When I think of forgiveness,
The saying, “forgive, but never forget”
Comes to mind.
But for me,
It’s easier said than done.
When people hurt you,
It’s hard to let go,
And begin anew.
But sometimes,
That’s all you need to do.
Hello everyone! I hope you’re all doing alright wherever you are. Right now, I’m doing really well. The Spring Semester at my Alma Mater has almost ended for the students. They just have exams next week, then they are officially done. But for me, I’m done working there for the semester. Just finished working a cookout they were having today a couple hours ago, and that’s it for now. I won’t be there next week because I’m not on the schedule so I’m officially done for the semester. Hopefully it’ll be my last semester there if I’m able to get a job this summer. Will just have to wait and see if that happens for now.
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you for these posts, I want to use more interesting coffee pictures. Pictures like the one I have above that have a lot of color and can catch your attention. I think these pictures would really make my blog stand out, and would look nice with my background. I won’t know exactly what that’ll look like until I’m looking, So you’ll just have to wait and see.
I know this is a #weekendcoffeepost, but I felt like briefly bringing up the infamous Unicorn Frappuccino everyone seems to be talking about. I don’t know how it’s made, because I don’t work at a Starbucks (though I know how to make Starbucks drinks because at work in our café, we have Starbucks products), but I felt like talking about it. I don’t know if it’s any good because honestly it looks like a heart attack. I’m not saying it doesn’t look good (because it kind of does), but pink isn’t my color. It’s definitely an interesting looking drink and I’m actually curious about how they make it more than anything else along with what it tastes like. Though I’m not curious enough to spend my money on one if I’m ever given the chance to do so.
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I have some bad news. It looks like I will have to buy myself a new laptop. Originally, I was going to get one, but decided to have it looked at to see if the part could be fixed so that I could save my money. But it looks like I’ll have to get a new one because the part I’ll need fixed will cost just as much as getting a new laptop. So that’s kind of a bummer. But at the same time, it’s kind of exciting too because it’ll be brand new and there are so many different ones out there I can check out.
Speaking of which, I’m also thinking about changing my blog name this summer. I have an idea of what I might change it to, but I still haven’t decided yet if that’s what I’m going to do. I figure I should though because my blog name isn’t actually that good. Kind of silly, honestly, though at the time I really thought it was a good idea. Just thought I’d let you all know before I do, even though when I do I’m going to write a blog post about it so you know. And since I’m not working right now, I’ll definitely be writing more posts again. I know my 2 year blog anniversary will be coming up within the next couple months so I’ll be writing about that along with whatever other fresh ideas decide to pop into my head this summer.
I think that’s really all I have to say now. Oh yeah, I’ve also been coloring more often too. I find it to be very comforting to do before bed and it’s just such an enjoyable hobby that I can’t help it. I’ve also started reading All the Rage and Mum and I are planning on going to see Hidden Figures tonight and the new Beauty & the Beast movie tomorrow. I’ll probably do a movie review of a tale as old as time too because it’s one of my favorite Disney movies from my childhood so I definitely want to talk about the new adaptation after I’ve seen it.
Okay, now I’m done. I hope you’ve all had a wonderful week and continue to have a good weekend.
As a writer, one of the things I struggle with the most is ideas. Finding different subjects to write about that will interest my readers and get people wanting to come back to my blog. Yes, I have my book and video game reviews I write whenever I finish reading a book or play a video game long enough to grasp the basic gameplay and style. But those aren’t the only forms of writing I want on my blog. So I post poems and short fictional pieces whenever I haven’t finished a book or spent time playing video games.
One of the biggest struggles a writer has to overcome on a daily basis is writer’s block. It’s where your trying to write, but you just can’t. No words come to you and your mind feels like a confusing puzzle you’re trying to solve. You want to write, but you just can’t.
As a writer, I’ve had many experiences with writer’s block. I remember having many moments where I knew I wanted to write, but just couldn’t. I’d sit in my writing space with all the tools needed, but everything I tried to write was complete garbage. So I’d call it a day and come back to writing later. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn’t.
When I experience writer’s block, I feel like my brain is overwhelmed with all these ideas, but I just can’t focus on which one I want to write about. Or sometimes, I literally have nothing to write about because I can’t focus on writing at all. Both these forms of writer’s block for me result in me not writing anything down, even though I know I want to write.
