Fun Friday: A Few Favorites about Fall
Fall is my favorite time of the year, and since we’ve actually started having some fall (rather than pre-winter) weather here in Middle Tennessee, it’s put me in a mind to list a few of my favorite things about the season.
- New TV season starts. With the exception of a few shows I watch on cable that run contrary to the regular season schedule (like the now-shortened Law & Order: Criminal Intent on USA, Primeval on BBC-A, and Army Wives on Lifetime), the new season begins in September (which, when I was in school, I never understood). I’ve already discussed, at length, what I watch. But I just want to give another shout-out to Flash Forward, which is my favorite new show this year.
- LSU Football! Anyone who’s known me for any length of time knows that I’m an LSU football fanatic—though I believe I have mellowed out about it in the past couple of years (since the last National Championship run in 2007).
Sleeves, Sweaters, and Jackets. Anyone who hates what short/cap sleeves/sleeveless shirts do to our upper arms (i.e., emphasize what doesn’t look good to begin with) is with me on this one. I love it when I can break out the 3/4- and long-sleeved shirts. And I especially love it when it gets cool enough to just throw on a jacket and not have to worry about what top I’m going to wear somewhere. This year, apparently, is the year of the cardigan. I have a few, and I’m okay with that, but I think I look better in the tailored jackets instead of the bulky sweaters. But sometimes, that fluffy sweater is just what’s needed. (In fact, CJ Banks is having a 40% off sale this week, and I went back and got this sweater that I modeled for them a couple of weeks ago—oh, and the tan faux-suede skirt, too.)- The end of hot weather (at least for a few months). Unlike most people who feel sluggish and hibernative during the cold-weather months, that’s what I feel like during the months when the daily temperature is above about 80 degrees. I have very little tolerance for hot weather—I overheat and dehydrate easily and then end up with a heat-induced migraine. So for me, when the temperature starts falling, my energy level starts rising. Even though the hours of daylight are shorter, I can get much more accomplished during the fall and winter months simply because I have more energy.
- Lower electric bills! Very important . . . when the temperature stays in the 60s and 70s for daytime highs, as it has been doing for the last couple of weeks, I need neither the AC nor the heater running to keep the house comfortably between 68 and 70 degrees. During these months, when there are no extremes to the temperature outside, my electric bill can be as low as $40 (compared to the highest it’s ever been, two years ago when we had five weeks of 100+ temperatures and it was $150).
- Anticipation of the holidays. For someone who lives alone in a city where I’m six to eight hours away from the members of my immediate family, I highly anticipate both Thanksgiving and Christmas because it means I’m going to get to spend time with my family. This year, I won’t get to see my sister’s family at Thanksgiving, which is usually one of the two times that I get to see them during the year. But it makes me glad that I was able to spend a week with them when I went to Baton Rouge early this summer. And I’ll get to see them for the ten or so days I’ll be in BR for Christmas. I also look forward to putting together the “Gift-a-Day” package for my niece and nephews. I remember what it was like to be a little kid and have a present to open every day during December (we had an aunt who did that for us a couple of years), so I’ve revived that tradition and do that for them now. Which means I need to get on the ball and get started shopping for that stuff, since I’ll have to ship it this year!
- Fall Colors. How could I have a list like this and not include my absolute favorite part of fall . . . the changing of the leaves. Here are some pictures I took at Shiloh National Military Park a couple of weeks ago:
A Chance to Win Ransome’s Honor
Okay, so I have this whole, long, drama-queen story about why I’ve been offline almost all day today . . . but that’s not why I’m posting. I’m posting to say: get on over to Krista Phillips’s blog before midnight (central) Thursday, November 4. Krista did a fun interview with me, and we’re giving away a signed copy of Ransome’s Honor to one lucky commenter on her blog.
You can find out what brand of toilet paper I prefer and see how I fared at creating a thirty-second elevator pitch on the fly:
Kaye & Krista, 2008 MTCW Christmas Book Signing Event
It’s Beginning to Look (and Sound) a Lot Like . . .
At least a week before Halloween, my Kroger store had put up a Coca-Cola Christmas display just inside the front doors—right in front of the double-wide aisle of Halloween stuff. When I mentioned this on Twitter, I got several messages back from people who admitted they were already listening to Christmas music.
