Drops of Inspira

  Hello! First off, you're going to notice something a little different. The graphic at the top is something I made with Canva that is supposed to be like the newspaper in my WIP (Work-in- Progress) Drops of Inspira.  In my WIP, The Underground  is a newspaper for members of The Underground, a group of members of the resistance against the governor of Inspira who have had to go into hiding or risk imprisonment... or worse. So, I thought I would name my little "life updates" in my blog after that with the goal of sometime in the not-too-distant future starting a newsletter with the same name. So, without further ado, let's get to the updates. Aha! You haven't seen this graphic in a while, have you?  So... Life.  This past year has been an absolute whirlwind.  I've gone from a year at a toxic job to the job I left two years ago. It's been a change for the better in many respects. My memory is strengthening (I lost months of memory from the stress at my last ...

  Hello! During the last post, I talked about cultivating sense of wonder.  Without wonder, we often find ourselves going about the day-to-day with a sense of rote, almost robotic-like rhythm. We don't really think about what we are doing. We just do it. Somewhere in the mix, we lose that childlike sense of wonder, hope and joy. We look forward to the weekends and then realize that they've passed before we've properly dipped our toes in their waters. What if there was a way to have that awareness, that wonder every day? I'm by no means an expert at this, but here are a few things that have helped me cultivate a sense of wonder. 1. Nature Getting outside, going for a walk, or just spending time with green and living plants, breathing in their scents seems to help a lot. Better yet, if you can plant something yourself, water it and watch it grow, that seems to give you something to root for (no pun intended). Suddenly, you are very involved in watching this thing grow and...

  Hello! It's been awhile since this graphic has made an appearance, so I thought it was time. One of my favorite things about the Summer Reading Program at our library was seeing how many books I could cram into three months.       There was one time I checked out fifty books. It was so satisfying seeing my car trunk full of knowledge. I didn't read them all, but I did read a great deal of them. What were they about? Mainly pirates and underwater archaeology. Because...research. I'm a writer. I research weird and wonderful things. So, for this summer, I thought I'd post a little reading challenge. It's not fifty books. I wouldn't do that to you. If you are like me, reading is more of a challenge than it was as a kid, and if you read one or two books in a month, you are doing fantastic. This is just for fun. You can join or ignore. So, here's the graphic I made for the challenge: The idea is to read one of each kind of book by the end of the summer. I though...