Category Archives: General

Questions on My Mind Today

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  1. How terrible is it if I go get a chocolate milkshake from Sonic after my dentist appointment today? 
    1. I truly feel I need to reward myself for doing this. It’s been 9ish years (don’t judge me) and I have super terrible anxiety with dentists and people being so close to my face and I’m really trying to stay calm today but it’s getting harder as the hours tick by.
  2. Why is starting a new book/story so hard?
    1. I know exactly where I want it to start, but actually getting it down and not hating it is proving to be a pain. Especially considering that I have this fancy new notebook for I Should’ve Eloped and I just wanted the first chapter to be handwritten, but I’ve already had to rip a page out because I hated the first sentence so much. Maybe I should type it out first until I’m mostly happy, then I can transcribe it? Hm.
  3. Am I ever going to finish this book I started reading?
    1. It was a free ARC from a publisher and I’m pretty sure the review was due last month. It’s not even a bad book. But it’s also not my favorite genre of book. I took it out of my purse and I keep forgetting to put it back. Oh well, I’m sure I can get through a good chunk while I sit in the waiting room at the dentist this afternoon.
  4. Why can’t people arrange work projects ahead of time, instead of springing them on an unsuspecting person all of a sudden? And then taking forever to respond to emails about it?
    1. Grumble grumble work problems.
  5. Why does time go by so fast when you’re not looking forward to something, but it goes sooo slow when you are excited about something?
    1. Did I mention my dental anxiety? Gahhhh.

 

Happy Monday, friends. I hope yours goes better than mine. I’ll share some news about my Camp novel tomorrow when I’m not pushing my luck with an ulcer. 🙂

A Facebook Milestone (and maybe a giveaway?), Yay!

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First, have you liked my Facebook page? If not, you should do it now! 😉 I share my blog posts, pictures we can all relate to, and updates on my writing progress. I TRY to post once a day, but rarely ever more than that.

Check it out here!

But I reached a milestone! As small as it is, it’s super important for Facebook pages. I finally hit 30 likes! (actually 34 now, woo!) 30 likes on your Facebook page means that you can finally see insights, so how many people your post has reached, how many times people have engaged it, etc.

The only problem with this is now I’m super obsessed about my post reach. Like it just sits up in the right corner of my Facebook all day and I can’t help but want that number to get bigger!

SO. Here’s my offer to all.  Continue reading →

A Crappy Valentine’s Day Poem

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to my fiance, and to all my readers out there.
Happy Valentine’s Day

Roses are red,
violets are blue,
I want you all to know
how much I appreciate you.

So eat a lot of chocolate,
drink a lot of wine,
spend time with your loved one,
or by yourself, that’s fine!

Happy Valentine’s Day
from The Caffeinated Writer,
I hope your day
is full of all your desires.

And now, a good poem!

To My Valentine:
by Ogden Nash

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That’s how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.

As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That’s how much you I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.

I swear to you by the stars above,
And below, if such there be,
As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes,
That’s how you’re loved by me.

What a sappy holiday, haha!

 

Wedding Planning is Hard

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Pardon the non-writing related update, but dangit I had a bad day Wednesday and I want to write a post about it. Which is double unfortunate because I woke up in a great mood. I had every plan to have a wonderful day.

Wednesday, it suddenly hit me that our wedding was a mere 4 1/2 months away, and that we still didn’t know where the ceremony was going to take place. We’re getting married on a Saturday in June. It’s kind of imperative that we put a deposit on a church sometime soon.

Brad’s family is very religious. Southern Baptist, specifically. They don’t want alcohol at our wedding reception, but that is not happening.

The one big request I am trying to guarantee is that we get married in a church by a (male) pastor (their request).

But oh my goodness. It’s kind of difficult when you’re planning a wedding in Texas when you live in a Virginia. I have only spoken with one church, but (no particular surprise), their requirement is pre-marital counseling. IN. PERSON. Continue reading →

Intriguing Results of Online Searches

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Especially in regards to WordPress.com blog posts.