Back when I used to sing in choir at church (have not done so regularly in several years), I know the Christmas music would come out some time in October—or even September in the church I attended in college which did a huge Living Christmas Tree production every year (which was only half of the program—there was a first hour that was done on stage in front of the tree structure—the couple of years I was in it, I think we had upwards of 250 people singing). So I was used to listening to all of that music in the car or at home to practice and memorize it from October on. But I still waited until closer to Thanksgiving to pull out what I consider to be “real” Christmas music.
Well, I had to make a Target run last night and while I was there, I picked up the Yo-Yo Ma and Friends Christmas CD. Which meant I of course had to listen to it on the way home. And it made me want to come home and pull out the rest of my Christmas music (well, pull it up on the computer, because I automatically rip all of my CDs to the computer as soon as I get them) and start listening. I even downloaded it all onto my MP3 player to take in the car with me as I run errands around town this afternoon.
So I figured that would be a good discussion topic for the blog today.
When do you start listening to Christmas music? Have you pulled yours out already? What’s your favorite Christmas song? What’s your favorite album?
This year, I started listening to Christmas music . . .
Yesterday!
Favorite Song:
“Peace on Earth/Silent Night” (Dean Martin, on Christmas with the Rat Pack)
Favorite Album:
What Is Stressing You Out?
As you can tell by the counter in the right-hand navigation bar, I’m barely more than halfway through the draft of Ransome’s Crossing—which is due in twenty-nine days (and there’s a holiday in there somewhere, too). I spent almost all day Saturday reading the galley of A Case for Love so that I could get my edits sent back this weekend (wasn’t due until Thursday, but with a new editing job coming either today or tomorrow, I wanted to get that out of the way while I could). In addition to getting Ransome’s Crossing finished this month, I have two relatively major freelance jobs to do this month—one due on November 17 and the other one on November 30. When I think about those and then think about how much I still need to accomplish on RC, it seems overwhelming—and that, in addition to general financial worries, is what led me to do some stress eating last week, which kept me from having any loss at the scale at WW yesterday.
But at WW, I had an interesting one-on-one conversation with the leader—started out talking about stress eating, then about the deadlines looming and how it’s so easy to get overwhelmed by stuff like that, especially at this time of the year. And of course, our meeting topic was on . . . dealing with all of the stress in our lives at this time of the year! It served as a great reminder that yes, while there’s a whole lot of stuff going on, I can’t lump it all together and try to tackle it all at once. If I plan and schedule my time wisely—and stick to that schedule—I’ll be able to get everything accomplished. (Of course, as far as the financial stress goes, I just keep running out to the mailbox every afternoon to see if the checks I’m desperately waiting for have arrived. And when they aren’t there, I just keep hoping and praying they’ll be there the next day.)
So those are the stresses I’m dealing with right now: getting RC finished, two big editing projects this month, financial worries, and wanting to be able to have as much time as possible to spend with my folks at Thanksgiving.
What is stressing you out right now? What’s a plan of action you can come up with (or can I help you with) to meet those stressors and deal with each one without getting overwhelmed by it?
Fun Friday: My Favorite “Scary” Movies
Last year, I shared a list of the “scariest” movies I’ve ever seen. (Proving once and for all what a total wimp I am when it comes to scary movies. If you want to see a list of movies that’ll scare the socks off of you, check out cousin Caleb’s Horrorfest on his blog.)
Upon occasion, I enjoy a suspenseful movie—and TV shows like Lost or FlashForward (man, am I loving that show!). Most of the time, I get my fix for that adrenaline rush that comes from suspense through action-oriented films, rather than those that are specifically “suspense” movies—mostly because I’m leery of those, not knowing just how scary they’re going to be. So, here we go . . . my favorite “scary” movies. (I hope I can come up with five!)
5. Silence of the Lambs. Though I’ve never watched this movie all the way through a second time, my memory of the first time I ever saw this film is strong enough that it deserves a place on this list. This film came out when I was in school at LSU. My best friend and I decided to wait until it came out on video to watch it—because that way, we could have all the lights on and if it got too scary, we could walk away/turn it off. We, along with her sister, watched it all the way through (I think by the end all three of us were sitting on one cushion on the sofa) and it left an indelible great memory—more of the friendship shared than of the movie. But looking back, I remember so much more about that movie than about any other film I’ve only watched once, which indicates it is truly a well-written, well-acted, well-made movie.