There are many ways I overcome my own struggles with writer’s block. Sometimes, I make the decision to come back to writing later after getting a good night’s sleep or when I feel like I can write again. Sometimes, I decide to use writing prompts to get my mind focused on a topic to write about. And sometimes, I just think “screw it,” and try to write anyway.
There is no one exact way for a writer to overcome writer’s block. What works for me isn’t going to work for everyone else just like what works for everyone else isn’t guaranteed to work for me.
Writer’s block is a problem all writer’s experience at some point during their writing journey. There is no one solution for overcoming it just like there’s no guarantee you won’t experience writer’s block again. The best thing you can do as a writer is come up with your own plan for overcoming writer’s block when it decides to strike. And just maybe, you’ll be able to write once more.
So on Sunday, I announced on my coffee post that I’d be a guest writer on a friend of mines blog. Well, that post has officially been published as of yesterday. You can check it out following this link:
My friend Lesley was a psychology major at Columbia College, the college I attended. We had Creative Nonfiction together, where we shared some of our most personal stories through the written word. On her blog Genius and Insanity: I Am That Line, she writes about many different mental health issues.
With this guest writing post, she asked me to write about how reading or writing affected my mental health. So I focused on escapism, the idea where someone does something they love as a way to escape their real world problems. For me, this was something I knew I did when my passion of reading and writing grew, due to the difficult circumstances that came into my life. During this course of my life, there were a total of three books that helped me cope through the problems I was dealing with. These books each taught me something different about life and myself.
I’m excited that my writing was published on Lesley’s blog. I’ve never been a guest writer before so it was nice to try something new. Please check out this post and Lesley’s blog. She’s a great writer and has a lot of interesting information about mental health that I think people will enjoy.
Thank you Lesley for posting my writing on your blog!
For Chuck’s Flash Fiction Challenge, the writer is challenged to write about something that scares them. While I have a couple fears that could easily be fun to write about, I’ve decided on one I know really is a part of my character: not being able to protect those I love from harm.
It was midnight once again when I found myself still struggling to go to sleep. I thought I’d be able to go to bed now, but my eyes refused to close. I know I’m tired and need this sleep so I can get up for work in the morning, but I just can’t seem to close my eyes. No matter what I do, my body refuses to rest. I feel hyper, like I’ve taken a sip from an energy drink I never bought. Almost as if I could stay awake for the rest of the night.
Finally after what seemed like many hours later, I felt my eyelids droop. I could hear the sounds of my restful breathing as I inhaled and exhaled the air around me. It was peaceful and comfortable in my bed to the point where I could hear my mother snore from her room downstairs.
I drifted into a dreamless sleep for the next hour. Then all of a sudden, I was having a nightmare. In this horrible nightmare, those I love were being harmed in some way or another. And there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it. I felt helpless as I found out my best friend was dead and watched my mom and sister being hurt right before my eyes. I tried reaching out to my loves ones in this dark nightmare, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Then all of a sudden, I’m lurched awake from these terrible visions. I wake up, tears streaming down my face with no recollection of what just occurred. All I know is that my dreams were of the people I love being taken away from me, but can’t remember anything other than feeling completely helpless and hopeless. I feel like I’m being punched in the gut, yet can’t find the cause of this type of violence against me.
It takes quite awhile for me to realize what I just saw in my sleep was all just a dream because it all felt so real. So real, like it actually happened.
So real that even when I’ve finally calmed myself enough to go back to sleep, the tears are still streaming down my face with no sign of stopping. Because while it was all just a dream, it’s something I truly feel could happen and it scares me.
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you with the arrival of my grandmother coming down, things have been quite busy at home. She came to visit us a couple weeks ago to see progress being made on restoring our house back to normal. While she was here, things were initially moving slowly because they had just started getting to work. So she stayed a couple days longer so Mom wouldn’t have to take time off work.
While she was here, my grandmother Meme and I spent the first couple days around the house in case they had any questions for us. I helped Meme wash her car, and we went on walks while the guys were working on what needed to be done in order to get our house back to normal. I spent a lot of time with Meme the first couple days before I had to go back to work. But even when I was at work, I’d spend time with her when I’d get off until she left to head back home. It was a lot of fun having her for a week even if it was because of the stuff going on at our house.
