Valerean

At the moment I'm thinking about what I want to do next year. My guy and I are not getting younger, and he's having issues now that require more of my attention (not yet in decline, just getting older.) One thing I spend about an hour a day on that I don't need to is updating my three blogs. Should I finally give them up and quit online journaling? Pros: I'd gain an hour of free time every day. I don't have much of an audience now, and that will continue to dwindle as online friends and any other interested parties go elsewhere for content. I'm not really contributing anything meaningful to the online writing community anymore since going freelance (nor do I feel I have to. Did that for fourteen years.) It is a time sink, and since I maintain my own handwritten personal journals I will still have a place to put my thoughts. Cons: I would probably not spend that free hour doing anything for my guy, as he sleeps in these days, so my mornings would b...

After that much-needed break I am back to blogging. I've decided to keep comments on all my blogs closed for the time being, possibly permanently, so I can maintain peace of mind and keep the toxic away. I appreciate your understanding. My one major achievement last month was finishing and delivering my first big work project of the year on time to my editor. My day job is quite important to me, and factored in to my decision to delete my Mastodon account. The problem that arose with social media did so two days before my work deadline, and three days before my mother's death anniversary, and that seriously messed with my head. I am already stressed to the max when I'm finishing a project; I don't need bullies and their need to pester me adding to the pressure. I feel a bit guilty over being such a drama queen about this issue, but I've worked hard to build a safe-for-me way to interact with others while preserving my privacy. I think being threatened ...

After having some severe anxiety over the social media problem, and being forced to give up my Mastodon account, which I really loved, I'm going to take a break from blogging for some much needed self-care. I'm putting myself first for once, and hoping to make that a habit, because I want my life to continue to be calm. See you when I'm ready to brave being online again. Image by Enrique from Pixabay

We just picked a bumper crop of Meyer lemons from our tree, enough to share with neighbors and still have all the chicken piccata and lemonade we want. :) I will be juicing and grating the peel from most of what I keep to freeze for cooking and baking the next few months. Since lemons are now about a dollar a piece at the market there much satisfaction in growing and harvesting our own. I think I've also banished all the hateful, lingering demons of depression over 2025's troubles and stresses. It was a terrible year, but I did get through it, and it's over now. I expect there will be more of the same in 2026, but how well I manage them depends on my attitude. The lemons of the new year need to be made into something. To start off on the right note I've created a new blog devoted to my thrifting and crocheting here . Writing about two things I'm passsionate about is fun, and gives me more room to express myself rather than brood over my diminishing abili...

Some news that is both bad and good: evidently my old writing blog, which still attracts over 3K visitors per day, isn't considered valuable enough to merit Adsense advertising, which passed on investing in it. Since my personal blog has much, much lower traffic I've removed the Adsense connection here, too. I was hoping to use advertising to cover some of my medical insurance premium costs, but I'll have to find another way. The good news is that it's kind of a relief, as I would have no control over what they chose to advertise on my blog. In other words, never mind about ads showing up on the blog -- not happening! Ha.

I'm still going through my photo archives so I can copy pics of the quilts I've made to my online album of the same ; this also keeps me from writing and pre-publishing too many posts for the blog. I'm struggling a bit with the latter, I admit. Having only one week planned stresses me out, but I am sticking to that goal of being (for me, anyway) more spontaneous. In some ways it's good for me to stop writing so many posts in advance; that's given me time to do other things like the photo album. 90% of my pics I took either for my old blogs or just for myself, and no one knows what they are besides me. When I'm gone no one will want to keep them, I know, but there are a lot of beautiful memories in my archive (like that one up there.) I'm not important enough to merit having everything I've done preserved, and I doubt my family will care about things that meant a great deal to me because they don't share my interests. So as I'm looking th...

For the last couple of months I've been posting twice a day so I could stop extending my pre-published content for months into the future. Today I've finally reached the point where I am just one week ahead of myself on blog content, and that's how I will try to keep things henceforth. Being *only* a week ahead of myself is a little scary, frankly. But it's also good for me to curb my tendency to pre-plan everything to the point of ridiculousness. I hope to be more spontaneous and enjoy writing my content as life happens. Hopefully you'll like it, too.

For the first time in forever I went and looked at the stats for my old writing blog back in October. While I get about 300+ views on this blog (which is semi-private, and my secret identity is known only to close friends), my old writing blog is still getting over 3K hits every month. Remember, I shut the old blog down in 2018. Six years later evidently it's still being read -- or at least visited -- by thousands. This dismays me for a couple reasons. I have zero desire to return to the glare of the public eye. Being able to write in isolation without anyone knowing what I'm doing is still absolute bliss. I also feel that after fourteen years of almost daily posts about writing I did enough teaching and helping the next generation of writers. I also don't like how social media has evolved into this search and destroy machine, which would probably set its sights on me if I ever went public again. In short, I do not miss that blog or the double-edged sword of th...

One of the things I've changed with my daily process is to keep a blank book on my desk to use as a work diary, diet record and idea keeper. I started doing this at the beginning of the year, mainly to practice my handwriting and to track my daily calorie intake. Over the last two months that's evolved into a self-motivation tool and kind of a bullet journal with short lists of things I want to write, concepts, character names etc. It's definitely helped me focus more during my writing sessions. I've been very easy to distract from work since the pandemic began and the post-election meltdown, and it's been unbelievably difficult to concentrate. I've tried different things, but going back to daily handwritten journaling has helped the most. Off topic, I finally had to shut down comments over on PBW after SPAMmers started flooding them -- apparrently Google isn't sending me comment moderation notices anymore, and I waste too much time manually deleting...

