S.J. Pajonas's Blog, page 113

How Not To Give A F*ck – Negative To Positive

In this continuing series, I will show you how not to give a fuck about your book rejections, bad reviews, and disappointing sales. Please see the table of contents at the bottom of this post for more in this series.

This is an idea I’ve come to love over the past year. Here’s a newsflash, “It’s not just about you.” Really. It’s not just about me. It’s not just about you. Though many of us tend to concentrate on our own sales, our own books, our own egos, that kind of thought can lead us into a downward spiral. In my opinion, and according to some research I’ll highlight below, it’s better to turn that energy outwards and concentrate a percentage of ourselves on others. Turn negative into positive! Let’s do it!

When I first started writing and I hadn’t met my tribe of friends yet, all my energy was focused on me. At the time, that was okay. I needed to concentrate on getting my first book out there. I was meeting people and absorbing information, but the real friendships developed slowly. Once I was published, I helped others and they helped me, and through that beneficial exchange, I came to love and admire a great group of people, people I was willing to cheer for no matter how low I was. Sometimes that small change of mindset can do a lot to help you give no fucks about your own problems.

Let’s talk about envy, a negative emotion that makes us want what other people have. I can’t tell you how many of my author friends are successful. SO MANY. Almost every week, someone is on Facebook shouting out about the new contract they signed, the USA Today or NY Times best seller list they made, the movie contract they got. Holy wow. It’s a lot, especially when I’m struggling to sell 10 books per month. Envy coats my brain in green as I read the updates and think, “This will never happen to me. Why do they succeed and I fail??” But this is typical, and I’m sure I’m not the only person who reads these and suddenly starts giving fucks about everything. EVERYTHING.

But we can turn envy into something more positive, something that works for us, instead of against us. The University of Rochester Medical Center suggests…

In small doses, these emotions can be motivating. When someone else has what you want, this increases your determination to get it.

Yep! But notice the “in small doses” part. Lol. When I have a week where EVERYONE is doing well and shouting it from the rooftops, my own confidence can take a nosedive. That’s a good time to rein in the social media and take some “me” time. But the weeks where I hear a good thing, here and there, I take the other’s accomplishments and use them to drive me towards better goals.

This article at Psychology Today about two friends, Penelope and Barbara, shows us that, yep, book deals and success can and do come between people, if we’re not careful.

If we cannot be happy for our friends, this is not friendship. Frenemies are often caught in toxic competitions more rivalrous than loving. If we hope to forgive the people around us their happiness, though, we must first recognize the hungry ghost voice that does not want them to have more than we do. This is a universal law. Otherwise, the void inside you that never feels adequate, authentic, sufficient, worthy, pretty, wealthy, or tall enough, becomes the dictator of your life and the bane of your successful friends’ existence.

When the void is large and we’re throwing our fucks into it at an alarming pace, we’re sinking deeper into an unhappy place. Turn your back on the void, don’t give it your fucks, and be happy for your friends.

Being happy for others, truly happy, is the way to turn these negative emotions into powerful positive emotions. If you’re having a bad day, ask another author friend how they’re doing and pump them up instead. My friend, Heidi, did this for me last summer. I was feeling really low about, well, everything and she sent me flowers! I will never forget that. I still carry the card that came with the flowers in my planner and re-read it often. Small gestures can mean the world to someone else and help you feel better about yourself.

If I think I suck, I go tell my BFF author buddy that she’s awesome, and I think she’s going to make it big one day. If my sales are low, I jump into one of my favorite writing groups and throw some cheer at someone. If I’ve had a day when the words don’t come, I go to Facebook and I post about a friend’s book or I compliment a cover designer’s work or I find some other way to prop up someone else and forget about myself.

Negative Thought Replacement, replacing them with positive thoughts, is a psychological technique recommended to get you on the right path. Think of it as “keeping your fucks” instead of “giving your fucks.” For every negative thought you have, replace it with a positive thought in the opposite direction. If you think, “Goddamn it, Susie made the USA Today best seller list again! I’m never going to be a best seller.” Change that from negative to positive by thinking, “Instead of concentrating on being a best seller, I will instead work harder at my own book so that it’s the best book I can make it be.”

