Choosing a career....and changing your mind.

Some choose for the money-making aspect...others do what they love. There are a few extremely lucky people in this world who do what they love and make a boatload of cash doing it. I don't know if I'll ever be one of those people, but I'll certainly try.

For me, being happy and fulfilled is very important. Your career is what you do for many hours a day- you spend more time at your job each day than you spend with your family. If you don't enjoy it...what's the point??

Yes...money is the point. We all need it....we can't get by without it. We can get by on less if we have to...but how many of us are willing to give up some of our income to ensure our career happiness??

I am one of an extremely small group of lucky women. My husband makes enough money for us to live on without me having a job outside of the home. Now make sure you read that right...I said "live on" not roll around in cash. We get by, our bills are paid, and we can still enjoy some of life's pleasures. It's by no means a walk in the park, but when we had kids we decided it was important to us to have me home to raise the kids. And while doing that, I was given the opportunity to follow my dreams. Thank you hubby...I will forever be grateful!

I used to have a job out of the home..a career...I have a college degree that gave me the title of Floral Designer. I loved my work and at that point in my life knew I wanted to open my own shop one day..but a specialty shop, not just a regular retail flower shop. I wanted to concentrate on weddings. And I did do that out of my home for a few years. Worked okay for a while and I thought I was happy. But things changed...I changed. And I chose a new career.

I've spent the last five years working my tushy off and it's finally paying off. And this new career has made me happier than my last career ever did. I feel fulfilled now.....and I never did before. I hear poeple complain about work and dreading going in and counting down `til the weekend....not me. I never feel like I get to work enough! I work whenever I can...I work on weekends...on Sundays, on holidays!

I wish everyone could feel this way about their career.

Dealing with mixed emotions...

I've been using the library since I was old enough to sign my name on the card (back when you still had to do that). And in my circle of girlfriends, swapping books is the norm. If I read a great book that resonates in me, of course I want to share it. In today's economy, we can't all afford to rush out and buy every book we want to read and there are tons of people who cannot afford to buy even one book. Without libraries and friends, some people, including children, would not be able to read at all.

But now I'm stuck.

These practices are found to be completely acceptable........but not in the ebook world.

I am soon to be published as an ebook author and I fully support digital media. I bought a Sony Reader and I buy more books now than I have in years. But I hear so much about how wrong it is to share ebooks.

We ran into this years ago with digital music sharing (remember that lil' site called Napster??). Geez...when we were kids, I can't even tell you how many mixed tapes I had that were songs other people taped off their tapes for me or taped off the radio. We all did it...no one was making money off it...we were just friends sharing what we had.

I am 100% behind authors, and all artists, getting the money that they are due...always have been. And of course I want to reap the benefits of all my hard work. This is my career...I want to be successful. But I find myself stuck in the middle here.... If feels hypocritical of me to say "Sharing ebooks is evil!" when I myself have borrowed treebooks (paper books) from the library and from friends for as long as I can remember.

Does anyone else feel as conflicted as I do???

Do blog contests draw readers in???

Can I ask my bloggy friends out there, why do you do contests?? Is it just for fun? Or do you hope to get something out of it?? More followers? A boost in sales??? I'm really curious as to your reasons for doing it.

I did one contest on my blog a while back. I had seen others do them and it seemed like a neat idea! Give away a cool prize (make someone's day) and maybe boost my follower list in the process!

But I was a little disappointed. I only had about 10-12 entrants and my follower list only bumped up by 2 or 3. But I did enjoy making someone's day! :)

The Waiting Game

Life seems to be a waiting game. Every day. You wait in lines, wait for food to be ready, the laundry to be dry. In this day and age we've come to want everything immediately- an instant gratification society. I can't say I enjoy waiting, but I do try to make the most of my time. Hate to rush life by.

But I do hate waiting to hear from an agent. Man that is excruciating! Not so much the query letters...but a partial. It's step one in the journey. It may be the only step you get. It's excruciating to sit back and just wait to see if you'll be moving your career forward...or not.

