Coffee, Low vision, Writing

Alliterative A-ha Moments

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I am learning. It’s exhilarating and exhausting. A lifelong journaler, at the age of 48 I am finally learning the craft of writing stories. The annoying thing about it though, is that I want to just get started on *actually writing* this memoir. But I know when I look back it will be fully clear to me that this all was a necessary part of the process. All of the brainstorming, list making, drafting, crying, praying, discussing. All of it is part of the design and foundation-laying of the manuscript. Right? Please tell me I’m right. Thank you. The craft part that I really don’t know much about is storytelling. I think that’s the reason I’ve been stuck all these years. I just really didn’t know what I was doing, or where to go next. I needed someone to teach me. And this memoir coach is doing that! Giving me the tools I need to accomplish this task I have so strongly desired to complete for years. But I titled this blog hinting at an a-ha moment. So let’s get to it.

After this week’s writing lessons I am ready to begin writing the scenes for my story. I was journaling about that as I sit here in my local coffee shop, writing about what might be holding me back as I move into this new phase, and I realized I was feeling overwhelmed about organizing the scenes once I write them. Where do I write them? Where do I store them? I need to start with an organizational system before it gets out of hand. (Side note, I have been drafting lame attempts at this memoir for so long, it’s already out of hand. I’ve since moved all my old drafts into an old draft folder, likely never to be seen again.)

I have been using two programs for writing: Scrivener and Microsoft Word. I don’t love Scrivener for writing because I can’t get the contrast I need to see easilly what I’m typing. But I love it for the organizational tools. I do 90% of my writing in Word, where the contrast is perfect, and I’m familiar with all the formatting tools because it’s been around since the 1900s. So. My decision was that I would Write in Word, Store in Scrivener. And just so y’all don’t feel left out of the alliteration: I’ll keep Blurbing on the Blog.

Ever since I’ve been more intentional about writing this book, and telling more people about it, I hear from people who tell me they can’t wait to read it. (No pressure, Mel. No pressure.) But that got me thinking, how will they know when it’s done? Maybe these people would like to get updates on how the process is going? I looked into starting a mailing list, and it’s downright overwhelming. I’m not super tech savvy, and also – partially blind. So, I don’t really wannt start a new thing. I do have a Substack, so I’m considering actually doing some posting there. I have a love/hate relationship with social media so that kind of stresses me out. So we’ll put a pin in that for awhile.

And now I’ve kind of entered into rambling territory, which is my signal that I need to rest. Thank you all for being here! If you are on Substack, you can follow me there: https://substack.com/@melinda6213796. I do intend to start posting there soon, as I start writing into the scenes for the memoir, so you might get some early snippets! Shalom, my friends. Until next time.

Bible Study Fellowship, Exercise, Faith, Family, God speaks, Multiple Sclerosis, Prayer, Writing

Small Miracles

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I’m trying a new thing this week. This month? This year? This isn’t my first attempt at setting habits like this, but this time my mindset feels a bit different. I’ve scheduled days on my calendar for going to the gym and then to the coffee shop to write. Exercise is important to me, mostly as disease management. My MS is better managed when I am exercising on a regular basis. It’s also better managed when I’m eating well, but I’d rather not talk about that today.

Writing is also very important to me, and I’m really trying to write a book length memoir. If you are tired of hearing about it, imagine how tired I am of saying it. Of thinking about it. Of thinking about it and talking about it and not seeing any progress toward the finish line. It feels like I’m running a marathon (26.2 miles) on a 400 meter oval running track.

However, I had a really awesome thing happen to me last week while on the ride home from a weekend trip to Tennesee. While I was on this glamping trip with my sister and niece and nephew to visit our mom, I had listened to a podcast about writing memoir (my favorite pastime). This podcast was memorable because the woman being interviewed was stressing the importance of two things when writing a memoir. 1) Get a therapist. Check! And 2) Work with a book coach. I listened to that podcast again and took notes, then resolved to look into getting a book coach once I got home to Michigan.

I’m not kidding you, on the ride home from Tennessee, a memoir coach I had had a brief interaction with a couple weeks prior reached out and offered me a scholarship to her masterclass. I’ve looked into online writing classes over the last year or so and they are quite expensive, and it’s hard to know if they are worth it. It’s hard to justify spending thousands of dollars for help writing a book you don’t plan on making any money from. My aim at writing a memoir is strictly because I feel called to. This is something God has put on my heart and won’t let me give it up (believe me, I’ve tried).

