Posted on by LA · 136 Comments

Sex is not Romance

Sex is…a bodily act…

Romance is another thing entirely…

So what’s the difference and why does it matter?

This is where I start to veer all over the place with this topic. We have the following random observations:

  1. Some people really like sex
  2. Some people really like romance
  3. Some people think romance is love
  4. Romance is often seen as the conduit to getting someone else have sex with you
  5. Romance is often associated with love
  6. People assume that if one person is romancing another, it means that they are in love
  7. People wrongly assume that if one person is romancing another, it means that they are in love
  8. Sometimes people romance another not because they are in love, but because they want to have sex
  9. Not everyone is romantic
  10. Everyone’s idea of romance is different

I could probably twist the words around a bit more, but you get the gist. Sex and romance are not the same but there are people who do not see the distinction. Or maybe they don’t want to see the distinction. I’m going to take a guess and say that people who want to be in love are going to take signs of romance as a sign of love.

Big mistake.

And I think this is where the problems start.

As I’ve been binge watching “The Big Bang Theory”, I came across an episode where Howard is planning something for the anniversary of his first date with his wife. Howard is known as being slightly oversexed. The Penny character (really attractive) begins to think that she never does anything romantic for her boyfriend. Her boyfriend (unsure about his attractiveness, but wants sex) does tend to do romantic things. The Sheldon character (not sexual at all) doesn’t do anything romantic, and his girlfriend complains about it. Raj, the character who desperately wants to be in love is clearly the most classically romantic of them all, and even romances all his friends in a friendship sort of way(and oddly, the only main character who ends up unmarried on the show)

Two male characters use romance as a way to show love and get sex

One male character doesn’t care about sex or common displays of love, so does nothing to romance his partner

One male character is innately romantic, yet, that seems to push women away

Is this a good correlation to actual life?

Could we start with a hypothesis that 50% of people use romance to get what they want, 25% don’t care one way or another, and 25% can’t find someone to love them the way they want to be loved? Would you say that out of the 50% who use romance to get sex, maybe only half of them are actually “in love”?

I am totally spitballing.

I have absolutely no idea about any of this, I’m just throwing our random observations and waiting for at least one of you (Deb) to make some sense of what I’ve said.

For Write my Blog Thursday, give me any observations about the correlation between romance and sex and love.

Why is this such a hard topic to think or write about? Is it impossible to define, or do we just not want to look behind the curtain of what this all actually means? Do we want to cling to any illusions that we harbor about sex or romance or love?

Discuss

https://anchor.fm/laover50
Posted on by LA · 51 Comments

I Love a Good Oxymoron

What do you think about things that seem to embody opposite qualities?

An animal that is so unique to almost be considered ugly but in that uniqueness it’s totally adorable?

A food that is both sweet and spicy?

A work of art so incredibly genius yet hard to look at, read or experience because it contains so much that is awful?

I love a good contradiction: to me, contradictions add depth where there really ought not to be. And the one I’ve been thinking about lately is thus:

Hard working lazy people.

How do I define these people?

Well, I will use my poor husband as the example. He will decide to mop the floor. First he will get the mop out and ask me to assemble it properly…because…you know…my degree in engineering and all…(not). Then he will proceed to do about half the area that he should mop. Then he will leave the mop and the cleaning solution out somewhere in the house. Like, the solution will be on the floor next to a chair, and the mop will be against the wall in the bedroom.

Hard working enough to decide without nagging that the floor needs to be mopped. Lazy enough to not do the job thoroughly and put the utensils away.

I, on the other hand, am an energetic slacker. When I decide to do something I do it 100%. I have the right tools, I set up a workstation, I have a lot energy when I get involved in a project. However, I really really really need to be motivated to tackle something. I will not normally wake up and say- “Gee- I need to mop.”

