Jdonley75

OMG, I lost count how many times I've had that happen. And it can get so depressing watching 1,500 words on a page that suddenly have to go because they were just bad.

Sometimes, I need to just get away from the world(s) I create and go back to something comfortable and familiar. I love reading a book repeatedly in much the same way we all love to watch a movie again and again. My go to books are my DragonLance series and I usually go straight to the Chronicles trilogy. It's an old favorite from when I was a teenager. It's adventure and magic and gods and good vs. evil and all that great fantasy stuff I enjoy all rolled into one. It lets my creative side take a little bit of a rest and let it replay a book I've read probably dozens of times by now. And when I'm done, I can move back to whatever it was my brain was fixated on before with a better ability to take the thoughts and feelings and put them into words that someone other than myself can understand. Great article as always.

Thanks. People tell me I'm pretty good with words.

Okay. Well... wow... I've sneezed at times when it's felt like a euphoric sense of release, especially if it was a sneeze I'd been chasing all day long (ever have one of those sneezes that almost gets there but then goes away and it frustrates you because you know you'd feel so much better if it would just go ahead and get out but it won't because it's playing hard to get? Yeah, like that.) I've sneezed at times and it's felt better than sex in some ways. I have never, in my life ever rearranged my internal organs from a sneeze. That in itself is going to be a great story over drinks from now until the end of your days. As for your depression and anxiety is concerned, hell yeah, go to war over that! Be a superhero and beat the crap out of it in your mind. Life isn't easy but that's a good thing because it teaches us over time to really appreciate the good things that happen to us. So, if you're gonna bleed, then bleed. If you're gonna get bruised up or take a couple hard falls, that's fine. But, no matter what, you get up ever single time and you show the universe you are a lot stronger than it thinks you are.

I've been working on my new story, which is kind of a prequel/sequel of my first story.

Hm..... I think, for a small moment in the middle there, I saw the first signs of some anger starting to form. Which is not only understandable, it's completely healthy. When we've been hurt, physically, mentally or emotionally, we eventually come to a point where we can look back at who hurt us and how... and we just get mad. I think it took me a year and a half before I got really really mad. I didn't fly into a rage or start ranting and raving. But what it did do was help when those moments the memories and the feelings would come back and threaten to send me into depression again. That's when the anger would override the tears. "Wait, no. I am not shedding another tear over this asshole. He didn't deserve years he had me in his life, he's not getting my time now that I'm free of him. Hell no. I am done with this." And that anger, while it's not (always) out loud, it serves as a buffer to protect you from feeling the pain and loss while remembering. Not saying I expect you to be doing that in the next four hours. But, if I'm right, I'd say you're further along than you think you are. Just my opinion. Hope you have a happy New Year.

Not me... One of my characters in something rather big I'm working on. To do that, I have to re-learn how to make a truly evil character that doesn't have just a simple plan but rather a layer of plots and plans that are laid out over decades. I don't want to tip it all off at once, so I need to re-learn how an immortal bloodsucker that has existed for centuries plots and plans their way towards their goals. So I've had to go back to my roots and read up on some old books and see if I can find some of my old notes from twenty years ago and see how I did it then so I can do it again today.

Very nice. I'm not a poet but I enjoy reading it from time to time. I've spent the last couple hours on here, reading up on how to be evil again so I can write a good plot for a project I have my sights set on, putting some work on another story and thinking to myself how Andrew Luck could be a pretty sexy furry boy given the chance...

Only 6? Yeah, I know that feeling. Intend to write only 12 or 13 chapters and end up with 26. I'm still working on chapter 5 of my new one myself...

Admittedly, I did use the word "ancient." But, I made up for it by saying @Kitt probably looked cute in her bell-bottoms as well.

I take a, "better safe than sorry," approach to my commas, thank you very much. 😅

I bet you looked cute in your bell-bottom pants. (I did, but I was three so I had no say in what I wore in the 70's.) And there are still some pinball machines out there. Not many, granted.

Ancient battle machines that mortals once used to battle each other in an arena known as a "video arcade" in a time the ancients refer to as "the 80's."

Minesweeper got me through a lot of boring nights on third shift.

I had a NES growing up and a SNES I bought myself when I was in high school. After that, I didn't buy another console until I was about 30 and got a PS2 well after they had been out. Now I had a PS3 and 4 in the house. I also need a new television in the other room so me and my nephews can actually play all of them instead of having to plug in and unplug systems on the one TV I got.

Especially when there's a lot of good memories in those old games...

#respect. Next novel I write, I have a good idea who I'm going to ask to edit it. 😜

My go to games lately for relaxing has been my new SNES classic. Haven't gotten to it yet, but I plan to revisit Final Fantasy III (actually VI but it's III to me) soon.

That's how it started... Somehow, walking and sucking up some liquids (let's be fair here, we're all experts in that field in one way or another) and somehow instead of going down, it went up. I still have no plausible excuse for how it happened. But, that was like ten years ago. I remember it was when I was leaving work when I was a night auditor.

Believe it or not, it wasn't nearly as bad as that one time I somehow got Dr. Pepper up my nose from just walking. No need to apologize. Every day is a learning experience of some sort or another.

That's... an interesting observation. I'm glad you shared it. In related news, I just learned that coffee coming out of your nose is not a pleasant experience.

Don't get me wrong. I had a dog at one point in my life and he was damn near perfect as far as I was concerned. I trained him and he loved everyone and he lived a wonderful life. We went lots of places together and he never once gave me reason to regret having gotten him. And I think that's my problem with dogs now. None of them compare to what I had in Sam. Also, I've been attacked by dozens of dogs and been injured by a few in the past 5 years and the last one probably would have put me in the hospital or morgue if not for some wild random moment. I have a friend who's overeager dog tried to bite my face on multiple occasions. My friend is great with pets but his dog is completely unruly and the people whose dogs have attacked me (while I was doing my job) seemed to not care that they attacked me. So, yeah, I've been pretty much turned off when it comes to dogs in general.

Ugh. Dogs are just too much work. I don't have time to walk it and pick up it's crap and keep it from destroying everything in its path. Plus, I work a lot and when I am home, I just wanna sit back and relax with my two little demons if they're not upstairs plotting world domination (because that's all cats do when they're just sitting there, staring at nothing.)

All of this is why I prefer living by myself. And have cats.

Sure, I'll play your little game. *takes the test and gets a 4* This test is broken!