Category: Thoughts and Reflections

Waiting for My New Toy

One of the recommended budgeting strategies for couples is what is known as “mad money”, or money allocated to each spouse that they don’t have to account for. They can spend it on anything they want* without recriminations from the other spouse. I have always said there are two different types of discretionary purchases — “mine” and “stupid”.

What I do with my mads is save it. Usually for some big technological marvel down the road. I spent my last accumulated money on an iPad Air 5th Gen, (circa 2022) gently used/refurbished. It does a good job of most of what I need, which is composing novels on Scrivener and surfing the net. It does sometimes seem a bit slow when I’m posting pictures for social media on Loomly, but I’m not sure if that’s my iPad or the wi-fi at Starbucks.

I have had that iPad for 15 months. I know this because I started saving my mads as soon as I bought it, with my goal again being “something technological”. I’m at the age where my knick-knacks are barely contained by curio cabinets, and I am fashion-backward. Therefore my reward to myself will always be technology, something useful and cool.

When I heard of the new iPads coming out, especially that it was going to be an exciting product revamp, I listened for the rollout, and — wow. The new iPad Airs with the M2 chip, the better display, the landscape front camera …

And then, I looked at the iPad Pro with its M4 chip, clearly overkill when it comes to my needs. All the features of the iPad Air, with a few more, and a faster, more powerful chip. Way overkill.

Way within my budget, given that I would be selling my old iPad to my husband and getting a bit of technology budget money. In fact, I thought I’d be paying Pro prices for my new Air. Rationally, the Air was the better choice.

Or was it?

  • I had been replacing my technology at a rate of once every two years because I found myself up against a slight slowdown and my expectation of needing power for graphics (Photoshop, Canva, Loomly) applications. If I could draw, I would be doing the artwork for my book covers, and I delve in Sketchup to draw maps of my settings.
  • I was losing money due to depreciation of the machines (the $600 iPad I bought being valued a year or so later at $180)
  • Because of the prior point, I wanted to keep the iPad for longer, maybe four years, before upgrading and get all the value out of it. The iPad Pro with its M4 chip, from what I could tell from iPad upgrade cycles, would be as good or better than the subsequent iPad Air for at least three years. If the Pro had contained the M3 chip, I probably would have stuck with the Air.
  • Only $150 of the difference between the Air and the Pro of similar specs was paid by my savings.
  • I had saved my money for the new big thing, and the Pro is definitely a new, big thing.
  • I value performance. If I can afford performance and delayed obsolescence, I’m going to go there.

I bought the Pro. It might be that this is my mid-life crisis sportscar, I don’t know. This post might just be wild justification, and in the long run I may regret spending so much on what is, basically, a tool for my writing and an adjunct for my leisure.

It’s supposedly coming in on Wednesday. I’m looking forward to it!

*Except maybe drugs and prostitution, but those aren’t a budget issue per se.

Twelve Years of Writing

I’ve been writing for twelve years. I started, strangely, three months after being diagnosed with bipolar 2, which I hadn’t realized till today. I know I didn’t start writing as a coping mechanism or as character insertion (my first characters were not me) and I didn’t write about being bipolar. I think I started writing because being treated for bipolar helped me focus on continuous tasks instead of pouring all my energy on the whim of the moment.

I was not a good writer at first — I wrote each chapter as if they were separate episodes, like short stories strung together. I didn’t feel like I wrote an overarching plot. The novels (I use the term loosely) I wrote then I have had to revise several times such that only the characters are the same. I learned a lot from revising them.