I realize that sometimes those things will get you down, no matter what you think. Those fucks will fly before you can reach out and grab them. Take a moment to meditate, feel happy for you, for your friend, and then replace the negative thought with a positive one. By turning my negative energy into something positive, I no longer give a fuck about my own failures. Instead, I give a fuck about seeing someone else succeed. I swear it works.

How do you deal with negative emotions? Can you turn a negative into a positive? Share your methods in the comments!
Table of Contents for the How Not To Give A F*ck About Your Book Rejections, Bad Reviews, and Disappointing Sales Series

Introduction
Meditation
Exercise
Negative To Positive

Expect a new post in this series every Friday!

Top 10 Apps For The World Traveler

If you’re a world traveler then your smartphone is your best traveling friend. With access to thousands of apps and the internet, it’s a great tool to have with you when you’re in an unfamiliar place. Because FACE TIME is a novel with Apple products in it (I had to make a choice for consistency sake and since I know Macs and iDevices the best, I went with that), here is a list of apps I think should be loaded on your iPhone before you step on the plane. Some of them may surprise you.

1. World Clock – This is an easy one because it’s already provided to you in iOS. Open the Clock App, and use the World Clock tab at the bottom to add in all the cities you’ll be traveling to. It’ll help you get acclimated when you land in a different time zone.

2. Instagram (http://www.instagram.com) – One of the catchiest photo apps on any device, Instagram will help you capture your trip and share it with all of your friends and family. You can post your photos from Instagram to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and Tumblr too so no one will miss that great moment when you hiked the Alps or swam with dolphins (Please do not put your iPhone in the water. Okay? You’ll regret that.)

3. Google Maps (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-maps/id585027354) – Sorry Apple Maps App, you can’t compare to Google Maps. With its built-in GPS and Street View for most cities in the world, it will help you find coffee when you’ve been up all night at the clubs in Spain or soup dumplings when you’ve been walking all day in Shanghai.

4. White Noise (http://www.tmsoft.com/iphone-whitenoise.html) – There are several White Noise Apps in the iTunes Store, but I love White Noise by TMSoft. I even bought the paid version because it had so many options. Sometimes you need white noise to block out hotel noise or the place is too quiet and you’re used to it noisy. This app will run all night with the iPhone plugged in and has a built-in alarm clock. It can’t be beat.

5. Evernote (http://www.evernote.com) – Use Evernote (one of my favorite apps period) to save articles, links, photos, and notes of places you’ve gone to or would like to go. Start a new notebook in Evernote for each destination and you’ll never lose that idea! It also makes a great way to keep a travel journal, if that’s your thing. If you’re traveling with other people, you can share out notes via email and text to other people on your trip and even create notes that other people can edit if you have a group of people who want to share ideas.

6. Runkeeper (http://www.runkeeper.com) – This may be one of those “huh?” apps but just think about it. Runkeeper has more than 19 million users around the world, two-thirds of which are outside in the United States. (http://mashable.com/2013/05/21/runkeeper-innovation/) It works in many places in the world and is a great way to keep track of where you walked and for how long. It’ll store all your hikes, runs, or walks for you, so if days later, you can’t remember where you saw that cute shop you wanted to go to in Paris, you can retrace your steps on the map Runkeeper keeps for you. Brilliant.

7. World Explorer (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/world-explorer-travel-guide/id381581095) – This is a great app with tons of information about over 850,000 places in the world. When you open the app, it’ll find stuff around you using Location Services which is always an added bonus. I like that it even had things about my own hometown! So I can imagine that tourist destinations are even more covered.

8. Google Translate (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-translate/id414706506) – This app is invaluable when traveling overseas to countries that don’t speak your native language. Type in words you don’t understand to have it translate or even have the other person speak into the application and get a translation. My in-laws use this app all the time with good results (English to Bulgarian and vice versa), and it consistently gets 5-star reviews. Use it to help negotiate a deal at the next street festival in Thailand you attend.

9. XE Currency Calculator (http://www.xe.com/apps/iphone/) – If you’re a world traveler, making quick purchases at roadside stalls, then you know you can’t pay for everything with a credit card. Hard cash is what is needed. You should always know the exchange rates so you can make sure you’re getting a good deal and not getting ripped off when someone tries to sell you a sarong for 400 baht on the beach in Koh Samed.

