I've been spending the past few days debating about what to do about some things in my life, mostly in relation to blogging (hence my online absence for a few days).
My book is going to be published next year sometime, and I'm an unknown author. This makes me feel a little nervous about how my book is going to sell... because people can say all day long things like "Oh, it doesn't matter if it sells or not, at least you got published!" but that's not the reality. The reality is that I would like for this to be a source of income. Ultimately (and I'm just being completely honest), I want to do this full-time, or at least have my books be successful enough so that it will lead to full-time employment of some sort.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Board books, and the small people who love them.
I love books - reading them, writing them, buying them. Books for adults, books for children, you name it. But there's this one subset of books that I never knew about until I had kids - the board book.
What's the point of the board book, you ask? Well, have you ever seen what small children do to "regular" books?
Take, for example, my Bible. I'm actually missing the first five chapters of Genesis because of a small child. Thankfully I already know about Creation and the Fall, but what if someone steals my Bible out of my car (this happened to my college roommate) and then tries to read it? So sad. This person may never know about how it all began.
Actually, if babies had better organizing skills, and could work together without pulling each other's hair or snatching toys away from each other, they would most certainly have a Baby Olympics, and Book-Ripping would be one of the events. Some other events would be Breaking-Out-of-the-Crib (it would be timed), Clothes-Change-Thrashing (the one who manages to evade his parents the longest would win), and Poop-Smearing (there would be an artistic score for this).
Back to Book-Ripping, though.
It happens a lot in our house because we are always leaving our books around. Although ripping is only one of the many ways that small children can undermine older people's reading pleasure. There's also the "Bookmark Pull-Out." Oh, this is annoying. Your book looks like no one's touched it, but then you settle into the couch for five minutes of peace, and lo! A small child has pulled out the bookmark. Now, your five minutes turns into 2 minutes of actual reading because you spent 3 minutes trying to find your place.
This is why we buy board books for our little ones. For although they do not keep the smallest Keen family members from tormenting the rest of us by assaulting our books whenever they can, at least they can start to learn the joys of reading with something that is a slightly more difficult to destroy.
What's the point of the board book, you ask? Well, have you ever seen what small children do to "regular" books?
Take, for example, my Bible. I'm actually missing the first five chapters of Genesis because of a small child. Thankfully I already know about Creation and the Fall, but what if someone steals my Bible out of my car (this happened to my college roommate) and then tries to read it? So sad. This person may never know about how it all began.
Actually, if babies had better organizing skills, and could work together without pulling each other's hair or snatching toys away from each other, they would most certainly have a Baby Olympics, and Book-Ripping would be one of the events. Some other events would be Breaking-Out-of-the-Crib (it would be timed), Clothes-Change-Thrashing (the one who manages to evade his parents the longest would win), and Poop-Smearing (there would be an artistic score for this).
Back to Book-Ripping, though.
It happens a lot in our house because we are always leaving our books around. Although ripping is only one of the many ways that small children can undermine older people's reading pleasure. There's also the "Bookmark Pull-Out." Oh, this is annoying. Your book looks like no one's touched it, but then you settle into the couch for five minutes of peace, and lo! A small child has pulled out the bookmark. Now, your five minutes turns into 2 minutes of actual reading because you spent 3 minutes trying to find your place.
This is why we buy board books for our little ones. For although they do not keep the smallest Keen family members from tormenting the rest of us by assaulting our books whenever they can, at least they can start to learn the joys of reading with something that is a slightly more difficult to destroy.
Monday, October 6, 2014
A Little Passion
A little passion, please, for a Monday!
It's a little humdrum in life sometimes, I feel. Not that we don't have anything to do - quite the contrary, we're actually very busy. But it's busy a lot of times (as I'm sure it is with most people), with stuff that is mundane and, let's face it, just life maintenance and boring.
Sometimes it's easy to lose the passion that we should have for life as we are in the midst of the everyday. That's the challenge. See, most of life is the mundane, and the key to not wasting your moments is to live them to the fullest.
Just take a cue from the kids, I guess. Take for example the way our one year old has so much fun just watching her big sisters and trying to be like them. Or the way she belly laughs over someone swinging her around.
She's in the moment. Not worrying about tomorrow, not regretful over yesterday, just full of happiness right now.
And, even when she's not happy, she's fully sad, or frustrated, or angry. And that's okay for adults to remember too.
Do we always need to be happy-go-lucky like some sort of hippie? Owning what we're feeling, and not trying to suppress or deny is a good thing as well. Of course, there's a level of self-control that adults should be able to muster up, as opposed to a three year old who may have a complete temper tantrum.
Life is full of these moments, and it's up to us to catch them and not let them float away into nothingness. How sad to get to the end of one's life and realize that you missed out, that you spent too much time wishing the moments away.
Anyway, it's something to practice.
It's a little humdrum in life sometimes, I feel. Not that we don't have anything to do - quite the contrary, we're actually very busy. But it's busy a lot of times (as I'm sure it is with most people), with stuff that is mundane and, let's face it, just life maintenance and boring.
Sometimes it's easy to lose the passion that we should have for life as we are in the midst of the everyday. That's the challenge. See, most of life is the mundane, and the key to not wasting your moments is to live them to the fullest.
Just take a cue from the kids, I guess. Take for example the way our one year old has so much fun just watching her big sisters and trying to be like them. Or the way she belly laughs over someone swinging her around.
She's in the moment. Not worrying about tomorrow, not regretful over yesterday, just full of happiness right now.
And, even when she's not happy, she's fully sad, or frustrated, or angry. And that's okay for adults to remember too.
Do we always need to be happy-go-lucky like some sort of hippie? Owning what we're feeling, and not trying to suppress or deny is a good thing as well. Of course, there's a level of self-control that adults should be able to muster up, as opposed to a three year old who may have a complete temper tantrum.
Life is full of these moments, and it's up to us to catch them and not let them float away into nothingness. How sad to get to the end of one's life and realize that you missed out, that you spent too much time wishing the moments away.
Anyway, it's something to practice.
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