25 Days of Writing Challenge: Day 2

Posted on April 2, 2013 by C.A. Jacobs

Day 2: Create a character. Write a brief scene of them in a setting. Also use this paragraph to introduce the character to the reader by how they react to their setting.

Metal struck metal and Lemira’s arm tingled. Kalmesh forced her through the same redundant drills. Block. Shift. Swing. Block. Shift. Swing. With every block and swing, the sword’s impact sent jolts of pain from her shoulder to her fingertips and threatened her tenuous grip on her father’s old practice sword. The other two girls in the training ring dropped their swords within the first round of drill and the boys all snickered. Sneers of “that’s what you get for letting girls pretend to be boys” and “girls are only strong enough to lift brooms, not swords” echoed across the walls of the ring. Lemira noticed the girls blush in shame and move to the shadows from the castle wall. She refused to be like them. If the boys could keep drilling and not drop their swords, then so could she.

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25 Days of Writing Challenge: Day 1

Posted on April 1, 2013 by C.A. Jacobs

Day 1: Write a biography your life. Only use a seven word sentence.

Wait, you want me to go where?

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Good ideas other people posted first

Posted on March 25, 2013 by C.A. Jacobs

I saw this posted to one of my fellow writer and friend’s facebook and decided this would be a fun and worthy way to spend the month of April. Since I spoke with my new boss today and it looks like my new job will involve extensive travel but not until around autumn time, I should be able to allow myself the illusion of stability in my life. Maybe for a little while, at least. With that in mind, I will start this on 01 April, and no, that won’t be an April Fools kind of thing.

25 Days of Writing Challenge
Day 1: Write a biography your life. Only use a seven word sentence.
Day 2: Create a character. Write a brief scene of them in a setting. Also use this paragraph to introduce the character to the reader by how they react to their setting.
Day 3: Think about the character you created for Day 2. Write their seven word biography.
Day 4: What world does your character exist in? Real or imagined? Scientific? Fantastical? Write a scene where your character is shown in their world.
Day 5: Your character is getting ready in the morning. Write a scene of their morning (or even mid day) routine.
Day 6: How was your character’s childhood? Write a scene about them as a child. How was their home life? Their family? Their upbringing? Where did they grow up? What friends did they have?
Day 7: FREE DAY! Write any scene you want!
Day 8: What about their earlier school days? Write a scene of your character in grade school or middle school.
Day 9: How was your characters first kiss? Who with? Where was it? How old were they? Write the scene.
Day 10: Your character has dreams, ambitions, and goals don’t they? What are they? What are they doing to achieve them? Write a scene that shows these aims.
Day 11: What does your character do on a daily basis? What is their job? Do they have one? Write a scene from a normal day in your characters life.
Day 12: What does your character do when their day isn’t a normal day? Write a scene where something goes amiss in your characters day-to-day life.
Day 13: Your character has a whole day off to do whatever they want. Write a scene of them enjoying this free day.
Day 14: FREE DAY! Write any scene you want!
Day 15: Your character is upset. What about? How does it affect them? Does anyone come to comfort them? Write a scene where your character is distraught.
Day 16: Your character is going on a trip. Where to? Who with, if anyone? Why are they going on a trip? Write a scene of them either getting ready or departing on their journey.
Day 17: Your character has fallen in love. With who? Is it serious? Are they in a relationship with this person? How did they meet? Write a scene of your character either contemplating this significant other or directly interacting with them.
Day 18: Your character has a conversation with an influential person in their life. It can be a parent, a teacher, a mentor, anyone your character looks up to. Why are they having the conversation? Write the scene.
Day 19: Today is a day that will change your characters life forever. What course of events occurs? How does your character react? Write a scene from this day.
Day 20: Your character is in a new place. What brought them there? Why are they there? How are they reacting to this change of scenery? Write a scene of your character in this new place.
Day 21: FREE DAY! Write any scene you want!
Day 22: Today is the end of an era in your characters life. How do they feel about this? What is happening today? Write a scene of your character on this day.
Day 23: Write a scene between your character and another character of your choice (whether brought up previously in the other scenes or not) using only dialog. The setting and situation is up to you, but you cannot not use descriptive exposition, only dialog.
Day 24: Write, in second person, a dream your character is having. Whether it be a nightmare or something happier, describe the dream in its entirety.
Day 25: Today, your character is saying goodbye to someone. Who are they saying goodbye to? Why? Are they emotional? Are they going away or is the other person? Write the scene.