10. Your Travel Site App of Choice – Whether you booked your trip through Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak, or Motels.com, you should have their app on your phone, loaded up with your itinerary for the trip. No need to chase it down anywhere should you drop the printed copies in the porta potties during Rio Carnival. Even if you had the best time of your life, I’m sure you’d like to make it back home again, so that you can rest up, get back to work, and earn money for the next trip!

Hope these apps inspire you to get on a plane and go! It’s all Lee has been doing for five years, and all Laura could help but do when she finally meets him in FACE TIME. Where do you plan on going next?

Teaser Tuesday: Newspapers And Murata-San

One of the main plots of THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER is about how Mei will live her life now that she’s home and jobless. Sure, she could continue to help her mom on the farm, and that’s something she had planned to do. But with the barn destroyed and funds low, plus it’s winter, Mei needs to bring in some income or face a winter freezing to death in an uninsulated farmhouse.

In her quest to find paying work, Mei finds jobs helping some elderly men and women in her town. One of her new clients, a fun and bright elderly woman named Murata, needs help cleaning up her apartment. Amongst the many things she has never had time to get rid of are stacked of newspapers she wasn’t strong enough to carry down the stairs and recycle.

I actually see this a lot with the elderly. They want to have a clean house, someplace that’s easy to take care of but don’t have the strength or time to take care of it, nor do they always have the money or trust to place in someone else to shuffle off this burden too. Family can only help so much and certainly not much if they live abroad.

The plight of the elderly in Japan has been on my radar for a few years now. The elderly population is growing there, and with family working long hours with very little time off, calling on sons or daughters to help them is a difficult task. It’s been an important enough topic for me to spend many hours reading about it, and I decided to weave it into this series as well. I wanted to give Mei something to be passionate about besides art. Hopefully you’ll love where her heart leads her in this series!

Sunday Update – June 12, 2016

Where did this week go? I feel like it flew by in a blur. Monday, the cleaning ladies came and I left the house to go for a walk while they were here. Tuesday, we got our first batch of veggies from our CSA share. Yay! New veggies and salads for June! On Wednesday, I went to the school library to help them inventory books. The school’s library is being renovated this summer and all the books need to be out. Then I hit the gym, too. Thursday, I spent most of my day at the treadmill desk. Friday, I walked in the park in the morning and my husband worked from home.

All through the week, I’ve been working on listening to all my Nogiku books and correcting typos, wrong words or missing words before the big cover reveal next week! I figured it would be good to go back and give the series a fresher-upper before the big reveal. I’m glad I’ve done it. I’ve caught a bunch of typos and wrong words (envelop vs envelope!) and it’s inspiring me to get back on the writing horse. I’ve got all the covers now and my Sunday night tonight will be devoted to getting them all saved out and sending a package of them over to Lola for the cover reveal.

I also uploaded the final version of THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER to all vendors and got the paperback all ready to go. I’m just waiting on the proof from Createspace, which will hopefully come this week. I’m also working on a 30-second FB ad video for the Nogiku Series that I’ll start once the new covers go live. Busy busy busy. I wish I were writing though. It’s been a long time since I wrote something new and all this other stuff is getting in the way.

What else happened this week?

Deer come to our yard often but this one was really close to the house!

I made pancakes for the whole family last Sunday!

The goslings are getting bigger.

I love my new white sunglasses!

And drinks outside when it’s nice are fabulous.

Coming up this week on the blog: a new teaser for THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER, a Top 10 post on Thursday, and a new How Not To Give A F*ck on Friday.

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How Not To Give A F*ck – Exercise

In this continuing series, I will show you how not to give a fuck about your book rejections, bad reviews, and disappointing sales. Please see the table of contents at the bottom of this post for more in this series.

Me, on a walk, no fucks to be found.

Maybe this post will come off as a little cliche, because everyone’s talking about it, but I don’t give a fuck. (See what I did there?)

Here’s the real, raw truth: if you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t write. Maybe you’re healthy, in your twenties, and you can sit down and type 10,000 words a day or more? Enjoy it while it lasts because that is not how you’ll be able to perform for the rest of your life, AND I dare say, you are accelerating your demise faster than I ever did. And I was a computer programmer for 18 years before becoming an author! Spent hours at the computer every day, coding. I used to get knots, ganglion cysts, between my fingers from so much typing. I fear they’ll be back soon.

