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What’s on Your Bucket List? (Why You Shouldn’t Wait to Start on It)
This month is NaNoWriMo month. I know, it sounds like a foreign exchange students’ reunion. Most people have no idea what it is. I didn’t either until 3 weeks ago. NaNoWriMo is the acronym for National Novel Writing Month and the event takes place during the month of November. It can best be explained as a phenomenon of temporary insanity that strikes a writer when they decide to take on the NaNoWriMo challenge of writing the first draft of an entire novel (minimal 50,000 words) during November. (Want to join the craziness next year? Visit the NaNoWriMo website here.) Yes, you read that right – 30 days, an entire novel.…
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Surviving Thanksgiving: What I’ve Learned to Value Most This Time of Year
Thanksgiving never meant a whole lot to me growing up. Coming from a fractured home life and a broken family, holidays just weren’t a big deal. As a result, I entered my adult years lacking a treasure trove of memories to draw on to make them special for my own little family.My boys would bring little paper turkeys home from school that they had traced from their tiny hands and cardboard pilgrim puppets that had either lost a glued-on eye or been smashed when they shoved them in their backpacks. To me, every bent and crinkled offering was a priceless work of art that I proudly displayed around the house. I…
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Guys vs. Girls: How We Bond Differently
Men and women have very different ways of communicating and bonding. It’s been the subject of many published books, talk show topics, private diary entries, and even front-yard screaming matches between lovers. We can’t deny it – we are very different from each other. Maybe a little insight into our bonding styles will help us make peace with those differences. “Hear Me Out” (Reasons Why We Clash) Studies claim that men use an average of 12,000 words a day. Women tend to be closer to 14,000. I am beyond curious about how they came up with those averages. But I digress… A woman loves to communicate. Talking about things helps…
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Not All Dreams Come True… (and that’s OK)
“All of our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” (Walt Disney) I disagree with this quote. Several years back, I decided that I wanted to tap into my more artistic side. I bought a set of high-end drawing pencils and some inspiring-looking watercolor paints on a whim. A sketchbook and artist brushes were thrown in to make it more official. I should point out that I can’t even draw stick figures without someone mistaking them for a poor rendition of hieroglyphics. Who was I kidding? In the end, I had filled up half of my sketchbook. I had managed to sketch a few interesting…
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The Devastation of Isolation
In the 1980s, the state of many Romanian orphanages–housing over 170,000 children–was exposed to the world with heartbreaking details of the horrors of neglect and isolation. Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, encouraged Romanians to increase the population in order to boost the economy. But the plan backfired as food and supplies needed for this increasing population were used, instead, to pay off the national debt. Desolate families turned their children over to state-run institutions where they were caged in cribs, locked in dark rooms, and cut off from nurturing or social interaction. Ceausescu was deposed and executed in 1989. But the damage had been done. The world got its first real…