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Book Review: the Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman

Posted on March 13, 2013 by C.A. Jacobs

This is the last of the books that I read in the last week that I am catching up on reviews for, and the first graphic novel that I’ve reviewed so far. I borrowed the Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes (graphic novel, 234 pages) written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, and Malcom Jones III a few weeks ago and finally sat down to read it last weekend. I had very high expectations of this story and my expectations were easily met and exceeded.

As something of a disclaimer, I don’t like to give away too many spoilers when I do book reviews because I don’t want to give away what happens in the book. Sometimes, it’s really hard to talk about the things that really affected me without giving away plot points and character interactions. This is one of those reviews where I’m likely to give away parts of the story just so I can clarify some of my points. If you dislike spoilers, you’ve been warned.

I knew when I picked up the book that it was going to be dark and have an adult focus but I didn’t really know what the story itself was going to be about. I was considerably interested when the story starts out in 1916, as that’s not really what I was envisioning at all. I’m not really quite sure what I was anticipating but the capture of the Sandman by Magus and his people nearly a century ago was not where I thought the story would start. As the story progresses, I realized that it had to start that early because of how the story links into world events. But when the Sandman first shows up in the circle on the floor, my first thought was, “ALIENS!!! I didn’t know this was a book about ALIENS!” I think it was the helmet and the cloak that made me think that.

He remains imprisoned until 1988, which is 72 years. He is finally identified as Dream, younger brother to Death. In an interesting connection to my book review from yesterday on Test of the Twins by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Dream returns to his home kingdom and finds that everything has changed in the time he’s been gone. Again, here is the concept that you can’t ever really go home. It won’t be how you remember it or how you think it should be. As Dream progresses through his home, you start to truly feel how large of an impact his captivity has been to the world as a whole, and not just our normal real world, but the other realms as well. This becomes even more pronounced as Dream travels to reclaim his stolen helmet, bag of sand, and ruby, his three items of power.

I think if I paid more attention to the world of DC comics, I might have gotten more out of some of the passing references. As it was, I just saw them as other characters that I might know more about or care more about if I actually had any idea who they were supposed to be. Dream finds his castle in ruins, the library vanished, and those that live in the dreamscape to be different than he remembers. His home is not what it should be. He asks for help from the three muses and I was absolutely thrilled at the mythological references.

The battle of wits/wills with the demon was one of my favorite parts of the whole story. Morpheus’ travels into hell was such a balance between the horrors of hell and how important dreams are to everyone. “What power would hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of heaven?” So very, very true. But what Dee does to the cafe filled with people was just heart-breaking. Humanity at its absolute worst.

I have to cut this review short, as work has just called and I need to earn money to live my lavish lifestyle. Overall, this story was very well done and emotionally engaging on every level. I am curious to see if I will read the other books in the series.

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Book Review: Test of the Twins by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Posted on March 12, 2013 by C.A. Jacobs

Last week, I finished Test of the Twins (fantasy 321 pages) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. In my opinion, this is the way trilogies should be done with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Sure, there were other Dragonlance books that took place before or after the time period of this trilogy and some of them even used or mentioned some of the characters, but this trilogy is complete all by itself. While I do believe that reading Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, and Dragons of Spring Dawning are necessary in order to fully appreciate all the characters and the current situation in this trilogy, I also believe that you could read just these six Dragonlance books and not need to read any of the others.

In this final book in the Legends trilogy, Tasslehoff and Caramon are transported to the future while Raistlin and Crysania enter the Abyss to challenge the Queen of Darkness. I think one of the most moving parts of the story for me is how so many of the characters long for their homes. One of the more moving passages for me was on page 85 where Dalamar, a dark elf, says, ‘”We who are ‘cast from the light,’ as they say, do not often venture onto the sunlit planes of existence.” His smile grew warmer, suddenly, and Tanis saw a wistful look in the dark elf’s eyes as their gaze went to the grove of aspens where he had been standing. “Sometimes, though, even we grow homesick.”‘ It really struck me throughout this entire trilogy how all the characters had their homes that they wanted to return to. Caramon and Tasslehoff wanted to return to Solace, Tanis wanted to return to Solanthus to be with his wife, and even Raistlin often thought about the way things used to be.

