Sharing What Matters

Lately, I’ve felt like a tiny dinky riding the waves of a hurricane. One moment I’m on top with clear view of the shore and then two blinks later I’m facing four walls of obligations. Well the other day something helped.

I was sitting in a doctor’s office making a series of appointments for my dear husband. It was very busy, almost chaotic. The woman who was setting up his schedule (I’m going to refer to her as Tilly because I like the name and it fits her) was busy on the phone coordinating with another medical office when a patient came out from the examination rooms. Several had preceded her and each time Tilly had greeted them, with a smile, took their passport, and asked them to have a seat in the waiting room, and someone would call them in a few minutes. Since Tilly was busy, I turned and did as she’d done before. I greeted the woman, took her form, handed it to Tilly and asked the woman to have a seat and someone would be with her shortly.
In that moment, every clerical worker in the office day changed. They burst out laughing and while the atmosphere in the office had been clinically polite before, it lightened. Tilly offered me a job.

Sometimes offering a helping hand or a smile can make a difference in someone’s day and in your own.

That instant, Tilly’s smile, changed my day. Even now, recalling Tilly’s laughter makes me smile. Each light moment is worth its weight in gold.

So, have you share a smile or laugh lately? Tell me about them.

Microsoft's Devil

Cursor… Cursor… Cursor… Cursor…

The dang cursor hangs there sometimes and stares at me, and it even has the gull to wink at me.
Damn thing. One of Microsoft’s devils.

But you know what? The devil has become a motivator for me to write. I see the winky-blink and my fingers itch to press the smooth keys of my laptop and my mind starts whirling through the hundreds of topics or projects I could write about. And there lays the problem I think many writers have. It’s not that we don’t know what to write. We can’t choose from the many voices in our heads, shouting out at us, pick me, you promised me, you need to write about me today.

Usually it’s the last scenario which wins our attention. It takes up a good chuck of our freshest muse and it’s not be our WIPs. It’s a blog post, an interview or an article due. Sigh. It’s our WIPs we really want to spend time on. What to do?

Well, we could not write blog posts or do interviews, or articles and write only your books but be warn today is the age of the world-wide info net. At some point we will need to establish a presence in the arena which will require writing other material besides our WIPs.

So how do we do that? If you’ve read any of blogs in the past, you know I make goal lists each day. The hardest part for me is to shut off the other voices which sound a lot like my four children did when they were pre-teen and focus on a project. But I’ve found if I make my list in priority order, set a time limit for the project, turn on my white noise, sit my butt in chair and stare at the cursor all this has helped me write the other projects and then drag my muse to the WIP.

So, tell me how do you handle the writing juggling act? I’d loved to learn different tactics, to change up and always beat the Microsoft Devil.