Mindful Monday - Engage!

I've really been enjoying engaging with the community of readers/writers/authors/editors on Twitter.

Since doing this, I've been privileged enough to beta-read for some folks I really enjoy, and hear people's stories that range from eerily-similar to worlds-apart from mine. Sometimes they make me feel like my dream of being an editor is a little less like a fantasy than I once thought it was. They are some of the most supportive and courageous people I've encountered, and I adore them.

Feature Friday - Friday Phrases

Yaayy it's Friday!!!

So, there's something I've really been enjoying the last couple of weeks, on Fridays. It is called Friday Phrases, #FP for short. @FridayPhrases posts the topic for the day on Friday (and I really enjoy that for me, this comes along late on Thursday night and I can ruminate while on my way to sleep), and the challenge is to tell a story/poem/what have you in one tweet, on Friday. There's also a website where they collect their favorites, http://www.friday-phrases.com/, and have information for submissions to a book being worked on. ((Let's all admit there's more I could say, but typed this at like 1 in the morning...so...yeah.))

I'm really enjoying participating, and seeing what all people come up with. It's fun, and gets my gears going a little bit :)

Some faves from today (so far--I'd feature older ones but I'm being a bit lazy with searching back for them):

#FP “How are you?” they ask, unseeing. “Fine,” she forces a smile. She pushes back the thousand screams that threaten to emerge, choking her

— ⚓️Kendra⚓️ (@KendraCP) June 26, 2015

On that very hill our last warriors faced the empire. It was a hopeless fight, but those thousand battle cries will echo in eternity. #fp

— Signy (@SignyTheSage) June 26, 2015

#FP Her friends were gone and she was alone in the catacombs. The smell of death lingered, so did a thousand screams echoing from long ago.

— Victoria de Lucia (@luciadevic) June 26, 2015

Her throat unleashes A thousand screams once silenced Arrows dipped in truth #FP #haiku #recovery #nolongersilent

— Jenn R-J (@jennfel) June 26, 2015

Here are some of my own #FPs that are my faves:

When it's *really* time to talk, that's when she's filled w/ silence. No one'd understand if she bared her soul, so she covers it in gab #fp

— Julia (@byersj09) June 19, 2015

The last call to board the plane made her heart quicken with excitement and fear. She hesitated, was she really going through with this? #fp

— Julia (@byersj09) June 12, 2015

When she looked at him, she saw red. It was their love, their anger, their joy, their pain, their beginning & their end. #fp @FridayPhrases

— Julia (@byersj09) June 5, 2015

Ozone ablaze, she now understood the warnings of old, the end was upon them. #FP

— Julia (@byersj09) May 29, 2015

A thousand screams would be more preferable than the angry silence you're forcing me to endure as the world crumbles around us. #fp

— Julia (@byersj09) June 26, 2015

Mindful Monday - Am I doing the right thing?

So it starts with this:

Kid knows how to break my heart: "Mommy, could you stay home with me everyday like you used to?" 😢😭😭😭💔

— Julia (@byersj09) June 22, 2015

and suddenly I'm back to square one, asking myself if it is really worth it to work, even a part-time job that has me away from home the least amount of time possible. I know I'm just being emotional, there's no way I can continue to not work now that I'm finished with school. And I'll be honest, I do like having a job. I like having the structure and the assignment and every Friday, I like a little thing called a paycheck (as little as it sometimes seems). This job was like the answer to my worries: during the school year my son only has to be away from either myself or my husband for all of two, maybe three hours; I'm not making much, but it's just enough to ease the stress about money; and a big bonus that it isn't retail. But I do miss my little boy as I sit in my cubicle answering emails and phone calls, wondering if I'm doing the right thing.

So there you have it, that's what's on my mind today. When I chose to go back to work, I was certain I was making the right decision, and with one sweet and sleepy statement, all my certainty has been destroyed.

Feature Friday - "Defining Love" by Elizabeth Reyes

I'll be honest, I feel like I'm cheating a bit here because I published this review on Goodreads and Amazon a couple of weeks ago. But I really enjoyed the read and so here is what I thought of Defining Love by Elizabeth Reyes. This review is for all three volumes together, since I read almost all of them in one night (and finished one hour the next).