Photo: http://blackwoodand.com/digital-marketing

When I was setting up my blog, it asked me if I wanted my blog to be found via online searches. Of course! I was blogging to share with the world!

It’s hard to actually tell how many of my page views come in from online search engines. Well, that’s not quite correct. I get the number, but I rarely get to see HOW they’re finding my blog. The analytics software that the free version of WordPress.com uses isn’t great.

In 2015, I had 43 page views attributed to search engines (out of over 2,500 total views), including Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL, and live.com. Out of those 43, it recorded these search terms: Continue reading →

Open Submission — Pitch Your Guest Post Ideas

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I haven’t been around the blogging world long, but I’ve been around long enough to see that guest posts are quite a thing.

From what I’ve noticed and what I’ve read about them, they have a few pros and cons:

Pros:

  • Fresh content
  • Different voices
  • Less posts for me to make
  • More exposure when the poster shares their post on my blog to their followers

Cons:

  • The time you spend not writing posts, you spend editing the guest’s post.
  • Sometimes you have to be mean and reject peoples’ posts.

Well, at this point in time, I have a hard time coming up with cons.

I, for one, think (as of right now of course) that allowing guest posts is a great idea. We’re a community here, and I want to be able to let other people share their posts on my blog, and vice versa. That way we can find new bloggers to follow, with a beaming recommendation from someone we already do follow.

I think there are a lot of opportunities to be had by allowing for people to guest post.

Everyone is always looking for a way to get their name out there. My blog is not huge by any means, but I’m hoping it works its way up. Someone with a smaller blog can guest post here and get more exposure for themselves. On the flip side, someone with a huge following can guest post here and I can get more exposure when they share the link with their followers.

Look, I think we all get the picture here –

I am opening submissions for guest posts.

Guest posters.jpg Continue reading →

Monday Musings #7

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Outback

On Distractions (hey! a butterfly!):

I sat down to write my Monday Musings post tonight (it’s 9pm on Sunday as I write), wrote a whole post, and then decided I didn’t want that to be my Monday Musings. So I finished that post, scheduled it, and then grabbed my iPad and pulled up Netflix. I told myself, eh. I wrote a blog post. I’ll write MM tomorrow. 

And I probably would, but I prefer to schedule my posts early in the morning. When people flip through their readers or emails in the morning, I want my post to be sitting there waiting for them. If I wrote it on Monday, I would be lucky to have it posted by lunchtime. Because my Monday morning schedule is wake up at 9:00(ish), do yoga, eat breakfast, drink coffee, go to work. I try not to write blog posts at work, especially now that we’re finally busy again.

So, before I started finally watching Person of Interest season 4, I locked my iPad and picked my laptop back up. I was going to write this post. Continue reading →

New Blog Title/Tagline

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So I signed up for Blogging 101 this month, which is like a back-to-basics type of session for bloggers. While I’ve been doing this for a few months, I figured it couldn’t hurt to maybe learn some new stuff.

The assignment today involved setting up a title/tagline for your blog, which obviously I have had done for awhile now, haha.

BUT upon conversing with some other bloggers, I realized that my title did nothing to really pull a reader in, nor was it very descriptive to the subject of my blog. And my tagline was just kind of blah. So I did some searching and have come up with a semi-new identity.

I’ll decide in like a week if I like it or not. But for the time being, welcome to —

header5

 

Let me know what you think! (I’ll play around with the picture/font color later too. I know it’s a tad hard to read.)

(And I’m so not getting rid of or changing Monday Musings. It just won’t fit perfectly with my blog title anymore. But that’s okay.)

2015 Year in Review

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So I’ve already posted my goals for NEXT year (it’s coming so soon y’all!), but I think now is a good time to reminisce on the year that is on its way out.

I can’t complain about 2015. It wasn’t a super memorable year, but it definitely wasn’t a year I’ll try to forget about either.

I got engaged in December of last year (Dec 26th at the Riverwalk in San Antonio <3), so I spent the majority of the first part of the year riding the engagement high. Pinterest all the time!

Continue reading →