I started another book. It will be a different series until I hear back from my advance readers.

Now I need to focus on getting an income. I’m not sure what I will find, but I know there’s something out there.

We’ve been watching Night Court lately. Some of these episodes wouldn’t pass today. Some of it is nostalgic.

Just a short post tonight. Happy Valentine’s Day all.

Laterness and g’nite

I finished the book last night. I’ve sent it to someone for their opinion and I’ve started outlining the next one(s). Doing this keeps my mind busy, and I’m not letting it interfere in the job hunt.

So far I’m still applying for work from home jobs. There’s nothing available here that I qualify for in town unless I go fast food, hotel, or general labor in a plant.

Anyway, back at it. 🙂

It appears that trying to write more often isn’t working as well as I planned. LOL On the other hand, I’ve got my book within 5,000 words of completion. I am hoping to have it done tonight. I’ve got a couple of people I’m going to send it to for opinions while I start on the next one. If people like it, I’m going to go ahead and upload it to sell on Amazon. I don’t expect to make a lot of money, but even a couple of sales would be a hoot.

I also have at least 2 more books outlined, though one is a short story that I may (or probably will) give away on my author website. I have to figure out how to do that part as well. It should be interesting.

I’m still looking for a job. The book writing is to distract me from getting discouraged. It’s been almost 3 months, and all I keep getting are ‘We decided to go in another direction.’

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m looking at freelancing.

Anyway, back to see if I can finish the last 5,000 words tonight.

Laterness & g’night.

Since I have so much time in my hands, I’ve been working on some of the books that have been in my head for years. They’ll probably be only about 25,000 words or about 90 to 100 pages long.

I’m about 8,000 words into the first one. So far, I’ve gotten everything mapped out in what I want to have happen, I just need to get it on the screen. I’ve been writing on Google docs, and I find I’m liking it better than all of those times I wrote on paper. I can go back and change things and move them around so much easier on the screen.

Unfortunately I was up late last night working on it, and time to get the kids up for school came way too early. After I’ve had my caffeine, I’ll look at jobs for a bit before starting back on the writing. I’ve been using a timer and getting a lot more done than I expected.

If I like the stories and how they turn out, I may self publish on Amazon. I already have ideas for 4 more. The 4th will be the easiest, since I’ll be repurposing a story I wrote for National Novella Writing Month.

Off for my caffeine for the day. It’s days like this that I wish I could stomach hot coffee – especially espresso. Since I had gallbladder problems in 2014, hot brewed coffee doesn’t sit well in my stomach. I don’t have any cold brew on hand.

I do like The Boomtown Rats, though 😉

I’m still working on redesigning my website. I offered to pay my daughter to update my logo, since she’s in graphic arts at the local Votech, but she hasn’t. I guess I’ll just have to do it myself. It’s all good.

I’ve published a couple of no-content books on Amazon – like a debt payoff tracker and a gratitude journal. I have some other ideas, but I’m not expecting much out of them, since I don’t know that they sell very well. On the other hand, since I’m doing all of the designing and putting them together myself, it’s not costing me anything except time. I can do it when I’m watching TV with the kids, especially since my son is repeating series in order. He just finished the Dragon Prince, now I think his plan is to watch Glitch Techs, though last night we watched a movie called Middle School: The Worst Years of my Life.

I wonder if he was trying to give me a hint? He has one more year of middle school. He’s not allowed to be that old already. I know he’s been complaining he’s bored in school. I’m not sure what I can do to help with that. He was in gifted in elementary school, but they don’t have such a thing in middle school, and for some reason he couldn’t get into the advanced math class this year.

I might need to talk to the teacher during the next student led conferences.

Anyway, I have a timer set to start job hunting.

Laterness

One of the writing sites I follow had an essay contest asking what my word for the year was. The essay also needed to explain why I chose that word, and all of this needed to be done in 500 words or less.

Like I’m able to keep things that short very easily 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 (my emoji version of ROFL) I did write the essay and stopped it at about 450 words, but I could have gone so much longer.

The word I chose was focus. I’ve been scattered since I lost my job. I’ve been learning programming, and looking at different sales funnels and looking at finishing my book (finally!) and thinking about buying a Cricut and a press to start selling t-shirts and cups on Etsy, and possibly at the ComiCon in town in August.

