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 |   A blog to house my musings, curiosities, and fascinations. |
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When it came time for me to start blogging again, I found myself paralyzed. I was trapped by the belief that my blog had to be unique, that it had to have a defined theme, and that it had to be appealing to everyone. After some time scouring Google for advice, I realized that if all I did was worry and plan, I would spend forever worrying and planning and never get to writing. From that realization, I've decided to display my blog writing guidelines here for everyone to see, but especially for me to see when I come here to write. ~1~ Blog about what is appealing to YOU. Don't worry about anyone else. ~2~ Allow yourself to WRITE! Don't restrain yourself to one voice, one writing style, one genre, or one topic area. ~3~ Throw out the fear of maintaining a consistent theme. Blog about your passions, interests, fancies, inspirations, opinions, musings, curiosities, ramblings, and loves. ~4~ Explore, experiment, and have fun! So, this is my solution. A blog about anything and everything that sparks my interest.  The title is inspired by the quote at the bottom of this introduction. Everything you love, even for a short time, becomes part of you. Our experiences and perception of the world is colored by those things we love and have loved, whether those things are  or not. This blog will be a place to house those passions and curiosities. Please enjoy! "It came to me that every time I lose a dog they take a piece of my heart with them, and every new dog who comes into my life gifts me with a piece of their heart. If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they are." -Anonymous ![Merit Badge in Aloha
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Only the most selfless, dedicated person would come up with an idea like an Aloha MB. But then, from all those things you do on WDC and we know you're doing out in the world, it's what we should have known you'd do. You've always been working to make things better and help people, animals, and places. Maybe the badge should have your picture so everyone knows a real example of Aloha.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Aloha-2171989_14.gif) Cover image by Jessica Woulfe
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Entry in the contest:
Character Count: 137 "Each day they attach us to hissing tubes where we stand until we collapse," she told her calf. "But you're a beef steer - an easy life." ~~~ |
Entry in the contest:
Syllables: 24 Lines: 4 Prompt Word: Insipid an insipid beige façade hides endless beauty - golden hills rolling into vast infinity ~ ~ ~ |
| So, something very strange happened to me today (yesterday?). It was like an out of body experience almost. I felt lost in myself, but completely separate from myself at the same time. I didn't notice the passage of time. I felt like I suddenly acquired the taste for something that I used to dislike as a kid. Now, I'm not claiming what I wrote is any good, but it is still an accomplishment for me. Somehow, I managed to write two structured, rhyming poems today! Not one, TWO! I used to think I couldn't write poetry if I was trapped by a form, but these two just spilled out of me. Real poets out there, please let me know if I'm on the right track. I'm early in my experimentation and want to learn more, so pointers would be super helpful 
Take care! Emily Ahem? No time to mention me, eh? I see how it is ... Just keep thinking this stuff is your work. You told me to hold this Sit a long time ago, but that won't stop my creative juices from flowing!  |
Entry in the contest:
Syllables: 24 Lines: 7 Prompt Word: Precarious  9/23/18 Winning Entry!the blank page is a precarious knife's edge where we quiver fingers shiver poised to write - or not ~ ~ ~ |
| So here's a little more about where I'm at with the job situation. I received the call on Wednesday morning that the grant was FINALLY signed! So I quickly showered and got into work just as fast as my little feet could carry me The reason I am so excited about this position is that it is a perfect blend of everything I'm interested in. I get to be a nerd about sciency stuff like water and biology and rocks and pollinators, but also interact with the public and encourage their exploration and curiosity of the natural world. I love, love, love seeing someone's eyes light up when they observe the wonder of the world around them for themselves and I'm so thrilled to be able to be the one to bring that feeling to people. But (there's always a but...), before I can do that fun stuff, I need to do the nose-down work of meeting with all the partners in my county and getting their input on what audiences/topics are most important to reach. I did a bit of this last year, but now as the new official Coordinator of the program, I need to be more official about it. I need to be firm with the likes of city administrators and make them make decisions about what they need me to do. It feels a little beyond my current capabilities and experience, but I grew so much last year, that this year I expect to grow even more and further entrench myself in this world. Anyone who works or has worked for