Things I have learned over the past few years:

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
  • My first draft is not my novel. Over the years, the novels have needed less and less rewriting, but there are always things to fix in second and third (and fourth, and …) drafts.
  • Developmental editors are an important part of your writing toolbox. It is worth paying for them.
  • There are three ways to write a novel: Plotting, pantsing, and plantsing.
    • Plotting: an organized outline at the beginning, and following the outline.
    • Pantsing: writing it as one goes along, without the outline.
    • Plantsing: writing with a rough outline but pantsing through the chapters.
    • I am a plantser.
  • Scrivener is a great program for composing my work, especially plantsing.
    • Scrivener arranges itself around a chapter format and a synopsis form that I use to guide my chapters. I use it like pantsing with training wheels.
    • One can get templates for Scrivener novel-writing that incorporate plotting frameworks, such as Save the Cat and Romancing the Plot.
  • ProWritingAid was another investment I don’t regret — my grammar has improved in ways I hadn’t considered before. I have lessened my passive verb structure massively.
  • Writing is the easy and fun part. I still don’t think I have the hang of promotion (and this blog is part of my proof of that.)
  • My favorite novel is always the one I just finished.

The most important thing I learned? That I can write. The second? That there’s a whole lot of luck in being discovered, and luck hasn’t come to me quite yet.

I feel like I could have learned more in 12 years, and maybe I have, but these are the biggest things I can think of. I hope they’re helpful to someone!

Making my Summer Productive

Usually, summer for me is a free-fall. For externally required work, I have the internships (now up to 13 students) and even then, the class has a huge amount of flexibility. I can grade the assignments (which arrive in dribs and drabs, as everyone has a different time schedule) and set up site visits with some leeway. There’s one conference I’m presenting at a poster session for, at the end of the month. Absolutely required.

Photo by Erio Noen on Pexels.com

Then there are the things I should get done before the fall semester, which are tempting to put off till the end of the summer. I have two new classes I’m teaching (one I used to teach 10 years ago, another I got from another instructor) this fall that I should prep for. It would tempt me to take a vacation for this first part of summer and vegetate. I have done it in the past, usually because I get depressed at the end of the school year.

This year I’m trying something different — I’m structuring my days. In the morning, I do prep for my new classes, refreshing myself with the material. When I’m done with that, I will be prepping the class Canvas (online instruction) sites. In the afternoons, I’m writing. If I get done with the daily task early I do what I’m doing now — blogging, getting attacked by my cats, and surfing a little.

Somewhere in here I have to fit some real vacation time. I don’t know when I’m doing that. I don’t do ‘nothing’ well, and would probably arrange my vacation as writing time anyhow. Mixed with restaurants and coffee. The best part is that my inability to do nothing isn’t my manic state. When I’m manic, I don’t do ‘anything’ well.

I’m looking at the plan, and I need to make sure I have some rest time. I can do that after reading my chapter or my module for the day. Pace myself; there’s plenty of time to do this.

Looking at Disasters

Maryville, MO is not part of Tornado Alley, but you would never guess that with the weather we’ve been having for the past couple weeks.

Last week, we were in the basement waiting out tornado warnings two days in a row. Tonight, we’ll be in an enhanced risk area with the possibility of being in the basement one more time. Makes me wish we had a fully finished basement, preferably with a wet bar. Not that I drink, but it sounds cool.

I’ve been prepping for a class called Disaster Psychology, which I will teach this fall. The first module is all about defining disasters as opposed to smaller-scale emergencies. Disasters involve large to mass-scale injuries and often deaths. They overwhelm a locality’s emergency services, and often require state and federal response. The media responds with on-the-scene missives, often lamenting about the lack of response when the emergency response is actually robust. On the individual level, people’s lives are upended and touched with tragedy.

Photo by Ralph W. lambrecht on Pexels.com

Knowing this makes it a little harder to feel reassured going into that basement. Knowing the strength of emergency response makes it easier. As a CERT-trained individual, I may be part of that response. Most likely, I would be a Red Cross volunteer in sheltering (I have a certification) or a disaster case manager (I have a certification there as well, at least in another county that offered them).

Most of our tornado damage here, however, has been slight, and I hope for our sakes it stays that way.

Christmas in … May?

It’s already time for me to start planning my next Kringle novel. Why? It’s only May!

This is my 2023 Kringle novel cover.