But you can never really go home. Things will never be the way you remember or the way you like. Buildings and people change and you can’t go back to the way things were. I think most people share that sense of nostalgia from time to time, remembering a better time in our lives. I don’t really think those times were better. Or maybe they were simpler. Everything in our lives is what makes us who we are and I think that this trilogy really shows that. Caramon, Tasslehoff, and Crysania go through some pretty traumatic stuff but still wind up preserving the world they know and love, even though all of them wind up marked from their adventures.

Another really moving part of this book were when Tasslehoff and Caramon said farewell to Crysania and then on page 311 where Tasslehoff is trying to figure out what he’s going to do now and Caramon asks if Tasslehoff is going to go home to Kendermore. “Tas’s face took on an unusually serious expression. Slipping his hand into Caramon’s, he drew nearer, looking up at him earnestly. ‘No, Caramon,’ he said softly. ‘It isn’t the same. I-I can’t seem to talk to other kender anymore ….. They don’t seem to understand. They just don’t … well … care. It’s hard – caring – isn’t it, Caramon? It hurts sometimes.”‘

And that’s pretty much what I was thinking about, how you can never really go home. Either it changes or you do, but it’s never the same, no matter how much you might wish it could be. But then when Caramon finally makes it back to Solace, you realize that even though things change, home is still home and your heart is the only place that knows the true location of your home. Sometimes, home is where your stuff is and sometimes home is found when you’re surrounded by the people you love who love you.

I also enjoyed this trilogy because it’s the small actions that wind up having big consequences. Tasslehoff saves Caramon’s life in War of the Twins by stabbing a dwarf with a tiny knife and that one action makes it so that Caramon can save Tanis who can then save Dalamar. So it seemed like such a small, simple thing, but it had huge and over-arching consequences. That continues to be one of my favorite underlying themes from box this trilogy and the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy – that it’s the big things that wind up being made out of a whole bunch of little things. Tasslehoff even says exactly that in the previous trilogy when he’s talking to Fizban and trying to work out how even big things like dragons come down to just drops of blood, which are tiny by themselves, but when all combined create something amazing.

This was a good read and I will continue to reread the entire trilogy throughout my life. Books are like old friends. Always there for you, no matter how many dragons or evil mages get in the way.

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Book Review: War of the Twins by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Posted on March 10, 2013 by C.A. Jacobs

Also in the last week, I finished War of the Twins (fantasy 411 pages) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I was once again struck by the thought that reading this series without having all three books present from the beginning would have been rather annoying for me, as this second book in the series also didn’t end in a very good place. It’s also a very emotionally charged book, which I continue to enjoy.

At this point in the story, the worthless overweight drunk has become the general and leader of the army, the heartless holy cleric has finally learned about love, the adventurous and fun-loving kender has learned about the cost of saving the world, and the evil dark mage has shown a bigger heart for caring than he lets on. Everyone has changed after everything they’ve been through. I think how close to real life and the changes people go through is one of the huge draws of this particular book for me.

I felt Raistlin’s disappointment when he uncovered the fate of the gully dwarves. Small actions like that where the reader is never told that Raistlin is angry because the gully dwarves mattered so little that no one bothered to include them in the histories are what provided the emotional fuel for this book. In my opinion, this is a prime example of showing versus telling because the reader doesn’t have to be told what or why Raistlin is thinking what he does because you, as the reader, feel it too. And then the camping trip with Caramon shows even more of the story.

In some ways, I was highly amused by my reaction to the story. I’ve read it before, as I mentioned in the previous review, but it’s been so long that some of the details had faded. I kept thinking that I would beat Crysania with a really big stick for being completely blind to Raistlin and the fact that he was just using her, but it showed how single-minded a person who believes in their love can be. I was still so engrossed in the story and the characters that the story felt real enough for me to have an emotional investment even though I’d read the story before.

Overall, this was just as good of a story as I remember from my childhood and I will keep it on the shelves and continue to reread it periodically.

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Book Review: Time of the Twins by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Posted on March 9, 2013 by C.A. Jacobs

It seems as though all the reviews I’m doing lately are books that I finished sometime in the last couple weeks and didn’t write reviews for as I finished them. This is remarkably accurate. I think it was just about a week ago that I visited a friend’s house and borrowed the three Dragonlance Legends books. I’d meant to read them last year while I was on my latest extended research trip but ran out of time and one of the books was missing which makes reading the trilogy rather complicated. So when I found these three buried in stacks of disorganized readings, I borrowed all three of them.