4. The Sixth Sense. This is actually my favorite M. Night Shyamalan movie, and one of my top 10 movies of all time . . . but the reason I’ve only ranked it at #4 is because it’s not really that “scary.” Great suspense and a fantastic twist at the end, but only a couple of mild “jump” moments. This is the movie that I always use as an example and recommend people study when I’m talking to writers about surprise endings and the “unreliable narrator.” If you’ve never seen it, you need to—especially if you are at all interested in storytelling/writing. And if you’ve watched it but you’ve never taken time to watch the “rules and clues” piece (should be in the special features section on the DVD), you should watch it, just to see what went into putting a story like this together.
3. Dead Again. After having seen and fallen in love with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson in Henry V a year earlier, when I saw the previews for this movie (another one that came out when I was at LSU), I knew I wanted to watch it. Again, I waited for it to come out on video, but this one I watched alone—and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Sure, it deals with reincarnation, but what movie doesn’t ask us to suspend our disbelief for a couple of hours? There are a few little jump moments, but it’s the distrust and tension that builds through the telling of the stories of the modern-day and 1940s couples that makes this a wonderful suspense movie.
2. Jekyll. Okay, this is a little bit of a cheat, because it’s a miniseries instead of a theatrical-release film. As the title indicates, it’s a modern-day retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—and it’s one of my favorite suspenseful “movies” I’ve ever watched—multiple times. James Nesbitt, as Dr. Jackman, is superb in the dual Jekyll/Hyde role—as the tortured soul and the torturer—and the dialogue is brilliant. Part of this is a mystery—as Dr. Jackman struggles to figure out who he is and why he has this condition. Part of it is science fiction, as he’s captured and put through tests. Part of it is conspiracy-theory suspense as a plot unfolds that shows “the government” knows more about him than he knows himself. And all of it is just good, old-fashioned mayhem.
1. Signs. I get laughed at a lot when I admit that this is my favorite “scary” movie, but there’s no accounting for tastes, right? You know the scene when the alien’s locked in the pantry and Mel Gibson gets down on the floor to look under the door and the alien suddenly sticks its fingers out? Not only do I experience a high level of anxiety as that scene unfolds, but I jump every single time I watch it, even though I know what’s going to happen. Sure, the solution to how to get rid of the aliens is pretty lame, but the rest of the story is so well written and acted that it’s easy to forgive M. Night Shyamalan for his lack of imagination when it came to finishing off the bad guys in this film.
A Blessing or a Learning Opportunity?
I just got off the phone with an editor at one of the publishing houses for which I freelance. She called to offer me a great opportunity: a regular freelance copy-editing gig for at least the next six months as they launch a new fiction series. I’d receive the manuscript of a novel each month and have two weeks to turn it around and get it turned in—about twenty-five to forty hours of work. I’m scared to say yes, because I’m nowhere near being finished with Ransome’s Crossing, which is due December 1; and then as soon as I turn that in, I have to write Love Remains and have it turned in by February 1.
I know those of you who work full-time and still find time to write are looking at that—forty hours in one month—and thinking that’s only a week’s work. Yes, it is. However, when I’m trying to get a book written in less than two months’ time, that usually saps me of all energy, takes up most of my time, and makes it hard for me to do much else.
But I’m also scared to turn down this opportunity—because even though I’ve had a lot of jobs that came to me in August and September, they all turned out to be relatively short ones, which meant they didn’t bring in much money—which means I feel like I’d be an idiot to turn down work that would guarantee a certain amount of income every month for at least the next six months—if not upwards of two years or more, depending on how long this series ends up being.
Of course, I don’t have to look too far back in my own personal history to find times when I’ve had more than one thing going on—like back in 2004 and 2005 when I was employed full-time, was working on my master’s degree, was a leader/part-time SS teacher at my church, and was an officer with ACFW, especially in 2005 when the conference was here. But I also know that one of the things I learned during that season of my life was not to overcommit myself.
So I have about fifteen or sixteen hours to decide if this offer is a blessing I’d be a fool to pass up or another one of those character-building learning opportunities God is so fond of laying at my feet to see if I’ll trip on it, step on it, or stop and see it for what it is and change direction.
A Dedication Problem
Over the past year or so, I’ve discovered one of the most difficult things about the publishing process is not getting the book finished; it’s not going through the editorial process; it’s not discovering your name is spelled wrong on the title page of your first book with a publisher; it’s not even the unending marketing process. For me, one of the most difficult things to do in the publishing process is writing the dedication.
