writer

Writing is Like a Marriage

/ Ajmorse / 2 Comments

 

I started going to therapy about two months ago now. It was a hard thing for me at first…I’m not used to baring my soul to a stranger, but I can see the benefits of getting some things out there in the open.

Being a writer has become a big topic of my therapy sessions. My therapist seems to notice how often I talk about writing, how important it is to me, and how frustrated I’ve become with it sometimes.

It is funny, we talk about how writing is sometimes like a marriage; you have your ups and downs and you have to work hard sometimes to keep re-establishing that relationship.

Writing used to be such a big comfort in my life, especially in college. I would take my pen to the blank page and it was like all the cares and worries of the day would fall away as long as I could keep creating, as long as I could keep writing.

Now that magic seems to happen less and less. I don’t always write with the freedom that I used to. It is a rare moment when the words come like a free-flow of consciousness.

It is a work in progress. I blog. I write poetry. I try to work on my novels-in-progress. I try to write at least once a day, but sometimes it is more like a few times a week…

I find myself breaking up with writing and then coming back like, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, can we start over?”

I sometimes find myself wondering: Am I still a writer? And seriously, if I still was, then how come I struggle so much? A person who calls herself a writer doesn’t struggle so much, does she?

Coming back to that same thought process over and over is exhausting and not at all productive. I don’t need to keep trying to convince myself that I am still a writer.

I need to remind myself that writing is a process and no one does it the right way, and no one does it the wrong way. You can read all the self-help books in the world…but remember, what works for someone, might not work for you.

I can’t tell you how much of a relief it was to realize that…that there was no wrong way to approach writing. And a lot of published authors now express some of the same sentiments.

How do they go about writing? Where does the magic come from? Most answers: Who the heck knows?!

What do you guys think?

Happy writing!

What if You Could Say What You Want in a Cover Letter?

/ Ajmorse / 2 Comments

Today was a productive day. I managed to apply for a few new jobs, do laundry, take a walk and enjoy the sunshine. It was a beautiful day today, and I walked the few blocks to the falls from our house. The sound of the water pounding in a plummet over rocks is both beautiful and relaxing.

Who needs the white noise of the city? I’d take my sounds of running water any day! The walk was a much-needed break from the resume and cover letter writing I was doing, which I always find somewhat tedious.

Who loves writing resumes? Definitely NOT this girl…there’s not many people I know who like writing cover letters either. Who likes writing pretty much the same thing over and over but in different, clean and precise words?

During the writing, I was also thinking about how you have to approach different styles of writing with a different mind-set. Well, at least, I do!

While, resume writing this afternoon, I was focused. Like, super focused. Headphones on to drown out the noise, and notebook in front of me, I didn’t leave my desk until I had to switch the laundry over and even then I was thinking about the next paragraph: why am I the best candidate for this job?

The reason might be, because I have a tendency to over-think it. I am a creative writer, I want the words to sound great, to have a flow, but you have to remember: you can’t sacrifice content for creativeness. 

For the cover letter, it is also the same way. It is a business letter to the potential employer, and you are the sales person. Why are you a great person for the job? And no amount of flowery words can cover a lack of experience.

To a person who likes to create characters and disappear into compelling dialogue, resume writing is about as boring as essay writing – and I didn’t much enjoy that, either.

I’ve always wanted to create something different: What would a resume or cover letter look like if we said what we actually wanted?

Like, Dear Ms. Hiring Manager:

I am a great person, a great writer, with a college education and I don’t really care for these cover letter/resume things. They never really say who I am as a person, and you can write the best resume in the world and make yourself look the best – but those people are never as perfect as they claim to be, and honestly, a fake person is not the kind of person you want working for you.

I dislike the fallacy of it all. Everyone brags about being a positive and energetic person, but honestly, there are not many people I know who are positive or energetic without coffee.

You can work at some jobs for a year, others for six months, and some for two years, but the most experience I ever had, was working with great people and for a great team. A job doesn’t really work, unless there are awesome people behind it.

And…how is that going to happen, if everyone basically lies on their resume/cover letters?

Anyway, it would be great to hear back from you. But I don’t expect to. Over 60 people applied for this job (it says so on Indeed) and I’m sure most of them have told you they’ve worked for ten years at the same job and speak french and mandarin, and some of them I’m sure are former beauty pageant winners. (I worked directly with a hiring manager this year, and almost every time, she hired the candidates who were the most attractive.)

My resume is attached for review…or is it? I might have sent you a link to my LinkedIn account instead. It’d be great to hear from you, but I’m not holding my breath over here.

Sincerely,

Amanda

Now, wouldn’t that be awesome?

In this competitive world we live in, there must be some employers out there who want the more creative resumes and cover letters? Honestly, I think everyone could always use a good laugh!

Hope everyone is having a great night! Happy Writing!