I finished reading Time of the Twins (fantasy 421 pages) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman about a week ago. I’m pretty sure this is another one that I started one day and finished the next. I mean, really, who needs things like sleep when you have a great book to read?

I suppose it’s more accurate to say that I reread this trilogy because these are books from my childhood. I hadn’t read them in many, many years and my recent experience with the Dragonriders of Pern series helped to motivate me to read more books with dragons in them. Although this book differs from those in that it uses magic and gods instead of science.

I like this book because it reflects my own views on the world, that the world must be a balance between the forces of good, evil, and neutrality. This book takes place in the world of Krynn and starts shortly after the end of the War of the Lance. But then the dark mage Raistlin manipulates events such that his brother Caramon and the holy cleric of Paladine Crysania get sent back in time to meet with him just prior to the Cataclysm wherein the gods throw down a mountain and throw the world into turmoil. The Cataclysm is mentioned several times in the previous trilogy, but here, the reader is shown that the gods punished the world for the arrogance and pride of the people, specifically the Kingpriest of Istar. This is a unique look at people that are “too good” and don’t understand that the actions and behaviors that they are participating in are actually selfish and hurtful. The clerics are buried in riches and believe that they are just and holy even though there is still hunger and suffering. They don’t even realize it, but they have become a form of evil. They exterminate other races just because they are different. They punish the poor and less fortunate instead of showing mercy. In a lot of ways, it mirrors things that I see in our world today where those who could affect great and positive change are too self-involved to do the right thing.

One of the other things I really enjoyed about this book is the seriously flawed characters. The story starts out with a holy cleric who believes that she is the chosen one and that only her power can remove evil from the world. She is unfeeling and uncaring, which is in stark contrast to the good she believes she is demonstrating. She is guarded during her trip to the past by a severely drunk human who fell so far into his love for his brother that he stopped living his own life. And then there is the dark mage who brought them all together so that he could challenge the gods themselves. He sees the gods as incompetent and the world as terribly unfair. He never says either of those things, but you can tell in the way he interacts with the world that the core motivation for his journey started as something positive but somewhere along the lines got twisted into something less so. Along for the ride and the adventure is a kender, a race on Krynn that has a reputation of thieves and child-like behavior.

This is definitely one of those books that you want to make sure you have all three books in the trilogy when you start the first book. The ending of this book isn’t really much of an ending at all and leaves the characters in a very ambiguous place. Overall, I suspect that this is a series that I will continue to reread periodically because I enjoy the story and the characters.

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Book Review: Dragon Quest by Anne McCaffrey

Posted on March 8, 2013 by C.A. Jacobs

So I also finished Dragon Quest (Fantasy 321 pages) by Anne McCaffrey pretty much the day after I finished Dragon Flight but am only now getting to the review of it because things have been super busy with the final stages of leaving the island. Overall, I am continuing to enjoy the Dragonriders of Pern series. I’m a bit disgruntled that it took me so long to read them, but I’m happy that I’m reading them now.

I think it’s possible that I might be getting more out of my reading right now than if I had read it in my youth. Now, I have the experiences and the knowledge to fully appreciate the mix of fantasy and science fiction being presented in this storyline. I think Anne McCaffrey is one of the better authors I’ve read that does a great job with making little details important. I like how the fire lizards know that going to the Red Star is a bad idea and how that plays into the attempts to get there later in the book. I like how everything is connected and feels so simple in the story, but is very complicated in real life.

One of the most interesting things about this story is the very different characters. None of the characters in this book are paper cut-outs and all of them have such unique personalities that you can tell which of the characters are the main focus for individual scenes throughout the story before the names are even mentioned.

I also like how things simply exist in the world of Pern without having to be explained. In my opinion, this makes the world feel like a universe we could find as we explore the stars. There’s no information dumping where the author is working to clearly talk about every piece of technology that might be involved. The readers know everything the characters know, though with our basic education in science, I believe that most readers get that really cool, “Ah! I know what’s going on!” feeling while reading the books. So the characters might be completely confused, but the tiny sparks of scientific knowledge in the readers allow them to infer more about the story than the story actually shows us. This is a trait that I hope to someday be able to emulate in my own writing.

