As-Is

 

800px-Sunflowers 3It is August and I am still struggling with the few essays,  I planned for this blog account.  It is frustrating and sometimes depressing and yet I persist.  Writing is very important to me but it is not the only thing I have going on in my life.  So this post is me when I am not writing.  It has taken me longer than I would like to admit putting this post together.  However, once the draft is completed to my satisfaction, I am posting it.  It will be like the title As-Is.

First, I am still someone’s mother.  My kid is actually a legal adult, however, she is still my kid.  We are about the same height and often to her chagrin, strangers think we are sisters.  Thank you Anti-aging moisturizer.  My kid is a reader like her mother.  She studies the Chinese language and is also struggling with developing her own fictional story, in the space opera romance.   I believe I mentioned it in a previous blog.

Then there is the day job it is hard to define since it combines the work of a caregiver and home health aide.  Before there is any protest, I looked it up and both jobs are defined differently even though they overlap in many areas.   The official title is Consumer Directed Personal Assistant, which means if something goes terribly wrong with the client,  the agency that cut my checks does not get sued by the family.  Other things are included but the most important is the care of the client.    I took this job because it was something I could do.    I don’t love or hate it.  I am glad that I am able to help someone in need.  This way I was not only helping the client, but I was also helping his previous caregiver. There are good days, bad days and meh days.   There isn’t more to add to that.

I have been planning on writing about this project but that post is still being worked on.  So I will mention it here.  I am developing a podcast.  Yes, I’m aware that podcasts are the new blogs, there are a million out there.   The small low budget podcast that I would present to the world, is like a drop of water in the vast oceans of podcasts.  Equal to this blog.   I’m an avid podcast listener and many podcasters encourage new ones to start up all the time.     The podcast is called the Red Mushroom podcast and it is about writing and the writing business.  It is all under construction.  I wonder why one of my many creative goals is to produce a podcast.   There are many writing podcasts out there.  However there is only one me and I believe that it is quite possible for me to reach that one person, who wants to write but doesn’t know where to start, wants to write but doesn’t understand the craft, wants to be successful but doesn’t understand the business.   Believe it or not, writing is a triad of art, craft, and business. I have listened to many blogs and they don’t always reach the audience they claim to be looking for.  I also realize how strange it is to begin a post claiming not to talk about writing only to come back to it.  I want to not only entertain people; I also want to inspire and inform.  So stay tuned.

The last things that I will write about are my phone games.  First I will like to say that I am not paid by any of these games, to endorse them. I play them and have paid them but that optional.  There is Home Design, Design Home, Homescapes, Wordscapes,  Wordswipe, Sushi Bar, Cooking Diary, Cooking Madness  Polygrams and Block Puzzle Jewel.  One of these days I may go into detail why I like these games.  That won’t happen on this post.  There is also all the streaming entertainment.   Almost everything with the exception of learning Esperanto on Duolingo will circle back to writing. I don’t think about learning a language as a game, so I didn’t add the app to my phone game list.  It is just an app that is on my phone.   The games and language app, are fun to use and playing is best when listening to an audiobook.

This may all seem like a waste of precious time.  I have felt that way too sometimes.  It is the things I do when I’m not writing.  In the future, I may do a time analysis.  I have cut back on some and others I take an interest every other week or so.   There are more things, events, places, these are the things that come up first.  My family is always on my mind.   Every day brings unique or unusual challenges.

End

 

 

Sunday Post #2

Some Quote Here

 

The beginning of this week will be different from most of them.  I am not at home in New York.  I’m in Georgia to attend a wedding.  Yay!  I am happy for the couple but ready for everything to be over already.  It is a kind of selfish on my part however these are my feelings.  This event changed what my summer would be looking like.  This may not have been stated before,  the day job is a patient care assistant gig.   I was hired directly by the family so the official title is a personal assistant.   Instead of hours of patient care,  I worked a block time to be off for seven days. When I go home I will work another block of time to relieve the colleague, who is taking care of the patient since I’ve been away. I will be a wreck.  Traveling takes energy,  preparing for a wedding takes energy, as well as taking care of a patient takes energy.  Being creative also takes energy.  Is my dilemma making sense?

In times like these, I catch up on interesting and entertaining movies, tv shows, listen to inspirational books, fantastic stories, informative podcasts, and music.  I keep in mind that time to be creative will come again.  Sometimes the mind is willing but the body can’t and vice versa. I make plans, consider writing reviews on what I am taking in, make notes.  It is difficult to remember but I do my best.  I would like to think that it would be better if there was some kind of achievement completed. This is a complicated thought because I won’t know until I do it.  I still feel the time is against me and some times the people in my life are against me too.

I get over this by writing.  I handle the negative feelings by posting them on this blog.  I apologize for sharing or oversharing.  I want this blog to be an upbeat account of a writer’s life.  But nothing is ever upbeat all the time.  There are downer days, weeks, months.  I’m grateful that I haven’t had a downer month is a couple of years.   I realized the triggers and  I work on them.  It doesn’t always show up on this blog.  What is important is that they happen.

It has been decided that this entry will be a short one. Mainly because there is a wedding to attend.    If possible there will be another entry this week.  There will definitely be an entry next week.  Until then I hope everyone has a good productive week.

End

-BlackPrincess

 

 

 

Sunday Post #1

 “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

-BlackPrincessThis is going to be an entry about my desire to be consistent with this blog account.   It only appears like I’m doing nothing because I have requirements I wish to meet before posting an essay.    Therefore, there are several essays in development.  However, none are ready to be posted yet.

