Its been a long time…

I’ve been thinking about restarting this blog. Well, not so much restarting as just writing things in it again. With the introspection brought about by this pandemic, I’ve started to write in my personal journal again after about a year of just not finding the time. It feels like time to do so here.

Blogs have long been replaced with the quicker feedback destinations like Facebook and Instagram (or even Snapchat) but I still love reading them. I still read the blogs of the people I’ve followed over the years when a notification comes through my email inbox that they’ve published something.  A few of the folks I do follow have taken to posting their articles on Facebook rather than a personal blog space. I will read those but I miss personal blogs.

Since my last posts, so much has gone on that I’ve thought about writing about. The Star Wars sequel trilogy came to an end. The Mandalorian season 1 aired on Disney Plus. I’ve read a few books. Fell in love with Hamilton. Oh, yes, and a Pandemic came through the world and shut everything down. My children are in high school and while they were home for the last quarter of their school year from March to May, they are both back in school for a blended in person/remote approach. We are knee deep into the college searching/application experience with our oldest. My husband and I have been working from home full time since March. and we miss Disney World.

In the time since I last wrote something, my country seems to be topsy turvy. The anger is front and center, and our press seems to relish in stirring the pot. I miss the days where people shared the good.  Focus on the good. 

In the words of one of my favorite Disney podcasters, now more than ever is it important to Choose the Good.

Hopefully more posts to come.

 

 

 

Of disappointment, resolutions and drawing things

At the end of last year, I found myself very down. I’m not sure entirely why but as funny as it sounds, Disney’s depressing take on the Star Wars saga was a large part of that. I would read every article, every blog post and every comment I could of fellow SW fans who felt the portrayal of Luke (and Han and Leia for that matter) was just wrong. These comments assured me I wasn’t alone but in the end they left me even more sad.

Sad wasn’t good. I needed to do something. I needed a distraction. So on New Year’s Eve I decided to make a resolution for 2018. I resolved to draw more and Facebook less. That was it. Just draw more. Pretty nebulous.

On January first, I picked out one of my sketchbooks that had been sitting, unloved, in my bedroom and drew. It was a quick pen and ink sketch of our television. I drew while my son was playing Legend of Zelda on our new Nintendo switch. It took me maybe 15 minutes. It wasn’t anything special but it made me feel amazing.

I started this blog years ago, as a place to post drawings I would do using the Brushes app on my original iPhone. I used it as a motivator to make me draw or do something creative. For a time it worked, then I let life get busy.

After I finished my first drawing, I posted it on my Instagram account with the hashtag #drawingaday and my new resolution took form. It has been so fulfilling to draw that I decided I would find the time to draw every day. It’s February now and I’ve actually done it. I’ve done one, quick pen and ink sketch every day so far this year and it’s been wonderful. I feel more creative than I have in a while.

There’s only one rule I’ve given myself on these drawings. Just do them. They don’t have to be perfect. They don’t have to be amazing. They just have to be. Every drawing I’ve done has been a small learning experience. I feel that I’m improving with the practice. When I pick up the little sketchbook I love flipping through it to see what I’ve drawn so far. My kids have honored me by also flipping through it to see what I’ve done. I’m looking forward to what I might draw this year.

Since I’m setting aside that half hour a day to draw, I’ve less time to blog, but I might post a picture of one of my sketches from time to time.

I encourage you to do that thing you’ve been wanting to do. Give yourself permission not to be perfect. Just do.

Boys and Girls are equal

It’s been a while since I posted anything here. Allow me to indulge in some parental bragging for a moment. I ended up wanting to write more than 140 characters in twitter will allow, so I decided to dust off this old blog.

I am so proud of my son. I guess that also makes me proud of how my husband and I are raising him. Let me give you an example of why from this morning.

As we do, our children are spending their Sunday morning watching cartoons on the Cartoon Network. When my husband and I came downstairs, they were watching an episode of Teen Titans Go. This episode: Teen Titans Go: Boys vs Girls

I didn’t see much of it, only caught the tail end. What I did catch involved cooties, and the boys not liking the girls (although Robin was conflicted because of his crush on Starfire) because boys are better than girls. The girls were saying similar things about girls being better than boys. In the end, they all had to work together to defeat the cooties and put them back in whatever box they’d escaped from. Robin makes a big speech about how girls are superior to boys in every way, and then Beast Boy points out that only a boy could make such an awesome speech. Ha ha ha. The End. It’s actually one of the funnier cartoons we let them watch.

The show ends, and my son says “I didn’t really like that episode. Boys and girls are equal.”

