Tag Archives: action

The little things

Each time I accomplish something, no matter how small I am learning to celebrate it.  Because no matter how small that thing is, I did it and it is a part of a progression of that small thing turning into something bigger.

It has been said in my blog before that I am a huge fan of a motivational speaker called Mel Robbins and currently I am reading her book “The high five habit” and though I am not seeing massive results three days into forming this habit.  I did notice today a small, very faint in fact, smile on my face when I went to the mirror this morning.

I’m not presuming you know what “The high five habit” is all about, so I shall tell you.

Mel Robbins suggests that each morning you high five yourself in the mirror in order to acknowledge yourself, try not to criticise yourself the first thing in the morning – self-love is key to making solid foundations in other relationships, if you don’t love yourself or take care of yourself enough, you can’t do that for other people, can you? 

Why? 

Because you will feel depleted in yourself and you won’t give it your best shot. 

Many people feel that high fiving themselves in the mirror daily boosted their esteem and performance throughout the day.

Why? 

Because a high five is a positive reinforcement and it makes you feel you have value.

Three days, that’s all I’ve done so far, though when this post goes out it will really be five days, because I am posting this to schedule.

I have barely done any writing since September 2023 but I am celebrating any writing I do even if it’s only a small sentence now. 

Why?

Because I am feeling depleted and I don’t like it and it was with Mel Robbins that I learned I felt depleted in so many different areas in my life through a free course I finished last week ran by her.

https://www.melrobbins.com/takecontrolthanks

I learned all these tiny little areas of my life built up and gradually I became overwhelmed and because my social circle died around four years ago – I never found a way through other people to pick myself up again.  It’s all self-reliance only, 100% pure self-reliance and most people can’t pick themselves up when they are being 100% self-reliant, but I have no choice right now so any little thing is going to be great progress for me right now!

Today I have written two poems, this blog post and approximately 1600 words towards my vampire project, not a lot really – not for me and how I used to write several years ago!  But I am learning to be kind to myself, not to whip myself so much because I have learned recently I am an incredibly mean slave driver to myself and a tyrannical bully – as I always felt I was so darn lazy, yet I wasn’t.

In the scheme of thing, in the law of averages I wasn’t.

I’ve been working under overwhelming conditions for a decade and didn’t realise it and the more I was putting onto myself the harder and harder I would beat myself up about it.

No wonder I struggled with suicidal thoughts for so long, no wonder I had no drive and energy to get out of bed and try harder.

I was beaten, purely by myself – no one else did that to me!

I escaped abusive relationships and I became free from all of that and I became my own abuser, pushing myself constantly, being hard on myself for the smallest thing and mistake, because that’s how I was trained by people from my past and I was carrying over in my head, their idealism of what I should be doing and putting it on myself. 

Effectively I escaped abuse from other people but replaced it with me abusing myself in the same way they did to me.

It takes something like doing a course by someone like Mel Robbins or reading their books to really get deep inside of yourself to realise these things are happening to you, because of you.

What’s more, these things can change because of you too – only you can save yourself from yourself!

It’s a weird world, but it’s true for all of us!

You don’t need someone else to get things to happen in your life, you do it for yourself.  Letting someone else hand things to you;

A; is very unusual to find someone who will do that to you anyway and…

B; handing your power over to them, thus disempowering your own potential!

If you feel you need to rely on someone for ANYTHING then you have chosen to be at another person’s mercy.

Now for me, to a certain extent this is fine for me, because I am happy to have some direction from others. 

But most people want to master themselves fully and that’s fine too.

However, even the most ambitious people can often fall into the trap of disempowerment because of their reliance on another person and they will become frustrated and even vicious with that person if that person doesn’t live up to their expectations to receive what they want from them.

Some people do this in romantic relationships, in fact a lot of people do.  They mistake their need for love with a need for resource and often confuse the two.

If you love someone, you don’t use them – you love them, you care about them, their happiness if your happiness and you will protect that the best you can… if that’s not true in your relationship, then there is something seriously wrong with the relationships foundation and it will fail.

