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Is blogging messing with your mind?

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For once, I’m determined to get my posts ready for the week. It’s Sunday afternoon and I’ve been glued to my office chair, staring at my computer for several hours. What the hell am I doing? the sun is shining and I’m inside my kitchen writing. (No need to tell me I’m crazy, I already realize that thank you.)

Fortunately, I find a blog post that resonates with what I’m thinking today and it’s called: “5 ways fear can mess up your blog,” by Tess Marshall from The Bold Life.

Tess points out “5 ways fear steals your joy and what action you can take in order to enjoy life and the blogging process.” Please hop over to read her great advice.

1. You obsess about the competition.
2. Your content Lacks pizzazz.
3. You Doubt Yourself.
4. You’re unmotivated and stuck.
5. You want to give up and quit.  
  
“Become aware of how many times in one day you wish for a better and bigger blog and all that goes with it?

Now estimate how many times a day you say to yourself,’My life is great just the way it is today!'”

Of course Tess is right, but once you get bitten by the blogger bug, it’s very difficult to erase it from your mind; especially when you’ve been asked to join a panel and speak about “Beyond Blogging” at the Orange County Branch of the California Writers Club.

A romantic dinner at home.

Last night I set a romantic table next to our fireplace. I had candles, roses in a vase, and champagne flutes ready for our dinner. With the kids gone, my husband and I can finally have romantic dinners at home. As we sip our champagne with some smoked salmon appetizers, I ask him, “Do you think I’d spend as many hours in front of my computer if we moved back to Ambergris Caye? (Photo at the top is from Ambergris Caye where we lived from 2004-2005. This is Victoria House, a beautiful resort on the island.) Before he has time to answer, I say, “I’m sure I’d blog and spend hours on my laptop.” In a way I’m scared Gutsy enough to admit that blogging and writing is my obsession, but since statistics show that women outnumber men in the social media world, perhaps society has created a new female disease that requires a new form of treatment.

So my question to you is: “Is blogging messing with your mind?” If so, in what way? 
This question is for men too. Please ask your friends and share.

Any regrets in your life?

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regret. nothing.

Do you find yourself saying: “I wish I’d done… or I wish I’d been… or I wish I hadn’t…” How does that make you feel? We’ve all made mistakes and there’s no reason to beat ourselves up or spend our life feeling guilty about our past.

My mother died when I was twenty-five, and she was fifty-seven. This triggered within me the goal to live a Gutsy life and never postpone my dreams. None of us know how much time we have left, so why not enjoy today, and every single day.

I remember writing about this topic before, and one person’s comment made a lot of sense:

There is no point in regretting anything, because you always do what you think is best at the time. Who would deliberately make a bad decision? Nobody. So, no regrets! Keeps you sane as well.

Perhaps teenagers are more prone to making bad choices even if they realize it at the time. Most of us have made mistakes, some bigger than others, but instead of looking at them with regret or failure, we need think of our past choices as opportunities that resulted in our growth and change.

Drifting back to the past, where we may punish ourselves with our mistakes and regrets, is a waste of time. The what if”s are useful for those who wish to write fiction, but not to be used against ourselves. Instead, we need to look at living in the moment; a universal bond that links all humans whether rich or poor, but so many of us forget to appreciate. I force myself to enjoy the minutes I have right now. It doesn’t happen automatically; I have to stop and think about what I’m doing at this moment.

When a friend wrote: “I was pretty much told, if you have no regrets you are in denial and a liar,” my first thought was: Who would make such a statement?
What do you think?
Any regrets?

Lazy Gutsy Writer Shows a Video

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Oxnard Shores Beach, California Febraury 21st, 2011
 
I’m on time. It’s still Monday and I spent my weekend visiting my twenty-year-old son, Austin, at UCSB, (University of California Santa Barbara) and then my cousin who lives in Oxnard, about one hour south of Santa Barbara. Look at the weather and how lucky we are in southern California.

Oxnard Harbor

I had forgotten how “poor” students live. My son doesn’t eat fresh vegetables or fruits. Just spaghetti and frozen pizza and I took him shopping for apples, bananas and grapes, hoping to pump him up with some fiber and vitamins. We also bought a frying pan and a saucepan. His frying pan had deep ridges and grooves like dry valleys in the desert. I wonder how much Teflon he’s swallowed in the last few months.

Do you remember stories from when you were a student? What about your children?

Making Love in Paradise

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 HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY TO ALL
Laguna Beach, CA February 13, 2011

When my husband and I moved to Belize, I knew we’d found the perfect place for romance. The two of us would embrace on the powdery sand with the sun’s warmth caressing our bodies. After a couple of exotic coconut rum punches, passion would take over, right?

Wrong! A primitive hut on stilts is not the place for a fulfilling love life. There’s a limit to how many coconut rum punches you can knock back while ignoring scorpions, large spiders, sweaty odors and sand flies sharing your bed. Having a mosquito net made no difference; the critters appeared on-time, and uninvited.

We moved from a luxury California king-size mattress to a knobby double mattress in Belize. Duke’s feet stuck out a foot or so, but at least the mattress offered a separation between us and the floor’s ecosystem.

The ceiling fauna was exactly the same, but gravity caused numerous landings of critters and their poop, onto our protective mosquito net. I just prayed that a giant iguana or rat wouldn’t fall out of the palm-fronded, vaulted ceiling and cause the net to collapse over our faces.

Body odor was another distraction during romance. The humidity and lack of air-conditioning caused us to sweat like baboons. I tried everything to get our sheets to smell fresh, but our stinky well water didn’t help matters. I boiled pot after pot of water mixed with bleach on my kitchen stove, and sprinted outside to fill our washing machine located underneath our hut. A colony of dock flies resided next to the washing machine and pounced on my legs, like hungry carnivores. Within an hour, I’d have large welts. I finally gave up and sprayed my precious Chanel perfume onto our sheets, but this was only a three-second fix. Desperate, I sprayed some inside my nostrils, and screamed in pain.

On this special Valentine’s Day, please remember how lucky you are to have a comfortable bed with clean sheets. If you want some tropical romance, check yourself into a nice hotel with air-conditioning.


What about you? Any romantic or fun stories to share?

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