The Kringle novel I write for this year will be for Winter 2025, so it’s even more ahead of time. A year and a half for a novel?

The ideas start in May so I have a while to play around with them in my head while I work on other things. Plots often come up on car rides with my husband, and there are more of those in the summer season (which, in my academic calendar, starts about May 1).

There are so many tropes to play with in romance — two of my Kringle books so far have mystery elements, two are enemies to lovers, a couple are friends to lovers, one involves second love, but no boy next door, snowed in at an inn, billionaire, bad boy or mafia yet. (I don’t foresee doing the latter three, to be honest. I like cinnamon roll guys myself.)

Friday, on one of those car rides, we decided that the next novel would be another second love with a touch of snowed in at an inn, where a divorced woman goes for a lone Christmas retreat at a great lodge, only to meet a local bar owner who hasn’t met the right woman in town.

The actual writing doesn’t happen till the Christmas season, November 1st-to be exact. That’s the season for NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. I won’t get it done then, but I will be well on my way. The benefit of this schedule is that I’m in the mood for Christmas, surrounded by the trappings of Christmas and immersed in Christmas carols, while I’m writing.

January through May is when I’m reworking the story, editing and refining. That needs to be done by October 1, which is publishing time. The cover gets finalized by the end of summer, and August is when I’m doing the mechanics of getting the novel uploaded onto the Kindle Direct Publishing site.

Other things are happening at the same time, of course. Teaching college from August – May, writing on other books and publishing them. I tend to keep busy, and I think it’s a blessing that I cannot be idle for too long. And that I love to write, and that there’s a Starbucks nearby.

My next Kringle-related activity is to go one more round through the 2024 novel, Kringle Through the Snow, which I actually wrote in January of this year because I thought I would never write another Kringle novel. But I can’t quit, because it’s now one of my Christmas rituals.

So Merry Christmas in May, and watch for Kringle Through the Snow on October 1!

What gives me direction in life?

Daily writing prompt
What gives you direction in life?
View all responses

Motivation needs direction, or else people waste their energy. There are several things that give me direction in life, honestly. Some are lofty; some mundane. I need to talk about both.

One thing that gives me direction is love. Love of people becomes an evident focus in my relationships, and it’s the answer people expect when I say “love”. But what loving what I do? That’s at least as strong a guide for direction in my life. I think about two activities I term as “flow” activities in my life, moulage (casualty simulation, otherwise known as making victims for emergency training) and writing. The love of the activity and the stimulation they give me gives me direction.

Photo by Mark Arron Smith on Pexels.com

Another thing is striving to be better. This points me toward improvement activities, such as reading about my writing craft and practice, practice, practice. Related to this is the desire for recognition. Although I don’t like to talk about my need for external validation, it’s there. It’s definitely there.

Sometimes, it’s duty that gives me direction. That I get up in the morning on days when I’m depressed, and go to work even when I am hypomanic, is the power of duty. Duty to myself and to my husband and cats. The need to provide food, clothing, and shelter; safety and security, and emotional support. I also do these things because I love all of them, but the daily things fall under the category of duty.

This list is pretty prosaic, more of an essay answer for my positive psychology class than a creative piece. But these are the places and the reasons I focus my energy.

Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite?
View all responses

Christmas* is my favorite holiday. It’s strange writing about Christmas in April, but then again, I have a Christmas tree still up in my parlor, and I turn the lights on now and then. And I just got done writing a Christmas romance. (It’s my sixth). No other holiday comes close to me.

Christmas lasts an entire season, and that’s one thing I love about it. I get to celebrate from post-Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. It comes when I need it, toward the end of a very busy Fall semester at the college. It livens things up against the leaden skies and frozen ground waiting for snow that doesn’t come till January.

Christmas also has traditions handed down from many cultures (mostly Western) to give it a rich color and flavor. Red and green, silver and gold, touched by Hanukkah blue and white (it is part of the season), ribbons and blown glass ornaments and Della Robbia wreaths (my mother had a particular fondness for them, as do I) and twinkly lights.

