Just Me

  Last year, I saw a posting from a writer friend that said there was one year where she challenged herself to only submit her work to paying markets. I thought that was an interesting challenge so I decided to do it, too.   Little did I know just HOW MUCH of a challenge it is!   So when January 2025 came around, that’s what I did. However, I soon realized that I have a soft spot for charity anthologies, and I REALLY wanted to have work included in anthologies that support charities which I believe in. So, I made an exception to submit work to charity anthologies. Then I saw friends posting about calls to submit to their nonpaying anthologies and E-zines. I liked what I saw and wanted to support them and their new venture, so I made another exception. And, in the end, I decided, okay, I will ONLY submit to the nonpaying stuff on Fridays.   And you would think that submitting my writing to only the paying publications meant I would be able to make enough o...

  My Christmas Eve wasn’t so great yesterday. I mean, yes, some good things happened: I finally got back an interview for the monthly newsletter (thanks, Natasha!), I got to watch Die Hard , the peanut butter blossom cookies I made for the very first time turned out really good and so yummy, and hubby made a nice Christmas Eve dinner, but some bad things happened too. I was missing my parents, I was sick with a queasy stomach for most of the day, I had a headache that lasted for hours that NOTHING helped (not even my prescription headache medicine!) and hubby bit my head off over the kitchen being messy. All of that put me into a DEEP depression and I just locked myself in my room for a while to try to calm down. (I tried to read on my phone but it wasn’t working!)   Still, I know the day could have been worse. The holidays are hard for a lot of people. My oldest recently had to talk someone out of trying to commit suicide and a new friend is having her first Christmas w...

      For a long time, I have lived by a mantra: Focus only on the present. In fact, I once drew a picture called “Eyes Forward” in which a drawing of a woman representing myself was looking straight ahead while monsters of the past were at her back.   And that’s what my own past is: A monster. A beast I must fight on the daily. It’s not enough that I have to fight the monster tempting me to drink again, I also have to fight the monsters of my past hoping to lure me back into their clutches. That is part of the reason why I drank for so long and why it got so bad. I couldn’t escape the bad memories from my past. I actually lived in the past instead of focusing on the present. I even had nightmares about the past.   But to combat this from happening again, I make it a point to focus on the present. This is why I don’t like to talk about the past. Sure, I’m writing about the past in my memoirs, and that’s not easy because of the bad things from my past. Bu...