Pembroke Sinclair's Blog, page 8

Thankful for the Little Things

In pursuit of contentment, I focus on things that I am thankful for. Some of the sweetest, cuddliest, and most constant things I am grateful for are my fur babies.

I'm grateful for my human babies too (even though they aren't babies anymore!), but my fur babies never talk back to me and are always happy to see me. Here are some photos to show why my fur babies are the best!

Are you thankful for your fur babies? Share their pics in the comments!

Finding Strength

Photo by Bilyana Stoyanovska on Reshot
In the pursuit of information and ways to cope with my anxiety and depression, I have learned a lot about
The amygdala Being stuck in survival mode Chronic pain and anxiety I’ve bought self-help books (and read them) and even did a CBT workbook . I’ve developed my own thought worksheets and started meditating. I’ve looked for guidance on letting things go and found techniques and tricks to keep myself grounded . I downloaded Youper on my phone as another tool to help with my issues.

While setting up my Youper account, I took a personality test, and the results came back that I’m an INFJ . This is about the sixth time I’ve been told I have that personally type, so there must be some truth to the results.

I read articles and books about what it means to be an INFJ and dug deep into my heart and soul to discover who I truly am and to get to the root of my anxiety and depression.

Pretty much all of these things have been helpful in some way. I’ve gained insight and knowledge, but I had to combine the information with other practices if I was going to find success.

Having information is a good thing, but to overcome anxiety and depression, I had to do more than read. I had to act. It’s not always easy finding the motivation to change your life, and everyone has methods that work better or differently for them, but this is the process that is pulling me out of darkness.

1. Therapy

Having a safe place where I can talk about my innermost issues, fears, and hopes is fantastic. It’s also really nice to have a trained professional help me make sense of what’s going on in my brain and find ways to overcome.

If you’re not in therapy or you’re on the fence about going, I recommend it. Keep in mind that everyone is different and therapists have various skills and training, so take the time to find one you feel comfortable with and enjoy talking to.

2. Building my self-esteem

If I can’t feel good about myself, how can I feel good about others? Anxiety and depression both work hard to tear down your self-worth and make you feel less than. Building this back up is beneficial and reminds you that you are so much more than your mental issues.

3. Being grateful

There’s this notion that for life to be worth living, we have to be happy. This is a narrow way of looking at it because life isn’t always happy. It’s full of ups and downs. Instead of being happy, I’m looking for ways to be content. If I aim to be happy and miss the mark, then that gives my brain a reason to claim I failed. By being content, I can find ways to cope with happiness, sadness, anger, and all the other emotions without feeling like a failure.

To do this, I find things to be grateful for. They don’t have to be major. Some days, I’m thankful that the sun is shining. Other days, I’m thankful to have a space heater at my feet while I work from home.

Big or small, there are things to be thankful for and to remind you that life isn’t all doom and gloom. It takes three seconds to find three things to be thankful for, and I usually list different things three times a day.

At night, right before I drift off to sleep, I think of three things that made me happy or that I accomplished during the day. Again, they don’t have to earth changing, but they are things that are important to me.

Some people keep a gratitude journal, and this is a great idea. When you write things down, you have the ability to go back and look at them whenever you need. I should probably start doing that…


4. Writing

This is so important to me. Being creative helps me cope and makes me feel good about myself, so I need to make time to engage in the activity and enjoy developing characters and worlds.

5. Taking it one day at a time

Every day is a new chance to find and maintain my calm. Getting over my issues will take time and dedication, but it can (and will!) be accomplished. Worrying about the future is what makes me anxious, and looking to the past brings on depression. Taking life one day at a time keeps me grounded in the present.

For all of you out there struggling with anxiety and depression: you’re not alone. There are ways to get your life back, but you have to be willing and dedicated. You have to show up and find a process that works for you.

I have faith in you. I know you can do it. You’re amazing!

 Photo by Mark Tacatani from Pexels 

Enjoying Dreams

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
I am one of those lucky people that has incredibly vivid dreams. I love going to sleep and seeing what pictures and stories my mind will put together. Sadly, I don't sleep often ( thank you, anxiety! ), but when I do, it's the best.

