Recent Posts
Living in a Near-Cashless Society
Conversations within my various editors’ groups occasionally turn to ways of accepting payments from clients. You get the conversations about using PayPal and similar services. There are the conversations about payments in cash. You get those hilarious conversations about clients wanting to pay via a royalty share, complete with boasted claims that the royalty share would be worth millions.
But whenever the conversation turns to clients paying by check, the group is often amazed by my response.
As much as checks might be nice for some people, I can never accept payment via check. No bank within New Zealand will allow you to deposit checks anymore. Even cashier’s checks are now a thing of the past.
There is normally one person who asks how we pay our bills if checks are no longer accepted, likely assuming that we pay for everything via cash. But my answer to this question tends to shock them even more.
New Zealand has become a near-cashless society. Everything is paid for by way of electronic transactions, most of which occur via internet banking.
LGBTQ+ Terms: A Glossary for the Unknowing Parent
Recently, I decided to binge watch the Netflix series of Sex Education—all three seasons of it, and I’m looking forward to the fourth season (which has been announced as going to happen). It’s a racy show that explores the concepts of gender and sexual identity while at the same time reminding us that we are all human. And it is seriously funny.
I will admit that I still see Gillian Anderson as Scully from X-Files, but in every single one of the characters on the show, I can see someone that I know in person.
The show is aimed at teenagers, primarily those 16 years old and older. But if you have never seen the show, let me warn you now that there is open-door sex throughout the show, including in the opening scene of the premiere episode. But the show is not about sex. It’s about understanding who we are as human beings, and yes, sex is a part of that.
This post uses medically correct terminology for human reproductive organs. If you are not comfortable with that, then you can stop reading right here.
#DigitalDetox Challenges 9 Through 16. I’ve been busy!
I’ve been quiet lately on my blog about my progress with the #DigitalDetox challenge. I have been working in the background, but I’m also starting to see a lot of the irony come to the foreground with all of this.
Most of these #DigitalDetox challenges have really been about self-reflection, deciding how I want my new normal in the post-covid world to look like. I don’t think we’re past the worst that covid has to throw at us, but I’ve noticed that since covid, our world has become more and more reliant on the internet… And I want to become less reliant on it.
I’ve been looking to the future, looking to see what challenges in my #DigitalDetox coloring book I can actually do, given my current situation. And I’ve been scheming as a result. I’m even starting up a book club. (The invite to the book club is in this post.)
So, here’s what I’ve been up to.
Sorry, peeps, but this is a REALLY long post, but it is what it is.
The Yearly Wheel Keeps Turning: Bring in 2022
It’s that time of year again, when I sit down and look at everything that I had set out to do for 2021 and assess what I can do to influence my successes in the coming year. More often than not, I’m reminded of something that was a massive step forward that I had completely forgotten about in the wake of all the negative.
Between COVID-Delta and the constant stream of lockdowns, the crazy of copyright laws, the push for increasing diversity, and all crazy that has ensued in my personal life, there is only one thing that I can do: focus on what I can control and breathe. (Okay, that’s two things.)
And my biggest lesson in 2021 is that I need to learn how to say “No.”
Today’s post is long, but it is what it is.
The Mental Drain of Big Projects
When I started this #DigitalDetox thing, I knew that I would learn a few things about myself that I never knew. Or maybe I did know them, but just didn’t recognize them for what they were. But I this week’s discovery explained so many things about the past that I had never put together before.
After completing a big project, I’m mentally and physically zonked—zapped of energy—and the fiction writing becomes a struggle. In fact, anything creative, including coloring-in pictures, becomes a struggle.
So, it probably won’t be a surprise to anyone to discover that this week is yet another #DigitalDetox redo.
Advice out of the mouths of babes
Some years ago, my daughter and I were having a conversation about what it was she would like to do for the coming year. She’s a dancer, and at the time, she was interested in the idea of turning her dancing into a career. She was only 13 at the time, but even then, she knew that if she wanted to go professional, she was going to have to work hard to be the best she could be—and some.
The performing arts are just as competitive as the publishing industry, if not more so.
Anyway, I had received an email from her dance school about auditions for a competition dance team. She had never been part of a competition team, but she was being invited specifically to audition. When I asked her if she was interested, she hummed and hawed for a bit, then she said something that hit a little closer to home than she realized.
“I’m never going to make it if I don’t take a risk and put myself out there.”
BAM! The fist hit me in the gut, and she never lifted a finger. She was talking about her own dreams and her own aspirations, yet her words carried a message that was powerful.