My partial has been with the agent I met with at The Write Stuff conference for over a month now...close to 5 weeks. Her website says 10-12 weeks for partial requests...so I know I need to sit back and chill. But it's so hard!!

I need to carve out more time!!!

Seems there's always something to take up my time and minimize the time I get to write and work on writing related projects.

There's the house and chores and dinner preparation, laundry, food shopping. There's always something we're prepping for: we have a costume party this weekend and I need to shop for supplies and make our costumes.

And then there's the kids. Every parent knows that the kids always need you the second you sit to do something for yourself. If my son didn't take a good nap every afternoon, I would not be sitting here typing this right now!

I hate to sound like I'm complaining, I'm really not. I know how lucky I am to get what I get. But I so badly want to make this career a success and I need to somehow find more time to give to it. But how do I do that without feeling guilty?? The most logical is after dinner. Hubby is here and able to take over parental duties 100%. I keep telling myself that if I worked a job out of the home, that is when I'd have to do it. But that is the only time we have as a family and that time is precious to me. The kids are only this age once. who knows how much longer we'll have before they won't want to play with us anymore.

I've tried the get up early thing...does not work for me. I am so not a morning person. I am better at night, but editing seriously makes me so sleepy!! I can usually write new stuff at night, but not edit.

Thanks for listening...I know there's tons of you out there who can relate!

What's their story???

Do you ever see a person or a group of people and watch what they're doing and wonder why they're there and what brought them to do what they do???

I do. All the time, actually. Is it my writer's brain that makes me think like this?? Or am I just nosey??

There is a McDonalds not far form my house, I pass it every single time I leave my house or come home (unless I come the back way, but that's rare.) And as soon as the weather turns nice, there is this little group of old men that congregate in the parking lot. They open up the hatch-back of a mini van and sit around it in folding camp chairs like they're tailgating. Sometimes they're there early, like today- it was noonish when I drove by. And there've been other times I've seen them as late as 9 pm. And I am so damn curious as to why they sit there, in the parking lot, only about 10-20 feet from a very busy road. Why would they choose to sit there rather than one of their houses or a bar or a park or anywhere else on the planet beside a fast food restaurant parking lot!

Humans are fascinating creatures. It's so interesting to observe and wonder and see what they'll do next. Maybe this is why reality TV has become as popular as it has. It's completely unpredicable. (well, sometimes. I know there is completely scripted "reality" tv out there too...but those shows are so lame.) I think poeple like to see other people and to know they're not alone in their idiosyncrasies.

What do you think???

Back to reality...but did I ever really escape??

We're back from our alone trip to Disney World, just hubby and me. We had been looking forward to this trip...we so needed some alone time and a chance to reconnect and just "be" without worrying about anything. I knew the trip would not be 100% worry-free...we were left our kids for 5 days and they were over 1000 miles away, but still. They were in mostly capable hands.

The trip itself was fantastic. Fab weather- 85-88, sunny, only rained one night and it was later on. We had a lot of fun and were silly and posed for lots of pictures. We rode all our favorite rides and re-rode them too.

On the Tomorrowland Speedway:


Waiting to be seated for Mickey's Philharmagic 3d show:


At Winter Summerland Mini Golf:


Epcot's Flower and Garden Festival:




The Morocco Pavilion in the background:


Streets of America at Hollywood Studios:


On the Teacups at Magic Kingdom:


And Cinderella's Castle:


Sunset Boulevard at Hollywood Studios with our favorite ride in the background- Tower of Terror!!


But of course it was stressful too...our son got sick, just a little virus or something, but because he has asthma, it becomes a bigger issue. Luckily I had prepared our sitters ahead of time and he seemed to be okay. But still.....very hard for me to be that far away at a time like that.

And the relaxing nights we had planned for the resort's hot tub...yeah...that didn't happen. There were tons of school trips and such while we were there and every night, when we headed to the hot tub, we were pretty much the only adults there, surrounded by a minimum of twenty unsupervised teenagers.

The trip was well worth it and we did find ourselves missing the kids and very much looking forward to our next trip to "The World" with them in December!