Roxy Mews's Blog, page 18

Are online skills surpassing IRL Experience?

I had a job interview yesterday and the most surprising thing happened. My work as an author and an online content creator was of more interest to the interviewer than my real life job experience. 

To put this in perspective, I'm a college-educated person with years of retail management and customer service skills under my belt. That portion consumed maybe five minutes of our forty minute interview. 

While I don't have experience in the field I was interviewing for, I'd heard about this opportunity and jumped on it. But I assumed my evil day job skills would be my biggest selling feature since I have management on my resume. It was barely a blip on their radar. 

What did we talk about? Online skills. We talked about edits and formatting and uploading and social media. We talked about Facebook parties and coordinating collaborations. Know what we didn't talk about? Management experience. 

Granted, I haven't interviewed in a long time, but the fact that my ability to grapple with authors to plan games and giveaways was relevant in my quest to obtain an evil day job...well you could have knocked me over with a feather! That stuff was just for fun. Right? It couldn't have been a marketable skill. Apparently, it was the most marketable skill on my list.

Like anything you do where you put your future employment in someone else's hands, I tore apart our conversation and thought of all they ways I could have presented myself better. And you know what I would do better next time? I'd put my online experience and skills to the forefront of my resume and my sales pitch. 

With attention spans not lasting any longer than a quick scroll through Facebook, you have to catch attention immediately, and refresh that first impression over and over again until it finally sticks in the back of someone's head. So savvy online people are valuable. Who would have thought all that time playing games with my friends online would have been topping my resume!

So for all those authors out there who are looking for a second or third gig to keep the lights on, I'm telling you right now...don't for a second discount all the skills you have as an author. I'm going to completely revamp my resume before sending it out again. 

Do you use your online skills as a feature for your Evil Day Job interviews? Do you have a blog? Write reviews for one? Host online events? Those skills are more valuable than you think they are. I definitely learned that yesterday. 

What do you think? Are skills with emails, social media, and skype-style conferences taking the place of in-person interaction at your place of employment? I'd love to hear about how you think the business world is evolving in your line of work. Tell me about it in the comments below.


~Roxy

What I've learned from 30 days of journaling

I've been chatting about my "morning pages" or daily three pages of journaling as part of my morning routine. When I looked back, I realized I've kept up the habit for over a full month now. So every morning, before I've even had my coffee, I sit down and brain vomit onto the page.

Most importantly, and I think something not enough people talk about...I didn't always want to do the work. That's right! There were mornings where I got up and grumbled and pouted and wanted to run away from my office without opening that book. I wasn't skipping to my journal with butterflies dancing around my head. If anything, the only animal I got was my cat weaving between my legs making me fall and whack my knee on the table. But I hopped for a second and kept going. Once I did put pen to paper, I never once regretted the time spent. 

I've also learned I'm super hard on myself. There is something about writing down all of your thoughts that makes you realize you're being a dick. When you have to put a negative thought down on paper, it makes you pause and rethink it. At least it made me pause. Taking the time to look at what is coming from my pen is humbling and inspiring, but most importantly, it's honest. And in being honest, I have to admit it when my negative self talk is not the truth. 

Every chance I get, I turn negative parts of my day into positive action plans. Personal pep talks are my journaling forte. I always seem to end with a written kick in the ass to myself. I recently ended a post with...

If it doesn't come to me right now, it will soon. I'm open to the opportunities that are about to flood my way.

That's the biggest difference I've seen in myself after daily journaling for a month straight. I'm more open to ideas. I'm more open to gratitude for what is going well, and I'm incredibly open to the possibilities I have in front of me to take advantage of.

Luck and instinct are two factors that have dictated an incredibly huge part of my life. I decided what college to go to the second I walked onto the campus. My hubby just happened to play the same instrument as me in the marching band. My passion for reading turned into a career as an author all because I reached out and told one of my favorite authors that she was hilarious and I owed her a beer for the laughs.