Do you know how rare it is to find someone who will love you selflessly?  It’s actually very special and many relationships fail because one or even the both of them fail to look at the relationship from a selfless perspective.

Now this wasn’t something Mel Robbins said, this is me talking now.  This is what I have experienced – I am not perfect, I’ve done the same in my past too and it’s not right and it’s not fair!

Where am I going with this?

To be honest, I don’t know.

But then again, nobody really knows what’s going on in their lives do they, let’s be honest?  We’re all just learning as we plod along, doing our thing. 

So, today I’ve done 1600 words towards my vampires – I celebrate that!

I did three lessons on DuoLingo for Italian – I celebrate that!

I wrote two poems – I celebrate that!

I read several pages of a book and magazine – I celebrate that!

I managed to eat a breakfast which is rare for me!  – I celebrated that too!

All these micro things are a progression to something bigger – foundations of something that will be big for my future.

The little things count, because doing nothing doesn’t.

Sitting back and thinking doesn’t count as productive time, because you’re not doing anything in action, you’re just thinking!

Anyone can think!

Anyone can waste oodles of time just sitting back doing nothing but plan everything to the letter!

But action brings things into motion, action is progress, no matter how small – it counts, it’s a manifestation, it is beyond thought, action is tangible, thought is not.

So when you write 50 words towards your novel and other writers laugh at your dreams of being a writer, remember this… you wrote 50 words, you didn’t just think them and that counts towards creating a book.  Sitting back and thinking about 50 words and not writing them, doesn’t make you a writer, it makes you a thinker!

Honestly how many writers out there think away hundreds of words per day but fail to write them down because they weren’t confident about it, didn’t trust the process and felt they needed those words to be absolutely perfect before they wrote them?

Also, how many days go by, weeks, months, years even because of the same thing?  Because of writers block?  That doesn’t exist actually; writer’s perfection does and guess what?  It doesn’t have to be perfect until you send it off to be published and even then it won’t be!

Just get the thing written, because you’re going to have to rewrite it anyway, so why waste time trying to be the impossible?

Nobody is perfect!

Not even the bestsellers, it doesn’t exist because perfection can’t be defined as everyone has a different idea of what that means to them!

So what you find as perfect is somebody else’s trash, basically.

Cold hard truth and I am not sorry for saying it.

The only successful people in the world are the people doing the things they want to do – doing, not thinking, not waiting on a hand out, not sitting back a dreaming – doing!

So celebrate the little things you actually do, not the great ideas you thought about and didn’t do anything with!

Thanks for reading!

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Filed under About Me

Choose a door

Calm down, I can’t sleep

Calm down, I can’t eat

Calm down, my sweet

I know things are hard for you

I can feel it in my heart

I know you are taking a risk

But I won’t let you fall apart

I will hold you up when you fall down

I will hold you tight and close

Because I feel you in my soul

Your spirit blooming like a rose

I don’t know who you are

You don’t know that I care

But I will love you always

I promise, I swear

When you are stressed I feel it

When you are calm I sleep

When you are near I feel it

Your presence is so deep

I can’t explain these feelings

But I know that we are one

You think you shine bright like a star

But to me you are the sun!

I can feel when you deny me

My spirit caves away

When you are happy to have me

I wilfully live and play

I am so connected to you

With each action that you do

I will respond to it

But you will never have a clue

Not until you find me

And choose to hold me dear

Because my fate is bound to you

Let me make that clear

I was born to be yours

As you’ve always prayed

But if you choose not to have me

I’ll easily fade away

But I can feel you strengthening

In everything you want

I can feel you choosing

In fact the feeling haunts

The spirits they have told me

That soon you will be here

But I don’t trust them fully

Because your worries I can hear

Each time you waver in your choice

There is a flutter in my heart

I am scared you will not choose me

Then I’ll fall apart

I am scared of my future

Do I have one at all?

Or do I have a hope in Hell

That I shall never fall?

Right now I am on a tightrope

Or so it feels to me

Will I get to the other side?

