December 2010
Applied for Editor Job
Submitted by jlpowers on Fri, 12/31/2010 - 3:51pmYesterday morning, I applied for a job as a freelance editor at a small press.
I'm trying really hard to not get my hopes up, but it sure would be fun.
Send good thoughts my way. :-)
Finished Cleaning My Library
Submitted by jlpowers on Thu, 12/30/2010 - 8:48pmToday I finally finished the tremendous task of weeding, sorting and cleaning my library.
I started the job earlier this fall when I got fed up because I couldn't ever find anything on my non-fiction shelves. So over the course of several weeks, I bought two new bookcases, rearranged several bookcases, and finally, re-categorized seven bookcases worth of non-fiction.
Then, the non-fiction looked so good, that the mess in the fiction section really started bugging me. So, with the kids home over Xmas break, I put them to work helping me. I weeded, sorted and cleaned ten bookcases of general fiction and six bookcases of science fiction/fantasy. Plus cleaned and straightened four bookcases of kids books and two more bookcases of misc. books.
Now, I have twenty-nine (6.5' x 2.5') bookcases that are sorted, alphabetized and clean, the floor is clean, and I have eight paper-boxes full of books to give away. And it all looks really, really glorious, except that I keep looking at the one (and only one) poor lonely little empty shelf (not case... shelf!)... and wonder what the hell I'm going to do because I'm out of room for more bookcases down there and I'm weeded down about as far as I can go.
Well, I guess there's one good thing about being broke, I can't buy books to fill up that one shelf as fast as I used to, so I'm safe for a while. :-)
And... it sure looks pretty down there. I keep going down and admiring it. :-) So, I'm feeling very accomplished right now. :-)
Am I Taking My Life For Granted?
Submitted by jlpowers on Mon, 12/06/2010 - 10:38amAt times, when I have nothing else to occupy my mind, I ask myself "Am I taking my life for granted? Am I appreciating the little thing, and big things, in my life enough?" And, most of the time, I tell myself that I'm doing a decent enough job of appreciating my life and go on to the next topic of consideration.
Then come the times when I obviously haven't been appreciating my life as much as I should, when I have been taking my life for granted, and the Universe decides that I've been oblivious long enough and it smacks me up-side the head.
For the last three days, my neck has hurt from that apparently not-so-metaphoric smack up-side the head. I didn't do anything to stress my neck or strain it, not that I remember anyway. It's definitely a muscle ache, not an alignment issue, so I'm just waiting it out... not fun.
But, there's nothing like not being able to turn your head to make you appreciate the little things in life... like sleeping through the night and turning your head to look at somebody when they are talking to you. (Read more)
First Post -- First Day of Rest Of My Life
Submitted by jlpowers on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 1:03pmI'm sitting at Panera right now, trying to get up enough ambition to face the day. This morning, that's not an easy task, so maybe that makes today a good starting point for this website and blog... in one of those first-day-of-the-rest-of-my-life kinds of ways.
Given that premise, that today is the beginning of the rest of my life, what does this starting point look like?
Well, the answer to that question is what is making this day so hard to face.
In general, I'm very healthy, which I am extremely grateful for, but I stepped on the scale this morning and today is a new high for me. Which I find very depressing, because it's not the measly 5 or 10 pounds extra that I see some women endlessly lamenting about or the monotonous complaints that they're now a size 4 instead of a size 2, which both leave me not the least bit sympathetic. No, today's scale reading makes me 80 pounds overweight, and that's not 80 pounds over me wearing a size 2, that's 80 pounds over me wearing a size 10 (what in the old days was a size 12, before they changed all the clothes labels to make the gullible feel better about themselves). And that number-- 80 pounds-- feels and sounds so large that it feels like an impossible task to lose it. (Read more)