I wonder if this has to do with the planner/no planner mentality. I use a planner. I detail everything I need to do. I keep lists. My husband is the opposite- though he keeps a date book he rarely checks it. Maybe he makes one list a year…

We are both self motivated- yet our paths of motivation are different. I need to think about it and know that I can do the whole job in a certain way. My Husband is more impulsive- he gets the idea and just does it.

Neither of us are right or wrong: it’s just how we handle things. Luckily our shared traits have produced our daughter: energetic and hard working. But never fear: she has her own particular brand of oxymoron’s.

What are your personal oxymoron’s? What qualities do you have that seem to be opposite in one way or another?

Do you have a favorite contradiction? A combo that is a little bit (or a lot) odd that really makes you feel something. I know the chocolate covered bacon fad is something I can’t really fathom but there are people who LOVE it…

Think- reflect-

Discuss…

Posted on by LA · 116 Comments

Self…?

We’ve bandied about the word selfish quite a lot recently.

Do we have the right to call anyone selfish?

When we say the word selfish, what do we mean? Of course I went to New Oxford American Dictionary for an actual definition:

(of a person, action or motive) lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure

Is it wrong to tell someone that they shouldn’t look our for themselves first?

Realistically, is it better to be selfless? (New Oxford American- concerned more with the needs of others than one’s own)

A few years ago my neighbor sent me a letter saying that she did not like the scented candles I would burn at the the end of the day when I was chilling before making dinner. In this specific scenario, who is right? Should I be selfish and light the candles because it was good for my peace of mind? Should I not use them so I can be a better neighbor?

Should I be selfish or selfless? Why?

Ok- take a minute and argue that one out…

When my daughter needed to choose a High School (high school choice in NYC- which after reading about some disastrous ELA programs, I’m selfishly happy that she had) was she supposed to choose a school that was best for her, knowing that if she got in, someone else wouldn’t? Or was she supposed to choose a school that was inconvenient and not inclined towards her academic interests?

In everyday parlance, what does selfish really mean?

What is the line between self advocation and putting others first?

My friend’s Mom felt bad because she got an appointment for the vaccine before her friend did. In this case, she was over 75 and clearly entitled to the vaccine. Why should someone feel bad because in this particular instance they got lucky? Was she selfish to get the vaccine before someone else?

What about survivor guilt? How many people feel bad because they didn’t die but others did?

I have to admit, much of what I do on a daily basis could be considered selfish in the right circumstance. I live in a home with heat and air, hot and cold running water that I presume to be potable, have a building maintenance person to take care of apartment issues. Pre COIVD I had a biweekly cleaning person to clean the bathroom and the kitchen because it’s easier on my knees if I don’t do that. Should I use less of these resources because others don’t have access to them? Should I take someone in off the street to shelter them?

I have volunteered in the public school system so that my daughter would benefit. I mean, obviously, my securing grants helped everyone, but my motivation was clear: do what I could to help my kid. Is that selfish?

We can think about public policy. Is it selfish to want your tax dollars to go to something you support, even though someone else might not support it?

If someone is anti-vax, are they selfish to not get inoculated?

Are smokers selfish because they pollute the air?

Do we have the right to tell anyone what they can and can not do with their body, their time, their money and their life?

What is your definition of selfish?

What do you consider a selfish act?

Pretend you’re a high school debater and argue both sides of the argument:

X is selfish because they _____________

X is not selfish because they ____________

The guy that tried to pickpocket me- was I selfish to not want him to take my wallet? Or should I selflessly have given him my cash because he obviously needed it more than me?

Discuss…

Posted on by LA · 27 Comments

Gratitude Saturday March 13

Two weeks ago my Father was able to get his first vaccine shot. Pfizer.

Yesterday my Husband was able to get his first vaccine shot. Moderna.

I am grateful to all those who have worked incredibly hard over the past year to come up with vaccines.

I am grateful to all those who chose to participate in drug trials.

I am grateful to all those who have assisted in distributing the vaccine.

I am grateful to all the people staffing the vaccine centers.

