Let's Start Over  EZ Publishing - 'Let's Start Over'  read more...

I have written about and forwarded a few articles on depression and mental health in the past. I recognize the strength it takes to speak…

If your looking for something to stuff in your pets stocking this year, I have a great product that I got to review! De-Stress your Pet this Holiday

My dog Susie says...

Life's little stresses

Last week I barked about taking your dog to work and its benefits. Well, how about other places that pets help humans: like school? In colleges from Atlanta to San Francisco counseling centers are using dogs to reduce…

Check out this old blog post from January that I never published on apriloutloud.com. I was working a PT job that had me feeling like I was always running on empty. I'm no longer with the place, and reading this blog helped me actually feel good about that. It's short but funny! 

I’m so exhausted. And overwhelmed, and yes stressed. Maybe I shouldn’t be but I am. I’ve been so exhausted from my regular job that I have no energy to write half the time and I’m eating Subway…

Kelley, Since the birth of my beautiful daughter 13 yrs. ago, I feel very emotional with too many things at one time. My work life, marriage, and neighbourhood, have caused me to have the feeling that someone or something does not want me to be comfortable in my own space/skin, and overall happiness. My dad passed just 3 months prior to his eightieth, Mom is eighty two now, and I fear my husband is leaving me. My resilience is gone. Could you help? Joy…

I love writing a haiku when I am stressed over my writing.  Why?  These days, I write novels and screenplays-- and sometimes, it all gets overwhelming. Just so many words, pages of them (I print everything out so I literally do I piles of pages around my desk). But here's the thing, some days I need to focus on the small not the big. On the syllable and not the sentence. I need to re-charge my writing. I do so by writing a…

My dog Susie says

To reduce stress: rent a pet?

I've been hearing a lot about how owning a pet can reduce life's daily…

So, I'm a senior in high school, right? What should I know about busy schedules? I mean, I'm entering the "real world" soon, but I have just a taste of what it's like.

I know that writing can be sometimes pretty difficult to fit into an overbooked schedule, and it hurts when you can't make time for the one thing you really love.

I may not know what you guys are up to, with working part times, or full times, not having enough time to work on a script, a poem, a character…

Now that I've embarked on the presumably lengthy journey to publication, I'm doing a lot of waiting.  I loan out the MS to a beta reader and then I wait for feedback.  I send the query to my editor cousin and wait for a thumbs up.  I email tentative query notes to a few select agents and wait for the no's to roll in.

I know that the process is going to be long.  But the waiting has go to go.  After pouring myself into my novel for months straight, I can't just sit back and…

http://www.yourbestwritinggroup.com/?p=494

Cheryl, can you be available at 3:15 for a phone conversation?  Finally, I was receiving my new assignment after being promoted 3 weeks before into a job that matched my skills and interests.  Having already started some tasks for my new boss, my energy level soared to meet the challenges placed in front of me.  3:20, the call finally came.  We wanted to let you know that we…

Reprioritizing:  Creating 24 Hours of Bliss

I live a good life, hectic, overscheduled and a tad on the stressful side, but otherwise good.  My two jobs bring joy and challenge through teaching.  I write daily.  I practice yoga faithfully to bring clarity, inner peace and balance.  But some days I fall into bed so exhausted that I cannot move or worse, can’t quiet my mind to sleep.  The cycle of chaos does wear on…

I haven’t done much writing lately. I have done a lot of thinking. I have been thinking, and observing and analyzing.  We live in a world of over-stimulation and sometimes you need to slow down and let everything sink in; permeate your consciousness so that you can make sense of it all.

It has been a long time since I had the opportunity to take a dynamic retreat. I had forgotten how meaningful it can be.

Prolonged periods of apparent aimlessness are unfortunately frowned upon…

Stress fractures aren’t an actual break in the bone and you can’t really see them on an x-ray, but they are incredibly painful and if not treated, they can create more complex problems later.

I have a stress fracture right now, but it isn’t in my bones.

It is in my…

I haven't been blogging here mostly because I have four other blogs and they really take up most of my blogging time. I also manage and am one of the administrators for the Louisville Bed and Breakfast Blog. So you see, I'm not new to this blogging thing. In fact I really love it. It's a great way to focus, to work out things that have been bothering me, and to try to make sense of all the many ideas running around in my head.

I've decided I am going to blog here as often as…

I often wonder how we, as women, survive.  I know that I am not unusual, but I spend the majority of my time worrying about what I have to do, longing to do the things I want to do, and guilting myself out when I don’t get things done, because I was doing what I wanted to do for myself.

Why do we do this to ourselves?  Life is complicated enough without adding more and more layers of complexities.  Somehow, society has painted a picture of what the perfect woman should be.  She should…

I am typing today’s post with sore and battered fingers.  No, I haven’tsmashed my thumb again.  Well…I did, but it’s OK.  I’ve been building fence and tomato cages today.  Finishing up my garden fence and building tomato cages was just two things on my lengthy list of to-dos.

...Continue

WordPress Post A Week 2011 topic suggestion #56: 

What keeps me up at night?

Ummm…it might be easier to list the things that don’t keep me up at night:

• Tornadoes – it’s a good thing the hubby is a light sleeper
• The dog barking
• Wondering who got kicked off American Idol – our family is Idoled out.
• Wondering if my husband will like the dusty…

http://wordsinsync.blogspot.com/2011/02/8-steps-to-dump-guilt.html

Do you end your days with guilt niggling at your stomach, nagging at the back of your mind, waking you up in the middle of the night? Apparently, it’s very much a …