Recently, I had a dream that I was
As you can imagine, having good dreams is the most ideal situation, but it's not always possible. Because I have such vivid dreams, when I get stressed, my nightmares can be absolutely horrific. I'm not particularly fond of those dreams. Thankfully, I'm a lucid dreamer, so I can change my dreams if I want.

I've always had incredibly vivid dreams, and more often than not, I remember what happened in them. When I was in high school, I took a psychology class, and one of our assignments was to create a dream journal. Everyone else in the class turned in 1 or 2 pages, while I turned in 10+. I can only imagine what the teacher thought reading through my dreams.

They may be vivid, but they don't always make a whole lot of sense. As you can imagine, being dreams, they follow their own rules. The laws of physics don't get obeyed, and time is often incredibly relative. Still, while I'm in the dream, it all makes perfect sense.

I've used my dreams as inspiration to write stories. Normally, I can't use them as they occur (refer to paragraph above for reason why), but I can pull certain ideas out and expand upon them.

With the work I've been doing to lower my stress, anxiety, and depression, when I've slept, I've been able to have some incredible dreams. I love dreaming. I will try to keep track and let you know if anything of note runs through my mind.

What are your thoughts on dreams? Do you remember yours? Do you enjoy them? What is one of the craziest dreams you remember having?

Life Is What You Make It

Living with anxiety is tough. Add depression into the mix, and life can become unbearable.

As tough as living with anxiety and depression is, talking about it can be just as challenging . There are a variety of reasons why people who suffer from mental health issues don’t talk about them.
They want to pretend the problems don’t exist. They are afraid of how people will react if they talk about their issues. They don’t know how to cope with the feelings (or lack thereof), so they can’t/don’t expect anyone else to help them either.
I have used all of these reasons at one time or another, but then I stopped. I’m no longer shy about talking about my anxiety or depression. In fact, I probably talk about it too much (judging from the looks I occasionally get from others: slightly wide eyed with lips pressed together or forehead wrinkled and mouth open like they want to ask a question but never do), but they are both part of who I am.

Anxiety and depression might be hard to live with, but they are nothing to be ashamed of. Millions of people suffer from these ailments , but hiding in the dark won’t make them better or go away.

Because I’ve hesitated in the past talking about mental health, I was always cautious and conscious of how I talked about it in my fiction. I wanted my characters to be troubled, but not too troubled.

That changed when I wrote Humanity’s Hope .


I knew from the beginning that I wanted Caleb to suffer from mental issues. I wasn’t going to be cautious. I was going to have him be debilitated by his ailments.

Now, don’t be confused: I am not Caleb, and Caleb is not me.

Yes, I created him and understand what he’s going through, but he is his own character. He has bits of me in him, but he is not a reflection or representation of how I deal with anxiety or depression. In addition, I’ve never been in a zombie apocalypse, so Caleb is on his own in that regard.

It was important to me to have Caleb struggle with his mental health and be overwhelmed by it because it happens to real people every day. But at the same time, these people (and Caleb) find a way to rise above and survive. They find the strength within to show up and do what they can despite feelings of worthlessness and like they are strangers in their own mind.

Caleb has his flaws (as all characters and people do), but he also has a lot of strengths. My hope is that those who suffer from anxiety and/or depression see some of themselves in Caleb and find the will, desire, and courage to push on.

Life can be tough. Zombies can rise, and the vast majority of the world can get wiped out. Or it can be challenging to get up in the morning and go to work—we all have our struggles. Whatever a person is going through, it can be difficult to understand and cope with, but at the end of the day, we get the chance to make the most of our lives, and we should take it.

Happy New Year!

Photo by Roven Images on Unsplash
2019 is here, and with it comes the opportunity and hope of something better than last year. While I have no doubt it will be full of ups and downs, I hope there are more ups than downs.

Some of my goals for this year include getting more writing done (I’m currently trying to finish the 3rd book in the Saving Humanity series).

There will also be new challenges (I’m teaching a class at the local community college).

I will continue to work on feeling better and keeping my anxiety and depression under control. I’m optimistic that I will be successful because I’ve learned so much in the past few months.

I wish all of you a wonderful, productive, pleasant 2019!

Reflections on a Sh*tty Year

Another year is about to come to an end, and I’ve spent the last month (maybe more) reflecting on everything that has happened.

It hasn’t been a good year. It’s been incredibly challenging. Sure, there were some good moments, but for the most part, my memories are filled with anxiety and depression and tears. If there weren’t tears, there was anger. So.much.anger.