But luck and instinct, don't put in the work. I tend to drift, and let me tell you guys...perimenopause is a bitch on the brain along with the body. Journaling has forced me to take the smallest of babysteps in reviving the parts of my gray matter in charge of focus. I sit and write without stopping, and that makes me sit for at least five minutes and focus on what crazy shit is floating around up there. 

Now, am I saying all of it makes sense? *snork* Not at all. Hell, my handwriting isn't the best because I've spent most of the last few years working from a computer. So some of those entries aren't legible unless you close one eye and cross the other while saying a chant and smoking something only legal in some of the United States. That doesn't mean that the parts I can read aren't super important.

I'm not going to talk about all the crap I wrote down, mainly because some of it is crap, but some of it is super personal. Journaling is the best therapy. No one is going to read it but you, and that raw honesty is invaluable. Every aspect of our lives is the combination of our responses to external factors, and choices we've made. Some of my journal entries have forced me to look at the parts of my own life I want to change. I get to explore how I got where I am, and what I can do to make a different choice to change my path.

I don't do everything I suggest to myself in my journal. I'm not that evolved. But I've started making changes in my life that I never would have, had I not taken the time to reflect on the "Why".

Basically thirty days of journaling has taught me...I need to do thirty more. And thirty more after that. Journaling is now part of my morning, and it's not going away anytime soon.

Do you journal? Do you do it daily? Are you thinking about starting now? Tell me about your journaling habits or just send this office supply hoe a pretty picture of your favorite notebook. I'd love to see it.

~Roxy

Please stop writing checks in stores

I work in retail. Running a cash register in a store is a frustrating experience, because as someone who has worked in this environment for the better part of two decades I can tell you, no retail store uses the top of the line computers to back their equipment. 

Things break down, freeze, and generally don't behave perfectly for more than a few transactions at a time. Basically we don't know how they are going to perform at any given time. So if we're standing there cocking an eyebrow at the screen, we're not idiots, we're just trying to use our psychic abilities to guess what the POS system is going to do this time. 

We also have to have the same conversations dozens of times in a day. And in the age of technology, we have to tell people how to use their own phones on the regular. WiFi is a complicated thing.

But for the love of all that is holy...please...from a cashier...stop using checks in stores. Please.
Checks are still able to be taken, but most places now use them like a debit card anyway and the money comes out immediately. Meaning...we use them like debit cards. No joke. The customer doesn't fill out the check at all in my store, and then I write VOID in black marker across the check before handing it back to the customer.

But unlike debit cards, we have multiple opportunities to screw up, there is a lot more fraud, and it takes FOREVER. Checks can't be starter checks, they have to run through the machine twice, they can't be business checks, they have to have both the address and the phone number on the check...so...yeah. I dislike checks.

And here's the thing...if I screw up and take a check that I shouldn't, because sometimes the machine will approve a bogus starter check, I HAVE TO PAY FOR IT! So not only do I have to worry about doing the procedure right, but I have the added anxiety of being out hundreds of dollars if I do it wrong.
Checks are the bane of my existence, and every other cashier's nightmare too, because it slows down the line. 

Please...I'm begging you. Use your debit card.

A woman yesterday took out her checkbook.

She took out a pen to note the amount.

AND THEN SHE PULLED HER DEBIT CARD OUT FROM BEHIND THE LEDGER!

I damn near hugged her. 

Be this woman. Use your debit card. Please.

​~Roxy

I took a tarot class

A little background. I've been dabbling in tarot since I was in high school. I bought the classic Rider Waite deck and got acquainted with the basics, but was never very good at reading them unassisted by a book. Even with a cheat sheet, I wasn't the best.

Jump ahead a few years, and I found a book and a deck that I connected with well.

I thoroughly enjoy the definitions and spreads in the book Power Tarot  and the deck I found for myself in New Orleans, the Cosmic Tarot . 