It’s Okay to Admit You Need Help

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Things have been a little quiet here on the blogging front. Not intentionally. This week I’ve been sick with a lovely head cold and I have some new things going on in my life and thought I would take some time to chat about it.

It’s not easy…admitting that you need help. Help comes in many different forms. Emotional…educational…physical.

You might have heard me mention it a time or two: depression and anxiety.

When I was a teenager, I was diagnosed with Seasonal Affective disorder, which is basically depression that one gets based on the lack of sunlight in the winter months. It’s no fun when a chemical in your brain stops working properly and tells you not to be happy anymore.

I’ve…managed with that the last several years. But lately, it seems like the older I get the worse my anxiety is. I have always been a classified “worry-wort,” but there comes a time, where it’s not just worry. Where anxiety becomes something more than just double checking that your doors are locked after you locked them. Twice. And after you already check again for the third time.

The older I get, it seems like the more I don’t function properly. I’ve been debating back and forth why I don’t see myself as “normal” anymore. Why, I think that’s something I ought to be, and why normal isn’t really the same for anyone. What’s normal? And why is it something anyone wants to be, anyway?

But anyway, I digress. The point…I’ve started going to therapy.

Some people might think, so? I’ve gone to therapy, what’s the big deal? But this is a big deal for me. I’m not used to telling my life problems to people, and it’s not always easy admitting that you need help.

There’s no shame in admitting that you need help, and there’s no shame in getting that help. Depression and anxiety are not easy things, and it’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

We all react to our life struggles in different ways, and we all have to find our own ways to encounter such challenges. I am not afraid to talk about my depression and anxiety, but I was afraid to get help. And I’m still afraid in some ways…do people look at me differently? Do I look different?

Does anyone judge me? But…I have to press on.

When I started this blog, I wanted to make sure it was a place that I could always come to, to make sure I was still writing. Now, I also want it to be a place where I can talk freely about my problems with depression and anxiety.

It’s something that needs to be talked about, and seeing as writers and creative sorts always seem to be the ones who struggle with depression and anxiety…we should all do a lot of talking about it.

Anyway, I hope you guys are having a great night, and I hope everyone had a great weekend.

Happy writing!

I Want to Live Life, Without Feeling Trapped

/ Ajmorse / 2 Comments

Having a case of the Sunday night blues tonight. Happens every night lately before the start of a new week. I love my freedom during the days on weekends. To enjoy the sunshine when I want, to read a book, to bake, to enjoy being human and alive and with others and the people who I love.

This current job I’m at now, while there are some decent people, I feel like everyone is so bored with life there. They are so bored and tired of the next day, of a job that keeps going with no end, of a retirement that is still eight years down the road.

It’s had me thinking a lot about what I want out of life, lately. I don’t want to work in a job where my life is taken from me. I want freedom…I want to travel…I want to live.

People judge millennials because we don’t want to work. But people forget many of us are not working in the job we went to school for. We don’t get money because we are doing what we love. We get money because we work at jobs, (very often) that no one else wants to work at.

I’m no slacker. I’ve worked a myriad of jobs to make money to pay the bills and I’ve been miserable at many of them, but I worked them anyway. Where does it say that we have to be miserable to make money?

People say that you should work hard, stay at a job, get retirement, but the sacrifice of life, freedom, and lack of money just doesn’t seem worth it anymore. Forgive me, but, I am no one else’s money-maker.

I want to live my life, without feeling like I’m trapped in my job. Is that really so much to ask?

Random Flash Fiction: Miss Green

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Hmm. Wanted to write some fiction tonight. Sat down and this kind of popped out. Not sure I’ll continue…but hey, it’s something. 

Hope everyone is having a great night, and happy writing!

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Miss Green

Her hair was the color of straw; in dreads and pulled up on the top of her head. I loved the way it looked heavy and woolly, like she was carrying some sort of burden that spoke of an adventurous spirit, a need to get a way and explore.

She wore an electric green top, and the jewelry on her nose and ears and hands were a metallic green. She looked like something electric and natural, like a cyborg-computer mixed into the natural environment; something that couldn’t be outdated or out-sourced.

I’d ventured into this club because my friends told me to. Go to The Hollow they told me, you’ll love it. “Eclectic,” another friend had said. “Eccentric,” said another.

I found it to be a place full of oddities – like me. I wasn’t in any position to judge, really. My shy, awkward persona seemed to melt well into the absurd: the guy wearing the golden tights and the black sparkly mask, the woman dressed in garb that looked nineteenth century, and the blonde with the silver bikini and chewbacca tattoo on her stomach. What guy couldn’t resist a woman who had an ode to one of the greatest movies on earth tattooed on her body?