I lost my desire and motivation to write. I spent a lot of time in therapy and reading books and working on myself. Every so often I was able to put words on a page, but it certainly wasn’t what I had done in the past. It was tough. It made me feel less than complete.

The past couple of months, I’ve been working hard to get back to writing. I’ve scheduled it in and found ways to be excited about it. I’ve finished the very rough draft of the third book in my Saving Humanity series, but it still needs to be typed, edited, and edited some more.

At the beginning of December, I made a conscious effort to think about my writing differently. One of the things that made it so hard and so frustrating was the fact that I wasn’t making money. Sure, I’d have a few sales here and there, but nothing major. Every month when I looked at the sales sheet, I asked myself why I was even bothering. It hardly seemed worth the effort.

Yes, depression played a major role in these thoughts. I hadn’t realized how far I had sunk into the hole until I was talking to my mom one day, telling her how I’d lost 30 pounds. She freaked. I freaked. I knew then that something had to change. I had to find contentment and calm. I had to find my way back to writing.

I sat down and asked myself why I started writing in the first place. The answer was easy: because I enjoyed it. Because it gave me an escape from my troubles and worries and allowed me to put myself in the shoes of another.

I lost that somewhere along the way. I became jaded and thought that my writing had to show a return of investment—a monetary return of investment.


I had help in this thinking. I didn’t come to this conclusion alone. But I held onto it. I let it define and influence me. I let it dictate how I felt about my stories. How I felt as a writer. When I couldn’t sell books or make more than a few dollars, I felt like a failure.

There was one point in the year, and I remember this vividly, that I was sitting on my couch working on Finding Humanity, and I had to go outside to help the kids scoop dog poop so that my spouse could mow the lawn. As I pulled myself out of the story, I noticed that I had a headache. Nothing major, so I went to take some ibuprofen, and my stomach knotted. I knew that if I put something in it, I was going to throw up.

Still, I had a job to do, so I went outside and walked the backyard with my kids and pointed out the piles of poo. Dizziness washed over me. I almost lost my balance numerous times. I thought I was in the throes of anxiety, but the next day, I realized I had a migraine.

From that one moment, every time I tried to sit down and write, my anxiety asked, “What if writing gives you another migraine?” (Side note: I’m more than positive it wasn’t the writing that gave me a migraine. I guarantee it was stress.) This scared me. It made writing scary for me.

Have you ever been afraid to write? It’s an awful feeling.

I asked myself if I could ever get back to writing for enjoyment, and the answer was yes. How do I get back there? By writing. By keeping in mind that there are other benefits to writing, not just getting money from the sale of my books. I get peace of mind, a way to relax, a way to escape. That’s the real return of investment for me.

It took some time and facing my fears to get me back to writing. I can’t tell you how many times I put the pen to paper only to have dizziness overtake me. I thought for sure I would get another migraine, so I often stopped after only a few pages.

Then, one day, I told my anxiety it didn’t get to decide. I was in charge, and I was going to write. “But, a migraine,” my anxiety said. “Bring it on,” I told it. “I’ve dealt with it before and survived. I’ll do it again. Even if I have to go to bed at 6:00.”

Surprisingly, I never got a migraine, and I was eventually able to finish my book.

My sister-in-law had been reading Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis, and she gave me a copy. I read it, and I loved it. There was so much in there that spoke directly to me. I laughed. I cried. I nodded my head in agreement. Then, I read the part about writing and felt validated.

Writing isn’t about money (for some people it might be, and that’s okay, but for me, it’s not). It’s about ME. It’s about doing something I love. It’s about being able to step back and say, “I created that. ME. No one else. MY work.” It’s an amazing feeling. It’s an empowering feeling. It fills me with pride.

I don’t need anyone’s permission to write. I don’t need anyone’s validation. It absolutely makes me happy to put my book out into the world and know that readers enjoy it and want me to write more, but that’s not the only reason I write.

I write because it makes me happy.

Period.

There doesn’t need to be another reason.

The path to getting healthy and feeling better is long, but I take steps every day. Some days are good, and some are bad. Some days I don’t want to get out of bed, but I do. I show up. Every.single.day. Maybe 2019 will bring me less depression and anxiety. Maybe it will push me over the edge. I won’t know until I get there.