Relationships seem to be my forte. So while I've mostly read for myself, I did get to a point where I even predicted a friend would be "barefoot and pregnant" by a certain month, and she's now had her third child and is a stay at home mom. I also did a few spreads when I met my hubby and informed him we'd be getting married two weeks after we started dating. He laughed at me for a few months...until he bought me a ring. ;)

All that aside, I didn't really trust my own intuition with the deck, unless it was screaming at me. So when an inexpensive online class called "Intuitive Tarot" popped up on my feed, and I had a few bucks in my bank account, I decided to give it a shot. I'm so glad I did!

I spent 21 days taking thirty minutes to an hour each morning and spending them with my cards. I meditated, I visualized, and I took some time over that period with every one of the cards in my deck. I'd heard before from multiple sources that taking time with each card was important, but this class took me on a journey with some direction, which is what I desperately needed.

I even put symbols under my pillow to try some dream work, but I was more successful with the meditation part. I don't think my nightmares about my retail job count toward the class assignments I was supposed to be doing. Seriously...coupons are terrifying sometimes. *shudders*

Fair warning, if you're not into visualization meditation, or chakra work, and haven't been exposed to any of that before, this class might move a bit fast in spots. I have a very basic familiarity, so I could keep up, but there were a couple days I had to click off my tab and do some research. 

After we got near the end, I had probably the best connection with the cards I've ever had, and even did a couple readings for myself without consulting my favorite book once! For some reason, I've never had a good reading from someone else. All the ones I get from other people are vague, and leave me with a real sense that the tarologist couldn't get a lock on me. Which is why I prefer to do my own readings.

My deck was gathering dust before, and now it's sitting just to the side of my desk. It makes me smile to have a way to mull things over in my mind with a little prodding from universal energy. Not to mention the fact that the deck is gorgeous, and reminds me of my trip to New Orleans.

Have you ever had your tarot cards read? Or do you read tarot too? Tell me about your experiences, I'd love to hear your stories.

~Roxy

You know you're an introvert when...

I'm not going to lie. I am exhausted right now. Know why? I've been around people a LOT lately.

Yes, they are people I love, and I'm adoring the memories we've had and the experiences we've been able to spend time together. But it has completely drained me. Mainly because I'm so used to getting down time. My immediate family all has their own interests and we come together to get food, and...okay, we basically know we have to come together to eat and the rest of the time we enjoy our own interests.

Even my hubby is exhausting if he doesn't have a project to do.

Are you an introvert too? Not sure? Here are 5 ways to tell you might be an introvert too.

1. Your dreams include visions of epic blanket forts of solitude. 

via GIPHY

2. You stash snacks and drinks around the house so you don't have to venture from your empty room to find sustenance. This also applies for putting energy bars in your purse to prevent speaking with people to order food while out running errands.

via GIPHY

3. You find yourself physically exhausted. Finding a comfy chair and using your sweater as a pillow even in a crowded room starts to sound like a damn fine idea. 

via GIPHY

4. The cleaning of your baseboards suddenly takes on the utmost importance, and you simply have to leave. "I'm sorry. I can't go out to dinner. I can see dirt if I squint really hard and crawl across the floor." Because even cleaning is better than peopleing sometimes.

via GIPHY

5. You are hyper aware of the most out of the way bathroom available. Because you know if you go to the bathroom you can feign stomach issues and play a game on your phone alone for a good ten minutes to catch your breath. 

via GIPHY

Are you guilty of some of these same introvert quirks? Or is it just me? Probably just me. LOL.

Extroverts, we love you. We appreciate the fact that you make us leave our homes on occasion, because frankly, if you didn't, we'd probably live off of Amazon Prime and Post Mates. 

Just realize that we need more breaks than you do. 

Are you an extrovert or an introvert? Or are you somewhere in the middle? 

Me? I'm scrambling to get this done before the family craziness continues. I love it, but I can tell you right now...I need more coffee!

~Roxy

Apparently I used to be a plotter....

My parents are visiting this week, and along with the cool little art piece they brought me back from NOLA (yes, I'm jealous I wasn't there), my mom whips this bad boy out of her bag. 

My first thought..."Oh shit. Please don't let it be a diary."