government knows the pace at which things tend to happen. For those unaware, the answer is slow. Which is another consideration I need to keep in my mind. I need to meet with all stakeholders, draft a workplan for myself, get the workplan approved by all stakeholders, AND get the workplan approved by the source of the funds before any project related work can begin. Then I have to prove the program is valuable within a year so that stakeholders can include it in their budgets for the next year after the current funding source expires (on Dec 31st 2021). Until then, I have a job, but the hope is to continue this journey long into the future, which means I'll need to secure new funding, which (due to the  government) means I need to get long term funding in the budgets of a bunch of cities ASAP.Anyway, I'm super excited, but it's a lot of pressure. And ... I'm going to be trying NaNo this year as well O.o October Prep month is upon us ... Wish me luck! Emily |
| Super quick update: JOB FINALLY STARTED!! Finally!  I may be a little busier now, but I'm so thrilled  See ya around, Emily |
Entry in the contest:
Syllables: 24 Lines: 6 Prompt Word: Murmur hummingbirds murmur behind my eyes woodpeckers peck peck peck a drum in my ears i n s o m n i a  ~ ~ ~ |
First of all ... Look at this!
 Do you see it? Do you see it?  My very own personalized, customized, commemorative ID number! 180180! So flipping cool!  Hurray!In other news, I created a couple new things in my port. 
This is the folder where I'll be putting all of my Grad School assignments. And below is the first class that started yesterday/today/officially on Sep 26. I submitted the first assignment already
Anyway, that is all. Take care! -Emily PS: Work update - no update yet  |
Well ladies and gents, my first online course is open! As far as I knew, it wasn’t supposed to open until September 26th, but it must have opened last night because when I checked today, others were already posting!  This is the two month course called “River Ecology” and it looks pretty relaxed as of right now. All the assignments are already posted, so students can do them at their own pace. Everything just has to be turned in by November 15th. I might be creating a little folder on here to hold my writing assignments for the course, but there are only 4 of them, so we’ll see. I posted my introduction today and am really eager to get started on the rest of the assignments and bang them out. Seeing as I’m STILL unable to start my job, I might as well get a head start on this course.Take care all! -Emily |
Entry in the contest:
Syllables: 24 Lines: 5 Prompt Word: Sinister  Remember the waning weeks of sinister September when ghouls awake, eager to Dismember  ~ ~ ~ |
Thanks to this cool forum, "Devil's Advocate"  , I’ve been fleshing out the background of my story "More than a Memory" and getting motivation to write more! It’s really helpful to have an outside mind ask questions so I can put my own thoughts in order enough to be understandable Below, I’ve pasted my thoughts in response to the questions I was given.What are the origins of the plague? This is really important, isn't it? And yet, I haven't given it much thought. I imagine it would have something to do with overpopulation and pollution and the rapid spread of air-borne disease that wipes out vast cities in an extremely short period of time. This would result in the need for walls and isolation, which causes cities to be completely self-contained and expand vertically rather than outward into the perceived danger of the wastes (the dead zones between cities). Why do Jonathan and his wife choose to be preserved? In the beginning, I played with the idea of them wanting to be preserved because of some financial benefit. Either, they were paid to do it, or their lives in 2018 were so poor, that they had nothing to lose in doing it. Right now, I'm liking the idea that they were paid to be preserved because that adds to the sinister plans of ALTO. ALTO had been planning this for a long time, and perhaps ... OH! Perhaps! ALTO caused the plague in the first place in order to necessitate their business model of selling memories of Returners. Their goal is to instill fear in the populous and monopolize the business of "experience" so that the only way people can acquire experiences/memories of the outside world is to go through ALTO. What do people do with the memories and how does ALTO get them? Once the memories are taken, they are given to whoever paid for them, resulting in the original holder of the memory completely without that memory (perhaps left with a void or knowledge of something missing), and the memory is complete for the person who received it. They can talk about their "trip to Egypt" in full detail because they were there in the memory, even though their body did not have that experience. The reason people purchase memories from Returners specifically is because those people carry with them all their memories of the world before the Plague, which makes them valuable. ALTO acquires the memories from unwitting Returners. Perhaps the motivation again is money. Perhaps they are promised something in return, but the memory of that promise is removed as well so they are completely scammed out of their memories. What is the state of the