So besides needing exercise to combat the effects of being at your computer all day, you also need it to help you not give a fuck. Why? Exercise is a great mood booster! Psychology Today actually did a meditation vs. exercise smackdown and I found this passage very telling…

“There is also strong evidence in humans that exercise improves the functions of your prefrontal cortex — the part of your brain that sits right behind your eyeballs. Your prefrontal cortex is involved in “executive functions” that include attention, working memory (keeping things in mind), and mental flexibility. If that wasn’t enough, we also know that exercise is a great mood booster. In one study it was shown that exercise could be as effective as a commonly used anti-depressant at improving symptoms of major depressive disorder. Clearly exercise packs a mean punch.”

See? Enhancing your mood also helps you not give a fuck! I’m sure of it. I certainly have fewer fucks to give after a good workout.

So let’s talk about what happens to you when you don’t exercise as an author. One of the things about being an author is that it requires a lot of sitting unless you’ve changed from the classic author mode to a standing or a treadmill desk. So not only can writing be bad for your mindset on occasion, when dealing with all the bullshit, but it can also be hard on your body.

Authors constantly deal with such ailments as RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury), carpal tunnel, sciatica, curved spines, wrist injuries, shoulder injuries, neck injuries, and eye strain. Sheesh! You would think we play a dangerous sport or something! But this is all from being in front of the computer too long. And when we’re in pain and poring over our credit card statement that will not be covered by this month’s royalty check, our moods plummet and we start to give fucks like we’re made of them.

No! Get up! Get moving! A good rush of endorphins can really help change your mood, and regular exercise that you stick to can help you keep a positive attitude through just about anything. How do you fit that exercise in with the looming deadlines and the fact that you have to write one bazillion words before the weekend and your hair is falling out?

Obviously, I’m not a doctor nor a personal trainer so if you want to really get in shape, I suggest consulting with a professional on this. But even a small amount of exercise can help when you’re blindsided by an awful review or you’re looking at your month-end numbers and you want to vomit.

1) Get up from your desk and walk away. Give yourself a goal for every crappy thing you encounter. Hit a new sales low? Do ten push-ups. Some reader writes you hate mail? Go for a ten minute walk. My favorite is every time I think that I suck and I’m a terrible writer, I get up and do 20 squats. I hate squats so I try to think nice things most days. Motivation!

2) Become friends with the Pomodoro timer. You’ve probably heard about this method online or through other author friends. Just google “Pomodoro Timer” and download an app to your phone or computer (or you can go old school with a timer of your own). BUT HERE’S WHERE I SUGGEST SOMETHING DIFFERENT! I had to put that in caps so you’d pay attention. Most authors I know set their Pomodoro Timers to something like this: 20 minutes of work, 5 minutes rest, 20 minutes of work, 5 minutes rest, 20 minutes of work, 5 minutes rest, 20 minutes of work, 15 minutes rest. People, this is NOT ENOUGH REST. This is how I want you to set your timer: 30 (or 45) minutes work, 15 minutes rest, 30 (or 45) minutes of work, 15 minutes rest, etc. And every time it’s “rest time,” get up from your computer, look out the window or focus on something very far away, and do some exercise. Come up with a routine. Squats, lunges, high-knees, planking, a round of sun salutation if you’re into yoga. Get your body moving and rest your eyes. Don’t check email. Don’t get on social media. Leave the computer and move your body. You’ll thank me for it later.

3) Become a walker. Now this is my own personal thing, but I swear that walking is something that a vast majority of authors do. I would love to see a study correlating walking to writing. I bet there would be a connection there. Either go for a walk and let your brain drink in your surroundings or listen to something (music, audiobooks, or podcasts) that’ll keep your mind off anything you’re giving a fuck about. When I exercise with just music or the sound of nature, my mind wanders and I think of excellent ideas for my plots and characters. If I’m sick of my projects, I can get a break by listening to an audiobook or an industry podcast. I always come back from a walk feeling much better about life, myself, and my career.

4) Consider a standing or treadmill desk. I understand that sitting is nice. Heck, I’m sitting as I type this right now. But taking a portion of your day to stand and work, or walk and work, is a much better option for your body. I tell people about my treadmill desk all the time and the first thing they say is, “I would break my neck if I did that.” People, I promise that it’s VERY slow walking. Like 1.8 miles per hour. It’s a slow stroll. I barely even notice my legs are moving. BUT THEY ARE. And when I step off the treadmill after working on it for an hour, and I’m both physically exhausted and mentally spent from creating a whole world out of nothing, I give so little in the way of fucks. Like none. It’s the best.

