I Committed Before I Was Ready – and I’m Glad I Did
Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay I sat, frustrated, on the couch in the living room. I squinted at the clock. It was after 12:30am. I took a deep breath and scrolled through YouTube, poring through the search results for “easy fingerpicking patterns”. Only 8 1/2 hours until I had to play in front of […]
Why is building a daily writing habit so hard?
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay Let’s do some math. A typical Hardwick novel is about 70 chapters long. I could, with little effort, write one chapter per day during the week. With 5 weekdays every week, that means I could write and complete a new Hardwick book in 14 weeks, or a little over three […]
How I Use Todoist, 2021 Edition: Recurring Tasks
Image by Alexander Franke from Pixabay This, right here, is why I use a to-do list app and not a pen and paper. We all have tasks that need to be done every day, every week, every other month, or whatever. Some prefer to use a calendar for this, but I find that I never […]
How I Use Todoist, 2021 Edition: Organizing All My Projects
Image by Ag Ku from Pixabay I’ve used a lot of to-do list apps in my day. Working for myself for 13 years, I have to have some place to organize everything. My day doesn’t just consist of a handful of things that I have to get done. I’ve got different responsibilities for different areas […]
How I Use Todoist, 2021 Edition: Organizing My Day with Labels
Image by Photo Mix from Pixabay Like most people, I’m kicking off 2021 with a pretty clear idea of the goals I want to achieve. I don’t really like calling them “resolutions” because the word has such a frustrating connotation – everyone knows that resolutions are busted by, like, Week 3 of the year. However, […]
The Most Embarrassing Moment of My Life
I wasn’t supposed to do it. I didn’t volunteer for it. When I saw it was coming, I figured I would avoid it like the plague. But it didn’t matter. I was chosen. I was stuck. Doomed to be publicly humiliated in front of around 1,000 people… four times in one weekend. And it wound […]
5 Things I Learned About Myself Writing My 5th Book
Image by TanteTati from Pixabay This morning, I finally finished drafting my fifth novel: almost 86,000 words across 78 chapters. And while I couldn’t be happier, there’s a part of me that is a little frustrated by the moment of success: namely, that I planned to have this moment last February. In my infinite wisdom, […]
We should stop mourning the idea of getting older
A few weeks ago, I attended the funeral of a friend of mine, someone I’ve known my entire life. He passed away at only 42 years old, after more than 5 years of fighting off terminal cancer. He left behind a wife and four children. It was a nice weekend of being with family and […]
Looking for solutions in the wrong places
Image by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay My stomach has had a rough 13 years. It honestly started a couple years before 2007. Intermittently, without warning or pattern, my stomach would turn on me. I would feel as though I was being stabbed in the abdomen with a knife. It could come in the middle of […]
Fear will make you miss out on life
It’s almost depressing how clearly I remember this. I was playing shortstop, for some reason. Normally, the other kids would send me to right field. That’s where they always sent the kid who was picked last – and I was always the kid picked last. On our playground (which was just a parking lot), right […]