Will you come to me?

Or are the wobbles a warning

That I will surely fall

And then you will not have me

And that will be cruel

Because you prayed so hard to make me

You deserve me as your kin

Just trust that you have got this

Trust in everything!

For right now I am at a stumble

There is no net for me

Just one choice will determine

What is next for me!

You can be happy my love

You can have it all

But make a choice quickly

Before I lose step and fall!

We balance each other, you and I

But I can’t choose for you

My life is bound to you, but you haven’t a clue

I am here waiting

But I don’t know how long for

Just make a choice quickly

Now please choose which door…

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Filed under poetry

Combat sports and feminine culture

Combat sports is another big influence in my stories; being a former judoka from the age of ten, I was just six weeks shy of the Commonwealth games trials of 1998 when I was rushed into A&E with a serious mastoid infection that literally ended my career before it could even begin, because I couldn’t do any kind of self-care for two years after the life-saving surgery I had to undergo.

This devastated me totally on a mental health level, because I used judo as a means to train my body for the hard knocks I was preparing it for as a professional wrestler, when I left school for college.  My grandfather was a backyard wrestler in the early 40s and 50s and he was a huge wrestling fan and I wanted to make him proud of me as he looked down from heaven and saw his “little cocker” as he called me, as world women’s champion!

But that was never meant to be, because my surgery meant that I had lost certain bones at the back of the right side of my head, which meant any future impact could be life threatening, so all dreams of combative sports had to end right there and then!

I love combat sports of all kinds, judo, karate, cage fighting, boxing, you name it, and I love it.

A lot of the various gimmicks in professional wrestling and other forms of fighting, whether it is combative entertainment or real, had influenced a lot of my characters and sceneries in some of my books – particularly those of the dystopian and cyberpunk genres.

I have a lot of background knowledge in fighting terminologies that can help with understanding the jargon, but I do know that a lot of my readers will not be au fait with the sport jargon that could be in the books, so I have honed in my skills as a very good describer of action scenes – of which a former English tutor is rather impressed with and says is a rare talent.

Along with my love for combat sports, I have a massive love for war history and battle games such as Rome total war, Warhammer, Medal of Honour and such the likes.

Back in 2004 I became an online player of Rome Total War’s original game that was based on my favourite TV show “Time Commanders”, as an avid devourer of history books, this was a massive thing for me and I soon became one the top five best generals in the world on their game leader board for two years!  Under the name Raven Warrior!

More recently I follow the artist Jazza which lead me to finding his brother’s channel of which I enjoy immensely “Shadiversity” which talks about the history of weapons and how good they are or not.  This is another tool which has helped me a lot in writing action scenes and accurate war scenes in my books.

You will find that there is a lot of fighting in my stories usually, but it is not constant mindless violence, I hope you will agree someday.

I’ve never been a girly girl and seeing ultra-feminine and helpless women in fiction is rather irritating for me, my characters tend to be female lead, strong-minded and independent women that save themselves because of hard times dragging them through into survival mode; usually they don’t have time to sit back and daydream of their perfect love life, they are usually dreaming about freedom and where the next meal is coming from! 

Thanks for reading!

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Filed under What inspired me?

Daily goals as a lifestyle

I no longer want to be in the league of procrastinating artists and writers, things are going to change.

For the past three weeks I have been living my life on a goal based lifestyle, thanks to some very motivational videos I have found on YouTube and the book I purchased last month called “Think and grow rich” By Napolean Hill.  Now I don’t fool myself for one second that art and writing is going to make me “rich” at all, don’t get me wrong – I am not just focusing on the money aspect, I am focusing on the aspect of happiness and feeling like I am achieving something, even if the rewards are purely emotional.

Obviously money would be nice, but ultimately, health and personal achievements for me, leads to a happy life and that is more important to me right now than financial gain.

I have had these talks before on my blog, the “No longer procrastinating personal prep talks” and they have always reached a point of returning back to old comfortable habits with excuses after excuses after excuses – I am sick and tired of failing myself and I watched on one of these videos last week that when you reach a point of being sick and tired of being sick and tired that’s when your life will start to change and I have reached that point in my life.