So if these things haven’t convinced you that exercise will help both your body and your mind give fewer fucks, then let me point to this…

“Meditation and aerobic exercise done together helps reduce depression, according to a new Rutgers study. The study, published in Translational Psychiatry this month, found that the mind and body combination – done twice a week for only two months – reduced the symptoms for a group of students by 40 percent.

‘Scientists have known for a while that both of these activities alone can help with depression,’ says Shors. ‘But this study suggests that when done together, there is a striking improvement in depressive symptoms along with increases in synchronized brain activity.’

The men and women in the Rutgers study who completed the eight-week program – 22 suffering with depression and 30 mentally healthy students – reported fewer depressive symptoms and said they did not spend as much time worrying about negative situations taking place in their lives as they did before the study began.” — Rutgers Today

Less time worrying about negative situations? That sounds like giving no fucks! Yes! *Rubs hands together* My plan is coming together!

Now go out there, exercise, and give no fucks, my friends.

What are your favorite ways to get exercise into your day? Share them in the comments!
Table of Contents for the How Not To Give A F*ck About Your Book Rejections, Bad Reviews, and Disappointing Sales Series

Introduction
Meditation
Exercise

Expect a new post in this series every Friday!

Do Your Reading Habits Change In The Summer?

I saw this discussion topic a while back and saved it to Evernote, hoping I could eventually write on this topic! Now, with summer approaching swiftly, and my town pool is open on the weekends, I’m happy to talk about reading again. As crazy as this is, because most of you know that I’m a summer girl, I seem to thrive the most during winter and summer. I know, I know. How did winter become a season in which I do well? This past winter I devoted my time to writing two books in a row, and it was great for me! I would write every day and then read in the evenings before bed. I did very minimal promotion and kept to this schedule October through February. I faltered in springtime, though, falling into a depression that’s been hard to climb out of. I think it was the transition from writing every day to promotion every day that killed me! It was hard. Now, summer is coming up and I’m ready to read and write again.

Do my reading habits change in the summer? Absolutely! And it all has to do with time spent at the pool. I have to be really desperate for writing time to take my computer to the pool (I’ve done it before and I plan to do it again this summer on especially hectic writing days) but I would definitely rather read at the pool than anything else. I get the kids all sunscreened up, pack a lot of snacks, and then park myself poolside to sit and read allllllllll day long.

I find myself doing a few things during the summer I don’t do as much during the rest of the year in regards to reading.

1) I always set time aside to read every day OUTSIDE. Something about being outside and reading really appeals to me. I will happily sit out front of my house, or on the deck, and read my time away. I love the smell of the green trees and grass, the sun on my head, and the chirping of birds as I read away. This is why the pool appeals to me so much. The kids are occupied, I’m outside, and READING CALLS TO ME.

2) I exercise more outside which leads me to listening to more audiobooks. I consider audiobooks “reading” so when I’m on a walk outside, enjoying nature, and getting my exercise in, I’m usually listening to an audiobook. I have a lot of my podcasts I listen to every week, but if I’m really into my audiobook, I’ll let that take precedence. This can even take precedence at the pool! My eyes get tired after looking at the computer or a book all day, and sometimes I’ll just stare into space or close my eyes while listening to the audiobook. If my eyes aren’t tired, I’ll knit while listening too. All OUTSIDE. I hate being cooped up all winter long, so being outside during the summer is important to me!

So yeah, my reading habits do change in the summer. I find myself reading more and listening to audiobooks more, and then reading falls off drastically once the pool closes and the kids go back to school. Le Sigh. I miss it. BUT THE GOOD NEWS IS SUMMER IS JUST BEGINNING! YAY! And I have lots of reading ahead of me.

Do your reading habits change in the summer? Or do they stay the same? Tell me in the comments!

Book Chat #25

It’s my monthly update of what I’ve been reading and listening to! Let’s chat about books!