As I wrote on Monday, I don’t have a huge circle of intimates—I have lots of contacts, lots of acquaintances, but few people with whom I have a deep enough relationship that I would ever consider dedicating a book to them. As I told one group of writers this morning, the only people I’m really thinking of when I’m writing are the people who’re eventually going to read the book. (And that’s usually only when I’m writing those hook endings I love so much, because it gives me a perverse sense of pleasure knowing that I’m going to make them have to read the next chapter to see what happens!)
The pitiable thing is that, with only three books out, I’ve pretty much exhausted the list of people in my life whom I could dedicate books to—my parents and my grandmother, my sister’s family, and three good friends. (I do have to say, my twenty-one-year-old nephew was thrilled enough to see his name listed in the dedication of Ransome’s Honor that he actually DM’ed me through FB to let me know he’d seen it when he bought it at Walmart—late at night when no one else was around, but he did tell the cashier that his aunt had written the book and dedicated it to him!).
So I’ve been conducting a sort of informal poll of one of my writing groups to see how more experienced published authors handle this situation. I was actually surprised by the number of responses I’ve received in which the authors say that they either don’t do dedications anymore, they always dedicate it to their husband/kids, they use a teaser/epigraph/Bible verse instead, or they use a general dedication to their readers that pulls out a theme from the book.
The irony is, 99 percent of the time, I don’t even look at the dedication in books. Until I started having to write them, that is. So here are some interesting ones I ran across in the books I have on my shelves:
To Kelsey,
I’m so thankful God gave you to us.
But even more, that you
gave yourself to Him.
~Tamera Alexander, in From a Distance
***
This book is dedicated with love
to the memory of Cass Isbre,
in whose library, at the age of twelve,
I first discovered Jane Austen.
~Stephanie Barron, in Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor
***
This book is dedicated to
Nathan Crow
And all the young men and women of:
The Virginia Military Institute
West Point
Annapolis
The Air Force Academy
The Coast Guard Academy
Norwich
The Citadel
and
Texas A&M.
These youths, past and present, have freely chosen to endure personal sacrifice and hardship by dedicating their lives to defend and uphold the ideals and principles that have made this nation and its people unlike any other.
~Harold Coyle, in God’s Children
***
To the One who closed
the lion’s mouth.
~Brandt Dodson, in Daniel’s Den
***
To American trial lawyers.
~John Grisham, in The Rainmaker
***
This book is dedicated to members of the Dick Pfaff Philosophical Group, which for the past quarter-century has gathered each Tuesday evening to test the laws of probability and sometimes, alas, the Chaos Theory.
~Tony Hillerman, in The Fallen Man
***
This story is dedicated to everyone
who has ever felt too timid, too weak,
and too insignificant to be used by God for a grand purpose.
~M. L. Tyndall, in The Falcon and the Sparrow
***
For Lonnie,
who took a chance on me when I was feeling invisible.
And for all those women who feel invisible—
whether by size, age, or circumstance . . .
The old hymn says, “His eye is on the sparrow.”
His eye is on you.
~Laura Jensen Walker, in Miss Invisible
***
Dedicated to the memory of
God’s extraordinary women
in every place
in every time.
~Stephanie Grace Whitson, in Unbridled Dreams
***
So what do y’all think? Do you read the dedications in books? What kinds of dedications do you like to see? What suggestions do you have for me when it comes to the dedication in A Case for Love?
Community Connections vs. Inescapable Isolation
I’ve been visiting a new church (new to me, anyway) the last couple of weeks. It’s a different denomination than the one I grew up in, yet still shares enough similarities in worship style that I’m able to actually feel like a participant in the service instead of just an observer, as I felt at the Episcopal church.
One of the things that has impressed me about this new (to me) denomination is their strong focus on hospitality and community connectedness, both on the local-church and the national-denomination levels. Yesterday, the pastor of this church started a new series on connectedness. He started off with a story about an older gentleman he knew many years ago who, when asked to what church he belonged, said, “Well, I’m a member over at First Baptist. But I don’t ‘belong’ there.” That’s exactly how I’ve felt at the last few churches I’ve attended/been a member of. I’m a member (or I attend), but I don’t belong—in other words, I’m not really connected there as a part of the community.
After the pastor’s brief introduction, he had a member of the church get up and speak for the rest of the sermon time about her experience with how she came to attend this church and why she, and her family, continues to make the twenty-mile drive from Hendersonville to Hillsboro Village in Nashville several times a week—and a couple of times a day on Sundays. She talked about how people reached out to her when her family first started attending. She talked about the SS classes and small groups in which they got involved. She talked about her children’s involvement in the children’s and now youth programs.