I found Miss Cyborg-Green on the dance floor. She was dancing to a funky beat; something with all drums and a nasal groan. Every one else seemed to be talking or drinking – not the typical mixed drinks and beer, no – mostly ales and wine, and I saw someone drinking coffee.

The lights were dim, but not completely dark. There was an atmosphere of frivolity. If I blinked my eyes, I could lose myself in another world. I felt the magic, the otherness in the air and was certain that Miss Green was a person that I wanted to meet.

Reading Anything Good Lately?

/ Ajmorse / 3 Comments

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I always know it’s time to clean my bedroom, when the books start piling up next to the bed. And they do, regularly. Case in point: the picture above. (Apparently the book store clerk thought it was a crime that I haven’t read The Phantom Tollbooth yet. I know!)

But it got me thinking tonight, how much I love books. And I do read a lot.

Because every new book is new inspiration. Terry Prachett and Stephen Baxter’s book, The Long Earth, had me thinking about parallel universes today, and how cool it would be to write a book about a different earth in a different part of the universe.

Kristin Cashore’s, Graceling, reminds me that dialogue is fun. The banter between characters is supposed to be full of tension and then yet equally entertaining but with an end game in mind.

And this new book that I started reading last month, by Genevieve Cogman, The Invisible Library, reminds me that many, many people share a love for books and it is something that connects us in more ways than others. Sharing a good book with someone else is like sharing a gift sometimes. If that book brings joy, well then, yeah, it was definitely worth it.

Anyway, What are you reading? Anything good?! Got any recommendations?

Hope everyone is having a great night!

Happy Valentine’s Day! Now, Go Love Somebody!

/ Ajmorse / 2 Comments

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I couldn’t seem to think of what to write tonight. I thought about sharing a poem that I wrote back in the college days…but nothing seems to fit the Valentine’s day/love theme that I am trying for.

It’s so weird to look back sometimes and see how different my writing was then. Back in the college days when I was writing for creative writing classes…when I was nineteen and twenty. It’s neither good or bad, just different. I wrote with a freedom then that I don’t seem to have now. I wasn’t embarrassed by my childish notions.

Life and adult-hood was so new to me, and I relished more in the freedom to create, in having a voice and the words to say. But I digress, really. No time to go down that rabbit hole…

Today is Valentine’s day and if you haven’t already, go tell your loved ones that you love them! Mike, the other half, took me out for a nice dinner and we ended the night quietly eating ice cream and both of us working on each of our projects. Me, revamping a resume that sorely needed doing, and him playing WOW, (which I’m sure if I wasn’t busy doing other things, I might be whining that he’s not paying attention to me, but whatever.) He certainly looks cute over there, sitting in his computer chair…(sigh.)

Make tonight your oyster. Be content with what you have, and if you don’t have it…go out and find it. One of the best Valentine’s nights I ever had wasn’t with a significant other. It was with my mother, my sister and my baby niece, Lilly. Us four ladies made dinner together, and watched Brave that night, and were content to be loved by sisters and mothers and babies and it was a night of togetherness that I’ll never forget.

So it doesn’t matter who you love, go out and love them.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! And Happy Writing!

Fear of Failure: The Struggle is Real Tonight

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God, I need to get motivated! Having a hard time tonight. Everything I was supposed to do, didn’t happen. All I did was eat food, watch TV, and accidentally fell asleep at like 7 o’clock and slept like an hour.

But when it comes to certain things, I am starting to realize that the fear of failure is holding me back. Every time that I tell myself all those wasted hours watching TV I could be writing, ends with me usually watching three of four more episodes of said TV show and then feeling guilty.

The same goes with applying for jobs. Temp jobs don’t last forever you know, they ARE temporary, but I see a job posting and think: what’s the point? Everyone is always more qualified, more well-spoken, always better than me.

A lot of this boils down to self-confidence too, hmm…

Anyway, I always seem to feel myself resurfacing to the What’s the point? I’ll just fail anyway.

My boyfriend’s favorite saying to me seems to be: You don’t know unless you try.

But lately, I feel like the past few years have been me trying and trying and nothing comes of it. I am afraid of failure. I am afraid of what happens when nothing comes of hopes and dreams…

How stupid, I know.

I can’t seem to shake this feeling though, tonight. And this feeling has me having trouble starting something, too. I’ll stare at my revamped resume and be like: do I really look like I’m a quality specimen? The person they’re ultimately looking for?

I certainly don’t feel like one sometimes. (Sigh.)

Same goes with writing, too. I’ll stare at the page and I feel like my characters stare unflinchingly back at me. In some sort of eternal pause, waiting for me to direct them across the page, but their stories are at a standstill…so they stare at me, and they judge me.

I decided early on that I wanted to be a writer. But that doesn’t mean that writers automatically know how to write a novel. This is difficult stuff, really.

I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, but…sigh.