But it wasn’t until she was back home in Pennsylvania that the progress picked up significantly. The popcorn ceiling where the water leaked through was replaced with more popcorn ceiling, the new bathroom flooring was put down, and plywood was placed on the living room floor until the flooring Mom wanted was eventually put down too. But with all the progress that’s been made came dirt. Lots and lots of dirt that needed to be picked up. Because of the amount of walking back and forth the guys who were fixing everything did and from tearing stuff up to put new down, dirt was getting in our house.
So we had to do some major cleaning of the house before they continued work last weekend and this weekend too. Things like wiping the kitchen cabinets and table down, wiping the walls clean, and getting rid of all the dirt on the stairs from their use. Doing this stuff on the weekend helped keep the house clean and left us with little less dirt for the next cleaning. I also did some cleaning while Mom wasn’t at home so she could work on what she wanted to get done.
While I know we’ll be doing some more cleaning again soon, I know there’s very little left to do before they are finished. This makes me happy because we have nice new flooring that looks really nice and our house will finally be back to normal, which means I’ll get my bathroom back soon.
Our new living room floor. It’s cherry flooring and looks really nice in our space.
I also won’t have to deal with the way Mom is stressing out anymore. Ever since we discovered this leak, Mom has been so stressed out about all of it. So stressed that I sometimes feel like I can’t handle it. I’ve become so used to our current living situation that it’s not bothering me anymore. But for Mom, her house isn’t in order, which is something that stresses her out quite a bit. Sometimes I can handle it because it’s not too bad and because she’s okay after a little while. But I feel like with this, she’s stressed out about things that are out of her control. Things like the progress they are making on getting things restored to normal, and the way they are working on it. I want to tell her things are going to be okay, that these things take time and that our house will be back to normal before she knows it.
But she’s also stressed because she’s not always happy with their work. She makes a decision on something, then ends up not being happy with the way its implemented or they haven’t completely finished working on something and start working on something else, etc. She’s fine with their work, then isn’t. She’s not happy though because her house isn’t in order right now. So even if they are doing a good job, she’s going to find something wrong with their work or complain about how long it’s taking. She says what they’ve done is nice, but isn’t yet ready to appreciate it because her house isn’t back to normal. This is her whenever she’s stressed out about things. Especially when her house isn’t in order, which it hasn’t been for the past couple weeks.
But they are close to being done now. And we are doing things now until they’ve completed their job. Things like painting the bathroom, refreshing the bathroom doors, and painting the living room so as to make it look fresh as well as continuing the upkeep of our house. This stuff allows Mom to stay busy and not worry as much about when things will be completed. And so far, it’s been going really well. Everything looks really nice and I can’t wait for everything to be done.
Our bathroom renovations. We’ve repainted the walls to freshen them up and replaced our toilet and counter top space, but have kept our vanity cabinets. Lighting is also new because the old lights just didn’t work well with our new bathroom style. All I need is the mirror and the look will be complete.
Besides cleaning up house, I haven’t really been up to too much else. Doing these renovations have kept me so busy that I haven’t really been able to do anything else when I’m not at work. Speaking of work, things there are pretty much the same. It continues to be a stressful and tiring work environment to me. Every day there’s always some new drama that attempts to darken my mood. But I’m doing the best I can to work around it because that’s all I can do until I can get a job elsewhere.
If we were having coffee, I’d also tell you I’m still continuing to do a good job on laying off the caffeine. Now, I won’t lie and say I haven’t been drinking any soda at all. But if I do have any soda on any given day, I usually manage to do a good job of sticking to my intake of one soda a day, except every once in a while where I’ll indulge in drinking one more soda at the most. I think this is good for me because I remember how much soda I used to indulge in and am happy to see I can cut it off cold turkey.
In other news, this week has been a very interesting one. The election came up and I was able to go out and vote. But despite my vote, Donald Trump has been picked to be the President of the United States. While I was upset because he’s not the man I’d like in power of our country, I’ve come to terms that I can’t change what’s happened. He might not be the President I want, but we are stuck with him now for the next four years. Hopefully he won’t be as bad as I think he’s going to be, but we won’t know for sure until he’s inaugurated into the White House next year.
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I haven’t done too much writing lately. With the way things have been at work and home, I just haven’t felt as up to it as I’d like. Meaning, I haven’t been working on my novel as much either like I was planning on doing. Hopefully, that’ll change this week but we’ll just have to wait and see.