Then, last night on Extreme Home Makeover, the idea of community was once more vividly exemplified before me as the team went to work building a house for a family who left mainstream, corporate jobs to open up a food/clothing bank for low-income families in their town. The difference this family has made in their town, the people whose lives they’ve touched, was just one more reminder of how much we, as humans, need to be connected with those around us—whether we’re related to them or not.
There are days when I actually miss having an office to go to where I’m around other people. My last full-time job was great: It was a small group (about twenty-five people) and the nature of our jobs, as editors and graphic designers, meant that we spent most of our days in our offices alone. However, there was the time of gathering in the kitchen first thing in the morning to fix our coffee and heat up our breakfasts. There was lunchtime when we all sat in the kitchen together to eat and talk. There were the trips in and out of each other’s offices to discuss projects or hand them over/pick them up. There were meetings (okay, don’t really miss those quite so much). And there were the two coworkers I went to the gym with almost every evening after work.
Even though I’m still in touch with those coworkers, and I see one of them once a week at Weight Watchers, not seeing them every day, not talking to them face to face, means there’s so much going on in their lives that I’m missing out on. On those rare occasions when we have time to sit down for coffee—or even more rarely, a meal—we spend all of our time catching up on what’s been going on in our lives, and realizing what we’ve been missing out on.
All of this talk of community has made me start thinking about my own communities. I live in a neighborhood in which I know most of my near neighbors—at least by first name. We’re the stand-at-the-fence talking kind of neighborhood. Would I consider any of them friends? No. Acquaintances—but acquaintances I trust enough to let them know when I’m going to be out of town so they can keep an eye on things. In fact, a few years ago, when I was up in Pennsylvania for my week of residency at grad school, my across-the-street neighbor called me to make sure everything was okay because she hadn’t seen my car or seen me coming and going in several days and wanted to make sure I wasn’t in the hospital or anything. That’s community.
I’m also a member/President of Middle Tennessee Christian Writers. This group started out slowly, as a coffee/dinner group really, between four of us who lived in this area and found each other through ACFW. It’s now grown to more than twenty members. We used to meet once a month—sometimes with just two or three people showing up, sometimes six or seven. We now meet twice a month and have at least fifteen members and several visitors attending. We also have a Yahoo e-mail group through which we communicate with each other almost daily (on varying levels). We challenge each other with our writing. We encourage each other when we hit roadblocks. We pray for each other. That’s community, on a much deeper level.
I also have my family, both immediate and extended. Over the past ten or twelve years, as everyone in the extended family started getting computers and internet connections, our family started to communicate with each other in a way that we never really had in the past—before e-mail, pretty much the only time we all talked with each other was when we were sitting around in my grandmother’s living room at Christmas. But now, with everyone online—and with the majority of the family on Facebook—I’m much more connected with my extended family than ever before. Of course, my deepest connection is with my parents, and it’s not unusual for me to pick up the phone and call my mom just to chat. That’s both family and community.
I know I am not connected enough—especially on the local level, which is why I’m really searching for a church where I “belong.” Because I have quite a bit of inescapable isolation in my life. As a freelance editor and as an author, most of what I “do” has to be done alone, in isolation—not around other people. My problem is that the areas of Community and Isolation are out of balance in my life. And that’s why I’m really hoping this “new” church may be my new community.
What are your communities? How are you involved in them? Do you have too much “community” time and not enough “isolation” time, or are you like me: too isolated with a need to get more connected in some communities?
Fun Friday: A Picture Is Worth . . .
Sometimes, words just aren’t necessary.
Happy Friday!
Resistance Is Futile
You will be assimilated.
Freedom is irrelevant.
You must comply.
Death is irrelevant.
Resistance is futile.
I mentioned yesterday my unwanted familiarity with the bowel and stomach irregularities (or regularities) of my social-networking friends’ pets and children. However, today, I’d give anything to be inundated with those kinds of comments on my Facebook page . . . because I CAN’T ACCESS IT AT ALL. For those who follow me on Twitter, you know that I’ve been having increasingly worse trouble with being able to use Facebook over the past few weeks until now, I can rarely get anything other than an “Account Temporarily Unavailable” message—if I can even get past the log-in screen. Then, when I do finally get logged in, I’ve apparently lost all my friends but one: my aunt Nancy McLellan (love you, Nancy!!!!), because she’s the only one showing up in my friends list.