But nope. It was what appears to be my very first book bible! Dated 1995 in one of the entries. This would have been a few months before my fifteenth birthday. Yeah. It was a while ago. 

And you can tell it's authentic because it has those stupid S's we all made in the 90's where you start out with six parallel lines and connect them, all over the darn thing.

Hubby said he never made those S's in the 90's. Was it a girl thing? I figured everyone did that. 

But trust me...this thing is very very 90's. 
The tabs in case the faded ink isn't visible are "Characters" , "Outlines", "Starters", "Inserts", and "Scenes".  And yes...in the "Scene" section I had one sentence summaries of 13 scenes plotted for the story. 

It's the story of a girl stuck in a love triangle between the jock and her best friend. I was obsessed with The Vampire Diaries around that time, so I'm pretty sure everything I was taking notes on was a love triangle of some sort. (And yes, young ones, Vampire Diaries was a book way back in the 90's. In the long long ago. Back when Elena was blond and had blue eyes, and that was an important story plot point, but we won't go down that angry road.)

But while there was some planning, there were also random notes that were my inner pantser trying to break free.  I think I dig the "Aggressive Imagination" part. Good term, young Roxy. Might need to make that part of my new tagline. 

Erotic Romance Writer with an Aggressive Imagination

*snort* Yeah. Let's put that on a business card.

I do remember this notebook, now that it's in my hand. I spent my own money on it, and held it for a good long while to make sure it was worth the hefty price tag. But I bought it because I knew it was the perfect spot to write my teen drama masterpiece. I'm not really the sentimental memento type, but I think I'm hanging onto this. 

​Do you have written proof from a long time ago that writing was always a part of you? Or something from your past that sparks a memory that you hang onto? I'd love to hear about it.

~Roxy

Battling Our Bodies

I work a helaciously long 12 hour shift in a retail store once a week, every week. And I've done that for closing in on ten years now. I am at the point where I'm quoting Murtaugh, before slathering Tiger Balm on my ankles and knees at the end of the night.

But right now, I'm still healthy enough to do this. With my parents getting older, and me getting older, health has started to weigh on my mind a lot more. And for real...every time I see a childhood icon show up in the media they're either dead or in the hospital for something horrid. I grew up in the 80's. All that cocaine is catching up with people.

In the age of Twitter, and Facebook, and YouTube, we get a lot closer to our idols. I'm not going to lie. I feel giddy whenever I tweet at someone and they like it or reply. Fangirling never leaves your system, no matter how old you are. 

Getting closer to others online is a double-edged sword. One of the women I've enjoyed following on social media got a comment on her video noting she had a lot of swelling over her right eye. She assumed it was allergies, but when people pushed her she went to the doctor and found out it was a brain tumor. 

I can't imagine how the world would have been robbed had she not received that comment. Her name is Simone Giertz, and her first video back from recovery is below. She shares a lot about her experience that I give her credit for putting out there, and it made me take a step back and realize how precious today is. 

My day to day life in my job involves dealing with people, and what folks will share with absolute strangers in a public setting is insane. No, lady, I don't want to know what you would do with your cheating ass husband if you see him outside of court. Although, I have snagged a few characters from my working hours. But that's beside the point.

Watching Simone recover, and really, seeing any of the people I admire overcome obstacles makes me take a second look at what I've deemed insurmountable. Sure, my life isn't easy, but I'm going to take a page from Simone's book and give my obstacle an innocent name before I conquer it.

Today my "Brian" is my inbox, some contest judging, and putting together the basics for a proposal I terrified to like. The chick below conquered brain cancer with humor and tenacity. I'm dealing with a sore back, and some joint pain, so I sure as shit, can answer some emails. There will always be days when, due to health, we can do more than others. So I'm taking advantage of what my body can do today. What task are you going to conquer?

~Roxy

Rejection Letters Suck

Last night I got myself a shiny new rejection letter. Even if you self-publish there are ads or promos you apply for and get rejections from. It's the truth of publishing. Somewhere along the line, someone is going to come to you at some point and say...