I’d also like to say before I’m done I’ve started reading a different book. The last book I was reading wasn’t catching my interest anymore so I decided to reread a book I enjoyed while I was in college. So far, I’m enjoying The Diviners as much as I did when I first read it for a Young Adult Literature class I took at Columbia College.
For now, that’s really all I have to say. I’ve had so much going on in my life, both at home and work that’s been keeping me so busy that I’m sorry I haven’t gotten the chance to post as much here on my blog. I hope with this week I’ll be able to change that, or at least get some sort of writing done. But regardless, I hope you’ve all been having a wonderful weekend and I’ll catch up with you on coffee again soon!
Remember how last year, I participated in NaNoWriMo and wrote about my experience? Well, I’ve decided to change things up this year.
I’m not going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. Instead, I’m going to be working on a different sort of writing project. Something I’ve been meaning/wanting to work on for some time now, but have kept putting it off time and time again.
There’s this story I’ve been working on since I was in 7th grade. I’ve had this story stuck in my head repeatedly, picturing how it’ll all turn out and what it’ll look like completed. I’ve made various drafts of the first couple chapters, both handwritten and typed trying to decide how to continue moving it forward.
The problem is I’ve always gotten stuck at some point with it. I just couldn’t find the right words to continue the story, couldn’t decide what I wanted to happen to my characters next. So I’d stop, telling myself I’d continue with it on a later day. But I’d end up not going back to it at all despite its continued presence in my mind.
This is the story I want to write instead of participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I want to write this story because I feel like its calling to me. It passes through my mind on a daily basis, asking to be written.
So I want to take up the grueling, difficult task of completing this story. I don’t know yet how long this’ll take me to finish. But it’s something I want to do because I hope to one day have it published. I want to be an author one of these days and I think this story could possibly be my way down that path.
Unlike with my story The Swan & the Crow, however, I won’t be publishing any of this story on my blog for you to read. I don’t want to do that because I don’t want the story itself online before I can get it published.
But that doesn’t mean you won’t hear anything about it from me as I continue working on it. I’ll try the best I can to continuously update you all on how it’s going, and whenever I finally finish it, I’ll be letting you know that too.
Right now, I can also tell you what it’s about in the hopes you’ll be interested in reading it if I’m able to get it published. I’m still working on a few kinks with the title and all so my synopsis will be pretty brief.
When Derek, a young high school boy goes to get his younger sister a birthday present, he gets more than what he bargained for. When he notices a mysterious necklace that not even the store owners were aware they had, he’s curious about it and buys it to wear later. Once he puts the necklace on, however, Derek begins to transform into a being he only thought existed in fairy tales. Having to adapt to the transformation, Derek makes friends with an unlikely ally who helps him adjust to the changes in his body just in time for them to have to work together to defeat an unexpected enemy.
I hope this story sounds like something you’d read and I can’t wait to continue working on it to see where it’ll take me.
Image via Pinterest’s Writing Spaces board.
Whenever I think of writing, I automatically think about my own writing space. Everyone who writes has their own place where their ideas flow in, a space where they can be alone with their creative thoughts. But every writer also has their own preferences for when they go to write, whether it be needing silence to get their thoughts down or listening to certain song lyrics. For each writer, doing these things allows them to write to the best of their ability. But not every writer does the same things.
Personally, I don’t really have my own writing space yet. This is because I’ve discovered I can write anywhere I go: in one of the comfy chairs at my old college’s library, my bed, on our living room couch, etc. Everywhere is susceptible for me to sit down and write. As long as I’m comfortable where I’m sitting, I can write.
But comfort isn’t the only thing I need in order to be in my own writing space. I also need to be in the right mental state of mind. For those who know me, I’m a really passionate person. This means I can be very emotional, which can be both good and bad when it comes to my writing. Sometimes, those emotions come out in a way I can safely write about them without a care in the world. However, they can also cripple my ability to write to where I just can’t do it, no matter how much I want to. I can sometimes use these emotions to write something good, but at the cost of feeling emotionally drained, not wanting to write anything more for a little while.