I was hesitant to take the offer, but the price was actually low enough (super discounted) to be realistic given our current finances. I was tempted; she was offering me a deal I couldn’t refuse. I was reminded that only a week or two before this invitation came, I had asked the women in my BSF class to pray for me as I wrestled with writing this book. After that prayer request went out, I started hearing from the Lord. Whispers to my heart as I read Scripture, “random” conversations affirming this desire to write a memoir. None of these things on their own are out of the ordinary, but the timing of all of it seemed quite unusual and I strongly believe this was God answering my prayers for wisdom and guidance.

And then that memoir masterclass. I started looking into the coach. She has taught writing for over 30 years. She’s not one of those people who just hopped on the internet bandwagon when memoirs started blowing up. This was already in her wheelhouse, and she has adapted to her surroundings by offering her classes online (she lives in Alaska). Also, she is a believer. Not just a Christian in name. She truly lives out her faith. I’m reading one of her books and I’ve read what people have said about her over the years. She’s the real deal. As a believer myself, I’m still often very skeptical of other believers. I know how easy it is to say you have faith and that Jesus is your Lord. It’s much harder to live it out day after day after day. I often feel like an outsider in a lot of these writing spaces I’m in, so to be offered a scholarship to a class led by a woman who shares my faith felt a lot like coming home.

I’m almost two weeks into the class and I’m learning so much. I don’t know where it’s going to go, but I’m trusting the process, and trusting the God who led me here. If He led me here, it must be what I needed.

So. That’s not at all what I came here to say. I had a different train of thought about not letting yourself down. Doing things I’ve set out to do even though I’m tired or fatigued. And those are still valid thoughts to discuss or write about, but I guess today wasn’t the day. You got all that exciting stuff about my new memoir writing class! You are welcome. I hope you are having a wonderful day. Shalom.

Daily Snippets, Haiku, Writing

What if?

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What if the tendency to make a short story long is not a flaw but a gift to be embraced?? What if the explaining of one’s experience in all the ways possible is useful rather than redundant? I’m pondering these thoughts but also, practicing brevity with haiku.

Life of a writer
So many thoughts in my head
Swirling all around

Daily Snippets, Domestic Engineer

Garbage Day

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Y’all, I just get so overwhelmed sometimes by all the information. My email is constantly overflowing with news, memoir training videos and articles about writing. Today I woke up from my mid-day nap and declared today a day to clean house. Decluttering my office corner, I scanned, I shredded, I deleted. I feel so much better!

Until it creeps up again, of course. I’ve been working to systematically unsubscribe from a lot of the emails I get regularly and fail to read, but it still builds up. I have to be honest with myself, these emails I think I’m going to read? They are causing way more stress than joy. So I’m Mario Kondo-ing that crap. Monday is my weekly “garbage day” because the truck comes on Tuesday mornings to pick up our trash, so this action was fitting. And it sets me up for the rest of the week. Now I think I can relax… maybe? It’s always a struggle for me. Oh, the irony that I always have to try so hard to relax. IYKYK. I’m going back to work. Just wanted to pop in here and say hello with that random update. Have a wonderful day, folks.

Daily Snippets, Disability, Food, Multiple Sclerosis, Running

A day in the life…

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I had my husband drop me off for my infusion this morning. It went well. I met some new-to-me staff, Kelsey who is a nurse and the clinic manager and Lyndsey, who is also a nurse. Kelsey started my IV and I swear I didn’t even feel it going in. She must be a witch. A good witch, of course.

My ride home was a whole other thing. Per the usual. Spec-tran was really late picking me up, I think 45 minutes from the start of my pickup window (11:29-11:44) and the driver was so apologetic. She said they were really short-staffed, and they kept adding pickups to her manifest. So she had one drop off north of my infusion center, two pickups to the west to be dropped off closer to my house, which was south (like, way south). It was a lot of riding around, getting a thorough tour of the area but eventually it was my turn! I was home at 1 pm. The driver said it was an hour after I was supposed to be dropped off, and she thanked me for being so patient about the whole thing. I knew it was out of her control and I honestly wasn’t mad, just hungry.