Living life day to day with goal based intentions for every day, is working out for me.  On the nights I forget to give myself a goal for the next day, I notice I go back into old habits, so I am almost paranoid that the last thing I do before I go to sleep each night is to list my goals for the following day, so I don’t slip up again.

Most of my goals are simple and may seem like nothing to anybody – how much do you think you are going to achieve in a day by doing these things which in their eyes, could be procrastination anyway – but for me, it is constructive.  It keeps me doing the “good habits” which make me a productive person.

My usual day to day goals are;

To write my morning pages via a site called 750words.com – this is non-negotiable, this is a must do, everyday forever.

Revising at least two pages of my old NaNoWriMo attempt from 2016, this was abandoned and forgotten in my drawers since 30th November 2016.

Writing two poems for advanced schedule posting on my blog, I am a month in advance at the moment, so the poems you are currently reading were written approximately a month before you are actually reading them.

Practise some sketches and art pieces in my sketch book, at least half a page a day.

Then there is a fifth random goal, it could be anything, such as take a walk, do something particular in the garden, bake a cake, visit someone, anything really.

This isn’t all that I do in my day, this is part of my daily goals, the idea is to get me into the habit of having something to wake up for, something to do.  I lost my purpose in life by allowing sickness to dominate me, but now I am trying to take back some kind of control in my life again and so far it is working.   I would never have thought about living my life in a goal based day to day way, if it wasn’t for the motivational archive on YouTube.

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Filed under About my work

Rigorous planning

I have been going through some rigorous planning of a rather complicated storyline for the last couple of weeks and it has almost consumed me; I’ve drawn up maps and personality profiles of the places and people involved and I’ve never been so thorough and I’ve never enjoyed myself so much either.

If I ever finish this story it would probably have to be published in a multitude of volumes for its sheer size, this is all thanks to the inspiring fourteen books I’ve been reading of the Land of Oz written by L Frank Baum, The Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling and the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S Lewis; not to forget also the Dragonlance series of books and the immortal highlander, all of these things are meshing within my mind and are giving me great ideas.

I can’t tell you what the story is going to be about other than it’s going to be a fantasy novel for sure with some horror thrown in for good measure, I wouldn’t suggest at all that it will be as family friendly as the books I’ve mentioned above but I can guarantee that if this gigantic story ever gets finished and published that it would be a thrilling read for generations to come; full of action, adventure, fairy-tale, romance, heartbreak, betrayal, revenge, vampires, slavery, struggles, imprisonment and steamy sex.

Why can’t I share a snippet of the storyline with you?  Well, I’ve noticed I am one of these annoying writers that when she shares her plot the plot loses its magic and I find myself unable to finish it; stories which remain a secret have ended up becoming finished so I am not taking any chances anymore and now I understand why legendary writers tend to guard their stories as top secrets until they’ve finished so fiercely… I think I might end up doing the same.  Do you know that I have started twenty seven stories in the last seven years and I’ve only finished two of them and they were short stories?  All of them were plots that were shared with others and at least eight of those plots were used to spark off other people (who also write) to write something similar to me, I don’t know, call me a snob if you like but that just loses the magic for me and I don’t do well competing with my writing, I don’t like it becoming a contest, and I think that’s why I didn’t partake in NaNoWriMo like I wanted.

I have found which market I want to write for and although I may not become as well known in that market as others who are more diverse I am happy in finding my feet amongst fantasy and horror for adults and fantasy and horror erotica.

I just promise myself I won’t be tempted to get my books published via e-readers because I want my standards to be professional, not dissing e-reader writers at all but the editing is usually sloppy I’ve found (since I’ve bought my kindle and read a few) and I find that unacceptable.

So, forgive me if my poetry has gone on the back bench a bit and please understand I am involved in something a little more exciting, though I will endeavor to try and post at least two poems a week as I don’t want my blog to falter.

I’ll post soon xx

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Filed under About my work