What I’m reading…

[image error][image error]I’m currently reading something fun on my Kindle! I decided to spend the money and buy WINTER by Marissa Meyer, though I haven’t paid this much for a kindle book in a long time ($10.99). Still, Meyer has never let me down, and I had a feeling this last book in the series wouldn’t be one to miss. I’ve grown to love this series over the past few years. CINDER was a little predictable but interesting with an underlying mystery I was into. SCARLET was very unexpected, but again, I was intrigued. By the time I read CRESS, I was hooked. I bought FAIREST at UtopYA last year, talked to Marissa Meyer, and had her sign it (though I haven’t read it yet.. it’s a side-story to the series). And now WINTER has me on the edge of my seat, a real page-turner, and significantly large too. I’m looking forward to reading the whole thing! I’m around 22% right now.

What I read…

[image error][image error]After I was done with DATING FOR DECADES, I moved onto EJ Wesley‘s current work-in-progress. You may remember that I read his book PERFECTLY ERNEST last year and loved it. He had asked me to beta read it in March and I wasn’t able to get around to it. I read it during May and absolutely loved it. I’ll be sure to tell you more about it when he publishes it!

What I listened to…

[image error][image error]I finished up WWW:WATCH by Robert J. Sawyer and I really enjoyed it. The elements of the story are really coming together now and there were some really tense and dramatic events in the book that had me transfixed. I can’t wait to listen to the next book. The narrators in this series are really good. I dislike none of them. So it’s been a pleasure to listen to so far and I’ll probably spend my next credit on the last book in the trilogy. If you love YA contemporary scifi, you should definitely read this series. I can’t recommend it enough!

What I’m listening to…

[image error][image error]I’m currently listening to the fourth book of the Expanse series, CIBOLA BURN by James S. A. Corey. I was really excited to get into this series again after taking a break from it for WWW:WATCH, but man, it’s been a hard audiobook to listen to! I won’t say that I hate the narrator they chose for this book, but he’s not the same narrator as the previous books and it’s been very hard to listen to some of my beloved characters. Amos and Holden just sound weird! I’m floored by what a difference it makes! And I’m aching to get Jefferson Mays back for the next book in the series. Being an avid audiobook listener has taught me many things about what I look for in audiobooks and what I would want for my own books, should I ever have the cash to commission audiobooks, that is. Regardless of the narrator, the story itself is great and engaging and I’m making my way through it at a decent pace, considering all the podcasts I listen to in a week! This may be my favorite scifi series next to the Ender Series by Orson Scott Card, though I doubt anything could ever top the Pequeninos.

And that’s it! I’ve been listening and reading as much as I can between work, but summer is coming up and I expect it to change a little in the coming weeks with more books read poolside.

Teaser Tuesday: Mount Fuji

Probably one of the most well-known things about Japan is its national treasure, Mount Fuji, or Fuji-san. Its asymmetrical conical dome has been photographed a billion times at least, and you can sometimes see it on a clear day from Tokyo (it lies about 100km to the southeast of the city), if you’re lucky. Fuji-san can be very temperamental though. This venerable mountain often hides behind clouds for hours or days at a time. It’s an amazing sight if Fuji-san comes out for your viewing pleasure! You can also see it yourself by climbing the mountain, getting up close and personal. People climb it almost every day, and you don’t need to be an experienced mountain climber to try! Fuji-san is also volcanic and has the potential for eruption so keep a close eye on it.

This quote from THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER is pulled from a documentary I saw once on Mount Fuji and the man who has devoted his whole photography career to capturing this beauty, Yukio Ohyama. I’m paraphrasing and taking some liberties for fiction, but this is mostly true, and it not only shows how Yasahiro feels about Mei, but also how he feels about Japan, though he’s spent many years away.

THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER goes on sale on July 7, 2016 and is available for pre-order now!

Sunday Update – June 5, 2016

Get ready for a rant! I logged into WordPress last night to work on blog posts for the week and my plugin that allows me to link to and embed Instagram photos in my posts no longer works. Sigh. Turns out Instagram changed its API on June 1 and now I’m shit out of luck. It’s possible that a newer version of the plugin (I have v1.x of Media Manager Plus, WHICH I PURCHASED) will work, though I don’t see anything on their website about it. Regardless, I am not paying AGAIN for this plugin, which is what the company wants me to do. They want US$45 per year for me to use it. No, just no. I’m so sick of companies trying to bleed me dry yearly for subscription model apps. Especially an app like this that hasn’t improved with extra features since I bought it. I pay for Buffer but it gets better every time I use it. I pay monthly for some podcasts I love but they deliver me exclusive content for the price. I pay for a ton of things per month that I know will get better with time. But if all a company is doing is staying on top of the latest WordPress changes so their plugin continues to work, then no. I’m not paying them a subscription. Just no. I’m making sure all my phone photos end up on Amazon Cloud Drive and then I’m just uploading the ones I want to my blog. I don’t make enough money to keep paying these fees monthly or yearly. Okay, I’m done ranting.

