Category Archives: Out & About

Places I go, people I see, things I do, stuff I notice.

Home Again

05 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by in Out & About

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

One of the houses on Wisteria Lane
If you’ve ever been away from home, whether it was just a few days or a really long, long time, you probably know the feeling that you get when you finally find yourself coming home again.

There’s a heightened sense of awareness as you turn into your neighborhood, and your heart starts to beat a little faster with the anticipation of the familiar and the missed. You probably don’t even notice the smile quietly teasing away the tensions of your absence.

Home. Your little space in a great big world. You want to get there as quickly as you can, but you resist the urge to rush, you want to savor the tingling sensation of joys remembered. And then, you turn a corner and see it – right there where you left it – patiently waiting for your return. Waiting to welcome you back, no matter how many times you’re away, no matter how long.

I have been away from this place – my little space – for quite some time, and it feels so good to finally come home.

I’m home. Again.

P.S. I don’t actually live on Wisteria Lane….

Winnebago Dreams

10 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Out & About

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

covered wagon travel
For many years I dreamed of the day when I could hit the road and see a little more of the world, taking right up where I left off BC (before children). I was sure that as soon as they were “grown and gone” I would sell off everything I didn’t need and buy a Winnebago so that I could travel around the country seeing what I could see. That was going to be my answer to the eventual empty nest syndrome. It was going to be…

Well, the children are grown and gone. I down-sized quite a bit, but I still have a garage full of “stuff” I couldn’t bear to part with – yet. And there’s no Winnebago, or covered wagon, in my driveway.

My little HHR has been the stand in, and it has done a great job taming the miles that I have put in so far. But, in the midst of all my travels, I have made an unexpected discovery – I love to “go”, but I’m not all that crazy about the driving these days. It all starts out well enough, I do enjoy seeing the beauty of my surroundings and all of the interesting scenes flying past my window, but after a few hours of being under the wheel I’m suddenly over it and I just want to ‘be there’ – wherever ‘there’ is.

I can remember a time when I would just jump into my car and take off, without a moment’s hesitation. I lived for the pure joy of having someplace to go and the adventure of getting myself there. The prospect of driving for sixteen hours straight didn’t faze me. And then one day, things changed. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but it happened.

Perhaps it was around the time that my ophthalmologist suggested bifocals, or maybe it was the year that I surrendered to the rebel gray and stopped coloring my hair. Now that I think about it, it very well could have been right around the first time some smarty-pants teeny bopper cashier slipped a Senior Citizen discount onto my receipt without asking if I qualified.

These days, I don’t just jump in my car and take off, I carefully calculate time and distance and mood before I embark on one of my adventures. And surprisingly, I have found that I’m not above changing my mind at the last minute and staying home. I’d like to blame my e.m.PD, but I have a sneaking suspicion that getting older is the more viable culprit that makes me less inclined to venture too far from the comforts of home.

Needless to say, I’ve decided to put the Winnebago dream on hold for the present time. At least, until I meet a travel buddy who loves to drive, or they invent autopilot for motor homes.

It could happen.

The Whisperer

19 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Out & About

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

Climb a tree and holler!
I’m a whisperer. Not in the sense of a horse whisperer or ghost whisperer or anything like that, not even in the sense of frequenting wishing wells. I’m just a quiet, soft-spoken, reclusive sort who hates to raise her voice and is averse to pressuring people into doing something they don’t necessarily want to do.

Shameless self-promotion is not one of my strengths. That’s one of the first lessons I learned when I made the decision to see where my entrepreneurial passions would take me. I discovered that I don’t mind talking about myself when it involves a pertinent experience to illustrate a point in a conversation, but when it comes to ‘selling’ myself, that’s a horse of a different color.

I think this is where I acknowledge the pickle this particular situation has created for me.

I’m still working on my product line, so I don’t really have a “thing to sell” at the moment. I do expect that to change in the not too distant future – what I don’t expect will change is my personality.