And with that simple statement, I know I am raising him right. I know my husband and I are setting a great example. Because for all of the girl empowerment and sexism bashing (and outright mean spirited attacking of old white men scientist guys who say stupid things) going on in social media, he knows that it’s not a competition. We are equal. Boys and girls. Men and women. We are all equal. That’s where I hope we are heading, and that’s what I hope my children are bringing into the world.

The Books I read in 2014

I used to love to read. < scratch that! I still love to read>

My love of reading started in high school and never really stopped. I’d always be reading a book, and when I’d finish one, I would immediately start the next in my queue. There was a used bookstore near my home, and I’d visit it monthly, to see what books I could add to my own library. First I started with mysteries like Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, and then, inspired by Tolkien, moved onto fantasy and (given my eventual profession) science fiction.

After my children were born, my time available to read dwindled to almost nothing. I was able to finish the last couple of Harry Potter books as they came out, but aside from one or two books here or there, reading just ended up being the last thing on my list of things to accomplish, and as such, was no priority at all.

This year, inspired by Goodreads and the “challenges” the site was promoting, I decided to challenge myself to read 12 books in 12 months. Checking most of the books out of the library using the Overdrive app on my iPad mini, I not only met but exceeded that challenge and managed to read 16 books in 2014.

And here they are, starting chronologically from last January to December, the 16 books I read in 2014. Let’s hope that in 2015 I can manage to read at least that many. I will follow up in a future blog post with a few sentence summary of each one and my recommendation of whether or not I’d read them again (or suggest anyone else read them).

1. Frozen Heat (book #4 in the Nikki Heat series), by Richard Castle
2. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel
3. Enders Game (the Ender Quintet #1), by Orson Scott Card
4. A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki
5. Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke
6. Wonder, by R. J. Palacio
7. Bud, Not Buddy, by Christopher Paul Curtis
8. Murdering my Youth: A memoir, by Cady McClain
9. Disney in Shadow (Kingdom Keepers #3), by Ridley Pearson
10. The Fault in our Stars, by John Green
11. The Splendour Falls, by Susanna Kearsley
12. A Pedigree to Die For (Melanie Travis, #1), by Laurien Berenson
13. The Silkworm (Coromon Strike #2), by Robert Galbraith
14. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
15. Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg
16. Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry

Hello 2015 – restarting things here

Wow, so I didn’t write a single blog post all of last year? It’s not that the year was any busier than any other year. It was normal busy. It was just that I didn’t make this blog a priority. I made my family, my work, and just enjoying life a priority.

I don’t entirely feel guilty. In this age of social media, I figure not many people read this blog anyway. If you do read anything i say, it’s most likely on twitter or Facebook.

I am not that big on sharing. That’s probably the largest reason that this site sits to lonely and unloved. I journal, which is mostly for myself and to work through whatever thoughts I need to work through. That probably satisfies any need to share.

Either way, I felt that since I had this space, I’d use it again. But as before, I’m using it mostly for me. I will try to motivate myself to drag again and track those drawings here. I’m also back to reading. My children are old enough that I actually find myself with occasional free time. Filling those free moments with a good book has been wonderful. I’ll track what books I’m reading here.

I hope that 2015 has started out wonderfully for all of you. Looking forward to occasionally posting things. Let’s see how much I actually do when I write another one of these posts this time next year.

Starting the new year with a post

I have neglected this blog. A lot. I don’t post here much because I don’t quite know what to post.

I like to write about my adventures setting up my Apple products because I hope that my adventures might help someone else to figure out how to use their new Apple products.

I enjoyed it when I was using the blog to help motivate myself to do a drawing here and there.  Posting the drawings I was doing on my iPhone using the Brushes app was less about publishing them than it was about keeping a promise to myself to draw.

I used to write articles on my experience as a parent for a now closed site. While that was the most challenging writing experience because I had to make sure I kept enough details private when talking about my kids, it was rewarding to put my feelings into work.

As with all of these topics, I would write something and then eventually not have time to write something. WordPress would show me that folks would come to read some of the things that I wrote. That was very gratifying. Knowing that someone somewhere had read something I’d written always made me smile.

All of the above sounds like I am saying goodbye to this blog. Shutting her down. That’s actually the opposite of what I want to do. I hope to write more here this year.

I don’t have a lot of free time to write here, so I am not going to make a promise to write once a day (much as I’d like to). That is what twitter will be for. But I do promise to post at least a few times a month. I might post about my kids, or about a drawing I am working on, or even a television show I am particularly enjoying.

Mostly, I will continue to post mainly for myself. If other people read them, that will make me smile.  If they don’t, motivating myself to post again will be its own reward.

Welcome to 2013!

RSM