government after all this time? or is ALTO a black-market operation? ALTO is not black-market. Rather, I think they are funded by the government, if they aren't completely run by the government itself. I imagine the whole economy is driven by this corporation, whether people know it or not. This is one aspect I'll have to think more on. I do know they have to be mega powerful, but in a behind-the-scenes kind of way. What does the technology in this era look like? I want the technology to be ever so slightly more advanced, but in subtle ways that aren't super "in your face." For example, the second chapter contains a scene with Jon interacting with a smart holographic TV and a clone/drone woman, but he notes that most everything else is similar to how he remembered it from the past. I'm also thinking about the city itself. I describe the city a tiny bit in chapter one. The sides of the buildings are green and blue and there seem to be no motorized vehicles of any kind. I want the buildings' electricity to be powered by algae and solar and the lack of cars to be a result of the over pollution of the past. The city has a very small footprint, but is extremely tall. All the buildings are skyscrapers and there are sky bridges connecting everything. This makes it easy to walk everywhere. Anyway, long story short, the technology is advanced, but only in certain things, so not incredibly intrusive in the story. I want the characters to live what we would call "normal" lives, but simply have some tech that is highly advanced to spice up the experience for my Returners. What is keeping Jonathan going? His need to find his wife, though I think I'm going to give him a secondary motivation as well to deepen his character. The current idea is that finding his wife is the initial driver of the story, but then through his search, he comes to uncover the nefarious actions of the ALTO Corporation and their memory stealing operation. As his hopes of finding his wife dwindle because he seems to be getting no closer to her, his focus shifts to protecting other "Returners" like himself from having their old lives stolen by ALTO. In the end, Jon is able to prove that the fears people have of the wastes between cities being contaminated by the plague are unfounded. This means that the residents of the city will be able to freely roam the world again and make their own memories, thus toppling any power held by ALTO. The conclusion of the story will be people rebuilding the land between cities (re-establishing the wilderness) and Jon finally finding Val (though I'm not completely clear on how this will happen just yet). She'll be older than him (I'm imagining he is 25 and she'll be 65 by the time they meet again), but this won't matter and they'll live happily together outside of the city. It’s coming together!-Emily |
Entry in the contest:
Syllables: 24 Lines: 4 Prompt Word: Gaunt Mauna Kea sees all with her enlightened eyes - summit a gaunt plinth where the Gods watch the sun rise ~ ~ ~ Mauna Kea ***Pronunciation Note*** In Hawaiian words, all vowels are pronounced, which gives Mauna Kea 4 syllables. Mau-na Kay-ah |
Just a couple things of note happened today. First, I wrote something again! It was for the Writer's Cramp, and I wrote it at the very last minute, but I'm pretty pleased at how it turned out 
I also opened the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" for contestants to sign up for the Unofficial October competition. Good way to get back in the swing of things, both for me as well as for contestants.  I have been delayed in starting my new job because of the government being slow to sign paperwork, so I've been out of work for a whole month. Not very fun, but I've said it before - I'm glad to have this time to relax and explore WDC again.  I expect to start on Monday, which would be a huge relief. My boss called me today about creating an event flyer, and I did it even though I'm not technically supposed to be working yet Masters classes start on September 26th  I'm pretty excited!I'm also on review crediting duty for the "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group" for the next two days, which feels so familiar. It's crazy how this was something I did six years ago! And now I'm back at it again like nothing's changed, but of course, everything has changed ...Speaking of everything changing, I'm still working on my poetry entry for the Rebel Poetry contest. I let it sit for a few days without looking at it, and coming back to it today tasted wrong, so I'm trying to rework it and get back to the grittiness I was going for in the beginning. TBD if I end up posting/submitting it. Anyway, this post was all over the place!  The best kind of blog Take care! -Emily |
Entry in the contest:
Syllables: 24 Lines: 4 Prompt Word: Bucolic only in Hawaii do black lava deserts and bucolic pastures marvelously zipper ~ ~ ~ |
Well, well, well! I'm baaack!! And I've just had the greatest day! Emily let me run free across the keyboard again! I was actually given permission to WRITE! {e:faint}And write I did I actually wrote two chapters of that weird novel Emily's been thinking about. The one she references in this note here: "Idea for a Story" . I pawed out the first two chapters of that thing and you can read them right here!
