Despite the fact that I have written a few award winning blog entries, complete with gorgeous photo spreads and witty banter, in my mind… I have not been able to actually get them onto this blog for all of you to ooh and aah over. Besides, something always happens between the thought process and the actual typing part that takes away from the utter brilliance of what I had initially planned to write down that makes it slightly less extraordinary. Or something like that.
At any rate, for the few of you who do come here regularly (and I am seriously honored that you do), I apologize for the lack of personal stories I’ve been able to place in here. And with as busy as I’ve been, it’s not going to get any better for a little while. But today I am taking advantage of a sick day (ooh, my stomach!) to get in a little bit of ME writing time before I get to doing a little work from home (with only 5 sick days a year, I simply cannot afford to actually be sick unless I’m totally dying. Thank goodness for a job that is mostly done on the internet!).
If you look to the right of this screen, there are two boxes that show a big part of what’s going on in my life. One is the word count to my novel. I have been slowly plugging away at it, some days getting in 2,000 words, some days only 200, to where I’m just shy of 20,000. My goal is to get in 30,000 words or more before the wedding (more than doable), and then finishing it up with NaNoWriMo after the wedding. I might “cheat” by finishing it early and then going in for editing. But dang it, this is the year that I will have a solid book in my hands, my name on the author page, and a link to Amazon where you all can buy it. I’m really proud of how the storyline is developing with this novel, so much that I am going to give you a sneak peek of the cover:
(Author website coming soon – work in progress)
Now bear in mind, this is not the absolute finished cover, but its pretty dang close. I had to create something to look at whenever I felt like this was too daunting of a task. Look at this as manifesting the completion of this book by visualizing what will be – seeing it as if it were already here. Yes, that is totally “The Secret” talk, though more recently inspired by listening to Wayne Dyer read from his book “Wishes Fulfilled” whenever I go for a run. This book will happen, and I’m so excited about it!
The other part of my busyness is, of course, the wedding. You guys, it’s in less than 5 weeks!!! OMG! And I’m not freaking out! You can tell by my over-usage of exclamation points!!! We have only 4 working weekends left until the big day, but honestly, I think it’s enough. These past few weeks I have increased the amount of time I am spending on wedding planning so that I’m doing something wedding related every single day, and then tackling a bunch of to-dos over the weekend. I am almost done with all my DIY stuff (thank goodness, because all this gluing is taking a toll on my fingers), and now it’s down to fine-tuning details like the timelines, seating charts, and room layouts – plus a few dozen more little things. But all the big stuff is done. 😀
And, of course, there is work. As busy as I’ve been with non-work stuff, between the hours of 8 and 5 I am very busy with work. Sometimes it feels draining, doing the same thing every single week. But that’s when I forget how cool my job is. I mean, I get to write every day – and get paid for it! I spend so much time getting consumed by a ton of the backend stuff of my job (making the website pop, formatting other people’s work to make it look pretty, etc) that I forget to make time for the part of my job that I really love, the writing part. And if I don’t do that, I am setting myself up for hating a job I really love. And you guys, it’s true. I do love my job. It’s just hard when it’s taking place during prime hours for working on my novel or planning my wedding, lol!
But the real reason I wanted to write this entry today was something really exciting happened to me in the blogosphere this weekend, and I need to shout it out from the rooftops! Two blogs, from bloggers I don’t know personally, linked back to this blog to state that I was a mom blog other people should be reading. Two of them, and I didn’t even bribe them! Singdance.com.au, a website out of Australia, listed this blog as one of their Top 10 picks of mummy bloggers. And Pat from patwoodblogging.wordpress.com, a fellow writer whose blog I read at WordPress, awarded me as one of her favorites for the Beautiful Blogger Award. Of course, now I have to share a bunch of things about myself before nominating my own personal favorites for this award – something that may take weeks to do, lol – but I was so honored to be considered a favorite blog by another blogger. 🙂
These two mentions are huge to me because in all honesty, this blog is not as highly read as it used to be. Before I changed platforms, I was gathering 15,000 hits or more a month on this blog. But when it became too frustrating to weed out the trolls from people who genuinely loved reading my stories, moving to a less public place became necessary. About 6 months ago in my new blog home, I received 27 hits. Total. Last month, that number grew to 864. It’s not thousands, but it’s a number I’m proud of. I earned it all by myself without depending on anyone else to bump up my SEO and visibility. And yes, I know that it’s not the size that matters but what we do with our blogs. But let’s face it, it matters when our ego is involved…
Honestly, it means that my writing here actually does matter because you are reading it. And if I could give you an award for making it through each blog entry I write and STILL coming back to read more, I would.
Instead, I’ll just say thank you. 🙂
Wine Country Mom 
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