April 27, 2022
April 28, 2022
BITS
Show me a man who daily drives a clean car and I'll show you a littered roadway. On the other hand, if you're being paid to drive the elderly around would it kill you to clean it up a little?
This house has no love in it. Except cats. We love our cats. I have to love his because he has little for that, too.
I got rid of my two pairs of pajamas and bought a pair that's more suited to office work.
PIECES
What was your life like before the internet? Those of you who are old enough to remember the workplace before the internet, how did you communicate? By phone, or by walking to their desk, right? You actually came to know the person on the other end. I remember one job where the four truck dispatchers each had their own address book and were constantly yelling to each other for an address. So I created a database in those early days of the internet to combine all the addresses they had where each of them could update any of them. Before the internet, bits and pieces of your life could be strewn around. Now we cannot mix the internet up with computers, of course. My first computer had no internet access. My second computer did, but only minimally. I seem to remember it was my third computer where I first created The Bonanza Board, through which I met David Dortort, that was in '92, which was also the year I quit smoking and the year I started writing my first Bonanza short story (You can read it in Cartwright Saga, a free download on the link tab). What was life like before the internet? Can you remember? I used to be closer to my sisters than I am now. It seems the more we got to know each other through the internet, the less we liked. I now have what I call a $30,000 sister, I won't talk to her again until she pays me my share of my mother's estate. She hangs onto it for family emergencies and she has all control over what that might be. If the property she mostly owns needs repair, guess what? Family emergency. Yes, the internet makes us both closer and farther apart. We meet strangers we like better than our own family.
I have a note here that says I wanted to write about Kids and Mental Health. Oh yes, it kind of goes with the previous topic. Are we creating more distressed children these days because they have too many people out there to compare themselves to? Is the internet at fault? So far my grandchildren seem fine but they are 10 and 7. Their parents have done a great job limiting them to access of the internet. Two of my own children have sought mental health guidance, and my husband, too, seems in need of it. They say I should get it, but hey, I've always aced psychology so I'm the type who gains perspective through my writing. Teach more children to write, maybe that's the key. Kids need to get in touch with their value; with the internet that may seem hard to do. But their parents and our schools are letting them down, especially if the focus is the internet as entertainment so you don't have to spend the time with them.
Rejection? Yeah, it's the story of my life. I woke up wondering where my value is. Then I got an email from a gal who wants me in her film. It's in Milwaukee and she'll pay my gas. I'm waiting for confirmation on the date ... May 8 works! Yeah, it's Mother's Day but I've got no kids around and sure don't like to eat out that day. We would maybe have Marlene and Marty come down that day to grill out, but they can still come, I'll just drive on back as soon as it's done. But getting work for money --- ah, there's the rub. There's where my lack of value comes in. Selling books, lack of value. Getting any attention for any of my work ... I am going to propose a presentation for the 2023 Western Writers of America conference in South Dakota. My presentation is out of my Civil War & Bloody Peace book on the theft of the Black Hills. Wish me luck! I'm sure it'll go over big, there, right? Yeah, that's what I mean by value. My work appeals to the minority, and maybe that's the best I can ever hope for.
Thanks for tuning in. This is hereby my last newsletter, as I make my way further around Authors Guild to see if there's any real value in remaining a member, when, after three years here, I've been unable to secure a publisher, and sales are on the decrease, rather than ticking up.