I picked up "Defining Love" with my Kindle Unlimited, and I'm glad I did. I've read many of the 5th Street and Moreno Brothers' stories, and I just keep coming back. I would say that in comparison to those which are related to each other, these are not (yet--will they be?) tied into other stories. That was a little bit refreshing for me. Also, while I still felt Aaron would be considered "alpha," it seemed played down a bit, which worked well with the story. Along those lines, most of the "sexy" scenes are closer to the end, and a bit played down as well. I think these were good things for Henri and Aaron's story, as their's was such an emotional journey.

I really enjoyed Henri's resiliency, and I think that made her moments of weakness so much more poignant. There's one particular scene where she is explaining to Aaron what is wrong with her and as a reader it was so emotional and even visceral to watch her deal with her demons.

I think really one of my favorite things about this story is how the characters know one thing but act like another. It reminds me of real life, when you know one thing in your head but you keep holding out hope in your heart that what your head knows just isn't true. I know this was a source of conflict for the characters, and it was done really well. I think too often we get to see the "noble" character who always uses their head and nips any problems right when they arise. But here, it is the combination of hope and fear that keeps the characters from taking action, and like I said, this was really well done and as such, one of my favorite components of the story because hey--those characters aren't perfect and noble.

I also appreciated how, as I suspect is intended by the title, different types of "love" are realized, as well as the difference in loving someone and being in love with someone.

Mindful Monday - Define Your Own Success

When my friends from high school started graduating from college a few years ago (and a couple of years before me), I realized I could not hold myself to society's definition of "success."

To me that definition is: no more than 4 (maybe 5) years in college pursuing a bachelors degree, an immediate or near-immediate entry into a career or grad-school, and financial gain, etc., or maybe that's just what I thought success was for so long because that is what I remember thinking success was when I was a teenager looking forward to my future.

So when I started seeing graduation announcements for friends, I looked at myself and my life and I wasn't unhappy. No, I didn't (yet) have a bachelors or even an associates degree. No, I hadn't found my calling and I was still working retail. But I was satisfied with where I was. At that point in my life I was already happily married, a homeowner, and on my way to being a mom. I felt satisfied with my choices and where I was, and I took it upon myself to assert that there is more than one type of success. That it has more to do with how happy you are with your life choices than where you stand in comparison to everyone else. So, in short, as I texted to a friend who was feeling like they were unaccomplished in comparison to her friends,

 "Success doesn't come only in numbers defined by others, you have to define it for yourself!"

Until next time,

Julia

No Feature Friday

Well I haven't really read anything [that I can share] this week, and somehow it's Friday already, and I've really dropped the ball! Seriously my schedule has become so wacky with my adjustments to working (and it's only part time)!

So, go have fun! What are you doing here?

Enjoy your weekend!

Julia

Mindful Monday - Politics?

Politics is generally something I steer clear of. It is generally something that overwhelms me and I always feel is so exaggerated I'm not sure I ever know what's "real" in that realm. But there is something that recently passed in Texas, my home state, that just feels wrong to me.

There are cities that have in the past year or so passed bans on oil/gas fracking within their city limits. Their citizens put these bans to vote and passed them. A wonderful way to exercise their freedoms in decisions that effect their immediate ecology and economy, right?

Well then, some months afterwards, here comes lawmakers in the state of Texas that say, statewide, cities can't ban fracking. This just stinks to me. It isn't as though the city(ies) have banned healthcare or growing sustainable food or the sale of bandages or something like that. It is something that as a group they came together to say "we don't want this controversial operation in our city." This seems like a perfectly acceptable and right usage of their abilities, and then the state comes along and squashes it!? Outrageous! 

Those are my two cents, take it or leave it, just doesn't seem right to me.

Until next time,
Julia

**Since writing this the state has also passed (and I think waiting on Gov. signature) that guns can now be open-carry in public, and closed-carry on college campuses. Not sure how I feel about those yet.

**Also, I know it's not all as cut-and-dry as this, but these are the things that stick with me and evoked my thoughts.