"We're sorry. You're not for us. Maybe if you wrote something worthwhile instead..."

via GIPHY

Okay. So they don't use those words. But even when you get something you know damn well is a form rejection email, the only thing that document says to you is....I'm the worst writer that has ever put fingers to keyboard.

via GIPHY

Here's the truth that was said to me by some women I respect more than most anyone else in this biz...

"If you have a story inside you, there is someone out there that needs to read it."

So what if your story has shape-shifting dinosaurs in it! There is someone looking for that exact thing somewhere across the internet, and when your book comes up. It makes their day.

via GIPHY

And at some point, that special reader is going to leave *gasp* a good review! They will look at your books and say, "I like this. It doesn't suck hairy donkey balls!"

via GIPHY

For the future reviews, for the possibility that my books will make someone besides me giggle when they really need a smile, I'm heading back in to wrap up another book. It's the one that's going to get me a "Yes".

via GIPHY

What are you going to conquer today? I'd love to hear about it. Let's go forth and be awesome together. The world needs us to make them smile.

​~Roxy

Weird Things My Pets Do

Animals have always been a big part of my life. To the point where when I was a kid, I didn't have imaginary friends...I had imaginary pets. And eventually I accumulated so many I had an imaginary zoo to contain them all. 

So when I got to the point where I could care for my own animals, I had them in my life from that point on. 

Not only do they give you the purest love that you can receive in life, they are damn entertaining. Below is my dog, Vernie. Her full name is Laverne, and we adopted her from a hoarding rescue as an adult. She already knew her name and we couldn't bear to change it. She's a timid little girl, and due to her time with her previous owner, she is not terribly fond of men in general.

She's a haired breed so we spend lots of time at the dogwash keeping her clean. She hates getting washed, but loves prancing around the pet store afterward. I still giggle when I wash her down and she shrinks to her real size under all her fluffy hair. While she plays on occasion, Vernie is around 14 years old now, so her main goal of the day, is being in a bed nearby. So for that reason, we now have to have a dog bed in every room. Otherwise she paces back and forth until a bed is available in whatever room I'm in. She's my girl. Tell me how cute she is. LOL. 
This is my cat, Grayson. Who, of course, is also a rescue from a local humane society. In our old house my cat spent the majority of his day scaling the kitchen cabinets to the point we gave up and put beds up there for him.

Now he has two obsessions...towels and his "red blanket". His red blanket is super soft, and if you dare use said blanket to keep your feet warm, you WILL have a cat kneading on your lap. The towels in our bathroom sit on a super deep shelf, and my constant punishment for not having adequate laundry done is he will climb behind said towels and take up residence. 

There have been many a week when I've had to re-wash an entire closet of towels because they had enough cat hair on them to form another animal.

He also hates cat toys. I have spent hundreds of dollars on actual cat toys, but he will turn his nose up at all of them to find a random ear plug on the floor of the garage for an hour. 
There has been lots of crazy sad and scary stuff in everyday life lately. And nothing makes me smile more than my pets. Spam me with pictures of your furbabies. Tell me what they do that make you shake your head, or giggle snort in amusement.

In case you couldn't tell, I totally used this blog to just spam pictures of my adorable pets. ;)


~Roxy

What's Radish?

Radish Fiction I heard about this app from Jeana Mann, and was super excited about it.

I'm always looking for ways to add more reading into my life. Between Evil Day Job (Which I'm currently running late to), and family obligations, life is about whatever ten minute chunk I can steal for myself.

Radish is a reading app that gives authors a way to pull their story apart into 10-15 minute chunks and give you a way to read on your phone while you're waiting in the school pickup lane, or the doctor's office, or hell...at that line in the grocery store behind someone writing a check.

Have you heard of Radish before? If you have the app, what are you reading on it right now?

I'm currently reading "Neanderthal Seeks Human" and "Pretty Broken Girl". Give me some ideas for what to binge on next!

​~Roxy