In business, and life in general, it is too easy to just give up or wander off in a different direction when faced with obstacles. While I have been known to wander on an occasion or two, I’m not one to just throw in the towel, even when the odds are less than favorable. In fact, I am of the opinion that when life hands you lemons, you make cheesecake (the whole lemonade thing is way overdone and the market is saturated with it). So, when my” whisperer trait” was referenced not once, but twice in my SWOT analysis (weakness and threat) I didn’t roll over and give up – instead, I have identified some creative ways to make this trait work for me more than it works against me. I’m looking forward to trying them out. I’ll keep you posted.

aSocial Media

01 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Out & About

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Birds on a Wire
Let me start by saying, I am one of the most asocial people I know. I don’t apologize for that, it is what it is. I just acknowledge my limitations, and utilize huge quantities of chocolate and Personality Spray™ to get by in this super-social world.

I also have a tendency to be curious, and I love the process of trying to figure out how things work. So, in spite of my little quirks, there are occasions when I feel compelled to venture outside my comfort zone to see what I can see, because, even with my contrary nature, curious minds want to know. That’s how my adventures, or perhaps I should say misadventures, in social media started.

*****

 Social communities have been around since the beginning of time, not that I was there mind you. They exist to satisfy that fundamental human need where we feel compelled to participate in the requisite social interaction on occasion – some on more occasions than others. Over the years, our “socialness” has evolved along a parallel that can be closely linked to the evolution of technology. The details of this evolution would make a great series of posts – for another time, and most likely, another writer.

When I finally arrived at the party, social media was already in full swing. Anybody who was somebody, or wanted to pretend, was on social media. According to all of the business gurus I consulted when I embarked on my entrepreneurial quest, I needed to hurry up and get with the program or get left behind in the social dust.

I hate to admit this, but I was more than a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of social media communities, and all of the clamoring voices in them. There was LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Instagram, Twitter, Goodreads, Pinterest, Google+, and dozens more. So, I took my time and considered my options.

I posted my first Tweet in December, 2012. That was well over a year ago. I don’t remember what, exactly, prompted me to select this chirpy little bird group over the others. Perhaps it was because tweeting seemed to offer the path of least resistance. Perhaps it was because this group appeared to be less intrusive. Perhaps I landed on someone’s Twitter page and something caught my eye, prompting me to drop back in on occasion just to see what random people were saying, and they were saying plenty. It took almost a year to make the decision to build my own little nest in Twitterville. Moving into a new neighborhood is a big deal.

Like so many of the things I do, and because that’s how my creative mind works, I decided to do it my way on Twitter. I was curious to see what would happen if I just posted a few tweets now and then about nothing in particular. I nearly fell over laughing when I saw that insurance commercial featuring Beatrice and her friends discussing the pictures she had posted on her wall. That is so me – doing it my way.

I’m sure my handful of Twitter followers would love to tell me, “That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works.” I hear you, and don’t worry, I’m not going to ‘unfriend you’ for telling the truth. Just don’t expect to see any significant change looming on the horizon.

For me, Twitter offers a way to be social on my terms, and on my schedule. If I’m in the mood, I am, if not, I’m not. Is that bad? Because I really don’t think I’m alone in this. I recall reading a tweet a while back referencing a report that 44% of Twitter accounts have never sent a tweet. It’s hard to believe there are that many people out there who are less social than I am…

A bubbly social-type once told me, “You need to get out more and make friends.” My response to that was, “I don’t make my friends, I accept them, and they accept me.” This practice has served me well in the past, I’m going to stick with it.

Meanwhile, thanks for accepting me dear Twitter friends
— what? I never said I wasn’t human, just a little asocial…

The Kindle Project

13 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by in Out & About

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Kindle Fire HD
My daughter gave me a Kindle Fire for Christmas. She said she wanted me to have a bigger screen to watch during my workouts at the gym. That was so sweet and thoughtful. She has always been that way.

