This question is a double edged sword for me. My favorite holiday and least favorite holiday are the same at this point in my life.

That holiday is Christmas. It used to be my favorite holiday to celebrate with my favorite people. Unfortunately, many of those relatives and friends are gone (passed away). All that remains is a big space where they used to be and it makes the holiday of Christmas a much more difficult.

I guess that makes me selfish, wanting to have my favorite people in my life present on my favorite holiday. I’m feeling like it isn’t my favorite holiday without them.

I’m not alone. I know a lot of people feel this way. I just make the best of it each year, and try and use the generosity of the holiday as a means to pick up my heart and spirit.

I am hoping someday to make new great memories for Christmas and definitely am going forward with my heart open to that, but it is challenging.

-aaa 💔 🎄 💔

This is a great question. I sort of see it as when do you get inspired or when you feel motivated to write and I have a lot of answers because it happens to me all the time.

Honestly all the time. When inspiration strikes I always start jotting down everything on my iPhones notepad app.

I get a rhyme I get a line I get some stanza. I get some kind of idea and I either I write it down immediately and build on it later or at the time.

That moves and drives me to write something down when I’m productive and that can happen anytime.

For instance, this morning, I was grabbing a hamburger and fries from a little local joint nearby called Avalon and I got this idea because I kept being in the wrong place and everybody’s way while I was waiting for my order to be completed and so I got these two lines “I’m always in somebody’s way no matter what I do or say” that’s often how poetry starts for me.

A notion an idea something I just can’t get out of my head. Earlier today, I fellow author wrote about how thankful she was about her grandmother being in her life. This really hit me hard since I haven’t had a grandmother and almost 20 years and how much that love and support meant to me I was motivated to write something about my grandmother although I loved them all and I shared it earlier today.

Be productive as long as you feel like it as long as it flows out of you. When you get stuck or get writers block sometimes you have to take a break and not do anything.

Meditate on it come back to it. I do often as well. just my $.10. 😊

-aaa

This is a different question, but I’ll do my very best to answer it the best I can.

There are many emoticons. I use often in my post, my texts and emails and social media entries. I’d have to say the following are my favorite emoticons to use: ❤️😊😀🥰😝🤩🤣😘😋😢.

The emoticons are used to convey emotions using pictures that are charged for various reactions. Pictures worth 1000 words and emoticons may be worth 50 or 25 worth ways to say “I love you. “ or “you’re beautiful.“ or terms of endearment if you’re sad that something happened to someone you might use a sad face.

I come from the old school where we used certain phrases in chat or in thread of discussions or emails, we use: “LOL” laugh out loud, or “LMAO” for laughing my ass off, or my favorite “ROFLMAO” rolling on floor laughing my ass off.

Also we had low tech versions of emoticons in the days of MySpace and other early social media platforms. Here are some that I used to use an emails, early text messages and the like

:-)(-; for romantic gestures. ❤ for a heart. Various smiles/smileys 🙂 :0) 😉 Or for sympathy or empathy 😦 :0( ;-(

Emoticons have replaced a lot of these phrases that were used many years ago when a lot of these chats and various social media systems were invented. Currently I sort of do a hybrid of both. I use a emoticons and I use a lot of the reserved language for lack of a better word that was invented 20-22 years ago.

-aaa

There are many but I’ll brainstorm in a rate brief answer to this question.

Items I’d like to explore in Daily Questions include:

Love

Relationships

Music (songs, albums, lyrics, genres, concerts)

Musician Experiences

Art

Life

Nature

Beauty

Heartbreak

Emotions

Lessons Learned

Divorce

Marriage

Education

Dreams

To name a few. 😝

-aaa

Like many of us I’m getting a sense of Deja vu with today’s question. i’m gonna take this opportunity to discuss when risks are worthwhile and when they’re not.

I believe we take risks every day. Some are worthwhile, while others blow up in our face. But you can’t let the bad moments take away your sensitive adventure, and your desire to grow through change.

That my friends is where the risk is going out on a limb, trying something new, someone new, loving someone new, changing careers, etc. These risks and they don’t always come out with great outcomes, but still worth it for the growth and knowledge that they bring.

