Happy New Year + Happy Valentine's Day + An update of sorts

Happy New Year! Happy Valentine's Day!

Hello hello.

How has y'all's New Year been going so far? How was your Valentine's Day? I hope all of you wonderful people have been doing well! :)

So... I've been rather absent here since Christmas, haven't I? Except for that last Super Bowl/sports post thing, I haven't done any real blogging since last year...

So, what's been going on? Where have I been? What have I been up to? Am I ever going to start blogging consistently? .(..And whatever happened to that Q&A post I was supposed to be doing for my 3rd year blogiversary back in November?? Heh heh...)

Well, friends, let me tell ya.

First off, yes, I WANT to start blogging more consistently. But then the answers to these other questions above have been kind of keeping me from being able to do that. Where have I been? What have I been up to? What's been going on?

Well, mainly right now for me it's been... College. Yes, indeed, college.

I've been mainly studying for CLEP exams, which has been going pretty good! (What are CLEP exams, you ask? In a nutshell they're basically exams you can take to get out of taking a regular one semester college class, and by passing the exam, you earn the same college credit you would in that class. They can save you a lot of time and money! I would definitely recommend looking into them, fellow college friends! Make sure to check out the official CLEP website to find out more about it. It's definitely worth looking into!)

So anywho, yeah, that's what I've been doing a lot of recently. But besides that, a few other random things I've been doing with my year so far has been... keeping the score book at my brother's basketball games, winning a free Dominoes pizza (two different times) from a halftime 3-point shot competition thing at two of said basketball games, seeing and hanging out with friends at basketball games... yeah, a lot of basketball games. xD Especially last month anyway. But besides that, there's been church, Bible studies, sending out church letters and calendars, taking care of adorable, yet mischievous kitties, tidying up around the house, trying to ACTUALLY write and work on my stories, finally getting my driver's license, celebrating my birthday.... and now trying to get back into blogging!

Alright. But what about that other question... the Q&A? Whatever happened to that???

Okay.

So.

This Q&A WILL happen.

Eventually.

IT WILL.

Just be patient with me, guys. :P

So, as I'm trying to get back into blogging more, one other thing that I thought would be fun, and hopefully motivating for me, would be to blog about my college adventures I'm now up to! I've been on the college road since September of last year, but it seems like I'm just now really picking up on it, and I'd like to share some of the things I'm doing for college, helpful programs/websites/etc. I've found, and just share my learning experience with you all so that maybe you can learn something about how to do college better, too! And I also would like to share more of my story writing projects that I've been working on some as well. So... we'll see how that goes! ;)

Anywho, that's all for now. I just wanted to come say "hi" again, and give you all an update of sorts. I really do hope to be able to do more with this blog this year!

I hope you're having a lovely evening, and I'll write to ya later! God bless! :D
~Faith

For all you NaNoWriMo-ers out there...

Well, National Novel Writing Month has officially come to a close.

Did I participate in NaNoWriMo? Well... no. But I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate all my dear friends who did. Even if you didn't get to finishing that entire 50,000-some-word novel, still -- good for you. You gave it your all. At least, I'm assuming you did... Maybe you actually didn't give it your all...

But anyway, you tried at least, which is more than this girl can say, because she didn't end up doing NaNoWriMo, or really much writing at all this past month.... (mostly because of life, school, etc.) So, I just wanted to say..... GOOD JOB, PEOPLES!!!

And just one more thing before I take my leave of this post. There's this YouTube video that I first saw several years ago by Broken Lens Productions that I've always thought would be fun to share with NaNoWriMo/writery people; So... here 'tis, NaNoWriMo/writery people! It's a humorous vlog proposing a new novel writing challenge... a 72 hour one! I hope you enjoy! ;)

Would you ever try this 3 day novel writing contest, or know of someone who would? XD Do you think it would even be possible?? (I might go for a short story in 72 hours, but yeah, I think that's about it. :P)

Again, congratulations to all of you who completed, or at least attempted in writing a novel for National Novel Writing Month!! I hope that this video amused you guys, and that you're having a wonderful start to your December! (IT'S OFFICIALLY CHRISTMAS TIME!!! YAAAAYYY!!! :D)

Write to ya later, and God bless!

~Faith

6 Distractions Bloggers Can Probably Relate To

Ah, blogging. What a fun life we bloggers lead. I mean, it's so easy to come up with and write posts and put them up regularly and all that, you know? Such a breeze. AM I RIGHT OR WHAT??

