Drops of Inspira

  Hello! I wanted to bring this to everyone's attention last week, but things were a bit chaotic at my house so I'm talking about it now.  When people think about February, they normally think of Valentines' Day . My entire time growing up, that's all I knew. When February came around, the world went crazy with pink and red hearts, chocolate, teddy bears and people in love.  As a kid, somehow I got a hold of old-fashioned valentines cards and would give them to my parents and siblings, writing in them with red crayon. Scandalous, I know. How dare I ruin those beautiful cards with my childish scrawls? As I got older, I watched those around me fall in love, get married, or break up. Meanwhile, I stayed single and made heart sugar cookies for me and my family.  It wasn't until about five or so years ago that I discovered that the same month that houses Valentines' Day , is also International Friendship Month . Which is pretty awesome. I mean, a whole month that cel...

 Friday night was not a good one. I spectacularly blew it. I had the biggest meltdown in the history of this month. In this year.  Now, the meltdown was stupid. I will admit that. The house was a wreck, but that doesn't justify a meltdown. During the meltdown, I reached out to a few friends via text and asked for prayer. Besides praying for me, one of them coached me through some breathing exercises and told me to step outside and just breathe. Everything within me wanted to say that it wouldn't work, but I grabbed a plate of food and marched myself outside and sat down at our picnic table and ate. Sometime during the stillness, I looked up and saw this moon. It was stunning. Wreathed in rainbows and clouds, it lit up the night sky. And as I gazed at the moon, everything else subsided and I was able to breathe. I could hear the rumbling of a few cars passing. Frogs began to sing somewhere in the forest and the neighbor's dog barked a few times. The stillness and the relativ...

  Hello!      Today I want to talk to you about one of my favorite subjects: friendship. I know I may be the odd one out talking about friendship in February when everyone else has Valentine's Day on their mind, but hear me out.       True friendship is love too. It's not the romantic kind, but it's just as important.       Love lets someone know they matter to you. Love is being patient with a friend that may be insecure and pester you night and day. Love is being kind, even when your friend is not. Love is not jealous of your friend when he or she is doing something that you really want to do, or is in a relationship and you are not. Love is not prideful. It's preferring someone over yourself and encouraging someone, even when you're not having a good day yourself. Love is not ripping someone apart. It isn't backstabbing the person or gossiping about the person behind their back. Love is selfless. It thinks about the good of ...

I can't believe it's already this time of the year again. Last year I joined Christine Smith   in her three-month Know the Novel link-up. This link-up starts the month before NaNoWriMo and goes through December. If you've been following this blog for more than a year, you'll recognize this series from last year. If you just started following me or are visiting this blog: Welcome! I'm so glad you're here. This month's theme is Introduction  and sets up the groundwork for what I'm doing today.  I've mentioned Harbinger  before. It's a WIP I've been working on for almost six years now. Over the summer I've decided to split it in three books, so now it's the Harbinger Trilogy. The working title for book one is called Sirens of Fate,  and it's this book I will work on for NaNoWriMo. I'm rebelling NaNo, meaning instead of doing this writing challenge traditionally and starting a book from scratch on November 1st, I'm using the c...

Hello! This month I wanted to discuss something that I normally don't talk about: books! Okay, so I'm joking. But only halfway! My favorite genre to read in is fantasy, especially lesser known fantasy, but way back when I was a wee thing, I didn't have access to the internet which has broadened my reading field.  I grew up on classics and read them for school. One of my goals for this year is to revisit some of them and read some new ones.  Today, I want to share with you some classics I've read that have inspired my WIPs (Works-in-Progress). These aren't arranged in order from most inspiring to least. They're just numbered for my sake (because I like order and that sort of thing). Classic #1: Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle My entire childhood I had a friend who would badger me to read this book, but it wasn't until I was an adult and in desperate need of reading material that I took him seriously and checked out this massive book from my local l...

Today marks one entire year since I first launched Poetry 15th on this blog, so it's my 1st Poetrversary. Yay!  I remember being very uncertain when I first started this. It's scary to put yourself out into the wide world. Especially for this introvert, but it's been rewarding. Little by little I'm letting go of fear and letting these paper-thin wings take flight. What is Poetry 15th? For those who are new to this thing, every fifteenth of the month, at roughly 2:30 PST, I drop a poetry prompt and a corresponding poem on this blog. Whether you use the prompt, it's up to you. You can use it to make your own poem or inspire some other creative endeavor.  Here is the prompt for this month: There you have it. Now I'll confess, I don't particularly enjoy the ocean. Too many unknowns hiding down in the depths, but I do like being there, walking on the beach, collecting shells, occasionally boating and dipping my toes in the surf. The ocean is powerful and awe-insp...

Hello and happy International Friendship Month everyone!  I'm not sure what it's been like for you, but February has been a whopper of a month and I feel like I've gone through the full range of emotions within fifteen days. Through it all, God has been good and I've learned things that I wouldn't have learned otherwise.  Today is the fifteenth! Yay! About halfway through the month. We did it everyone! In keeping with the theme of this month, I thought a good poetry prompt would be "friends." Honestly, I wouldn't have made it this far through the month without my friends. I'm so happy that there's a whole month devoted to friendship. I wrote this poem a couple of years ago during a dark time in my life and so I thought I bring it out again for this month. If you'd like to use the prompt above to write a poem of your own about friends, or draw a picture, write a song or do something creative, you're more than welco...