I am also grateful that my husband has asthma.

I am grateful that we are all on our way to some sort of normal.

Hoping for podcast recording soon!

Posted on by LA · 71 Comments

Sentimental Journey

I am not sentimental.

From Oxford Languages we get sentimental as “of or prompted by feelings of tenderness, sadness or nostalgia”

So what does it mean when I say that I am not sentimental? Does it mean that I am never prompted by these feelings?

Well yes. And no.

My walls are covered with framed drawing that my daughter did in elementary school. I have a portfolio filled with snippets of her work from middle school and some of high school. I have a folder in my email box with the letters of things that she has won. These things make me happy. They could also fit in a medium sized box.

I have pictures of my friends on my desk and shelf. I have one trinket that my Mom gave me and one trinket that my Dad gave me on a shelf in my bedroom. On that same shelf sits a few ornamental cats that my Husband bought me on our first vacation together and our honeymoon. Above my vanity sits an old Mother’s Day card from my daughter. In my nightstand sits a tee shirt from a treasured friend whom I don’t get to see very often.

I am sentimental about this handful of things. These things have meaning for me. Two medium sized boxes of goods.

I am sentimental about my memories. Doesn’t everyone love a good memory?

But I refuse to live in the past. I am pretty happy living in the present.

I think that is were the difference lies: some people prefer to think back over the past moments of their lives. There is nothing wrong with that. It’s just not me.

There are also people who are constantly living in the future. When I was in High School, my best friends family was constantly telling her things like: “Sure. Person X has a 10 speed bike now. But will her family be able to pay for college?” They were so hyper focused on preparing for the future that they didn’t leave anything for the present. I’m not telling people how to spend their money. But, you know…balance…FYI- not a sentimental bone in these people’s bodies.

How do you define sentimental? If you were writing a book and you wanted your character to be sentimental, how would you describe the character? What adjectives would you use? What devices would you employ to prove to the reader that you want this character to be sentimental?

Do you think you are sentimental? Do you ever wish you were more or less sentimental?

The definition I stated referred to sentimental as “sad”. Do you think sad when you think sentimental?

Give me 25 words or less on sentimental…

Please…

Posted on by LA · 84 Comments

One Year Anniversary

Can you believe it?

I’ve been blogging for a year!

Here’s some random thoughts about my experience, in no particular order:

  1. I still hate writing titles.  How can you accurately title a blog about daily life?
  2. I began blogging because I was having a severe case of writer’s block.  I had an idea for a novel, yet I couldn’t get the words on the page.  One year later I an halfway through the second draft.  Yay.
  3. I am still amazed at the amount of wonderful people I have met through blogging.  That’s the greatest benefit to the internet- the ability to bond with like minded people all over the world.
  4. I don’t care about grammar.  I know there are people who will not read my blog because I apply my own rules to how sentences should be punctuated and worded, and all I can say is, life to too short to read things that are displeasing to one’s ear, so please feel free to not read me, but please don’t comment on my lack of grammar etiquette.  I’m sure this sentence is completely wrong, but that’s how I roll.  This is my biggest act of rebellion…I write as I speak….Of course, the people who this applies to are not reading this, so……
  5. I can’t believe that I come up with enough ideas to write a personal experience blog 5 days a week (in health- not so much in sickness)
  6. I still don’t know what a widget is.
  7. I still don’t care about knowing what a widget it.
  8. Lists.  Lists.  More lists.
  9. My new focus is on how the little things in life really reflect who we are.  Expect more posts where I will pose the question “What does this say about me?”
  10. I love the amount of positive energy that I see on blogs.  People really are cheerleaders for one another.  But there are still trolls- so please don’t be a troll.  If your hobby is being mean to others on the internet, please find another hobby.  I can send you a list of alternate things to do.

And of course, I need to say THANK YOU to all my friends!!  Thank you for all the love and support over the past year!!

xoxoxo.