Okay... so no, not really (as I'm sure you could tell by the plethora of blogging I've gotten done this year... heh :P) It seems hard to not get distracted whilst trying to craft the perfect blog post and trying to keep up with your blog. So here's a list of six things I've found to be pretty big distractions for the average teen/early 20s blogger person.

1. Pinterest
Pinterest is amazing, don't get me wrong. And it's a wonderful tool, especially for bloggers. But -- as we all know -- there is SO MUCH to find on this site that it can be a two-edged sword at times. You might just be getting on to find one nice sunset picture to go along with some blog post you're writing, and then suddenly find yourself looking at a pin of how to do your hair up to make it look like a bow.

^ Basically what browsing through Pinterest is like.

2. Social Media
Other social media platforms can be just as distracting as Pinterest, maybe even more at times. Or maybe not. Or maybe so. Who knows. All I know is that it's quite a big distraction.

3. Food
Sometimes food can be a motivator, but then other times it seems like it's just an excuse to take a break and slack off. When you're mind goes blank with what to write, you might say to yourself, "Well... maybe I can get those creative juices flowing by just taking a little break... in the kitchen..."

This might just be one of the cutest gifs I've ever seen... =D

4. Other People
People are wonderful, they're absolutely wonderful! But when you're trying to focus on writing or doing something with you're blog, and someone interrupts you to ask you about something... or they need to get on the computer you're on...

5. GIFs
So maybe not every blogger gets distracted with trying to find the perfect gifs for their posts... but...... I probably know of at least one who does..... heh.