Overall, I’m enjoying this series greatly and will likely continue reading it as I have time.

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Book Review: Dragon Flight by Anne McCaffrey

Posted on March 1, 2013 by C.A. Jacobs

I actually finished reading Dragon Flight by Anne McCaffrey (Science Fiction/Fantasy 202 pages) either last week or the week before. I don’t remember when exactly, as it seems to me that I started and finished the book the same day. I told several of my friends that I was reading it and one of the questions came up as to whether I was reading the series in the order that it was published or the actual timeline order. Having no idea what my friend was talking about, I did a little bit of research about how the series progressed. I mentioned to them that I had never actually read any of the books in the series and that produced an astonished response. Having now read the first book in the series, I am also wondering how it is I managed to never read the series before now.

My childhood was certainly shaped mostly by fantasy books, the Dragonlance books, R.A. Salvatore, Terry Brooks, Mercedes Lackey, Patricia Wrede, Andre Norton, J.R.R. Tolkien, etc., and most of the television I enjoyed was either science fiction or fantasy. So how come it is that I missed the Dragonriders of Pern?

I guess the easy way to start this review is to actually say that I enjoyed the book very much. Anne McCaffrey‘s Crystal Singer Trilogy remains to this day one of my favorite series which means that I’ve been pre-conditioned to enjoy her science fiction stories. I guess all those times in the bookstores where I passed the Dragonriders of Pern books that I was perhaps slightly biased. The titles themselves indicated to me that the books were more fantasy and less science fiction and for the last decade or so, I think I’ve been tired of reading dragon stories. But it turns out that the Pern series really is carefully buried Science Fiction. It’s just not as obvious in the first book.

One of the fun parts about stories like this for me is the anticipation. I never read the back cover of this book to see what it would be about, but based on the title, I guessed that people who ride dragons would feature prominently into the story and this is true. So when the story started out with the intertwining fates of the two main characters, you get that feeling that you know what each of them wants, needs, and is looking for and then you get frustrated when they don’t communicate their intentions adequately to the correct person.

There were some parts of the story that were a bit frustrating to me, but I absolutely respected that this was a story about a completely different culture on a very different planet. Lessa’s first intimate encounter is unexpected and potentially rather rough, but that’s just the rules of how that society works. The characters were clearly products of their environment, which is one of the reasons why I enjoy Anne McCaffrey‘s work so much. She builds completely different societies and completely different planets and she does it so well that you as the reader are simply expected to accept the way the world is and move on. In my opinion, this provides credibility to her world building when she doesn’t take the time to explain down to the readers te complicated process that simply makes the world the way it is, whether that world is a Red Star, Pern, or someplace else entirely.

I guess one of my sources of amusement or concern (I couldn’t decide which it was more often) was how many times Lessa just gets shaken. “You’re not understanding me, woman!” shake, shake, shake. Grab by the shoulders, shake, shake, shake. I got the feeling that Lessa was something of a bobble-head and I wondered if that was where the idea came from. Other than that, I didn’t really have any issues with the story.

I thought the story was well-written with good action and the pace was enough to keep me turning the pages. In fact, the story was a little bit too engrossing, as I several times decided that I should finish just this one more paragraph/page/chapter instead of accomplishing necessary tasks like going to work. Or cleaning out my empty apartment. You know, things that actually have deadlines and make it so I can pay the bills and live comfortably. The dragons, of course, were my favorite characters.

Overall, I think this is another great book that I can’t believe I never read before. Silly younger me and not reading these books sooner!

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Life Isn’t Perfect

Posted on February 8, 2013 by C.A. Jacobs

It seems like such a simple thing to know and understand, but life isn’t perfect. Not for me, not for you, not for the people we admire the most in our lives, not for our neighbors, our friends, our family, or even the celebrities on television.

For the past several months, I’ve been diligently taking the time here and there to get my life organized and packed for the big move that just finished about half an hour ago. I disassembled all of Legotopia, which was sad and fascinating at the same time. In the last week, I spent countless hours sorting paperwork, shredding things, throwing things away, donating things, and recycling as much as I could. Everything I organized and filed brought up a seemingly endless list of things I always meant to get around to taking care of but simply never found the time.