The struggle for an informative and entertaining read is something I strive for all the time.  To improve my writing, I am taking a couple of classes on Skillshare.  This is not an endorsement of the product.  I have just succumbed to all the ads, that I have seen on YouTube.  There are a number of creators I follow that have endorsed the service.  Some even have classes on the Roster.  Yes, those are my first three classes.     Courses take up an hour to 50 minutes to watch.  Each lesson is broken up into 9-5minutes.  All the lessons can be taken one day.  I am breaking them up to absorb the lessons, take notes and use the resources offered.  If there are longer lessons in classes I haven’t seen them yet.   It is true that Skillshare is the budget savvy Master class, I’m good with the price.  If needed I will add my thoughts on how everything is going.

One of my goals is to improve my writing and become consistent with the work I produce, for this blog.

When I invite people to the JC Henry Universe Blog, I want them to see something of value and come back, make comments, recommend it to others.  No one wants a bad blog site, otherwise, why make it public?

The other goal is to be a published author.  I’m a writer and I write almost every day.  I don’t doubt that.  An accredited author is a level of success I have not reached.  Yet.  There are several reasons for that.  Some might say this blog is published so stop nitpicking.  I agree and disagree at the same time.  In the future, I would go in detail what I think my creative success would be.  Expect it to be an interesting exercise.  Mainly because along with that I should add the steps taken to achieve success.   If no one has said it before, let it be stated here.  There is no such thing as Instant Success.  For people on TV, Films, and other media.   Especially for writers who wish to be authors.   We always have a day job.   I have even heard a couple of authors state that they prefer it that way.  I am still on the fence on that subject.

Another reason I wanted to write this brief essay and post it is that I don’t post regularly.   This is the beginning of a new month and week, full of opportunities and possibilities.  I have to stay positive and produce the work I want people to see.    This is all I have to say on this subject.  Maybe in future Sunday post, I will have more relevant things to include.   I hope everyone’s week goes well.

Peace

JCH Universal Review #1

RG Bad Feminist
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
Narrated by Bahni Turpin
Publish August 2014 a collection of essays on various topics, unique ones like scrabble tactics, dated ones like sweet valley high, sad and rage-filled ones when she writes about rape and the murder of Trayvon Martin. It was an odd experience listening to this book. Roxane Gay wrote about things that I should have remembered viscerally but I still felt distanced and detached. What was I doing in the two years before August 2014?
A job similar to what I am doing now, taking care of an elderly person except that person was not a relative. I remember hearing snippets of Gay’s essays on NPR via WNYC radio. There was also a book review. I can’t remember by who and I’m not sure what it said. This review will be completely new and possible less eloquent.
Bad Feminist as I understand it, are parts of Roxane Gay’s life, good and terrible and the idea that most women are bad feminists. Actually, there are no perfect feminists. She writes about the word feminist, used as a slur and used as a shield. She writes on how we as girls can mislead ourselves into dangerous situations. How there is no safety net when something like that happens. How shaming the girl is damaging for the woman she will become. She puts herself out there as an example. I admire the bravery and not sure I will ever be that brave.
Listening to Gay’s book did prompt me to buy a digital copy. I don’t know if reading or listening to the essays would change the experience. I do know that it has made more thoughtful or so many things in our culture. When I use that term “our culture” I mean the United States mass culture. I would love to say I’m not affected by it. But I don’t think it is safe for anyone born and raised in this country. Despite all the achievements made in the last couple of years, the things written in Bad Feminist are issues we have to deal with.
Bahni Turpin did a wonderful job narrating the essay. I don’t know how many audiobooks she has worked on, but I will recognize her name in the future. I have been a member of the Audible since 2011 and haven’t followed the success of voice actors. Even though it may be a growing industry for people who are into that work.
In conclusion, Bad Feminist has impressed on me to read or listen to Roxane Gay’s other two collections of essays, Hunger and Difficult Women. I will definitely look into her fiction writing as well.

End

shallow focus photography of pink flowers
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Some Title Here

cropped-summer-sun-yellow-springEver so often I feel like writing and posting an essay that is similar to a Do Now, the teacher assignment given to elementary kids at the beginning of the class period.  I call them free write essays.

Bear with me this might hurt.  I write that because I have read previous free write essays on other blog accounts,  all posted without the benefit of the Grammarly app and they are sometimes painful to read.

What I will like to accomplish is an entertaining essay on how good intentions can be difficult.  These intentions are my writing plans.  However, this will mostly be a stream of consciousness essay on random thoughts that go through this writer’s mind.   One thought blending into another thought that may or may not be related.  Essays like this are usually a response to something that happened in the public eye – politics, the internet, various business industries, etc.     I have done my best to stay away from the outrage wagon or the trending wagon.  There are people whose only purpose in life is to outrage others.   While we are exploring the outrage, we are missing important clues everywhere.  I was trying to come up with something more profound but the words are not with me today.

I started this essay in the last week in March I think.  The plan was to write everything and then post it with or without grammar corrections.   It is now the third week in April.  My reasons for this vary.   There was a family event and there is Camp Nanowrimo.   I may write a Camp Nanowrimo blog or a Nanowrimo blog.   I am supposed to be posting an essay at least every week on the Universe.  That does not happen.  I believe sometimes it is because I don’t feel I’m qualified enough to write on a certain subject.   This is also the reason I stay away from what is trending.  By the time I feel like I know enough to write on a subject.   It is no longer trending.  I will still write about it, just to get my thoughts out of my head. I won’t post it.   There are exceptions, those are not posted because I haven’t finished them.

Despite everything that is going on in my life the ups and downs, I can’t see myself not writing.  I can’t see myself not telling myself tailor-made stories or revising something that I read, watched or listened to.   I didn’t give this entry a title because I knew it would be paragraphs of rambling thoughts.  I hope this inspires someone to create something like me or not be like me.  As long as they are happy with the choices they made.

Today I am good with my choices.

End

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