of feeling caged like a cubicle-monkey?

As a freelance writer, you have the flexibility to develop an active social life, so don’t let yourself become isolated. It not only affects your work, but also it has a negative impact on your mental and physical health (not to mention your relationships). Creativity demands a variety of sensory input, so leave the old ball and chain (and keyboard) at home and take a zumba class at the gym, meet your friends for lunch or go see that awful movie that you can’t get anyone to go see (et tu, MacGruber?).

Your work (and your well-being) depends on it!

About the guest author: Alexis Montgomery is a content writer for Online Colleges who gives advice on the pursuit of higher education and living a healthy life. In her free time she enjoys reading, writing, and spending time with her family and friends.

Photo from flickr user delphwynd

One kid’s school went all out on Earth Day and turned it into Earth Week. They did an activity each day. Monday was the Paper Bag Project where the students decorated donated grocery bags that went back to the grocery store to spread the word about protecting our environment.  Tuesday was Walk and Roll Day when kids were encouraged to walk, bike or skate to school. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do this one as there is a major intersection that’s not safe for my son (This isn’t his “home” school.)

On Wednesday, he brought a plant to school. On Thursday, actual Earth Day,  kids wore blue and planted two trees at the school. Today, kids calculated their carbon footprint. Kids will pick up litter at school tomorrow. Nice, eh? I hope the kids learned from the experience that we can all do something to help our planet.

Irony of the week: Last week, we saw in the school’s newsletter than the kids were to bring a plant to school. So I bought a plant over the weekend when I was at the story. A note came home on Monday saying 5th graders were to bring geraniums. What??? Why didn’t you say so the week before? Gives me two evenings to go get one. So that meant hurting the environment for an extra 15 minutes driving the car as we had no plans to shop on Monday or Tuesday night. On the bright side, the school’s flowerbed looks beautiful and colorful.

From @OMGFacts: More than 20,000,000 Hershey’s Kisses are wrapped each day (133 SQ miles of tinfoil). Tinfoil is recyclable.

Recyclable brain food…

• AP changes its style on website, related words: The new entry for “website” says: “A location on the World Wide Web that maintains one or more pages at a specific address. Also, webcam, webcast andwebmaster. But as a short form and in terms with separate words, the Web, Web page and Web feed.” I never liked “website” as one word, but what can you do?
• Why Don’t Publishers Market & Promote the Books They Publish? Jane Friedman tells it like it really is.
• Once Upon a Time… Lori shares great tips for getting started in a writing career. I did a lot of the things she mentioned in my early days.
• 10 Reasons Why You Aren’t Done Yet: Wonder why you can’t finish tasks? This will help.
• 5 Great, Free Keyword Research Tools: Worth saving for when you need it. I tried the SEO Toolbar, but it turned my browser experience into an annoying one.
• Why Meetings Suck if Bullies Speak: I love the look at the brain’s involvement in the process. I’ve learned a lot about the amygdala, serotonin levels and hippocampus and how they play with our emotions. I’m a fan of Dr. B. Bryan Post’s “The Stress Model,” which says the all behavior comes from state of stress and we have two primary emotions: love and fear.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• The 50 best author vs. author put-downs of all time: “Yes, hell hath no fury like one author gleefully savaging another author’s work.”
• 10 Wackiest Fitness Products: Just watching the first video with Ellen is worth it — even without captions! Guaranteed laughs and ab workout.
• Mindbending photos of the sun: The blue one is just … wow. [Link: Amber Naslund]
• Uncovering the Secrets of Hidden Mickeys: Looking for Mickey Mouse in Disneyland in not so usual places. [Link: Neatorama]
• How to Name a Volcano: Cute cartoon.
• @oatmeal: This is an infographic to end all infographics: Death and Taxes by @mibi
• 8 Twitter Inspired Tattoos — What Were They Thinking: My thoughts exactly.