Just Jot It January,

The prompt word for January 22nd is “seasonal.” Thanks go to Kaye for the wonderful prompt!

Please be sure to check out Kaye’s blog here!

For Just Jot it January, click the following link to see how you, too, can join in! https://lindaghill.com/2023/01/22/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-22nd-2023/ It’s fun!

Linda spoke of how her writing was seasonal. NaNoWriMo, CampNaNo and Just Jot It January becomes her writing time. Me, too. It seems those programs help motivate me properly. I haven’t won every time. And sometimes, like last month as I tried another goal, I made no progress at all. But often I make the 50k. Even on the camps. That would probably not surprise my teachers. Most of my report cards had comments like, ‘Darlene talks too much in class.’

This year I’ve over-goaled my life with all the gifts I’m trying to make and so writing has fallen by the wayside.

And I still have to podcast and start reading aloud my books, starting with my memoirs. The area in my house I planned on using, suddenly has Diamond Paintings.

My recorder playing, piano and voice practice have fallen off.

There are only 24 hours in a day. Still!!! I stay up reading until 3 or 4. With my old dog waking me often, sleep also seems seasonal. Heat and smoke and bugs of summer, icy cold and snow of winter affects everything in our house. Where we hang out, how we sleep, either covered up over my head with warmth or sheet to keep bugs off. And all this affects energy and pain levels, ya know?

Maybe I need to organize my day better and my week to include everything I want to do.

Thank goodness for the treadmill. It still gets used most days of the week.

How does anyone get anything done with a job? I did do NaNo. But the rest of this, writing, knitting, especially learning new stitches, artwork, music, etc. Little got done. Too tired. Housework. Phew!

Seasons of our lives are as influential as the weather. Whew!

Making Monday

Time to look at works in progress.

Sock on the left ready to cuff. Sock on the right ready for ankle.

Almost done.

But if you’ve been following. I’m spending a lot of time reading. Even reading out loud. I know that seems something small. But my eyes have never been able to see to track and read properly, even though reading has always been my favorite pastime.

So I’m in training now so that my dream of sharing my books and podcasting will happen. I picked up

12Pcs Dyslexia Tools for Kids Dyslexia Reading Strips, Colored Overlays for Dyslexia Transparency Reading Guide Strips for Kids Correction Gel Lighting Filter (11.7 in x 8.3 in) to help me track better.

I will use these on books and computer screen.

I’m still checking out Librivox to read aloud books and Audacity to help record podcasts and books.

So busy!

Stream of Consciousness Saturday, Boo

This being October 30, I had only two days to prepare for NaNoWriMo and writing another book.

Making my second podcast/vlog  I two days. I tossed yesterday’s because I didn’t understand how to share my screen. Thanks to helpful friends I think I get that now.

Our Zoom session lasted about an hour. Moving it to YouTube is my new problem. I don’t know that I’m up to background music and graphics, you know the whole kit and caboodle.  I will learn as I go.  No need to get fancy. Besides, I’m constantly being booted off because I haven’t saved correctly or some other techish nonsense.

When I  finally get it posted somewhere, I  will share. It is a writing group meet of sorts. We covered a lot of websites, programs and books. As soon as the upload finishes, I need to figure out how to add those.

Just think maybe someday our novels will don your bookshelves.

If I can get past the slow upload. BOO! To slow computers!

Per Linda:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “boo.” Find a word with the letters “boo” in it or use “boo” as is and base your post on it. Enjoy!

Unfinished Friday

After frogging yesterday’s hat, I nearly have a brim finished on the new one. Within a row or two, I will put that first row in the middle onto the pegs, knit the first and the last row together, and then start the main part of the hat.

And after ‘frogging’ yesterday’s podcast attempt, I spent the morning learning about starting a new project. I used Wondershare, the free version, to try and work on what might be salvageable from yesterday. I have only gone through the first couple of steps and feel confident I can do something to help others. Here’s their first YouTube.

So my attempt for tomorrow is to show how to set up for NaNoWriMo and hopefully show how my friends start theirs in other programs. I will even walk through setting up a new project on NaNoWriMo. Though I finished (Pandamapocalypse) and won last year’s, That book isn’t finished. I got halfway through another during the first CampNaNo with Marina’s Mission. And suddenly, I had another story, Meeps creep in, but I haven’t posted word count to NaNo yet. And now, because of #Inktober, I suddenly have Crystal. Which I set up in yWriter yesterday thinking I had screen sharing going on Zoom. Nope, it was just me talking, and all you could see was my glasses as I had to get really close to the screen to see. The nice thing about NaNo now, as opposed to how it used to be, is you can divide your wordage between projects or even aim for pages edited or other types of goals. So I plan to share that tomorrow also. So the mistakes of yarns yesterday become new projects today.

Do-over Please

This day! Yikes! It started with a sad situation for my son.

Our internet has been so sketchy today.

I attempted to do my first Podcast. I did the recording on Zoom. I thought I was capturing the set-up of my yWriter project for this November. What I got is a recording of my glasses and my voice yammering on and on. Then I could go no further because of a bad internet connection.

So to soothe my soul, I pulled out the hat I was knitting. It was supposed to be a fast one as I was e-wrapping. But 5 inches in, I found it was too large. So I had to frog-it, rippit. Now it is only an inch long and that’s part of the fold up brim.

Tomorrow is another day. I’m hoping for insight. Anyone know how to share screen on Zoom on the laptop?

On the plus side one of my NaNoWriMo project is ready for wordage!

Podcast Thursday

I have spent this week attending a Podcast seminar on FaceBook. Well, actually, I took the live class on Monday but found the rest of the classes at awkward times to live watch. So I binged the rest today and I’ll have to watch Friday’s class when I get the chance. Here is the YouTube of what I watched Monday.

I’ve mentioned here that it is in my plan to make a podcast. I still feel strongly that it is something I should and want to do. I don’t know why, exactly. I certainly am lost in trying to do this but I will be doing it.

My aim is to have a chat about this 71 year-old lady and what that feels like for me. I plan to share my passions good and awkward. Crochet, knitting, loom knitting, piano, singing, recorder, artwork, and especially my writing. I could do write-a-longs or read alouds of my own books.

When I was young, and I hate to admit it but even now, I love going into other people’s lives and homes and getting to know people intimately. I enjoy feeling the comradery of a good knit and bitch or sing-a-long.

Report cards pf my youth give me promise that I can do this. What did get written on almost all of them? ‘Darlene talks too much in class.’ Not that reporting that to my parents helped at all. Neither did moving me to different seats. I always made friends with whoever I sat with. One teacher even moved me up near his own desk. Guess what? It wasn’t long before he and I were in a conversation. He spent nearly a whole class chatting before he realized that he, too, had fallen for my gabby self. So, it is called a gift of gab, right?

Another reason I want to do this is to join baby-boomers and anyone else who feels isolated. I know with my cataracts reading has been so hard. That ability encompasses so much of our lives, not just reading books. Reading the phone number to make a call, reading ingredients on a package, etc. I want to make life more accessible. I have already made this blog available on Spotify but not my own voice, just the robot voice offered on Anchor. By the time I get to the writing the blog time, I don’t have the energy to read the words.

But the gabbing is something I want to use to get to know people better. Not just hear myself speak. So I am asking all of you to give me suggestions of what I might cover. Thanks for being the great bunch of friends you are here. I can hardly wait to see what you recommend. I think blogging helps me so much and I think the podcast will, too.