As I’ve struggled with having less and less access to Facebook, I’ve started experiencing a little bit of anxiety—whose updates am I missing? what if I’ve missed something important? what if someone has posted a message to me that I can’t see/answer? what if I can’t get logged-in and share the pithy comment that crossed my mind?
I started to write off FB altogether, to delete my account and go about my daily business and rely on Twitter as my social networking site. The problem is that the majority of my family is on Facebook, and I’d be totally out of the loop on what’s going on with them if I weren’t there. Also, because I have so many friends all over the country (the world, really) with whom my (current) sole contact is through FB, I would not only not be able to communicate with them, I’d lose contact with them—because we’ve never exchanged e-mail addresses.
Yes, I’ve been assimilated by Facebook.
Freedom is irrelevant.
How is it that over the course of just a year or two, I’ve managed to put myself at the mercy of a website like Facebook that can now control me and my relationships with other people? One of the things I enjoyed about FB in the beginning was the way that I was able to connect with people from my past whom I never thought I’d ever hear from again in this lifetime, as well as family members with whom I’d had very little contact before but now have grown pretty close to by connecting with them and discovering things about them we might never have had a chance to know about each other by seeing each other only every third or fourth Christmas or at family weddings.
Facebook giveth . . . but Facebook taketh away.
Because I work at home, Facebook is one of my main sources of contact with the “outside world” during the day. In addition to the time I spend writing and reading blog posts, up until the last couple of weeks, I would spend quite a bit of time daily on FB communicating with friends and family. I mainly used FB as a communication tool—Addicted to Lost is the only active application I have on my profile, and I only use that when the show is on (in the springtime). So it’s not like I’m spending hours on FB playing games or building a farm or being in the mafia or giving people flowers or blessings or anything like that. It’s definitely a communication tool for me. And now that outlet for communication has been taken away.
You must comply.
Even though I know I’m not likely to be able to get on it, I still find myself clicking on the button in my quick-links bar a couple of times an hour to see if that will be the time I’ll be able to log in, if that will be the time that I can actually see my friends’ and family’s posts. And when I can’t, when I see things like Account Temporarily Unavailable, Validation Error, You Do Not Have Permission To View This Profile (my OWN profile), Kaye Has No Wall Posts, Kaye Has Not Posted Any Links, You Must Confirm Your E-mail Address followed by Invalid E-mail Address, I become frustrated and angry and tense because the website is controlling my ability to be able to communicate, to be able to connect with others.
I managed to post a status update today asking for anyone who could see it to comment on the update to make sure I still “existed.” And (after getting about 20 “validation” errors and “you don’t have permission to post that” errors and “you must be logged in to do that” errors) my one abiding thought was EVIL TECHNOLOGY. But it’s not really the technology that’s evil—it’s just failed. The “evil” is that I’ve become so reliant on being able to connect with people through Facebook (and Twitter, which has been “overloaded” much of the day today, impinging on my ability to communicate with folks there, too) that 99 percent of the time, I spend my entire week without having any meaningful face-to-face communication with people (or even on the phone).
Death is irrelevant.
Sunday, after being out of the house until about four o’clock in the afternoon, I spent most of the evening and night (until about 3 a.m.) pacing around the house and stretching my left leg, trying to alleviate the painful muscle spasms and cramps I was experiencing (a lingering side-effect of the back surgery I had in 2003). I couldn’t sit for more than a few minutes at a time, and being at the computer wasn’t on the agenda. I ended up sleeping until almost 2:30 in the afternoon Monday, and when I sent the daily challenge to my local writing group that afternoon, I made a quip about how I bet they were wondering where I’d been. One of the members responded that she’d been a little worried when she hadn’t seen any e-mails or Twitter or FB updates from me in more than twenty-four hours. I was actually comforted by that, because I’ve seen WAY too many cop shows where they find a body of someone who turns out to have been dead for several days/weeks and no one reported them missing—because no one noticed they were gone. So, I guess my addiction to FB (and to a lesser degree, Twitter) and blogging is a good thing, because hopefully someone would notice before a week had gone by that I wasn’t communicating and something might be wrong. (But, conversely, if the only way they know how to contact me is through FB, Twitter, or the blog, how would they contact me to make sure I’m okay? Ah . . . the conundrum.)
So, even though I hate to admit it, resistance IS futile.
KayeDacus.com 
