by Nikki Amare | Oct 3, 2019 | Musings
I’m finally home and trying to recover from my trip. In the last year I’ve chosen to avoid most situations that I know will cause my health issue to worsen. Hubby does the grocery shopping that way I don’t have to venture out. We rarely go out to eat or anything as we are both homebodies. It’s one of the reasons we’re planning to buy land and build everything ourselves. We want to create a place that we don’t want to escape from. A place were I can live a happy and healthy life without the need to constantly venture out into the world. Not that I plan to become a hermit or anything but this trip showed me more than anything just how easy it is for me to backslide when constantly bombarded by things like perfume, fabric softeners, scented candles, air fresheners, fumes from cars and planes, fumes from road construction, and a million other things I shouldn’t be breathing.
Even though my family is well aware of my health issues they still don’t think about things like putting clean sheets on the bed I’m going to be sleeping in. Normally this would be a good thing. I mean, who doesn’t like clean sheets, right? Except that those sheets had been recently washed and the smell of fabric softener was so strong that I almost immediately had trouble breathing. After two weeks I went from just having a bit of trouble breathing to coughing and being short of breath all the time. Not just from the fabric softener but because of everything combined. And that was with taking almost three times my normal amount of CBD oil a day.
I’ve been home a few days now and I’m still having trouble breathing and I’m still coughing. It will go away eventually I just have to tough it out since going to the doctor is out of the question at the moment. As least I’m no longer running a fever like I was the first few days.
The good news is that Hubby got a lot of stuff done while I was gone. He didn’t finish everything he’d intended but that wasn’t really his fault since the air condition went out while I was gone so he had three days of misery before they finally got the part to fix it. Since I left so he could paint, painting wasn’t happening when there was no air conditioning. Not only because it was almost ninety degrees in the house, but also because it was over severity percent humidity. So he didn’t get it all done but we’ve figured out a way for him to finish without it being too bad for me. At least we think we have. Until we do it we won’t know fo sure. Since the trip was kind of a short notice one I didn’t really have time to help him prep things as much as I would have liked. So now I can at least help with that part even though he’ll have to do the actual painting himself. Although, it will probably be a few more days before I’m ready to jump back in to the packing and stuff. Fingers crossed nothing else goes wrong.
by Nikki Amare | Sep 12, 2019 | Musings
For the last year I’ve spent a lot of time removing things from my environment and turning our house into a place where I can be without having to worry about triggers. I’m currently visiting family and I’m reminded of how many triggers there are. Fabric softener is one of the worst for me. It’s also one of the things that is everywhere and it lingers for a long time after the laundry is done. Just walking into my mom’s house I could smell the fabric softener. It clings to the pillows even though I removed the pillowcases because it was too strong.
Most people don’t think about, or realize, just how much scented stuff they are surrounded by on a daily basis. Since I’ve eliminated scented stuff from our lives my nose is super sensitive. I smell things I never would have before and things that didn’t used to bother me all that much do now.
But the reason for the trip was to get me out of the house so Hubby could paint without me having to be exposed to the paint fumes. It will also allow him to do some other things that he’s been putting off because he didn’t want to expose me to harmful chemicals and fumes. Now he has a few weeks to take care of everything and air out the house before I get back.
In the mean time, I’ve had to adjust the amount of CBD oil I take in order to be able to breath and I’ve had to wear my mask several times already. But I refuse to let my condition stop me from living.
By the time I get home I have a feeling I’ll be feeling worse than I have in awhile. Still, I will never regret the time I get to spend with my loved ones since I don’t get to visit often. Feeling bad for awhile is worth it in the end. But next time I think I might buy my mom a ticket to visit me instead of me coming to see her. That way I can enjoy the visit and still be able to breath when it’s over.
There probably won’t be a post next week. I’ll write a new post once I get home, but for now I prefer to focus on my loved ones rather than taking time away to write for my blog.
by Nikki Amare | Aug 28, 2019 | Musings
Being sick meant not a whole lot of anything got done, unless you count sleeping since that’s mostly what I did. I haven’t been writing a lot, but on the few good days I’ve had I have tired to find a few hours to get some words down. All of the reading I’ve been doing has really gotten my creative juices flowing and I’m currently working on four different books at once. I’ve tried to stick with one book and write it from start to finish before moving on but it doesn’t really work for me. I like to be able to bounce around between books, otherwise I find that I get bored. I’ve also realized I tend to write the start and ends of a book and then end up filling in the middle when I go back to edit. I’ve always ended up adding ten to twenty thousand words to a novel during edits but it wasn’t until just recently that I realized why that was. I remember reading that after edits your book should be 10% shorter than it was before, but that has NEVER been the case for me. No matter how hard I tried I always ended up making it longer. And now I know why.