6. Real Life
Of course, we bloggers always have high hopes of posting regularly, maybe on a certain day each week or something like that. But then it suddenly hits us that we actually have real lives in the real world and things don't always go as smoothly in real life as we plan them to. And we can't usually be working on or writing something for our blog at a certain time each day right when we want to and have this meticulously perfect plan of how we keep up our blog (unless blogging is your actual job and it's the main thing you do in life).

~~~~~~~~~~

So, our real lives often get in the way of our blogging lives. But you know what... that's actually not really a bad thing. I think a lot of times we put social media/blogging/computer things higher on our priority list than just living life and spending valuable time we won't get back with family and friends in the real world without really meaning to. (I've caught myself doing this too many times unfortunately...)

We've been given this amazing life, the chance to make a real difference in this world. I keep needing to remind myself not to waste it all on earthly things that won't last. It's of course not bad to spend time on social media and the like occasionally, but I realize that I need to watch myself that I don't let it dominate my life and I start becoming obsessed with it.

In fact, I've discovered one easy way to tell if you're addicted or obsessed with something: If you're constantly or regularly thinking about that thing. 

I found this out one night a while back. My younger brother had gotten the game Minecraft. Well, so I decided one day that I would try it out and play a little bit. Needless to say, I got a little too into it. But for a little while I didn't even really realize how engrossed I had become in the game. One night, however, I finally came to reason. As I was lying in bed getting ready to go to sleep, I suddenly caught myself thinking hard about how I should construct some part of the house I was building in the game and anticipating waking up the next day to work on it. A jerking thought came to me: MineCraft is one of the only and biggest things that has been on my mind these past few days...

And so that's when I realized -- I had become addicted with this game. Once I realized that, I tried hard to stay away from it for a while and focus more on truly important things. It wasn't easy of course, but I asked God to help me with this obsession, and He did. And now, I actually hardly ever play MineCraft at all.

So basically what I'm trying to say in all this is that we all really need to take a good look at our lives and where our priorities lie. I'm definitely not trying to say that Minecraft or any other games, or even blogging for that matter are bad, but the problem begins when we start obsessing over them, or any other temporary natural thing. If we find that our priorities aren't where they should be, then we need to step back, and fix and reassess them. That's much easier said than done of course, but we CAN do it -- not alone, but with our Heavenly Father working in us and helping us along the way. Nothing is impossible with God! And if we just pray and ask Him to help us with keeping our priorities straight and put Him FIRST in everything, He WILL help us!

So guys, let's do our best to put God first in everything we do and make Him our very top priority -- even above blogging -- praying and asking Him for His help in doing so.

"Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak." ~Mark 14:38

Well, that's all for today! I hope this could be of some encouragement to all you fellow bloggers out there. :)

Have a fabulous rest of the week, everyone! Happy blogging!
~Faith


P.S. Are there any other distractions that you as a blogger face that I missed? How do you keep from getting distracted whilst blogging? Any tips for us fellow bloggers who get distracted easily?

Writerly Things

Hello again, my friends! A Happy belated Easter you! Jesus is ALIVE!! That's so awesome, isn't it?! :D

So, in other news... where have I been? Well, life's been a little crazy recently, trying to figure out life, college, work, etc. etc... And of course, with all this, I haven't had a lot of time to blog. But then it seemed like whenever I'd have time to work on it and I'd start writing on some post, I'd get some sort of writer's block one way or another.

But recently, I got an idea of something to share with you guys. Another thing I've been busy with lately is writing on different stories and projects. I've started to realize that I actually haven't shared so much of my stories and writing life here as of yet... so, I suppose I'd better change that now, shouldn't I?

I've always liked stories. And writing. Growing up, I always wanted to write stories. Children's stories especially. It was always my dream. I was planning to grow up and becoming an author, and that's what I always told people if they ever asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up -- "Write children's books," I'd answer decidedly.

"What do you want to do when you grow up?"
"Write children's books."
"Oh! What kind of books?"
"Uh, well, Children's books."
"...Oh."
(Something close to this conversation actually happened one time... :P)

When I was younger I would take several pieces of paper, fold them over, and then staple them together to make it look like a book. I thought it was brilliant. And then the stories... OH HO HO, THE STORIES.

I'd write stories in those "books." All kinds of stories. Funny stories mainly. I liked making people laugh. (I still do :D) Whatever my mind could come up with. Not usually fairy tale type stories though... more realistic ones... well, sort of. Maybe not really. But stories about real people in the real world... that kind of realistic I guess. Most of the time anyway. Well, sometimes about animals, too (like that one story I wrote about a horse who talked and liked poking things with a stick and ended up poking the police and getting sent to jail... ahem... yeah, nevermind... :P) I adored coming up with stories and different scenarios and characters and everything. And then I'd always excitedly try to get my brothers or parents to read the wonderful stories I wrote. It was one of my favorite pastimes as a child. I'd also like to frolic about in our yard, coming up with pretend "tv shows" and "movies" in my head and acting them out to myself.

Ahh... those good ol' days. I always did like coming up with a good story. I still do.

SO...

I thought it was about time I shared more about this part of my life here (especially since that was one of the main things I had planned on posting about here when I first started this blog...).

I have so many stories rolling around in my head right now, but for the ones I'm actually working on currently, well... here we go!

• I've been working on a story for some time now about "The Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe." It's supposed to be based off of that nursery rhyme of course; but it's a full account of what all really happened -- who this "old lady" was, why she has so many children, why she lives in a "shoe", etc. etc. It's set in the early 1900s and is supposed to be a funny kind of story of course. This is probably going to end up being a children's chapter book/juvenile fiction type of story, and it's one I've actually been pretty passionate about, interestingly enough. I think I just especially love all the characters in it and have been discovering recently just how much of myself I'm actually putting into a lot of them. It's interesting...

Here's more of an actual synopsis/summary of what I have right now for it:

Opal Dullen lives a simple life, trying not to get in anyone else's way or let anyone else get in her's, especially the pleasantly irritating Richard Cobbler. But when she receives an unexpected letter that her brother-in-law has died and left his ten children in her care, her entire world is turned upside down and inside out. Not knowing what else to do, she reluctantly accepts Mr. Cobbler's offer of his vacant inn as a place for the children to stay -- an inn made to look like a shoe of all things!

Regrets and past hurts try reclaiming their place in Opal's mind anew when the children come to live with her in their new home, but she soon begins to discover and learn about the beauty of second chances... and perhaps even rekindle a relationship that was thought to be lost forever.

I'm considering whether or not to change it to seven children instead of ten...?? I'm not sure about that yet. I'll try to keep you guys informed on this story as much as may be. ;) I think telling you guys about it here will also help keep me more accountable to this story, so that would definitely be a good thing.

• I'm also currently working on two different short stories, both historical fiction, for two different short story contests going on this month... but we'll see if that actually happens (most likely not, I'd guess, as it's getting pretty close to the deadline and I have tons of other things I should be doing besides...). Whether I actually submit them in the contests or not, I'm still planning to finish them of course, and might even possibly end up posting them on here when I get them finished.

And I have so many other starts to stories written down different places, and ones that have only been written up in my head up until now, but those are the ones that are mainly going on right now. I'll have to share more stories and ideas in another post. SO MANY STORIES, SO LITTLE TIME. 

So yeah, hope you enjoyed this different kind of post and hearing about a couple of writing projects I've been working on lately. Do you have any 'works in progress' going on right now? I'd love to hear about them! :D

I hope all of you are having an awesome week! Write to you later! God bless! :)

~Faith