Just Me

Today is the first day of Fall. It’s my favorite season and I’m excited about getting just a bit closer to being able to put up all of my Halloween decorations. Now that I have my hallway back, I can bring back the Hall of Horrors! Yay!   But this new cycle of the year is not just about that or even about the return of the Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks. Though all of that is nice!   No, the reason for this blog post is that I had something happen recently, and with a message I received today, it really made me think!   As part of getting sober, I make it a point to do the things that I need to do in order to make peace with my past. This includes shadow work, exposure therapy, meditation and journaling. These things help me to come to terms with a lot of bad stuff that happened in my past. I will often remember the bad things that I did and once again fall into a pattern of self-loathing and insecurity. No matter how much I try to remind myself that I am no...

Several months ago, I decided that one of my fitness goals would be to run in a race and NOT come in last. Because that’s exactly what happened when I ran in a race while participating in cross country at a high school I attended (Monta Vista High School – just one of the high schools I attended!). Even though my coach was with me at the time and everybody was still excited and happy that I had completed the 5K run, I still felt bad that I came in last. That really sucked! And as part of my “new life” in sobriety, I not only wanted to make physical fitness a part of my daily life, but I also wanted to set some goals. I’m a goal-setter! It's not enough just to do something; I have to set a goal for it!   So, yeah, running in a race became that goal.   So I asked my doctor (my PCP) if I could start running again. She said yes, and to start small. She told me I had to go slow at first and I took this to mean short sprints while I was out on my walks.   But when I...

Photo credit: Pixabay   I’m a big e-newsletter person. Anytime I come across the opportunity to subscribe to a newsletter, then, if it’s something that caters to my interests, I’ll sign up. I also sign up to a lot of author newsletters, as a way to support fellow authors.   But this morning, I had to unsubscribe from a popular newsletter I have been receiving for a while. The reason? The whole purpose of that issue of the newsletter was to share about the owner’s most recent podcast, which was basically to talk people into buying his book, paying for his coaching services, or signing up for one of his online courses.   Never mind that the podcast summary I read beneath his podcast was just that: A summary. This was discouraging to someone who is deaf and must rely on text beneath a podcast to know what was being said since I can’t HEAR a podcast that doesn’t have closed captioning. The podcaster saying “you’ll get more information from watching the podcast” that I...

  Every year, I try to do something to celebrate National Poetry Month. I love poetry. I love reading it and writing it! In fact, poetry is the first kind of writing that I started writing with !   For this year’s NPM, I decided to read as many poetry books as possible. I ended up doing something more than just this one thing , but that’s the goal I had for the month, just to get started.   Here is the list of all of the poetry books I read this month. Some of them are books I was happy to add to my personal library. As a book reviewer for Reader Views, I was able to obtain two poetry books to review. Only one of those reviews has been posted as of today and I have included the link to it.   Words Left Unspoken by J.A. McGovern   The World Eats Love by Carol Edwards   My Heart is Like a Singing Bird by Christina Rosetti, Illustrated by John James Audubon   Unspoken: An Anthology of Poetry   Troubled Times Ahead: A ...

 On Facebook, someone posted a request from book reviewers: Share your top 25 reads from last year. I made a list that ran A LOT longer than 25 books so I had to shorten it a bit. Here is my list of the top 25 books I either read or read and reviewed in 2023. Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens edited by Marieke Nijkamp The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror: Evil Lives on the Land! Edited by Mike Marshall Smith If You Were Here by Jennie Yarboff The Boy from the Basement by Susan Shaw The Disappearance of Tom Nero by TJ Price Cackle by Rachel Harrison Clefelo by Sarina Policastro Salem’s Lot by Stephen King Sour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke The Vile Thing We Created by Robert P. Ottone Never Wake: An Anthology of Dream Horror edited by Kenneth W. Cain and Tim Meyer The Levitation Game by Sharon Wagner Cruel Stories by Donald Tyson The Night Weaver by Monique Snyman Her Teeth, Like Waves by Nikki R. Leigh Dracula, the Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt The Exor...