And I remind myself: if I get committed to a mental health ward, it will give me more time to write.

I hope during the last few days of this month that you take some time to reflect on the past year and look at the things that shaped you and made you stronger. It didn’t have to be a good year—mine was terrible.

But I’m coming out of 2018 with lessons learned and a goal. I hope you do the same.

School's Out: Middle Grade & Kids Fiction Giveaway

Guess who’s participating in this promo?!? Me!! Enter to win 15 Kids & Middle Grade Novels, including books from authors like Rachel Lynn Solomon, Dustin Stevens, and more.


Book 1 in The Ifs series

Landon and Broden are brothers, and some days they DO NOT get along. They spend most of their days fighting, arguing, and plotting ways to get revenge on each other.

Then, strange things start happening… Noises in their room that are not from the cat. Homework that is mysteriously finished. A broken shoelace that repairs all by itself. Clothes that are put in the hamper on their own.

The brothers want to share their weird experiences, but they don’t know if they can trust each other. But when they find out who’s behind all the strange things around the house, they are called to battle with the most unusual creatures and wildest of beasts.

When the battle turns more dangerous than they imagined, Landon and Broden must face their fears, put their grudges aside, and learn how to work together. 


In addition, get FREE reads just for entering. This giveaway ends soon, so make sure you hurry!

Good luck!

GO HERE TO ENTER: https://booksweeps.com/book-giveaway/middle-grade-kid-fiction-december-2018/

 

Final Frontier: Space Opera, Military, and First Contact Sci-Fi Book Giveaway

Have you seen this awesome giveaway from BookSweeps?

You can win my book Coming from Nowhere , plus books from authors like Matthew Mather , Mark Wayne McGinnis , and more.



There’s more! You’ll also get a brand new eReader if you win and FREE e-reads just for entering.

This giveaway ends soon, so make sure you hurry and enter!

Good luck!

Join the fun here !

A Rancher and a Warrior: Remembering a WWII Vet

Today marks the 77-year anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor . It was this act by the Japanese that got the U.S. involved in WWII.

My grandfather-in-law is a WWII vet. I had the honor and privilege of writing his story, and we would be excited and humbled if you check out his book (it’s available as an ebook, paperback, and audiobook).

Dale is still alive today. He’s as feisty as ever and still full of stories from “back in the day.” What he did for our country was an amazing and wonderful thing. He is an amazing man and a true American hero.


Lance Dale Robinson dreamed of one day owning his own ranch. Born and raised in a small town in Wyoming, ranching was all he’d ever known and it was all he ever wanted to do. But on his way to achieving that dream, WWII got in the way.

He was a heavy machine gunner for Company H of the 313th Infantry. He landed on Normandy Beach 6 days after D-Day, and tells a story of wading through bodies like seaweed to get onto land. He was part of the Battle of the Bulge, where he was almost court-martialed for thinking his sergeant’s life was more important than his weapon. He received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and a British Military Medal.

When he returned home after his service, he went back into ranching. During his career, Dale worked with the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University to improve artificial insemination of cows. He traveled and lectured about the impacts that were being made in the process, and he helped advance science and ranching.

This is the story of Dale's life in Wyoming and in WWII.

For those who are interested in the audiobook but don’t have/don’t want an Audible subscription, I can sell you a copy of the story. It will be downloaded on an MP3 player and delivered straight to your door. Please contact me for pricing.

Happy Release Day!

Today is the day! Edge of Humanity, the second book in the Saving Humanity series, is now available for your reading pleasure!

Book 2 in the Saving Humanity Series  Does being immune to becoming a zombie still make a person human?  Caleb tried to live a normal life after the uprising. He moved into the city, found a home, and worked a job. He yearned for days full of tedium and schedules. Instead, he discovered he was immune to becoming a zombie, and his life was turned upside down.

Fear and uncertainty have replaced normalcy. Caleb no longer knows if his immunity makes him human or something else…something monstrous. He knows who is after him, but to find out what his captors want and what he is, he’ll have to play their game and give up his freedom. His sacrifice may or may not lead to the answers he desperately craves. The publishing of this book marks the 13th fiction book I've had published. 13! To celebrate, I'm giving away signed paperback copies of all of my books to one lucky winner. You can enter the contest below. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway