So Long and Thanks For All the Fish

Hey everyone, it’s been a real long time since I posted on here. And there was a reason for it; that reason was I was getting tired of this blog. I found myself without any inspiration to update it with any kind of post, even though I did take time out to plan out some potential topics, yet I didn’t get the muster up to actually finish them. For a while I cited this lack of motivation as depression, then later to being busy with work. You can tell starting from late 2014 that once I got a full-time job, keeping up with Musings became more challenging, so this wasn’t far from the truth. So I decided, since I didn’t know what was causing it, to take a step back and give it a few months to figure it out. It dawned on me about three months into 2017…

I was done.

Sure I could keep it up for myself, but updating it is not the plan anymore. There was a time where this blog was a safe harbor, especially when I was in college and working in retail. Now that those days are long gone and I have a lot of things going on: full-time job, living on my own, paying rent and other things (including a car payment!); it is time to clean house and find out what I want to spend my time doing. One of those things did not include keeping up with this blog.

So what is the future of Musings? Well, after this entry, there will be no more. The blog will not be deleted, I rather keep it up for archival purposes and for myself. If I do start another blog, it will likely be at Wordpress, but the when I cannot say and that day may never even come.

I am fonder of keeping paper journals, especially since I’ve fallen into the hobby of fountain pens as of late. Taking the journal class with Rowdy Kittens sealed the deal for me on how I felt about this blog. It just took me much longer to admit it.

To those who stopped by, been here from the beginning, or whenever… thank you so much. I don’t know how many of you are there, but you all count. Thanks to my friends who left comments, for continuing discussions, and just being awesome overall. Thanks to my family who barely flinched when I announced I wanted to be a writer when I was sixteen.

If you want to continue to follow my adventures, check me out on Instagram (link at the right side): @thenewadventuress.

It’s been a fun, heartbreaking, crazy, weird, funny ten years.

Fare thee well!

Alright, I'm Back!

After almost a month of silence, Musings of A Frustrated Lady Writer rises from its deep slumber and is ready to continue!

Part of the reason for the break was because of a very hectic three weeks at my job. First off we were down a lot of people due to a training class for dental claims, then a lot of callouts and sick days turned my once-robust night team into a skeleton crew. Calls seemed to pour in without end. Along with that, I began helping out with a long-term project that involves returned checks and there was a significant learning curve with that. But things have settled down and my focus can now change back to other matters, like this blog!

Right now, there are workers repairing the roofs of all the apartment buildings in my complex. After months of living with leaks and a semi-permanent solution of tarps over said roofs, the repairs are in full swing. Even with this finally coming to pass, I am still going to move out of the complex when my lease is up. So that is one huge thing that is happening later on this year. As it gets closer, I'll go into more detail. Right now my focus is on getting rid of as much stuff as possible.

Writing and reading also sat in the back-seat for a long while too. Since I have today and tomorrow off from work, I am going to use this time to catch up on reading and working on finishing a project.

Last weekend, I was able to attend another Writers' League of Texas class in Austin, where I learned the fine art of writing short stories. It was tremendous fun, especially since the class was held in a community college that was once an old mall.

Also, for those that know I live in San Antonio, you may have heard about my hometown getting its ass kicked by tornadoes on Sunday night. I can assure you that my folks and I are safe and sound, also the same can be said for the citizens as well. Despite the catastrophic damage, there are no reports of serious injuries or deaths. We are fortunate in that matter. Plus it helped a lot it was late at night on a Sunday and pretty much everyone was at home sleeping. I'll talk about my experience on that night in a separate entry.

Hope you are all doing well! It's good to be back. Until next time, stay cozy and stay beautiful!

P.S.: I wanna give a shout-out to my most-excellent friend and old B&N colleague Kristin who runs a minimalism/lifestyle blog The Mulberry Patch. She is a phenomenal writer and photographer, go check out her work here! You can follow her on Instagram as well.

A Pause... For Now

Ever since I wrote my last post back in December, about how to react to the Trump presidency (which seems to be getting to a new level of nightmarish as days pass...), I've been conspicuously absent from this blog since.

Honestly, I cannot even begin to put into words why I haven't posted since then. But I will say that a lot of things happened in that span of time that changed the trajectory of this year. A series of events that I am not ready to indulge just yet, but I assure they will be elaborate in their telling.

Until that time comes, the blog is coming to yet another pause.

This is not permanent, this is not goodbye.

Fight the Power: Plans to Piss Off a Kleptocracy

hey look everybody, it's my boyfriend! 

Okay, I promised a post that addresses what I'm gonna be doing from this point on regarding the waking nightmare that is the current state of US politics.

A horrible, inexperienced man is president-elect, a MASSIVE downgrade to the wonderfulness that is Obama, massive leaps backwards into the harsh and ugly parts of history. Trump is bringing in people that plan to dismantle civil rights for many marginalized peoples, destroy school systems, spreads white nationalist propaganda, have no regard for the environment, and overall simply doesn't give a f*** about anyone but themselves.

More than ever, we need to be kind to each other. Compassion should be the law of the land as everything goes to chaotic evil.

My plans are to talk more about my feelings and share what I find here and elsewhere. I feel it's my duty as an American citizen with social media and a blog to be a sounding board and a messenger. If you wish to avoid this posts, that is up to you. If you choose to no longer follow me because of this, or for my views, I understand that as well. I only ask you to go out and be kind.

I will continue to post about writing, my life, and whatever else. You'll just be seeing more politics is all.

I also plan on donating more often and even volunteering. I detail a little more below.

~~~

Donations or Volunteering:

I have donated all my birthday money (and soon, some of my Christmas monies) to six non-profits and charities (a seventh to follow...) that will need all the help they can get as they gear up to fight against a president and a cabinet full of horrid, hateful monsters.

If you work with a company that matches donations, take advantage of that as well! I know I will.

Here is a pretty damn good list.

If you want to know who I donated to, here ya goes:

Planned Parenthood of South Texas (I am researching on becoming a clinic escort)
ACLU of Texas (also now a proud member!)
NAACP
Stand with Standing Rock
Southern Poverty Law Center
Bitch Media (along with a renewed subscription to their most excellent magazine)

Posts and a Book to Read:

If you want to improve on your compassion, I highly recommend Karen Armstrong's beautiful book Twelve Steps to A Compassionate Life. I read it a long time ago and found it to be a balm. It has changed how I feel about the world and my interactions with any and all people.

Van Jones gives a realistic view on what happened and what we need to do moving forward.

Tananarive Due talks about why she wasn't active on social media and took to journaling to cope with the horror.

Chuck Wendig drives all the post-election feelings home here very well. In fact, you should read his entry before mine. It is definitely better.

It's interesting to note that this post will be almost a year old, but boy howdy, we are gonna need it more than ever now.

George Takei speaks from painful experience about why a Muslim registry is starting to sound too familiar...

This lovely post about what to do to take care of yourself after all this...

Rowdy Kittens shares some thoughts and some lovely pictures with inspiring quotes.

Susannah Conway tied together the sadness of the political atmosphere along with a sweet dedication to the late Leonard Cohen.

Videos:

John Oliver provides some laughs and outlines some more non-profits to support.


Commander Holly continues to be the human incarnation of sunshine by suggesting non-profits and other ways to be kind this holiday season.


LittleKuriboh eschews politics to get to one heart of the matter: self-care in times like these.

~~~

This is merely a primer of suggestions. There are many posts like this I'm sure, so I'm not saying anything newish. But I like to think it's just an addition to the voices. May my voice not be louder than those who said it better and have more to lose than myself.

I will be blunt and say that a Trump "presidency" is not gonna affect me greatly as a straight, cisgender white person. It will affect me as a woman, but not as much as say... a woman of color. And you know what? That disgusts me more than anything that I will be more okay than a great chunk of friends, colleagues, coworkers, neighbors, and complete strangers. I was raised to be considerate to everyone and not think I was better than anyone regardless of any identifying traits. 

That is why I am going to use my privilege for something good: do anything in my power to stop this madness from getting any worse than it already is. 

Who's with me?!

NaNoWriMo 2016: Dammit

 Well... uhm... okay look, this time it did not go as planned. I actually had a good start the first week or so. Kinda like last year, where I was thrown off by illness and the starting of my new job, but I was able to make a comeback that I was quite proud of.

Not this time, sadly.

basically me by month's end

First off, I will be blunt and say that Trump becoming the president-elect bummed me out something serious. I mean, what the hell do you do when you did as much as you could to make sure the asshole didn't get elected and he "won"? It turns out I wasn't the only one, there were a lot of writers I followed on Twitter that were depressed. Even Stephen King had to take a break from Twitter.

Then slowly but surely, more people I followed revealed they were upset about what happened. They were concerned for family and friends, angry at those who voted and/or were reacting by being horrible human beings (well, more so than usual), and wanting to do something good (I promise I'll address this more in an upcoming entry on what I'm thinking about doing...).

Tweets after the election were outpourings of love and awareness, even a few speaking to those who created art to get ready and be more empowered to create more than ever. In dark times such as these, art will flourish, speak for the voiceless, and bring us a measure of joy when we think there is none left. It was those tweets that got me to think of coming back to the projects and also to do NaNoWriMo every year until otherwise indicated (I was thinking of calling this time as my last).

While I did not return to the projects, I learned a valuable lesson: do not do multiple projects during NaNoWriMo. Just focus on one! I ran into a similar issue in 2014, but it didn't sink in until this time.

actual footage* of me trying to write later in the month...
*not actual footage

After somewhat recovering from post-election malaise, I got smacked with an awful, ass-kicking head and chest cold. It was a perfect storm of WTF that took up most of my last days as a twenty-something. The cold delayed my initial appointment to get my tattoo, which was on the 18th (it changed to the 22nd). On top of all that, I also got so wicked drunk that I was violently ill for most of the night (also learned watching Interstellar drunk is not a good idea, despite that it was a fantastic movie). Needless to say that November was not a month in my favor.

But now empowered to keep creating, I vow to keep doing NaNoWriMo every year and to get back to my project (in this case, Dolls) next month so it can be done by New Year's Eve. Despite the setbacks (aw, that's cute, "setbacks" is being nice...), I did get over 15K on Dolls and it's getting close to being finished. So not all was lost nor underachieved.

Bottom line is that whenever craziness throws lemons at you, make lemonade and not invite craziness to your awesome lemonade brunch 'cause it can go f*** itself.

OMG I'M 30 AAAAAHH

me in five years, just you wait...

So on Saturday, I turned that fated age of 30, marking three decades of living behind me... one decade closer to being a "middle-aged adult". As I sit here in my abode, listening to Norah Jones's new album, watching Commander Holly's videos, and babying my tattoo... I can say with absolute certainty I am happy to be finally here.

My twenties were... really rough (and that's being nice). The last year of it or so were better, but I dealt with eight+ years of bull-crap, too much for me to want to stay in that decade for much longer than needed. So it was a huge sigh of relief to get to this point. I am beyond fortunate to have survived the toughest decade of my life to get here. From here on out, I declare my thirties to be the most awesome ever.

I celebrate even in these dark times of uncertainty, fear, and downright surrealism we as Americans face now and will continue to until... the cows comes home? Man, I don't know. (More on my thoughts about this going forward in a future entry...)

For those who had a birthday Saturday, happy birthday fellow Sagittarians! For the ones already here, we're in for the long haul, let's get to it. For the newcomers, welcome to Spaceship Earth! We need you more than ever.

*just remembered that Steve Buscemi is also a Sagittarian... O_O*

Surprise Big Thing!

Hey people, it's been a while, so glad to be back here on the blog! As I mentioned in a past entry, I had some big things happening this month. Well, here is the surprise one:

I got a tattoo!