Most writers will tell you that the middle is the hardest part to write. It’s necessary to the story but it’s the part that most writers would rather skip over. The beginning of a story is where we’re getting to know our characters and their goals. It’s where we figure out what makes them tick and what it is they really want, not just what they think they want. The end is the big finale, that thing we’ve been building toward, where all of our hard work and the character’s struggles pay off. The middle, eh, that’s where stuff happens, necessary stuff, but it’s usually not nearly as fun to write as the other.
I write the middle, it’s not like I completely skip over it or just put in a placeholder to fill in later—although it’s kind of like that. I write it but I don’t tend to put a lot of detail into things in the middle. It’s kind of like writing: She walked into a large room. But then going back and fleshing it out so that it ends up being: Gayle walked through the doorway, the sound of her boots on the polished marble floors echoed back at her, drawing her eyes up to the domed ceiling overhead.
See, both say the same thing but the second one fleshes things out and gives the reader a better idea of what the space looks like rather than just telling them it’s a large room. It’s the whole show vs tell thing. And while there are always scenes peppered throughout that need to be fleshed out more, I would say that seventy percent or more are in the middle of the story. At least for me.
I think understanding your process and accepting it is one of the things writers struggle with. For years I tried to change how I did things because I listened to those successful authors who said it had to be done this way and all that did was make it harder and harder for me to write. Because their way of doing things did not work for me. I tried to make them work. I forced myself to sit down and write every day. To try and only write one book at a time. And then I ended up getting frustrated and when I couldn’t figure out where to go next, instead of switching to another story and working on it for a bit, I would find myself either staring at the screen wondering why I couldn’t find the words, or writing something I knew I would just end up deleting later because it felt forced. So I went from writing a new book every three or four months to a year going by without having finished anything.
Now, I write the way that works for me. That’s binge writing or spending hours at a time writing as much as possible while the characters are fresh in my head and talking loudly. Then, when they go silent I will switch to another book and see if those characters are ready to talk again. It means, writing like crazy for days on end and then not writing for days or even weeks. It means not forcing myself to write a certain amount of words every day. It means writing until the story is told and then setting it aside for a few weeks or a month before going back to edit.
This isn’t something that will work for everyone. But it works for me and so I’m finally embracing my process.
by Nikki Amare | Aug 22, 2019 | Musings
It’s been over a month since I posted anything on my blog. I’ve been struggling with my health and most days getting out of bed was beyond my limits. I know it’s just part of dealing with a chronic condition, but every time I think I’m getting a handle on things then I seem to have a setback of some kind. The health issues have really stalled our move. We had planned to leave the first part of June, but here we are nearing September and we have at least another month or two worth of work to finish on the house before we can put it on the market.
After more than a month of being sick I’m finally starting to feel somewhat human again. I’m still struggling with the exhaustion and find myself sleeping more than usual but I know it will even out eventually. It always does. For now, I just have to listen to my body and sleep when it tells me to, otherwise I’ll end up sick again. Even while I was down Hubby continued to whittle down the list of things that needed to be done, although there are a lot of things that he can’t do by himself so hopefully those will be taken care of in the next few weeks as I start feeling better.
One of the upsides to the forced social media hiatus is that I realized just how much of my time I was spending on social media. Granted it wasn’t as much as most people, but it was still more than I really wanted to. I understand that social media is necessary for authors to be able to reach readers, but if I’m honest it’s not something I particularly enjoy. There are some aspects of it that I like but for the most part I could easily walk away from social media and never look back. If it wasn’t for the whole author thing I probably wouldn’t have any accounts except for maybe Pinterest, since I use it mostly to find new recipes to try. Life is too short to spend a lot of time doing something you don’t enjoy. I like blogging and writing newsletters, so I’ve decided that’s what I’m really going to focus on from here on out. I’ll still post occasionally on Facebook and Instagram but I’m going to try to limit my social media time to no more than 30 minutes a day. That’s across all platforms. I’ve even set that limit for my Screen Time (a mac application that allows you to track how much time you spend on a specific app) so that it will lock all of my social media apps once that limit has been reached.
Another good thing to come out of being sick was that I got a lot of reading done in between naps. I’ve found a few new to me authors who now fill spots in my top ten all time favorite authors list. While not every author landed on that list, I have found several other new to me authors that I’ll be keeping an eye on future releases. Since it’s been awhile since I did a “What I’m Reading” post I might put a few together to share the books/series/authors I’ve been reading lately.
I tend to read a lot of different genres and sub-genres, but lately most of what I’ve been reading has been in the realm of fantasy; either fantasy, romantic fantasy, fantasy romance, or urban fantasy. I’ve also read several sci-fi and sci-fi romance books as well. With a few contemporary romance thrown in there to break things up.