But, truth be told, the little portable TV that I happened to be using at the time was fine. All I had to do was pull out the antenna for free “air TV” and tune in to watch whatever happened to be playing on the Create Channel for an hour or so.

Getting a Kindle was on my to-do list, but that was scheduled for some vague point down the line, probably when I was closer to actually publishing my own books and would need a way to preview them. But, I’m not there yet, so the sleek new Kindle languished, much like a genie in a bottle waiting for that special rub. And I continued to use my little portable TV at the gym.

I felt really bad when I saw the Kindle just sitting there day after day after day. So, I fired it up and downloaded a couple of games. What a waste.

Then, I received an offer for a free Kindle book. I like free. So I downloaded it. And then another, and another, and another. Pretty soon I realized that I had started to build a nice little library on my Kindle. And that’s when this idea hit me – for the rest of the year I would only download free books to read on my Kindle. If you’re a writer, don’t get your panties in a wad, I buy books too, I just use a different account for those purchases. Now that we have that cleared up, back to the Project.

To date, I have one-hundred sixty-nine free ebooks on my Kindle. It is an eclectic mix of whales, pirates, birds, zombies, murder, magic, humor, inspiration, crafts, medical, how-to, and how not-to. But I know these books aren’t really free, someone somewhere is eating the cost of putting this information out there. And because I don’t want to be a “taker” I decided I would offer each of the generous authors something in return. Easier said than done.

The most obvious route for giving back would be to write a review on Amazon. That was my first obstacle. Although I tried to be somewhat selective with my download choices, and only add books that appeared to be of interest to me, I quickly realized that sometimes, you get exactly what you pay for. And, because I’m not one to go out of my way to say something less than kind about someone else, I faced a dilemma. Some of the books are so poorly written that I couldn’t complete them. And some I found to be merely a farce to try to get you roped into buying an add-on “secret” that was “much too big” to actually include in the “free” book. It felt like the kind of crap you see on late-night infomercials, or one of those work from home scams that train you to do unto others what some scumbag just did to you. I actually considered warning other readers about this one, and I might still.

And then there was the rejection letter I received from Amazon when I actually submitted a review of one of the free books from my library. I enjoyed the book, but, in my opinion, it wasn’t a perfect read so I gave it 4 out of 5 stars and wrote a nice little note to that effect. I received a very polite notice thanking me for submitting a review, but it did not meet their review standards and perhaps I should consider revising it and resubmitting. Excuse me? I completed all of the technical stuff for minimum word count, subject, star rating, everything. And you’re going to tell me that MY opinion of this book doesn’t meet YOUR review standards? Which led me to another question – who is the review written for anyway – is it for the potential reader? Or for the writer? I’ll have to address this topic in another post. Let’s get back to the Project.

I don’t like to be told how I should think. So no, I didn’t revise my review for resubmission.

I decided to try another route instead. I would contact the authors directly with my feedback. They could then choose whether they wanted to publish it, consider it, or toss it. And, where warranted, I would include any typos I had found distracting during my read. Again, easier said than done.

Some authors include contact info at the end of their books and ask you to send them your feedback and corrections, others don’t. If they have asked, I will try to comply. But honestly, some of the problems are sooo big! I am hoping that if they paid a proofreader or editor, they can get their money back.

As I am nearing the midway point of this little project, I have made a few decisions as to how I will proceed. If an author has invited readers to contact them directly, I will. If the author gives no indication he/she wants to hear it, I won’t. If I have nothing good to say, I will remain quiet (except for the one case noted previously). For a few select titles, I may even include them on this site in my “About a Book” category. It has to REALLY appeal to my sensibilities to land there.

In closing, I’d like to say to all of you wonderful authors out there who offer real, well-written stories and information at no cost to the reader, thank you. I am making note of those I have enjoyed, and will make an effort to watch for future offerings that I may purchase.

Stay tuned for more on the Kindle Project.