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

-BlackPrincess This 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

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

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Some Title Here

cropped-summer-sun-yellow-spring Ever 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

Hard Choices

Hard choices were made this week. Accounts were permanently closed or disabled. I don’t know how many people were following the Jo Experiment Blog Review. I barely got any feedback and I was never as prolific with reviews as I wanted to be. However, it was one of the longest blog accounts I had, and I tried to keep it up. The spirit was always willing, but the body was … … tired, hungry or uninspired to create intelligent, entertaining, informative essays on media. I had expanded the JoEx to include anime, graphic novels as well as books from any genre, that I read or listened too. It is crazy that along with writing fiction I would set myself up to do so much and then freeze.
This blog, the universe was supposed to be about writing, fiction, the writing business and the road to developing a podcast. I don’t know if I ever wrote all those things in one sentence for the account but there it is.
This account was started when I failed with the website on 1and1.

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
Thomas A. Edison

I don’t know if I have found 10,000 ways to fail as a writer, but it just feels like it. [side note: I don’t know if this quote is a verified Thomas A. Edison Quote. Any objections should be taken up with brainy quotes of brainyquotes.com]. I used to have a blog about becoming well and healthy, about fiction only, about book reviews etc. Each with a defining flower so I know what the hell I was looking at and where I should file or post the essay. But once I put a name on it. I had a problem creating and it was easier to let other issues in life take up space. I have family members that sometimes need help and since I am generally low on cash, I offer my time and person. It takes a toll. The result was that the blogs suffered. I would leave them for months and then come back with an apology essay and then state that I will do better.
That never really happened because there were a number of pressing family issues to deal with. I have never felt comfortable exposing my whole life online. There are some things I am willing to share and there are some things I will never write about here.

Two years ago, two of my close relatives died. It changed a lot of things in my life. I am still dealing with it. I am now realizing that I would always be dealing with it. Of course, writing helps. I have solved most of my moodiness with writing.

I would like to say that this essay was easy to write. It wasn’t. I made several attempts that ended up in the delete folder. Ever so often I come across a YouTube video or podcast that reminds me that writing is not just about art, but it is also a business.

One of the most important goals is to produce intelligent and entertaining essays for this blog. Another is to make each essay informative as well. As a reader expect some essays will be subjective and others will be objective. Some posts will be fiction, other reviews on fiction. There will also be the odd essay about the podcast as well as essays with a different point of view.

Overall, I am hoping that what I am writing is worth reading. It is not just a plea from a person online screaming “Like me, Please Like Me!”

The process is ever evolving.

In conclusion, I am hoping to attract readers who comment and like my work. I don’t have a number in my head. In the past, I have taken all kinds of steps in many directions and surprise got no positive results because I was spreading myself too thin. Consolidation is difficult but necessary.

End

lioness standing