Mindfully Mondays 2024 #3

So, I’m writing this post on Monday!! What the what?? The funny thing is just because I’m writing this post on Monday, doesn’t mean I couldn’t forget and not post it today. Seriously, it has happened before.

But I will post today. I started this journey of Mindfully Mondays for this very reason: to be more successful in blogging consistently.

Currently getting lost in Spotify and I need to get ready for work but here is my post for today. I may or may not have a part 2 later when I think of what I would actually write about today!

Later for now! Be back later!

Mindfully Mondays

Over the last week, I did manage to create a tentative schedule for January. I’m thinking Mondays and Wednesdays. I’ve also been reading on and learning to be more mindful.

That being said, I am thinking of making Mondays ‘Mindfully Monday’. How and in what sense? I’m not exactly sure. I know I have issues I want to work through mentally. I have anxiety and depression. I have attention and focus issues.

I want to be able to function more fully in the moment and with those around me in my personal and professional life.

That means that I need to be more mindful.

Mindfulness is a practice that involves being fully present and engaged in the current moment without judgement. It’s about cultivating awareness of your thoughts , feelings, and surroundings, which can contribute greatly to improved mental well-being.

— ChatGPT 3.5 Response to “In the sense of mental health, what does mindfulness mean?”

It makes perfect sense. I spend too much time lost in anxious spirals. That’s not living in the moment, engaged with those around me. I can’t live like that anymore.

Mindfulness, to me at least, goes a little further. I need to be mindful of my writing self and my creative self as well. I need to write every day. I need to make it a daily habit to write every day.

I won’t be blogging every day, or at least I won’t be setting that as a goal as to keep myself from getting burnt out but I will be writing every day.

Now, that doesn’t mean that if I have a blog post inside of me that needs to be written and it’s not a Monday or a Wednesday that I won’t write it.

Absolutely not! I will write that blog post and post it. I will write that snippet and pocket it away until I have more to it.

I have to be the person that I want to be. I have to be the person that I am destined to be and a person that is so anxious and depressed that he can’t fully function and have successful relationships is not the person I want to be.

Let’s see how it goes!

When It Comes

When I have an idea, I need to write it down. Whether I’m at work or home or where ever. If I’m driving, I need to have a way to dictate my ideas.

I’m trying to stay hopeful that I can keep this momentum and positivity going forward and on into the new year.

It makes me think of Peter Pan and how he flew off to Neverland, into a new world of amazement.

I want 2024 to be my year. I want 2024 to be our year! I want to take a little extra cash at the beginning of the year and get my passport. I want to travel with them. I want to create with them. I want to make a good life with them.

I’m not exactly sure where I wanted this blog post to go but I got an inkling of wanting to write a post and decided to just grab my iPad and write one.

That’s it! It was when inspiration strikes me, I need to snatch the opportunity and get to creating.

I mean, just starting to write, I wandered slightly sideways to the path of Neverland and that makes me think of Alice in Wonderland which I love because I associate it with Yvonne and some good times in my younger years.

Now, that doesn’t mean that I should only wait until inspiration strikes to do anything. If I constantly do something creative, whether I’m inspired or not, it can lead to other things.

I’m learning or remember really because we learned this in school right, how to take one thing and then branch off… I want to say that is sort of like the snowflake method. Some reason I want to associate it with ‘something-spider’ or ‘spider-something’ but maybe that’s something else entirely.

But anyways, I’m going with things better. I’m taking one little smidgen of an idea and then running with it and seeing where it goes.

Maybe this is my ADHD as a benefit because I can discover new things.

Oh and speaking of discover, I think Star Trek Discovery is starting new episodes fairly soon and I know I saw earlier or last night that SVU is starting new episodes soon too!

Work schedules being what they are, I usually don’t get to see the shows when they air but that’s okay.

I’m losing the point of this blog post again but anywho, I’m learning to branch out from one idea and into something else. I’m learning to embrace imperfection. I’m learning that I don’t like it when things don’t go my way. That’s okay. I have to learn to be able to handle that I only have control over certain things.

I would love to have a tiny laptop. I am currently sitting outside or rather I was and now I’ve moved back inside but I got to looking on EBay and they have an 11 inch Lenovo laptop for $70 and that’s not bad. I wouldn’t imagine that it’s that heavy being that it’s only 11 inches.

Dinner is almost ready. Maybe I’ll come back and write more later!

Happy Holidays

I wanted to write a blog post today but as I sit here, my fingers on the keys, I really couldn’t think of what to write or anything. All I could think of was the little jingle Happy Holidays that Robyn used to say back at Albertsons all those years ago.

The holidays are coming up. We just finished Thanksgiving last week and Christmas is coming up in a couple weeks. Then New Years.

November and December always used to be such a magical time for me. I always loved to write during the winter time and the ‘ber brrrr’ months.

Now, that warm, fuzzy feeling is gone. Well, maybe GONE is too strong a word but it’s gone more often than it’s there anymore.

But I want to get that feeling back. I want to get off work and come home, grab by notebook and write. I want to have ideas all the time again. I want to sit with the boys and they do their thing and I write.

I want to day dream about my characters and my stories and my worlds again. I want to doodle about my worlds and the places in it!

I want to have that ‘kid waking up on Christmas Morning’ feeling again. I used to use the Sims to create homes and such for characters. I need to do that again.

I need to …

Lol I don’t even remember where I was going to go with this blog post! I left it the other day on my IPad but it didn’t sync to my phone so I couldn’t access and it got left behind for work and everything and I am just now getting back to it!

Well, I think I’ll leave it exactly as it is. An unfinished piece and that be that! I need to embrace imperfections!!

My Roots

Even now, writing this blog post, I don’t even know where to really begin or anything.

My writing has been pretty much non-existent for so long now. I want to say that I have no idea how to get myself writing again but I do. I need to start writing.

I need to just start w/riting. I can. I know that I have the ability to write. So why don’t I write?

I don’t write because the little voice in my head tells me that I can’t. It tells me that I am no good. I’m an imposter if I think I can write like the other writers I see online and in the bookstores.

The little voice that tells me that if I write, I’m being selfish. I should be doing something more productive instead of writing stupid stories.

But are they stupid?

NO! My writing is not stupid! I may not write what everyone else is writing. I may not write what everyone else wants me to write but regardless of any of that, my writing is valid and worthy of being out there in the world right along everyone else’s.

Now, that being said, while I try to get my creative writing mojo back in action, I’m thinking of going back to my roots as far back as my earliest writing in fan fiction.

When I started writing, it was horribly written Star Trek fan fiction. There were so many Gary Stu characters that it was cringe worthy. Then I moved on to slash fiction in the Buffyverse with Angel and Xander and the writing was, let’s say better.

It wasn’t great by any means but it was better. It was also slash fiction that got me writing my own original fiction in the first place.

So why not go back there and see if in writing something familiar I can’t spark that same creative passion again and reignite the fire again.

Stay tuned and let’s see how this writing experiment goes!

Sunday, June 26, 2022

So there are only 5 days left until July’s Nanowrimo session! Are you ready? Do you have your outline finished? Are you pantsing it? Do you have any kind of idea of what you’re going to do for the month at all?

If you’re like me, you’re probably putting it down to the very last minute on what you want to work on for the month. I have no idea. I have a project I have worked on in Nanowrimos in the past but never finished and I’m kind of thinking about that for the next month as well.

But I also wonder if I should just start something new and different from what I’ve already been working on in the past. I’m in a completely new place in life. Things have changed so much over the last few months and I’m definitely not the same person that I was before.

So I don’t know. I know I need to figure something out for the month because there are only a few days left. I’m off on Tuesday. Maybe I’ll use that day to get a better idea of what I want to do for the month.

But regardless of what I am going to work on for the month of July, I am going to have fun with it. I am going to get out of the house and go write at coffee shops again. I am going to go to Balboa Park like I always wanted to do with Richard and I’m going to sit in the grass and write.

It would be so easy to just let myself fall away from anything that I enjoyed and just sink into a darkness and not come back out of it. It would be so easy to succumb to the negative, sad thoughts that are already floating around in my head. I can’t let myself do that though. I have to pull myself back up and start to enjoy life again.

Richard may be gone but he will always be with me in my heart. He would not have wanted me to stop living life. He would have wanted me to go on to do great things. He would have wanted me to pursue my writing because it was something that always brought me great joy. He would have wanted me to share my work with the world.

While publishing is not something I will most likely be doing any time soon, it still might be in my future.

But for now, I need to figure out what I even want to write about.

Where are you at in your #preptober month? Have you settled on an idea for a story? Have you outlined or are you going to fly by the seat of your pants and just hope for the best? Let me know in the comments section below!

Happy Writing Everyone and have a great week to come!!

Every Day is A New Day

Today was a pretty stressful day at work but I made it through it. I always do. I buckle down and I get shit done and I get through the shift. Even when an eight hour shift feels like a 16 hour shift or longer, I still get it done.

But I got home about 15 minutes ago and I need to get in bed because we’re going to a Father’s Day brunch in the morning but I needed to get a blog post done first. I really do need to start writing each and every day again.

Even if it is just a short little blog post, I need that creative outlet to help get me back to my old self.

When I got off work tonight, I drove past mine and Richard’s old apartment building and maybe I shouldn’t have because it made me sad but it wasn’t too bad tonight. I got sad and I talked to myself as I drove down the familiar road to the highway but once I got out on the highway and was heading south to my home with Juan and Brian, the sadness lessened.

I know that it’s only been a few months since Richard passed and that it’s still all fresh wounds and all but I am hopeful that given time it will get easier.

I know that I will never, ever forget Richard. He’s all around me. Music was a big thing for him and I’m surrounded by either music playing somewhere at any given moment or I’m surrounded by his vinyl collection as I sit in the lounge and write.

So I will never forget him but maybe it’ll get easier to handle things and maybe I can be a little less triggered all the time.

It helps a great deal to have two wonderful men in my life that love me and want me to be happy. They understand loss and sadness just like anyone else and they help me any way that they can and if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here today. I honestly don’t know where I would be.