I found beautiful journals with glaring empty pages where I had promised myself that I would start writing again. Old notebooks filled with stories, poems, journals, and incredible knowledge from previous classes that I meant to find the time to scan and save to my computer. Piles of unlabeled CDs and DVDs that could easily contain the secrets of the universe but instead remain mysterious in their content. Designs, patterns, and gifts intended for countless people throughout the years to demonstrate how much those individuals have touched my life, unfinished in a box somewhere. Shelves filled with hundreds of unread books. Spiral bound rough drafts of my stories waiting endlessly for me to finally edit them, collecting dust on a shelf. Stampless thank you cards for everything I received during the holidays.

Every item I found created a sense of incompleteness. All these good intentions that I always really meant to finish, but somehow just didn’t.

I keep thinking that someday, I’ll get the time to work through all these projects and all the things I’ve so far left undone. While the movers were packing everything up today, it was certainly eye-opening about how much I really have in my life that I either don’t need or haven’t completed. While going through the inventory sheets and verifying all my boxes at the end, there were a couple times when I had to ask them if they were sure I actually owned the item on the box and that they packed it. As it turns out, I did own everything and they did pack all my stuff, but it was still a weird thing to have to think about.

I’d like to say that once I get to my new place and everything gets moved into whatever new dwelling I wind up living in that I will take charge of all of these projects and clean out my life. I’d like to remember to journal every day, scan all my old knowledge to my computer, clear up my CDs and DVDs, finish and send out all those gifts for all those people throughout the years, read those unread books, and edit those stories.

But the truth is that I probably won’t. Why? Because life gets in the way. It’s not perfect. There will always be bills to pay, vehicles to get serviced, long and crappy hours at work, groceries to buy, skills to learn, and people to help. There will always be those days where all I really want to do is take off my boots, curl up on the couch, and avoid the rest of the human population. There will always be those days where I feel alone and isolated and I go see a movie by myself just so I can feel like I’m a part of the world. There will always be other draws on the time we have in our lives.

Ever since the beginning of the year, I’ve been rather proud of myself for managing to read a book a week and write my reviews of it. It was a goal for the new year that I made and that I had kept! Go me! Only this past week got so out of hand at work and the packing for the big move that I just didn’t have the time to sleep, let alone to read anything. The total exhaustion and frustration with having to take care of every major event in my life all by myself caused this one, minor thing to because something more major in my head. It started a trickle-down effect, wherein I started to feel like a total failure at everything I do because I couldn’t do even this one little thing like reading a book a week. It’s supposed to be my self-reward. I like reading. It opens my imagination and allows me to experience an unbelievable array of emotions, from sheer joy to terrible loss and everything in between. So even this one, tiny task that I enjoy and look forward to every week became something that I not only failed at but was probably not doing right anyway. From there, my brain went to all the gifts and cards I never managed to finish and get sent out. And so on. And so on.

Sitting at my broken desk in my 99% empty apartment, exhausted beyond my usual level of functionality, eating my breakfast cereal out of a plastic bowl nine hours after my alarm woke me up, I realized that life isn’t perfect. And it’s never going to be perfect. While I would like very much to live in an area near some of the people who matter the most to me, I realize that it would never be the way I would wish. Living closer would not mean that I would be a more important or more frequent part of anyone else’s life.  I may never finish all those incomplete tasks I found during my cleaning and packing.

All these things combine in my head and creates a motivational struggle every now and again. If I know from the beginning that I’m not going to finish things, then what’s the point of starting them or saying that I would do them in the first place? Why not just give up and throw in the towel?

Because life isn’t SUPPOSED to be perfect. I think if everything on my list was complete that I might go insane from boredom. I’m not one of those people who can waste their lives in front of a television or drown themselves at the bottom of empty alcohol containers. If I don’t have a specific task or something I am working to accomplish, I tend to get a bit unsettled and restless. The things I have left to do make me feel all the more satisfied once I complete what seemed like an unaccomplishable task. Because eventually, I really will get everything done. Or I’ll just keep doing the best that I can, knowing full well that things are the way they are for a reason.

I’ll keep getting things done because it’s a challenge. It’s something to keep my brain occupied. And as I cross off every long-term item on my list, I feel better about the way things are in my world. Sometimes, all you can do is accept the world as you see it and try your best to make it a better place. And understand that it’s not supposed to be perfect. It’s supposed to be a challenge and a lesson. I’m hoping that just understanding that will be half the battle 🙂

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