It doesn't have a name yet, but that's only because I need to write more of it first before I can get the feel for it. Seems like Emily's really stoked about it though, and I'm of course happy to help out. Please go give her a read! I'd love to hear what you think! Boon |
| I actually wrote two things today One is posted here for the "Invalid Item" poetry contest. It may need some more editing though before the end of the month. I'm pretty pleased I was actually able to get words to mash together into something reasonably readable though I've also been working on something for the "Rebel Poetry Contest" [18+] which is a little more "adult," shall we say. Not posted yet, but if you're interested in getting a first look, I'd love a bit of critique before I submit it.Not much else from me today. The new job still hasn't started, but I'm happily unemployed for the time being since it means I have more time for my muse to be inspired Speaking of my muse, you may know him already if you were with me from my previous blog. He might make an appearance here before too long.Anyway, ta-ta for now! -Emily (and Boon , happily out of the kennel again)   |
I've had a spark of inspiration for a story today, and wanted to jot it down before it was lost. If you find yourself reading this, please let me know your thoughts in the comments or in a review. I'd love to hear them!  In 2018, Jonathan Towne and his wife Valerie elect to have their brains cryogenically preserved with the promise of being awoken in the future when the technology exists. However, when Jon is revived and finds that his wife's cryo chamber was compromised and she had to be woken 40 years earlier, it becomes a race to find her in the unfamiliar and sinister world of 2353 (goal). Meanwhile, in a planet shattered by the devastating effects of a mysterious plague, the ALTO Corporation makes a substantial profit selling memories from "Returners" to the highest bidder (subplot). If Jon doesn't find Val in time, she may have all her memories of him stolen (consequence). To find her, Jon must infiltrate the ALTO Corporation's upper echelon and pursue the band of rebel "Nons" living in the wastes in search of leads to his wife (requirements). But at each turn, Val seems further and further away and the ALTO Corporation's control and power is growing (forewarnings). Any thoughts welcome! |
-- wee bit of bragging ahead -- Wowzers ... That Birthday week was bonkers! Made me feel  at times, and then  , tired, overwhelmed, humbled, and . I feel so privileged to have been welcomed back into this community as I have been and I can't tell you how thrilled I am to find it just as popping as when I left it WDC, keep doin' you!The MB frenzy this week was out of control, but a few of my most recent acquisitions really made me feel the feels. Mostly because I was just partying hard with WDC and they showed up out of the blue in my inbox. Those are the best surprises  Unprompted recognition for being me. Just doin' as I do and not expecting anything for it. Easiest way to make a WDC Addict, I'll tell you that.Anyway, the first four are reviewing related, and I'm super proud of bouncing back into the reviewing side of WDC. It was due in no small part to this Birthday activity that I was able to get so many written: "The Celebrity Match" Very good motivation competing against the lovely Mona herself, eyestar~*  !Below is a list of the reviews I completed during the Birthday Festivities ▼ Before you read on, I really hate tooting my horn, but dang, I've been spoiled this week and am overflowing with giddiness! If I don't write down these feelings somewhere, I think I might just literally jump for joy, ha! ![Merit Badge in House Martell
