Friday, June 29, 2012

Sloppy Joes


Last night I made sloppy joes, which normally would not merit a blog post but I found a recipe from allrecipes.com that allowed me to skip the canned sauce and make my own using mustard, onions, garlic and ketchup (mostly ketchup).  It's never crossed my mind to make my own sloppy joe mix and I've always used the canned stuff.  Intriguing!  My husband has made this before and it was delicious, so I decided to try my hand at it.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Ramblings

I would like to make a cartoon someday.  It is something that I've secretly been rolling around in the back of my head for several years, and would require a lot of pre-work work (I'd need to learn programs and how to write a script, which is totally different from writing a story!).  But I think it's something I can do.  Maybe Definitely not alone, I'll need help.  I'll need voice actors, just to name something that is glaringly obvious.  But it could be fun.

So I watched Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead last night and I liked it more than I thought I would.  Basically a guy named Joe is a terribly sick and overweight man who decides he's going to eat only fruits and vegetables in the form of juicing them for 60 days, three meals a day.  That's pretty hardcore dedication.  My favorite part was when he mentioned how he only did the fast for 60 days but the desire for healthy food has remained with him beyond that.  That's really the important (and hardest) part - you can do anything for a set period of time, but once that time has passed unless you picked up better habits you're just going to lapse back into your old self.  I think what I'm trying to get at here is while it's really hard to change bad habits, you have to just take it a day at a time and remember what you're gaining back (maybe your health, maybe your time).


Daily sketch after the jump --

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

I am a writer.

Yesterday I finished "You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One)" by Jeff Goins.  It's part pep talk and part marketing course and a very easy read at around 80 pages.  I enjoyed all the of the book, but the best piece of advice I took away from this book?

You are a writer.  You just need to write.

Of course this makes total sense, but I'm sorry to say it took having someone say it to me to get me thinking about it.  The hardest part of anything (writing, cooking, weight lifting) is starting, taking that first step (and then the second after that).  And that's where 90% of us get stuck.  We make our someday plans and talk about how we want to write a book or learn to cook a souffle but never actually take the first step.  It's a lot easier to talk about the finished product than put in the work to get there.

Today, I employed the book's advice when I sat down today to write on my story.  I've been avoiding it for a few days due to writer's block!  If I write, then I am a writer.  And to my immense surprise, I had to actually stop myself two hours later because I'd been writing and having such a great time doing it.

Starting right now I want to dedicate myself to telling my story - whether or not it ever nets me anything financially.  I know this will be a struggle.  I know part of the reason we decided I should quit was the potential to hit a bigger windfall than what I would ever make working 40 hours a week in an office.  But I'm a writer, I just need to write.


Art after the jump...

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Greetings

I guess I'll start with a little about myself. I quit my job a month ago to pursue one of my biggest dreams: write a book. It's funny to write that sentence because nothing I say can really convey the time and energy that was put into that decision. It wasn't something suddenly decided over dinner one night - it was a series of small choices made over a series of months, and involved a lot of frank conversations with my family.  (Sometimes these conversations would go until 11pm, that's how frank they were!)  I am, however, incredibly fortunate in that I have a very supportive husband, one who is willing to work to keep a roof over our heads while I write. And write and write (and write some more). Thanks babe!


So what am I hoping to get out of this blog?


Practice: I've never written a book.  I took writing in college, but I know I can do better. I want to do better. And how do you get better? You practice. But I don't necessarily want to work on the book every day, because that will cause burnout. Then I realized: a blog would let me prattle on all day about nothing (There are plenty of people that do that.) I could not only use a blog as a way to sharpen my vocabulary and writing specs, but also perhaps build relationships or (at the very least) get some advice on how to fold a fitted sheet.


Accountability: I'm very much someone who starts things all gung-ho then never finishes (see my spare bedroom for a good example: two of the walls are painted and one is half-painted, then it just kind of tapers off... if you stand in a certain corner of the room it looks great! Just don't stand in the other corner, because then it looks horrible.) I think it's certainly easy enough to start something, but to follow it through to the end... that takes skill. That's something I've always struggled with. Talking about it online in a blog, however, puts it in a very public eye.  If there's anything I've learned from being online it's that the internet is never short of people who will call you a lazy ass.


In short, I am following the advice of a very wise man:

Never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing.