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when she woke

If We Were Having Coffee: What A Busy Week

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Hello everyone. How are you today? Hope you’re doing well. Since we’ve entered the month of October, I’ve decided with my coffee posts to do images of coffees that are Halloween related in some way or another. As a way for me to get into the Halloween spirit so to speak on my blog. Halloween is my favorite holiday so I want to celebrate it in whatever way I can here.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you this week has been a busy week at work. I’m not going to get into any of the specifics, but it’s been pretty stressful. Things out of my control happened and I felt like I walked into bad news every day I came in. Some of the things that happened have me feeling ashamed and frustrated that they happened, but are being handled the best way they can.

I’m sorry I can’t get really get into more detail other than that. I can tell you it’s not necessarily something me or my coworkers have done. It’s something that’s happened at my college that has everyone around campus talking, wondering what’s going to be done about it. It’s stuff out of our control, things we couldn’t predict happening. But nonetheless, it happened and we are doing the best we can to move on from it.

If we were having coffee, I’d also tell you I’m still working on the fifth chapter for the Creators Academy course I’m taking. I’m not sure what I want to do it on just yet. I’m thinking of possible topics, but just haven’t come up with one yet. I know my last one was about Harry Potter so I’m considering doing something about it again, like maybe talking about the Harry Potter podcast I’ve been enjoying or something. But haven’t exactly decided if that’s what I really want to do or not. Until then, I’ll keep looking and see what happens. I’ve also found out I’ll be given another mentor again. Don’t know why I keep getting different mentors, but I’m still looking forward to this whole process and am excited to see what I’ll be writing next on this site.

Speaking of writing, I’ve found a Flash Fiction Challenge I’m really looking forward to doing. I think I know what I’m going to write about, just not exactly sure how I want to go about doing it yet. Considering its more of a nonfiction post, I’m still trying to think of how to tell this personal experience of mine. It’s something I want to talk about, but not sure how others will feel about it so I’m still trying to figure that out before I write it. But I am planning on doing this challenge in the near future even if it ends up being finished later. Would rather write this one accurately and late than finish it on time and it be completely false. So I plan on working on that sometime in the foreseeable future. Fingers crossed it’ll turn out the way I want it and others will enjoy it too.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I’ve finished reading When She Woke, with the review posted on my blog for all of you to enjoy. I enjoyed it, but there are some things with it I have a problem with. I’ve also just started reading this book called The Imperfectionists yesterday. So far, it seems like an interesting read, something I’d enjoy. But will just have to wait and see once I’ve finished.

I’ve also started watching Criminal Minds on Netflix. I’ve been wanting to binge watch it for the longest time now and figured since I’ve been seeing some of the episodes on TV, I might as well watch it from the beginning.

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So far, I’m enjoying it, like I always do. I know I’ll probably eventually get tired of watching it, but right now it’s very enjoyable to me.

Right now, that’s been it for me. I haven’t been up to much else besides work and whenever I have free time, I read, write or do something else. Hope your week has been good and can’t wait to hear all about it.

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Book Review: When She Woke

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Rating: 3 stars

Hannah Payne’s life has been devoted to church and family. But after she’s convicted of murder, she awakens to a nightmarish new life. She finds herself lying on a table in a bare room, covered only by a paper gown, with cameras broadcasting her every move to millions at home, for whom observing new Chromes—criminals whose skin color has been genetically altered to match the class of their crime—is a sinister form of entertainment. Hannah is a Red for the crime of murder. The victim, says the State of Texas, was her unborn child, and Hannah is determined to protect the identity of the father, a public figure with whom she shared a fierce and forbidden love.

A powerful reimagining of The Scarlet Letter, When She Woke is a timely fable about a stigmatized woman struggling to navigate an America of the not-too-distant future, where the line between church and state has been eradicated, and convicted felons are no longer imprisoned but chromed and released back into the population to survive as best they can. In seeking a path to safety in an alien and hostile world, Hannah unknowingly embarks on a journey of self-discovery that forces her to question the values she once held true and the righteousness of a country that politicizes faith and love. 

When She Woke is a really powerful story. A story that makes me question the world Hannah lives in as well as my own society.

Chroming people depending on their crime is an interesting idea to think about. Especially because in this book, I feel like each color choosing for a crime is symbolic. Red for murder is obvious in the sense that murdering someone involves blood being shed while blue for rape represents a sense of innocence being lost. I think the idea of chroming people in general is interesting because it would make it easier for us as a society to know who’s committed a crime. We’d be better able to protect ourselves from people we don’t know who could hurt us. But at the same time, I see it has serious issues too. It would be another form of racism where people who’ve been chromed will have to deal with people trying to hurt them because of their past actions. It would create another society for people to continue hating each other. But at the same time, society would be safer because we’d know whose committed crimes and justice would be served. Either way, it’s an issue you ponder as a reader when reading this book.

This book also makes me question faith. I’m not a highly religious person to begin with because I believe everyone should be able to believe in whatever they want without someone judging them. Not everyone has the same faith and I think everyone has a right to practice their religion without fear from others perceiving them in a negative light. In When She Woke, Hannah had her own doubts about what she believed in whenever she became a chrome. Life changed for her and she found she couldn’t feel God’s presence anymore. She also realized that she missed out on so much in life because of her faith and how it perceives women. While I enjoyed reading this aspect of the book, it definitely makes me question religious institutions and the way people act towards others in the name of their faith. While I believe religion is important, I don’t think it should be considered so important that you completely disregard another person and treat them ill because of their actions. If anything, that’s when a person needs religion the most. It’s because of the way people act towards others in the name of their faith that I don’t care as much about religion as others. And this book brought that to the surface to me in ways I didn’t expect.

I enjoyed reading this book because like the two issues I’ve mentioned above, it brings a lot of interesting conversation to the table. Conversations about issues like crime, abortions, faith and racism that while uncomfortable to talk about need to be discussed. I enjoyed reading this book because these issues were included in the story and made me think.

However, there were also some aspects of When She Woke I wasn’t pleased to see. I wasn’t happy that they made faith such a huge part of this story. While I understand that Hannah was once a very religious girl, I feel like they really enforced it too much sometimes. Especially because it seemed like almost everyone in this society was religious in some way even though that’s not at all how everyone in our world acts. I felt like reverends in the story like Hannah’s lover were given celebrity status in the story for being so indoctrined in their faith. While it gave me hope that things with chroming wouldn’t be too bad, I also felt like it was trying to force a message about faith on people too.

Another aspect of this story I wasn’t happy about was the way in which Hannah becomes saved. I found so many plot holes with the whole thing, especially near the end of the story when Hannah is left to travel to Canada on her own. Especially because so much could’ve gone wrong with her traveling alone. I also just didn’t understand why this organization was only helping women who’d gotten abortions instead of helping every chrome who wanted to repent their crime. I guess I just expected more from this besides Hannah going to Canada to reverse the change. Maybe something along the lines of her and the organization stopping chroming from being legal. I guess I feel like the story isn’t finished being told and that more should’ve been written.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading When She Woke. It was a very powerful story with a lot of things for the reader to talk about. It just didn’t necessarily have enough explained in the plot for me to give it a higher rating. But I did enjoy the book as a whole and recommend it to anyone interested in reading something like this.

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If We Were Having Coffee: A Misfortunate Event

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Hello everyone! How’re you all doing today? These past two couple weeks have been… interesting to say the least.

If we were having coffee, I’d pour my heart out to you about them. As this is oddly enough my thirteenth coffee post, it’s unfortunately going to be a little full of bad news. Just to let you know though, this bad news doesn’t pertain to my blog and you guys in any way. I just wanted to let you know that before I continue.

The reason I haven’t been posting as much lately is because I have a lot going on here at home. On Tuesday last week, my Mom and I came home to a disaster in our house. The septic tank in the toilet in our upstairs bathroom cracked, resulting in a leak that did some water damage to our upstairs bathroom, the living room floor, and the crawl space below our house, which just recently had new insulation put in. This damage means we have to replace the flooring in our living room and bathroom, which has severely impacted our living space.

Because of this damage, a lot is going on here at home in order to get our house back into working order again. We’ve had to rearrange our living room space so we could have somewhere to sit down besides our bedrooms as well as cleaned our house the best we can because of the mess the demolition process caused. The only thing really left to do is get our contractor started on replacing everything that was damaged so we can have our living room and bathroom space again.

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The toilet that caused it all. The only picture I’m going to show because my Mom doesn’t really want me posting about this everywhere. Once everything has been fixed, I’ll be posting more pictures in the future.

But because of this situation, I just haven’t had as much time to write. All of this going on at home is constantly on my mind even when I have free time I could be using for writing. I also don’t have as much space to write anymore, which sucks but is something I’m adapting to in my own way. I’ve decided to seclude myself in my room whenever I want to write at home or in the library at school whenever I’m waiting to go into work. I think this’ll work better for me anyway because I’ll be able to write undisturbed. But now that the initial shock over this leak is over, we are adjusting just fine to our new surroundings. Just need to get the bathroom and living room space fixed up, hopefully looking even nicer than it did before. I’ll continue as my weeks progress to let you know how it’s all going.

If we were having coffee, I’d also tell you things at work are just as crazy as home. The week this all went down, there was a catering dinner I was helping out with for two nights. During this dinner, there were apparently some issues going on between some of my coworkers that resulted in one of our coworkers quitting. These issues occurred apparently as soon as I left to help out with the catering and have just caused more trouble than its worth.

Having that coworker quit has reminded me of why I’m not content working here. While I don’t mind the work and the people I work with, our managers aren’t exactly what I’d call the best at managing their employees. Especially when issues like this arise and when certain employees don’t handle their responsibilities correctly, resulting in other employees having to pick up the slack. While I don’t personally have issues with the managers, the way they handle their work responsibilities doesn’t always sit well with me. Especially when employees let them know again and again about certain issues and instead of handling them they just don’t talk about it.

But enough about work right now. How about talking about something happier, like let’s say my writing or books I’ve been reading? If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I’ve finished reading The Dark End of the Street, which the review of can be found on my blog. I enjoyed reading it, but I think I’ve read it before because a lot of the short stories felt so familiar. So now I’m reading another book called When She Woke. Unfortunately, I’m dealing with the same problem because all of the character’s names sound so familiar to me, even though I don’t really remember most of the events going on. But I’m still enjoying it anyway because it’s an enjoyable read.

I’ve also finally completed the fourth chapter assignment for Creators Academy, which can be seen here for those interested. I’ve been struggling with this one for a long while because I just didn’t know what I wanted to write about. Well, that’s not necessarily true. I knew I wanted to write about Harry Potter in some capacity. I just didn’t know what about Harry Potter I wanted to write about. Luckily, I was able to figure something out in order to write this story, even if it was talking about the series in a news story way. I know this piece wasn’t at all what I was expecting to write, but I’m happy with it anyway because I haven’t written a news piece since being in college so it felt nice to do it again.

If we were having coffee, I’d also like to mention I spent these past two weekends with other people I care about besides family. Last weekend, I spent Friday night at my best friend’s house because my Mom wanted me out of the house while dealing with the mess that’s become our home. While at her house, I had a much needed sleepover, which included watching movies and sleeping in a comfy bed. Just getting to spend some much needed girl time, catching up on life with each other and just enjoying each other’s presence. During the sleepover, I was able to get some much needed sleep along with go with my best friend walking at one of the parks near us. This walk was something we’d talked with each other the week before about starting to do every Saturday morning.

But that didn’t end up happening this past Saturday because my best friend hasn’t been feeling well lately. I know she gets sick a lot though so I already knew we probably weren’t going to be seeing each other because of it. But that was okay because another friend of mine wanted to spend the day with me. So yesterday, we went park hopping once again. Like all of the other times, it was a lot of fun despite how hot it gets here. We also went out to eat at a Korean restaurant for lunch, which was so delicious I brought some home with me to eat for lunch on another day.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that while there’s been some misfortune going on with the house, I feel like things afterwards have finally settled down for me. I hope in the weeks to come I’ll be able to write a little more and that the mess with our house will be fixed and I’ll be able to use my bathroom again. Hope your all doing well this week and are having a wonderful weekend as we get close to the beginning of a new month and season.

 

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