LA

Posted on by LA · 62 Comments

Oh No: A Blog About Blogging

Sometimes the universe works in weird ways.  I planned to write about my blogging process, and the day is just throwing in some twists and turns to sort of oddly highlight how my blogging process works.  And if his doesn’t make sense, I will tell you that I have a nasty cough and head cold, so my powers of thought are a bit all over the place.

Let’s start at the beginning- the beginning of the day.  I usually write my blog early in the morning.  My daughter usually leaves for school at about 7:05, my husband leaves for work about 7:45.  Around this time, I am thinking about my blog post for the day.  The minute my Husband is out the door, I sit and I blog.  My normal blog takes me about 15-20 minutes to write, assuming my internet doesn’t go out.  Now, I admit my internet service is awesome: my computer is lousy at staying connected.  I love writing at this time in the morning: my mind is fresh, my thoughts are sharp, and it is a great warm up for when I begin to work on my novel.  I also have this compulsion to have my blog post out by 9am.  It’s one of my controlling things…

Now, a few weeks ago, I went to DC.  Before I left, I decided to schedule blogs because I knew that being away and keeping to a blogging schedule was just not going to work.  So, my “plan” was to write a day ahead from the week before I left.  If I included weekends, I would have blogs scheduled for the duration of my vacation.  Good plan.  I would still write in the morning, just not for that days post.

And as all plans go….

Here’s what actually happened.  I would sit down to write, and instead off finishing in my usual 20 minutes, I found myself overthinking my blogs.  In the back of my mind I kept thinking “this isn’t scheduled to go live till tomorrow at 8.  I have until then to work on it.”  This is where the problems began.  I started to tweak and play and rework my posts.  Now, one would think that these posts were outstanding, because I edited and reworked….Well, one would be wrong.  I hated these two weeks worth of posts.  I felt they were stilted and didn’t sound like me.

So what did I find out about myself?  I need to write my post fresh in the morning.  I need to just publish the drivel that I’ve put on the page.  I need to stop overthinking. When I write in the morning it’s fun.  I’m enjoying it.  When I start playing with posts, well, it’s not so fun for me anymore.  I second guess.  This is not a good position for an over thinker.

As I’ve already started talking to you about my blogging process, I might as well give you the rest of the dirty secrets.  You’ve all heard about my obsession with planners…well, as soon as I get a blog idea, I enter it into my planner.  For anyone interested, I know what I’m writing about through May 10.  Yes.  I have that many blog ideas.

Which brings us to: how do I get my blog ideas.  Ok- literally everywhere.  I get inspired by comments others have made on my blogs.  I find interesting things in other blogs I read.  My family.  My activities.  Etc.  Etc.  I get ideas from my life. My plain, old, boring life fills me with ideas.  I guess this is the upside of being an over thinker: every aspect of my life has the ability to become a blog post.  Every blog post has the ability to become a follow-up.  Are they all equally interesting or great? No.  But you never know what will interest people.  Topics I thought were a little boring have gone on to be favorites of the blog community, so here’s another one for what do I know.

Now, I also admit that I pre write my Gratitude Saturdays and Week in Review.  I begin \those the day after the old one posts, and I just add to them as the week progresses.  As these is no central idea, I have no problem with this method.  The only problem is that some weekends are WAY busier than others, so I don’t get to add any flourishes to the weekend reports.  That’s just life.  I’m trying to be chill about that.

But now lets talk about today.  I have a nasty cold.  I normally get up at 6 and start prepping for the day.  Today, 6am brought about a hideous coughing fit, and the decision to pull the covers up a little more.  I didn’t get out of bed until 8:30.  I went to boot up my computer, and noticed that a update had been installed.  Good times.  Who knew what time my computer would actually be ready for action.

Finally, install and restart completed.  It was after 9.  The crazy part of my brain was annoyed that I wouldn’t have my post completed before that.  Technically though, it was still morning and it was still going to be a fresh blog post.  And there was some sort of irony in knowing that I had planned a blog about blog process 3 weeks ago, and then today it all went to hell.