When I got home I heated up some leftovers (working on cleaning out the fridge without wasting) and sat to listen to a podcast while I ate. It’s been a tiring day, but it’s also sunny and 65 degrees so I can’t seem to muster any frustration about it all. Just happy to not be in pain from the cold. My body is so relieved to be feeling warmth all the way through (and not in a perimenopause hot flash kind of way). I’m eager to return to regular outdoor running, for real!

Family, Food, Friends, Low vision, Running

All about the pie

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Last weekend I ran the Pi Day 5k with my sister, her boyfriend, and a friend of mine (who has run this race with me for the past 4 years). None of us were running alongside each other, but you know what I mean. We all ran the same race and got our pie and medal at the end. This race is local, on trails I am familiar with, so I’m always comfortable running it alone.

I had originally signed up for the 10k, when I saw they had added that option. A few weeks prior to the race, it had become apparent to me that a 10k was a bad idea. I hadn’t been running much over the winter, and I also had developed some significant foot pain. I believe it’s plantar fasciitis, but I’m tired of calling it that. It just feels like two weird words paired together and I always feel like such a poser saying it out loud. I don’t want to sound all hoity-toity so let’s just call it foot pain. I can withstand a little foot pain for 3 miles of pounding pavement, but not six. So, I contacted the race director and downgraded to the 5k, and when she responded in the affirmative, almost a literal weight was lifted from my back. Seriously. Instant relief. The race went fantastic and though I had pain, it was minimal and easy enough to ignore for the majority of the race. I only tripped on my foot a few times, but had zero falls. That’s always a win.

As part of our race package, we were given t-shirts with a cute drawing of a slice of pie on the front and it says “Keep your eyes on the pies.” I’m not generally a fan of t-shirts, but this one is super duper soft. So when I put it on yesterday, I really wanted to love it. Great material, a fun pun, what’s not to love? Well, that cute graphic on the front was not properly centered. I took one look in the mirror and cringed. It’s not super obvious, but it’s enough to drive me bonkers if I keep thinking about it. I considered changing my shirt, but I was so excited to wear it to Bible study that morning that I decided to just let it go and move on with my day.

The problem with this though, is that I believe it set the tone for my whole day. In the morning I was making an egg salad sandwich for my husband’s lunch and as I slapped the second piece of bread on top of the salad, I noticed the shape wasn’t lined up with the bottom slice. Like a savage made it. Later that evening, I was preparing some Caesar dressing with “freshly grated parmesan” (a phrase I love to say). I opened up a brand new wedge of cheese, cut off a piece to shred, then set the remaining wedge down with all the other prep tools on my cutting board. When I was done with my preparations, I moved the entire cutting board to the kitchen sink, cheese wedge and all, and left it there, not having seen my mistake. I only became aware of it after dinner, when my husband was rinsing off his salad bowl and he turned to me and asked, “What’s going on here?”. I got up, looked into the sink, and cursed. “Oh, f*&$!” My precious parmesan was ruined.

Stuff like this happens to me a lot due to my low vision. Most days I can laugh about it but there are times when it really angers me. This was one of those times. I had just had enough of it. That whole day felt whackadoodle. Some kind of low-key curse was upon me and I blame that damn shirt. But at least we still had pie.

Friends, Low vision, Nonsense

Not a panic room

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My husband and I experienced our first escape room adventure with a couple friends who have done countless escape rooms. I was really nervous leading up this, not knowing what exactly to expect. I kept accidentally calling it a panic room, which was kind of funny. I knew that I probably wasn’t going to be a lot of help in solving the big puzzle, mystery, whatever you want to call it. It involves a lot of visual clues that I just can’t see. As it turned out, the skills I brought to the table were of jiggling handles, unlocking padlocks, and holding a flashlight. Not much else I could offer, but I had a good time. We did not escape in time, but we were very close! If we only had 5 extra minutes, I think we would have made it. When the attendant came in, she revealed to us the few steps we had left to solve the puzzle, and remarked that this was their hardest game. That made me feel pretty good, because this is definitely something I would consider doing again, if I felt I had a chance at winning once in awhile.

Food

Brunch at my house!