We go through life and learn through our mistakes which risks are worthwhile , and which risks should be left alone. that’s called learning and it’s very important part of life. I pity those who don’t take risks, because they basically sit behind walls and never go out and live. The risks I’ve taken haven’t always gone as well as I would’ve liked, but they’re still worth the wealth if experience and self understanding I gained from them.

I have to say, though in the end at all the risks I’ve taken in my life, many of which were very foolish were worth it to be the person. I am now. I am empowered, I am brave, I am ready to live the life of my dreams and I won’t stop until I do. One risk, one change, one challenge at a time. 🔥💪 🔥

-aaa

This is an excellent question, each day these are great and today is no exception.

In anticipation of a career change 6 years ago I made the decision to pursue my Master’s Degree in English. This was a real departure from the 22 years I’d worked in information technology. Not to mention the 25+ year hiatus and going to school/college. I enrolled at GCU (Grand Canyon University).

At first, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get it done. Learning about the new for me new APA writing format was so difficult to adjust to versus MLA which I used pretty much up until that point. Assignments were awkward class participation, and threaded discussions was such a new thing for me.

But once I got into a good flow, everything fell in the place, and it was pretty effortless to be honest. I wrote my papers if not all of them the night they were over 3 to 4 hours each time. And as crazy as it may sound I got “A”s on everything I touched.

It was weird. It was like I’d go into almost a trance and just go stream a consciousness, and my essay/papers would just take shape. And to deal with my problems with the new APA format I basically would take my previous paper, gut it rename, it save it, and then put the new content in there. this assured that I would not have any issues with format or design of my assignments.

Since my masters degree, was online, one new and challenging part was submitting each essay for originality. There’s actually software out there that will compare your paper to other papers written for the same courses and scan all the text and give a score. The lower the score the higher the originality so I was always shooting for under 10% and often got it. 99% of the students in my classes were teachers versus me, coming from technology perspective, so as a result, my papers were very unique.

Before I knew it two years gone by and I finished my 11 classes and gotten my masters degree in English. I’d leverage that degree for writing jobs and even change careers and write full-time now (as well as part-time here).

In conclusion, I must say that the risk was worth worth it all. Writing is my passion and working in it for a living is a dream come true and far more lucrative than I ever imagined…

-aaa

There are a great many things that make me nervous most of which I think are quite practical for many or most of us. We need to remember that being nervous is just a feeling and doesn’t mean that anything bad is going to happen. It just keeps us really really focused.

Below are just some brief examples of items that I have found that made me nervous and how I have dealt with them.

Life Changes

Change of any kind makes me nervous. We all have a resistance to change and it’s not easy specially in life when we have lots of changes happen to us. However, I’ve come to find that all these changes in life that are difficult lead to the best growth and the happiest life possible.

Site Reading Music and Public Speaking

I could recall when I used to site read music that I’d be nervous about making any mistakes, but that just kept me frosty and on my toes and ready for anything. Sort of like when you’re going to make a speech or speak in public, you get nervous before you do that speech, but that keeps you on your toes and sharp.

Meeting New People Dating

Dating is never easy, especially in this day and age with all the technologies that are out there to use. So when you meet someone for the first time in person, you’re definitely very nervous and wondering how people will be in person. Whether they act the same as when you’re chatting or talking on the phone. Results were mixed on this one and will be expressed in subsequent writings by yours truly.

The World at Large

Currently, there are a lot of things going on in the world that are not great that also make me nervous. Potential climate change global warming seems to be getting worse. The politics in our own country here (US) have gotten more dysfunctional than I have ever ever seen in my lifetime or right about even in any books. Wars people, dying famine disease so many things out there that aren’t so great keep me nervous pretty much daily. But, I try not to let it bring me down because there’s only so much we can do about it and again this kind of goes back to everything. Just roll with things and do your best to get through them all.

Ergo

At the end of the day, feeling nervous is just that a feeling. A mere interpretation of our reality. just our minds telling us to stay sharp and be ready and that’s not such a bad thing. We just get caught up in feeling “nervous” where it would be best to enjoy the ride see what happens. See how the song comes out how the speech is delivered how the world is going to cope higher life change. “Just keep going”, which is my daily/hourly mantra…

-aaa