I need to buckle down and actually settle on something. I did when I started thinking about what word I wanted for this year. I’ve spent the day narrowing it down, and I have a very good idea where to start. I may end up busier than ever for a bit, but it has to be better than putting in 3 applications a day and hearing nothing back. I love the sound of crickets, but it’s frustrating when it’s crickets in response to my emails.

Once I start where I need to, I will either go on Guru or Textbroker and do some random writing to get money in while I’m getting the other process set up. I will eventually be writing emails for travel companies to send out to their customers or address lists to show why we need to get away from it all. It’s been a heck of a two years, and doesn’t look like it’s getting better any time soon. We all need a vacation.

Laterness

I was on a webinar late last week, talking about publishing on Amazon. It was interesting, but a lot of information.

I was also working on a crochet project a friend paid me to do. Then I had to go to a financial planner to get something set up for the 401k from my last job.

All of this means I didn’t get my normal things done those days – I didn’t put in job applications. I didn’t work on my Udemy course, or the work/refresher on copywriting. I have blocks of time set for everything.

I had to add time to write my stories that I used to write. I forgot how much I enjoy writing.  I’ve got the story I’m working on outlined. I’ve got the characters fleshed out. I’ve got the location determined and made notes on average temperatures. I am working on it at least 15 minutes a day. The nest step is to pad the outline more and start writing the story.

Anyway, back at it. Laterness and g’nite.

We have two dogs. One of them is little and mouthy. You can tell her something and it’ll seem like she’s talking back to you. One day I’ll have to record her and post it for the giggles.

Anyway, it often seems like she is the dumb one of our dogs. She does odd things all the time. She’ll sometimes get the chain tangled. We were playing Ticket to Ride last week, and she kept walking across the board. The other dog laid herself across the board.

Last week, the little dog proved she’s smarter than it seems.

First, my son fed the dogs, but forgot to get them water. She brought the water bowl in to the living room to show it was empty.

Then, we gave both dogs treats. The little one hid hers in the front room. The big one put hers down in the middle of the floor. After they watched us eat – we don’t feed them, but they watch anyway – the little dog got the treat that the other dog put down. My daughter went to get her treat to give to the big dog.

After she finished her treat, she went into the front room to go get her treat. She thought she was going to get two.

Earlier this week, I had a headache for two days. It would go away with ibuprofen, but then come back. When I lay down in the dark waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in, I started thinking about possible reasons that my head would be hurting. (Turns out, it was stress from job hunting, I managed to kick the headache eventually).

I started thinking about my father. He was only 5 years older than I am when he had his first stroke. My older sister had a stent put in at that same age. I remember thinking at that time, that it would be a long time before I got that old. Not so much, now lol.

My mom is in her late 70’s and hasn’t had health problems, but she’s always stayed pretty active.

It is definitely past time for me to pay more attention to my health. I need to start going for walks. I was going to the gym with my youngest. I don’t even remember why we stopped. I’ve also bought the things I need to eat healthier. Frozen and fresh fruit, salad makings, chicken, brown rice, frozen vegetables, oatmeal, green tea. All yummy, I just need to start making my meal plans ahead of time again.

Laterness

Today, I’m really missing my web developer job, and the coworkers I had back then. I am working my way through a web development boot camp on Udemy, and she started touching on wire framing websites. This is a technique that I haven’t used in years, but it helps you determine the layout of a website you’re developing, and make sure that the flow makes sense.

Since my current sites are blogs, I really don’t need to use it. But if/when I get back into web design, I will.

The teacher brought up a site called Balsamiq. With this site, you can do the wire frame for your website. I started to geek out about this site, but unless you design websites, it wouldn’t really matter.

But it just made me think about how much one of my former coworkers would have loved the site. He would have gone on and on like I almost did.

Since this person died in 2006, I’ve realized how important it is to hold your friends close.

In the last month, there have been multiple deaths that have hit close to home. My step-son’s mother died. A friend from work died. Several people at church, including one baby. The week after my step-son’s mother died, the pastor at church said that he had 9 funerals coming up. Then the friend from work died, and he’ll be doing her funeral as well.

Keeping friends close and treasure the time you get with them. It doesn’t last long enough.