Whenever I really feel like writing, I’ll mentally feel the itch to write thoughts down. I’ll imagine myself at some location, either writing by hand or typing my thoughts out on my laptop. I’ll try and imagine what I’m writing about and make those words come to fruition. Whenever these itches occur, I try my best to write right afterwards because I know I’ll be able to do it. Otherwise, those words will fade from my mind into the dark.
While some people prefer silence in their writing space, I can write while listening to music AND write in silence. I don’t prefer one over the other because sometimes I can write and listen to music and sometimes I need silence to get my writing done. It all just depends on my state of mind and the environment around me which one I prefer at the time.
Every writer’s preferences are uniquely theirs. Every writer is unique in what they need to do in order to get their creative juices flowing.
The things I’ve mentioned above are what I need to be in my own writing space. The only thing really missing is just finding the right place for me to sit down and write. While this hasn’t been an issue for me just yet, I still hope one day I’ll have my own space. Because while being able to write anywhere I go is great, I still want my own little place to write. So the places I imagine myself writing will have to do until then.
What about you? Where do you go to write? And what do you need to be able to do to get your creative juices flowing?
Hello everyone! I know it’s been awhile since I’ve done a coffee post. But I hope you all have been doing well these past couple weeks.
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I went on a mini writing hiatus. I honestly can’t remember the last time I wrote on my blog besides my two recent book reviews. I know I definitely haven’t done one of these posts in a while, that’s for sure. This hiatus wasn’t planned or intentional, just sort of happened and I went along with it. Actually felt nice taking a little bit of a break from my blog for a little while. But at the same time, it’s good to be back.
I miss writing. Whenever I do it, I’m always enjoying every minute of it. But at the same time, I have to be in a certain mindset to do it. I could go more into that here, but I think I want to do a post about it instead. I think it would be a fun post to write too so I think that’s what I’m going to do.
Speaking of writing, I haven’t done too many more posts for Creative Academy either. Mostly because I’m trying to figure out what I want to write about for the next lesson. I have a couple ideas in mind, but will just have to wait and see what happens.
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I’ve officially started back to work. This week was my first full week back at the dining hall. Most of the first couple days was spent setting up our café for Wednesday’s opening. But also put in some hours helping on the line and register downstairs too. And so far, it’s been pretty good. I’m trying to be more positive about things in life, work being one of them because I don’t always like my job. It’s not the place I want to be, but it’s better than being unemployed. So I’m trying not to be the way I was when I was at work last year. I think requesting to have weekends off this year will go a long way towards me not feeling quite as discontent there. That along with trying to leave all the work negativity where it belongs: at work. I think just having this type of outlook on work will benefit me there in the long run because I won’t be bringing all of that negativity with me home. We will just have to wait and see if it works, but right now, things have been going well with it. Friday I didn’t work dinner shift because we had some serious storms going on here. The power went out around campus and everything and they figured they wouldn’t need me. We had this type of weather last year where we were out of work for almost a week and I don’t live close by so they wanted me to get home safely. So this weekend came to me earlier than expected, but not going to complain because I felt like I needed it. But so far, things at work have started off pretty well. Fingers crossed they continue to be that way for me in the days to come.
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I’ve finished several books since I’ve last done one of these posts. All of the reviews for the books I’ve recently been reading can be found on my blog. But the book I’m currently reading now is called Nelly Dean. It’s a book based off of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, a story considered a classic by many but a book I myself just didn’t enjoy in my English Literature class at college. But the good thing about this book is that it’s told from the perspective of a different character than the original, making it more of an enjoyable read for me. It’s also helped make the characters in the classic more relatable to me and actually like them a lot better. So even though this book is about a cast of characters I originally didn’t particularly care for, I find myself starting to warm up to them a little bit now.
Along with reading Nelly Dean, I’ve also been playing video games a little less frequently. I started playing Transistor the other week and have been playing it a little less due to situating myself at work and been interested in playing Minecraft again due to one of the YouTubers I watch who did some videos of playing a Pokémon world in the game. I haven’t started playing yet due to wanting to finish watching these videos, but I know I’ll be playing some of it again soon in the near future. Will probably be doing a post about that too once I start back on it.
Other than all of the above mentioned, I haven’t done too much. Just settling back into work, attending my best friend’s son’s birthday party yesterday, and going to work on another job application today. Hope you’ve all had a good week and can’t wait to hear what you’ve been up to!
Rainy Day's Books, Video Games and Other Writings 