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Every time I make a frittata, my husband likes to jokingly call it Nelly Frittata (a play on the singer, Nelly Furtado). Last night I made a frittata for dinner. It had bacon, potatoes, green peppers, onions. It turned out so great, my husband and I both went back for seconds. There were zero leftovers! I didn’t use a recipe, I just followed my gut. I cooked with my heart. I was so proud of the dish, I’m renaming it: MELLY Frittata.

Disability, Family, Grown-up Stuff, Health, Multiple Sclerosis, Running, Writing

Emerging from the fog of four weeks of fatigue

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Is there another word for emerging that starts with F? Something about alliteration soothes me. I know I’m weird. I’ve embraced it.

I’m popping my head up, finally. Happy new year! I had a good holiday season. A lot of relaxing and spending time with my family. My son was home from college for an extended period of time, so that was nice. After he went back to school his absence was almost palpable. He is the energetic extrovert of our family, so without him we resumed our antisocial ways, only peeking out occasionally from our caves to eat food and play with the dogs.

The reason for my four weeks of fatigue was an unfortunate timing of events. In mid-December, we learned my husband’s employer was switching to a new health insurance company, in order to keep it affordable for everyone. I’m not mad about the decision, I understand the necessity, but the timing of it was not ideal. Most of our medical providers participate with the new insurance, but my infusion center did not. This forced me to move to a new infusion center. Which involves getting new authorization and approval. My infusion was due on January 1st. The new insurance went into effect on January 1st. This obviously did not allow enough time to make the transition. It was a big ‘ole mess, and I spent several weeks on the phone fighting to get approval and get scheduled for my infusion. I finally pulled a “Karen” and demanded to speak to a manager. Surprisingly, that actually worked! Within 2 days of talking with this manager I had my approval and was scheduled for my infusion. It was almost 3 weeks late, which had me worried some, but aside from extremely debilitating fatigue, I had no new MS symptoms. Knock on wood. It was my usual week of fatigue I get prior to each monthly infusion, plus 3 bonus weeks. 1 + 3 = 4. FUN.

So now that I’m coming out of that fog, I’m loving the feeling of NOT dragging. Remember when you think about doing something and you just get up and do it? You don’t have to take deep breaths and talk yourself into it, one painful baby step at a time. Like showering. Remember that? It’s here! It came back! Now you have three weeks to catch up on everything before the next bout hits. But beware, you don’t want to wear yourself out so be careful. Don’t rush in. Be intentional. You’ve got this.

So that’s where I’m at. I’m so thankful to have made it through that hiccup, and just praying my health stays stable going forward. Now that my head is out of the fog, I’m refocusing on some basic yet important things, and I have a list (of course):

1) Drink 2 liters of water a day – I actually set an hourly timer on my phone to remind me to drink. We’ll see how long that lasts. :/

2) Eat more fiber – daily chia pudding or overnight oats with fruit have been my latest obsession.

3) Write memoir – I’m still plugging away at this gargantuan project. The process isn’t pretty but it’s moving forward at sloth pace. What I’ve been doing to work on this could fill a whole post of it’s own, if I get around to it. No promises, but I’ll think about it.

4) Running – yeah, I haven’t been running, but I need to. It’s good for my health, my legs, my fatigue levels. And, I have a 10k in just under 7 weeks so I need to get my tail back in gear, pronto!

That’s it for today’s update. Thanks for tuning in and I’ll see you next time!

Coffee, Daily Snippets, Domestic Engineer, Music

Trouble Waking

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I’ve been sleeping late, as I tend to do in the winter months. I get up early to feed the dogs and see my daughter off to school, and then I usually head back to bed. Getting out of bed for that second time is significantly more difficult for me, and it takes a good amount of willpower to do it. Usually it’s my bladder that urges me up. Today it was the mental reminder that I needed to put a grocery order in for my daughter to pick up after school.

I got out of bed, put on my cochlear processors, and queued up a 90s music station to pep me up a little. The song that played first was R.E,M., “Everybody Hurts”. Not really the motivator I was looking for, but at least now I feel seen! Michael Stipe always gets me. If you know, you know.

Anyhoo, I’m up. Not super peppy, but I’m ready to work. Coffee in hand, I’m gonna go knock out that grocery list!

Deaf and half-blind runner with multiple sclerosis