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Congratulations! We wanted to reward you for your outstanding participation in our 'Flash Review Event' for Martell warriors. We truly appreciate your efforts. Thank you! *^*Sun*^* ~Lornda, Maryann, & The [Link To Item #power]](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-House_Martell-2079761_12.gif) A handsome House Martell Badge from the generous Lornda~ House of Martell ~  for my participation in the "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group" Review Raid for the GOT Warriors of House Martell! #sunspearsforlife This was kinda my first experience doing anything related to GOT, but I'm hooked now! I can't wait for next year to cheer for our team!![Merit Badge in Positivity
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Just a small token of my total appreciation of your reviews of [Link To Item #900009] . Having a whole novel receive reviewing love is just amazing!!! Os](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/general-Positivity.gif) A completely unexpected and beautiful badge from Osirantinous  for my reviews of her novel "Lucifer's Pocket Calendar" [18+]. Really, the pleasure was all mine! It has been a long time since I've actually read and reviewed an entire novel here, and gosh, I feel so accomplished! Can't wait for those expansions! ![Merit Badge in Hedwig and Harry
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For paying it forward with style and class and great reviewing all the time! Sending love and bear hugs! *^*Heart*^**^*Teddy*^**^*Heart*^*](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Hedwig_and_Harry-2026567_14.gif) ![Merit Badge in Congratulations
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A little something for being #1 on the most credited reviewers list.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/Kudos-Congratulations-2500.gif) These two badges congratulating me for my reviewing and for being on the most credited reviewers list. Um ... what? That's a thing? And I'm #1 on it? Wow, I've been gone too long!  Thank you, ♥Pay It Forward♥  and brom21   ![Merit Badge in Business
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It's WDC's 18th Birthday! So why a business Merit Badge? Well, you're just starting a new job, hopefully one that will lead to a nice career for you! Happy WDC Birthday!
Jim](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/genre-Business-160.gif) And then there's this little gem from my friend, Sum1  . I know I've told you already, Jim, but you really made my day with this surprise. I so appreciate your support and friendship and a hearty thank you for this gorgeous badge and the words you wrote in it. I hope I can live up to them  Now, there's little I haven't done on WDC, but I think it's high time to do one of the things I've been holding off on. I think there's a need for an "Aloha" MB in this place, don't you think? My special way to thank those super people who need thanking. Yep... it's decided. Commissioning a MB is my next goal. Stay tuned Have a great night/day everyone! Remember to be humble, grateful, and ... Whoa, whoa, whoa... Hold everything... Something just popped into my email ... Wow, now I've really been spoiled! Thank you everyone! |
Entry in the contest:
Syllables: 24 Lines: 10 Form: Fibonacci Prompt Word: Homage 9/8/2018 Winning Entry!lei of orchids an homage to Goddess Pele - her firm foundation the rock to which I come home ~ ~ ~ |
Well, WDC, you're finally an adult. 18 years old. Our little baby has grown into an inspiring, bright, clever, funny, gender-less person.  We are all so so proud of you.To celebrate, I'd love to take you on a trip down memory lane to remember some of the celebrations from your previous birthdays  . Let's take a look at 2011 (my newbie year) through 2015, otherwise known as the Emoticon Renaissance.In 2011                       In 2012           TAGGING                         In 2013 New Awardicons and Portfolio Awardicons!                  This: Birthday Video (By the way, I’m 18 myself in this video )In 2014       StoryMaster hosted a Trivia Night event in Scroll                         In 2015 1000 remastered emoticons!                        We  You  !**Please note: This is not an exhaustive list. **Inspired by "Note: 48-HOUR CHALLENGE : Media Prompt Deadl..." |
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