and Other Creatives Creative pursuits can provide a kind of balm to a person’s mental health. A quick web-search will uncover dozen of scholarly articles on the uses of creative writing therapy, art therapy, and the like. …

Income Streams to fund a dream — Making money writing Novels When we’re talking about income streams, writing novels is not a lucrative one for me. I am serious when I tell you I don’t write books for the money. I’ve written — and spoken — on this topic before and people look at me like they think it’s some kind…

Continuing the Fresh Start journey — I almost always start my blog posts by finding the image that will appear at the top. It’s creative, can be a bit of fun, and the easiest thing to get out of the way. …

Continuing the Fresh Start journey — Here I am, scoffing at New Year’s resolutions one minute and repurposing my project board with a full-color 8 1/2 x 11 “word of the year” poster the next. Mountains. Sunset. Quote from the Buddha. And the word “determined” in bright yellow letters. The works. It’s up there with the…

The Long and Winding Road — A Fresh Start In a previous blog, I mentioned I had embarked on a Fresh Start journey. It started with signing up for the Fresh Start course offered by Ninja Writers. I didn’t take part in all the live calls, but I worked through the exercises and read Shaunta Grimes’s book on the…

What it means to me People who have known me for a long time know I don’t really “celebrate,” New Year’s Day. To me, it’s a new page on a new calendar. I reflect plenty. I do that around Thanksgiving, then my birthday, and again on Christmas. By New Year’s Eve, I’m all reflected out…

… years-old, not the forty-fifth President of the United States. That would be a wholly different blog post. Today I turned forty-five, and it feels different from other birthdays. Thirty Unlike many I know, and perhaps unlike the convention of our modern world, I felt nothing special about my 30th birthday…

Because who need that?! — You have the option of pursing your dreams like everyone else. Sometimes, those dreams are hard to reach; pursuing them can be a lot of work, and let’s face it, no one wants to do anything that takes a lot of work. Maybe you’re the kind of person who doesn’t…

Next week is a spirit week at school. Friday's theme is "dress like what you want to be when you grow up." When I was in elementary school, you would have seen fire helmets and police hats, scrubs, camouflage, and a suit and tie (because "business man" covers a wide…