What do you guys do when fear gets you down? Do you struggle with some of the same fears I do?

How Depression Really Feels

/ Ajmorse / 3 Comments

Once again, trying to channel those super-down feelings of depression. Sometimes it helps to just get it all out there. Very much gloom and doom, though, I’m sorry. But sometimes it helps to get it out and maybe it’ll help others to understand. Especially, when they haven’t gone through these emotions themselves.

window-view-1081788_1920Today is a bad day for me. I try really hard, but somehow, I am always less than what I should be. Feelings of worthlessness, tiredness, that whole Is-it-worth-it-to-get-out-of-bed type of attitude.

I wish it was easier to go on, I wish it was easier to snap out of it than it is…but it’s not. In truth, I feel like I’ve done it to myself…not doing things that I should, not being where I should, not being enough again.

If only others knew how it feels. How it feels to be completely worthless.

Let me crawl back into bed with no judgement. Wrap your arms around me to keep me from going to pieces. But don’t look at me and don’t judge me. I can’t bear the weight of your expectations.

Sometimes I need that little push, but sometimes it frightens or scares me. Sometimes, I feel like I’m being thrust out into the cold with nothing to hold onto, and there is an icy floor beneath my feet.

Let me slip and slide if you want to, but how am I going to pull myself up?

How??

My light therapy doesn’t feel bright enough. Usually it blinds and stuns at first, but today, it’s as if I just turned on a regular lamp. There is not enough light in the world to snuff out this darkness.

And I feel as if I have buried my nose in the heart of it and it is weighing me down. Oh, so very much.

Let the rain come, and let the worms burrow in my ears and let everything bad that’s supposed to happen rest upon my shoulders. I’m sure there is a weight in the world, worthy of this. But why all this despair, when I’ve done nothing?

I’ve done nothing to deserve this. And I shouldn’t think I have.

The brain is a fickle friend sometimes. One minute, you’re convinced you are doing everything to live a healthy life, the next thing…she’s telling you: you are worthless scum.

Go away brain, and let my heart speak for once.

10 New Year’s Resolutions for Myself

/ Ajmorse / 2 Comments

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I don’t normally do these lists, but well, I wanted to this year. Besides, if I don’t write things down lately, I will never remember them. And this is for me after all…Plus, it gives me a chance to actually think of my New Year’s resolutions as I haven’t really thought of them yet, heh heh.

Anyway here goes…

1. Love More

Love my family more, love my boyfriend more, love my friends; show compassion to others who don’t necessarily see it on a day-to-day basis. More hugs and cuddles!

2. Be a better Writer

Okay, confession: I am a terrible speller, and I could be better when it comes to grammar. Sure I know the difference between my there, their, and they’res, but there are certain grammatical rules I should probably know better. Like does that comma go there, does that semi-colon go there, etc. Sometimes I feel ashamed of myself. Oh, and I need to actually Write More this year!

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3. Eat Healthier

Now that the holidays are over, enough with the sweets already! We are having a nice meal tonight (courtesy of the gift cards we got for Christmas) but this is our last hurrah. But what a way to break into the new year with filet mignon and scallops, eh?

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4. Travel More

Was playing a drinking game last night, and it became clear to me that a lot of us hadn’t been out and done anything. I felt kind of pathetic. Enough of that! It’s time to see the world and experience new things. You only live once.

5. Volunteer

This Christmas, I felt the need to give back more than ever. It has been hard with my Grandma gone around the holidays, but this year felt just a little bit easier.  I felt like it was time to show the love to everyone that she has been known for.

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6. Exercise

I hate going outside during the winter months sometimes. It’s so cold! But on the sunny not-windy days, I need to bundle up and get moving! Motivate myself with a new book, etc.

7. Treat Myself Better

This goes along with taking time for myself. Sleep more, give yourself time for light therapy in the mornings, and don’t be too hard on yourself. Nobody is perfect and there will be bad days and good days. I have to remember that when you are upset you make it ten times worse to make yourself feel bad about it.

8. Be Open-minded

If there is anything to take away from this disastrous election year here in the US, it’s to be more open-minded. Not everyone is going to agree on everything, but we should listen and chat openly about the issues we are facing in our country. Only by educating ourselves can we truly understand the problems at hand.

9. Save Money

We are terrible at saving money. It’s not that we spend it on useless things, and it’s not that we ever go without – we just see a little extra money in the bank, and it’s a hey! Off to a great place on the weekend or a new restaurant! Self, it’s time to BE BETTER at this.

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10. Love Animals

My boyfriend’s dog, (aka our fur baby) lives at my mother’s house as a country dog, which he loves very much. But being with him this holiday season reminds me of the powerful therapeutic connection we share with our four-legged friends and how important it is to continue to support our animals…domestic or otherwise.

And that’s it really. What about you? What are your New Year’s resolutions?