So while I continue to recover, I’m looking forward to getting back to writing and reading some of the new books on my e-reader.
by Nikki Amare | Jun 20, 2019 | Musings
Hubby and I are in the process of packing up our house and selling it so we can buy some land and build a small house. We plan to build an eco friendly sustainable homestead. When I tell people this they almost always ask the same question… Why?
We currently live in the suburbs in a three bedroom, two bath house that’s about 1,300 square feet. Of that 1,300 square feet we actually use about half of that. The rest? It’s used to store stuff we should have gotten rid of years ago. Which is why the new house will be around 650 square feet. I plan to eventually build a small office for myself and we will have a shop and a green house but the actual house will be smaller.
One reason we’re moving is because we want to be able to enjoy the outdoors more. We don’t want to be stuck inside because it’s too hot to be outside most of the time. So having a smaller house that’s better organized with built-in storage makes more sense. If we don’t have a lot of room to keep unnecessary stuff then we’re less likely to accumulate the junk that we have here. And having less square footage means less maintenance and less time spent cleaning.
Another reason is because we want to build a life we can enjoy instead of spending so much time working jobs we don’t like to pay for a life we never have time to appreciate because we’re working so much to pay for things. It’s a vicious cycle. I don’t have a problem working hard, but I would much rather work hard for myself than for someone else. The goal is to be able to support ourselves off of my writing and the things we can produce on the homestead.
We want a simple life but one where we can go to bed at night with a sense of accomplishment.
Like I told my best friend the other day, I want to create things, to plant something and watch it grow, instead of just consuming things without thought. Although admittedly Hubby will probably be handling most of the planting because I don’t seem to have the green thumb of my grandmother or mother. Hopefully that will change but just in case it doesn’t we’ll be sure there’s enough plants that Hubby is tending to actually feed us. LOL
One of the things I’m really looking forward to is the food. Hubby and I both enjoy cooking and we’ve really started to get back into it after too many years of quick and easy meals, which translates to processed and not good for you food. We’ve always eaten relatively healthy, or so we thought until we really started paying attention to the labels of things. A few years ago we stopped buying processed foods altogether. The exception being pasta because I don’t have a pasta roller and I don’t want to buy any more appliances until after we get moved and have a house. Plus, I don’t really have the counter space for pasta making at the moment. And Ramen noodles because I’m not even sure how I would make them. Although I’ll probably go searching for a recipe at some point because I really do hope to make at least 90% of our food. I would really like a grain mill so I can mill my own flour but that’ll be a few years down the road if I do get one.
Since we’re going to be building the house—as in Hubby and I doing the actual building not hiring someone to do it for us—we plan to do things like grey water tanks, a water catchment system, passive solar heating, and radiant heating. We’re also talking about going off grid with solar panels. But that’s going to depend on budget. Because one of the things I’m adamant about is not acquiring any debt in the process. I don’t want a mortgage or a bunch of credit card debt. I don’t want to have large monthly bills the way we do now. I realize it would be impossible to get rid of all monthly bills but I hope to get them under a thousand dollars a month.
It means we might have to get part time jobs for awhile in order to be able to afford to buy materials and supplies to get the homestead started and the infrastructure in place. But if we’re careful with our money then we should be able to live off of what we earn from the homestead without having to depend on outside jobs. We have short term goals and long term goals for the homestead. We have the must haves and the wish list. We also have several ways to potentially earn an income. I’m a firm believer in not having all of your eggs in one basket, also known as having multiple streams of income. It’s why my books will always be wide unless every other retailer suddenly goes out of business leaving only one option. Even if that means I make less money than I would if I went exclusive with one retailer. Even if it means it takes me twice as long to build a stable income. Because the stability is more important to me than the money. Having only one source of income, no matter how big that income is, isn’t a good idea. Things happen and those things can mean you go from making a hundred thousand dollars a year to making nothing in the blink of an eye because that was your only source of income. I would rather make thirty thousand a year from ten different sources because the odds of all ten sources going away at once is slim to none. And if one goes away then I should be able to continue to live on the others until I can find a way to replace that lost revenue with another source.
I’ve never thought money was the end all be all, but the last few years I’ve really realized there are more important things than money and if we set things up right then we shouldn’t need much of it to survive. I would rather spend money on experiences than things like buying a new car every few years or designer clothes. Or even ridiculously high power bills. ($400 a month at the height of summer is just too much) I would rather travel and see the world, meet new people, and build memories occasionally. I would rather build I life I love, a home I don’t want to escape from, and spend time with friends and family.
That’s why we’re homesteading. That’s why we’re moving out of the city and into the country. That’s why we’re getting rid of sixty percent, or more, of our things. So we can get healthier, be happier, and live a more purposeful life.