So, as I type out the last words, it’s 9:56.  I’m happy with this post.  And I’m going to try not to freak out that it’s “late”.

Posted on by LA · 71 Comments

January Writing Update

I started another writing class this month, Fiction 2 with Gotham Writers Workshop.  This experience is different than the one I had last semester.  Last semester my teacher was a woman, older than me and a novelist/screenwriter.  This session, my teacher is male, younger than me (I believe he’s 12) and a short story writer.  The biggest difference is not the gender or the age:  it is the writing discipline.  Writing a short story versus a novel is the same, yet different.

Many of my classmates favor very ambiguous stories.  They’re OK with limited, or no plot.  They’re OK with vague descriptions.  They’re OK with no dialogue.  These are things the novel people never want to read/see.  The biggest criticism I get when presenting my novel is the lack of description- I am dialogue heavy, and personally, I don’t care if the kitchen is all black and modern, or yellow and countryesque.  But, readers of novels do.  Readers of short stories don’t.

Should I become a short story writer?

No.  I want to write a longer work.

So we have the first conundrum I face when working on my novel: how do I add description to my work?

Seriously. how do I add description to my work?

My problem appears to be in my first chapter.  OK- I have problems in other chapters as well, but lets begin with the section I’m currently playing with.  I need to introduce my setting, which is a kitchen, and my protagonist and her three best friends.  (on a completely different note- I did learn in this current class that the protagonist and main character do not have to be the same- who knew???)  This is a lot of information in the beginning of the book, and I am having difficulty maintaining my light, fun voice with the task of similes, metaphors, adverbs and adjectives.  I like description to appear in little bits and pieces.  People reading my book do not.  They want a laundry list of how the room looks.  How do I reconcile what the reader wants with how I want to present the story?

Is this the first basic problem with writing?  Writing what you want versus writing what people want to read?  Is this just a variation of chicken/egg?

So, I’ve added a prologue.  I am introducing my protagonist separately.  I’m laying out one of the “problems” before I even get to anything else.  I’m establishing the tone and voice.   I think I’m liking this better, but it is my first rewrite, so….

Which leads me to the following:  my first draft is finished.

Yay.

Sort of.

To explain, I have the first half of the novel fleshed out.  The second half is just major arcs.  I have to fill in the filler.  Here’s the thing I realized- I want the filler to actually count, so I need to flesh out the filler better in the first half, so that it is more meaningful in the second half.  What, you say.  I didn’t understand this last sentence, how am I going to understand her novel?  I wish I could explain my thought process a little better, but really, how much do you want to get into my brain?

But, I am pleased with the main points of the novel.  I like my two characters- they are funny and smart and damaged, just like we all are.  I only hope that these things are coming across on the page.  I am enjoying the process though.  I look forward to writing.  That is huge for me, the fact that I look forward to writing.   I even think about plot points and dialogue when I am doing other things- my little pink notebook is never far from my side.

In other writing news.  I blogged at least 5 times a week this month.  Yay.  Had so much amazing feedback from comments and generated lots of new blog ideas.  Thank you all for that- you keep me on my toes and keep me thinking.  You are all an inspiration.  My hope is that every now and then I inspire you.

I formed a writing group with two of the women from my first fiction class.  This is the best thing I did.  We meet every three weeks and really do a line by line critique of each others work.  Even if I don’t like their suggestions, it’s making me look at my novel in a different way.  I’m thinking of the overall theme more, because I see how individual word choice effects the general feel of a work.

My next task is to try to find an agent.  Yeah.  Good times.  I don’t know how to even start this process, but my February goal is to start researching the “how”.  You’ll get the report next month.

So there you have it: a summary of my writing for January.  Tune in next month for the latest tale of my writing highs and lows.

Happy writing!!!