We have special Christmas foods from many cultures as well. Pfeffernuse (ginger cookies) and springerle (anise cookies) from Germany, Mexican wedding cakes/Russian tea cakes, sugar cut-out cookies, Christmas goose, plum pudding, KFC (in Japan) …

Christmas remains my favorite holiday, even though I’m too old for Santa. But given I write about a secret society of Santas, am I really too old?

*I am talking about the secular parts of Christmas here. I am of a “spiritual but not religious” bent, best described by “omnist“. Or maybe “panentheist”. I’m not sure. My beliefs are very personal, and I don’t want them hijacked by the “one true religion” crowd.

The Taco Truck’s in Town! (Severe Weather)

We in the far northwest corner of Missouri have spent two consecutive days down in our basements (about two hours total) because of tornadic activity. We didn’t fare too bad — the tornado at Maryville did not touch down but wasn’t that far from campus, although some neighboring areas saw some damage. Northwest of us — Omaha and Lincoln — got some bad damage, as did parts of Oklahoma on day 2.

I wrote the other day about how today’s weather warnings are so much more sophisticated. The FEMA app (my favorite for severe weather) informed us throughout the afternoon and evening. This app distinguishes between “Your neighbors should be in the basement” and “YOU should be in the basement” when setting alarm noises; the latter noise is more alarming than the city’s ominous siren. What struck me was that, despite the neighborhood destruction in Omaha and Lincoln from an EF3 tornado, there were no fatalities and only non-life-threatening injuries. This speaks to me of a robust warning system and better awareness of the danger of a tornado.

The graphic at the top of this page is perhaps one of the most ingenious tools of the current emergency mitigation response. It’s a non-threatening way to describe the threat levels in a tornado. It’s funny enough to go viral. And on those severe weather days when we’re waiting for the sirens, we’re looking for taco trucks. Only we want to avoid them.

In Those Glorious Days of Civil Defense Tornado Warnings

For the next couple of days, my city (town?) is in a severe weather zone. The Weather Channel says, “There is a likely risk of severe weather today. Wind, tornadoes and hail are possible. Look out for large hail and powerful tornadoes. Have a plan and be prepared.”. This risk continues through tomorrow; the National Weather Service has given a Hazardous Weather Outlook (pre-Watches and Warnings) to our area.

Our house has weather radio and our phones have weather programs with warnings. Our basement has bottled water and emergency kits. We remember the tornadoes in Utica, IL and Joplin, MO (home town-adjacent areas for each of us) and take severe weather seriously.

Weather awareness has changed significantly since I was young, and I was in one of the few areas with any form of local weather response. When I was young, most people got their television through antennas, and so network TV carried tornado watches and warnings. I don’t believe stations posted severe thunderstorm watches or warnings back then. Our middle-of-nowhere town was in the Chicago market, yet 90 miles away, so we watched warnings in which we may have been obliquely mentioned. However, because there was no way we could receive TV waves in a river valley, we had cable TV in LaSalle County, IL, which was novel 55 years ago. This was important to the current discussion because we had our own emergency warnings.

At the time, FEMA didn’t exist; the national civil defense organization was named Civil Defense. Our Civil Defense person was Bill Bailey, who I believe was the Sheriff. And he delighted in Civil Defense. When a tornado watch or warning occurred, he cut into our regularly scheduled programming with emergency tones. He then droned on about the warning of the moment. Originally, the screen would go back, but I think later interruptions had this symbol:

We would all go to our basements like good little Midwesterners. Ok, I kid. I would go to the basement, as would my mother. My sister and dad went out to the front porch to watch for tornadoes. I was scared to death of tornadoes back then (and many other things as well, but not spiders or snakes or bees or wasps).

Nowadays, we have a much better warning system. We have warnings about weather days in advance from the National Weather Service. We have FEMA with not only warnings, but sophisticated operations in the aftermath of severe weather. But I remember when all we had in LaSalle County, IL, was Bill Bailey.