But I might not be where I am now, that’s for sure.

They also encourage me in my writing. They gave me a space all of my own in the lounge, surrounded by not just Richard’s vinyl collection but Juan’s as well and his stereo setup also. It’s nice to have a space all to myself.

In mine and Richard’s apartment, I had somewhat taken over the little dining room area that we had as my writing space but the tall, bistro style table that we had was just too high for me and it just didn’t flow the way that I wanted it to.

And that was fine. I was content to make due with what I had but it sure is nice to have a little dedicated space of my own here that I can sit and write.

There’s just over 10 days left until the beginning of July’s Camp Nanowrimo session and I really need to be planning and prepping for that. I have no real idea what I am going to write about but I’ll get it figured out a little bit better before the month is over. I might just gather up as many ideas as I possibly can and then that way I have a bunch of different things I could work on for the month.

I’ve done that sort of thing in the past and it has kind of worked and then not worked. I just don’t want to burn out but I am also not going to get down on myself if it doesn’t work the way that I want it to.

Anywho, I am having a hard time keeping my eyes open now so I think I’m going to get in bed.

How is June going for you? Are you prepping for Camp next month? Let me know in the comments section below!

Happy Writing!!

Preptober 2021 – Day 16

Get A Timer

So my tip for today… GET A TIMER!

Writing sprints are an amazing way to get a flow going and to really increase that word count quickly!

You can set a timer for 5 minutes and write to see how many words you can get in those 5 minutes! You can even change it up and set it for 7, 13, 24 or whatever amount of time you might like.

You can even get others involved as well! Nanowrimo does write in videos during Nanowrimo which they do writing sprints during the video.

Writing with others is a great way to make the month not seem so alone and can give you an extra boost of inspiration!

How is preptober going for you? Let me know in the comments section below!

Preptober 2021 – Day 15

Thinking about the story prompt of taking someone from your every day life and making them into a character and or villain in your story!

It’s a very interesting idea and something I definitely might do! It very well might be a good therapeutic tool to help me work through stress and anxiety that I have due to certain people and situations at work.

I’m thinking this will be a really fun exercise! I might work on some ideas for this when I get home tonight!

How is #preptober going for you? Let me know in the comments section below!

Pretober 2021 – Day 8

The month is definitely not going the way that I wanted it to. I am 3 days behind on my goals. I redid my word count goals for the month. If I write 1,475 a day, the next 2 days, itll put me back on track.

I just feel like I’m falling into a depressive rut again and one I hate this feeling and two, I just cannot let myself get like this. I’m better than this. I need to refocus and come up with a new game plan.

Hows the month going for you? Let me know in the comments section below!

September 28th

Having to work overnight tonight so I spent the better part of the day sleeping. When I did get up, my Windows 10 machine did some updates which caused the computer to not even be able to log in.

Seriously Microsoft, WTF?!

Finally got the computer up and running but had to reinstall all my programs and such. Really makes it hard to write if I can’t even use my computer!

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day and I can at least get a little bit of writing/prepping done!

September 25th

So, this year, this month and everything else outside and in between have just not been going the way that I wanted it to.

Richard and I had a Covid scare on Thursday. One of our neighbors who was at our house for dinner on Saturday tested positive on Thursday and both of us had been feeling sick all week.

My boss gave me a website to go and get tested the same day and we got the results back today. Thankfully both of us tested negative but it was still a scary time for the both of us. I was more worried about him than myself. He has health issues as it is and I was more worried about his cough and breathing issues than my own.

I hate to think what catching it would be like if we weren’t both vaccinated. No I am not saying that to get into a battle of vaccinate or not-to-vaccinate. People can make their own choices.

But with us both being sick this week, it’s been hard. Earlier in the month we had to completely vacate the living room as we had maintenance from our apartment complex coming in to do some work and it meant all the furniture, including Richard’s turntable being inaccessable to us for almost two weeks and being mostly confined to the bedroom for any TV or music playing. Which isn’t all that bad but being stuck in a small room for 2 weeks, it gets to you after a while.

Then after all of that, we had a few days of being able to enjoy the whole apartment again but then I started feeling sick and after I was a little better, he started feeling rough too.

It’s just been a month.

Here’s hoping that next month will be a better month and I can get some good prep done for #nanowrimo2021. This will be my first Nanowrimo since moving to San Diego and I really want to do well on it.

My goal for today, besides getting the kitchen prepped for another round of maintenance was to get a sort of organized plan together for next month for prepping but I’m not sure if that’s going to happen or not. We wound up having to push the maintenance out a week because our arrangements for the dogs on Monday fell through and that’s fine. It gives me a little bit more time to get the things done to the apartment that I need to get done, done.

But as for #NanoPrep, not sure if any of that will get done today or not. It might but we shall see.

Well, I’m going to get off of here and maybe grab a notebook and a pen and go sit with Richard who is in a little pain from his neuropathy and see if any ideas come to mind.

How are you doing? Are plans going how you expected they would? Let me know in the comments section below!

Happy Writing and have a beautiful weekend!