To begin the process of dipping my toe into self-publishing I went and tried to create a website for my new pseudonym on Wix, which turned out to be a massive headache that I don't need right now. So to save time and pain I've created a simple blog on Blogger for my alter-ego, and over the next couple of days I'm going to be relocating most of my posts about the NA series over there and deleting the rest. I might mention how it's going on this blog now and then, but I want to keep the NA project and Valerean separate. I'm beginning to realize just how much work and aggravation self-publishing is going to be -- massive -- but I'm trying my best not to freak out or talk myself out of it. I still think I can do this if I don't let the challenges discourage me. I'm not stupid, just intimidated. I've already solved the web site problem by opting to do what I know versus what I don't. On the side I'll be working on some free stories to put o...

I'm not posting this on the day I was notified, but it seems Craftsy is back in operation . They've offered me a year of access to their 1500+ online classes for the low low price of $2.49, too. Alas, I'm not biting. Other than the fact that I'm not interested in taking any online classes, how all this played out disturbs me. Many creatives who make their living via teaching online classes were railroaded when Craftsy/Bluprint/And now Craftsy again went out of business. Communication to them was very poor, or non-existant. Even Back when Craftsy became rebranded as Bluprint the powers that be screwed over a lot of content creators , too. If there is by chance some skill I need to acquire, I can find plenty of free blog and YouTube tutorials to teach me whatever I need to learn. I suggest you do the same. :)

Every time I open my blog dashboard these days it displays in the new Blogger interface (click on the image to see a larger version): The "legacy" interface, which is what I've been using since the last revamp of Blogger, looks like this (click on the image to see a larger version): How is the new interface an improvement? Because it uses teeny tiny symbols instead of words? Really, how much more can they dumb it down? Anyway, no matter how often I switch my dashboard back to the "legacy" interface, Blogger keeps switching it back to the new, which tells me I have maybe a couple of weeks to relearn how to use my blogging site before what I do understand disappears forever. Again.

Hurricane Sally thankfully gave us a pass, but she's pulling in some storms that are dousing us with rain and lightning. This is what my afternoon is forecasted to look like: As you know when it rains a lot in the country our broadband goes down, but don't worry if I'm scarce. I've got plenty of posts scheduled to publish, and I'll check in with you once we're back up and connected.

While hunting around online for free quilt patterns I stumbled across Quilting Inspiration , a ten-year-old blog about quilts with a pretty amazing free pattern archive. Along with all the patterns for quilts, quilted gifts, table runners, redwork embroidery, tote bags etc., they have links to free online tutorials and also post pics of beautiful quilts they see at the big shows. They also link to just about every other quilter online, as you can see in this post about quilts made from unwanted/used clothing. Looks like all of the freebies they offer are in .pdf download, but if you're looking for a holiday-themed pattern you probably won't find as many choices anywhere else.

This is that time of year when most folks make resolutions or choose a theme word for the next twelve months. I'm guilty of doing both in the past. I'm definitely a planner, and January always feels like a starting line. I found that choosing goals or themes often sets me up to feel like I've failed when I don't achieve whatever I planned or imagined, so I've quit doing both -- yet I still feel the urge every January. As I write this post it's actually December 10th (see what I mean about planning? I'm currently 22 days ahead on blog posts.) Today I need to begin putting together some notes for my annual business meeting in January, work on finishing the last novel of 2019, and finish my prep for my guy's birthday tomorrow. 2020 won't arrive for another three weeks. Why worry about it, or anything else, for that matter? I think it's mostly because I'm not spontaneous or organic or whatever allows people to just do stuff without plan...

Following the creaky tradition I had while writing PBW , I thought I'd take a look back at 2019. Okay, so all the bad stuff first. I had surgery to repair a jaw I didn't realize was broken, lost eight teeth, slipped three discs in my neck and had to give up sewing and quilting for a month while working on straightening out my spine. My guy got (treatable) skin cancer. All that was the personal worst. I had not planned to move my blogging back to Blogger, but Tumblr started censoring my G-rated posts about quilting as inappropriate/adult content. Meanwhile, every pornographer taking X-rated shots kept showing up, and some of them followed me. Euw. Then people on Tumblr figured out who I was and started asking me for money. I finally decided I'd better move. Best decision I made all year. I decided to keep this version of Valerean secret, so it could be just for trusted friends. I don't want to be a public figure anymore. So far that's worked, and I...

I've been having a lot of problems with Tumblr, and now they've been sold again I expect there will be more. I've never had these issues with Blogger, so over the next couple months I'm going to move all my content from there to here before I delete my blog. This version of Valerean will just be for online friends, and I'm going to try to keep it private without making it members-only. So (if you don't mind) please don't link to it or pass around the URL. Yesterday I got my mom's birthday quilt batted, backed and pinned and started hand quilting it. I went with a white-on-white tonal fabric for the backing, and I'm quilting it with plain white thread. I'll use the extra yard of colorful fabric Jen sent me to make the binding.