So we had a busy week here last week. Last weekend was Memorial Day weekend and we had off Friday through Monday. We enjoyed the opening of the pool, a cookout with my brother and his family, and then another trip to the pool on Monday. We didn’t expect to go to the pool on Monday because it was supposed to rain all day, but we got lucky!

Tuesday was gym day for me and then I got sushi and sat outside to eat. Wednesday, I went for a walk in the morning and worked. Thursday, I worked at Panera, ate lunch outside and napped. Friday was a half school day for my kids and my youngest graduated from kindergarten!! I can’t believe how big she is now. Yesterday, it was nice out! I spent time outside working and took the kids to the pool in the late afternoon. I’ve been reading, working, and generally been very busy. I can’t wait to be done with my edits so I can start writing again. But there’s so much to do, I feel like it’ll all never be done.

I also suffered through a pinched nerve in my shoulder from Wednesday through Saturday. It was painful and made it hard to sleep, exercise, basically do ANYTHING. I need to do some yoga this morning and then walk later and I’m hoping I’m not in any more pain this coming week.

What else happened this week?

Reading at the pool! Summer has begun!

I love eating outside.

Made up a batch of pasta sauce!

Check out this deer who hung out in our yard all morning.

And Runkeeper has been cheering me on! I’m glad they send me emails telling me how well I’m doing. Lol. It helps keep me motivated.

Coming up this week on the blog: the first Teaser Tuesday for THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER, a Book Chat, a discussion post, and the second installment of How Not To Give A F*ck About Your Book Rejections, Bad Reviews, and Disappointing Sales.

Say Anything Saturday: I Love My Filofax

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “How does Stephanie, oh she who loves apps and uses her phone for almost everything, have a planner?” Right? It’s really old school, but for some reason it works for me. Last year, I used my Filofax planner pretty consistently but it’s big (A5 size) and I thought this year I would go for something smaller. So I bought a Hobonichi personal planner… and I turned it into a journal. Lol. That wasn’t supposed to happen! I was supposed to use it for work!

Since my planner planning was thwarted, I dug out my Filofax planner in late February and got it back into use again. I ordered some inserts from an Etsy store I really love, Pembroke Papers, and I started decorating and planning again.

I also finally invested in real dividers and chose these ice cream cone ones from Planner Dividers.

It suddenly became important for me to do this whole planning thing right this year. To be coordinated. To be ON TOP OF THINGS. I know, it’s a little nutty.

So, anyway, I just decorated June’s calendar a few days ago. I have a very wide variety of washi tape and cute Korean stickers, so I have a lot of fun decorating each month. I keep track of work stuff in this planner, so here I have written all the important things to keep tabs on like cover reveals, blog posts, events on FB to attend, etc.

And looking back on May, I was pretty busy! I kept the blog running all month with posts about FACE TIME and some new features I’ve been working on. I write notes to myself of things to do at the end of each month too, which is important for keeping a tidy business and website.

Sorry this photo is blurry! I think my phone buzzed as I was taking the picture, but I’m sure you can tell what it is…

In the section after my calendar, I have vast to-do lists. I have to remember to come here every day and look things over, make sure I’m not forgetting anything. Any low-priority items that don’t get taken care of one month are rolled over into the next month. I’ve been meaning to wash my hand knits now for two months. Oops! Just too far down the priority list for me to care.

I love the Filofax because it’s very versatile. The A5 size, though I thought it was big in the beginning, is actually a very good size to see everything on the calendar, plus it’s big enough that it’s hard to lose. There are a million Etsy sellers with printable inserts and all you need is A4 paper, cut in half, and a hole punch. I’ve printed up many of my own inserts and will probably do it into the coming years. Later this summer, I hope to add a section for meal planning!

Anyway, I just love my planner and I’m not afraid of saying so! Lol. Thanks for indulging me this post in which I gush over it.

Who else has a planner and loves using it?