An evening out of my comfort zone

Yesterday evening I ventured out into the cold and rainy night to go and listen to Nadia Bolz-Weber speak at the downtown theater. I arrived early in fear of not getting a parking spot and found one just past the theater. There was a line of people waiting under the awning for the doors to open. I waited in my car until the line started moving. While I was waiting I received two messages letting me know that people I had invited to come with me were not able to. Had this been a year ago I would have backed my car out of the parking spot and gone home. No way would I have gone in alone. My desire to hear what Nadia had to say was greater then the anxiety that was filling my chest.

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 I walk into the theater and head to the nearest bathroom. I take a deep breath and tell myself I can do this and I will be okay. I walk back out into the crowd and there is a sign that tells people if they don't have a ticket to stand there. I happen to have an extra ticket and gave it to one of the ladies that was waiting in hopes of getting one. I got in line to have my ticket scanned so I could enter the auditorium. A short thin woman with a big smile and an awesome corduroy trench coat was greeting people. All of a sudden she is standing next to me and says "hi" and gives me the biggest tightest hug. I thought maybe she had mistaken me for someone else. I don't know. She hugged me and walked away. She'll never know who much that hug meant to me. It was just the encouragement I needed.

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 I find a seat in the back and wait for Nadia to come out. She walks out onto the stage. Tall, tattooed and with short sorta spiky hair. She lets us know that she'll be reading a chapter from her book, taking questions, reading from new work, and taking questions again. Listening to her speak I knew I wanted to go out and read everything she's written. She is funny, curses without apology, and speaks the truth. She spoke about getting sober, her church in Denver, and about grace. I don't remember the details but she told a story about confessing all of her sins and about the person who heard them telling her all that was in the past. I remember feeling this sense of forgiveness and silently whispered "Thank you".

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I walked out right at the end before Nadia began signing books. I got in my car and cranked up the heat. I get a text message from my sister saying she is proud of me for doing something outside of my comfort zone. My sister knows how anxious and nervous I get around a crowd of people. I drove home and the anxiety slowly melted away and was replaced with gratitude. Stepping out of one's comfort zone is so hard but often so worth it.

2015 Reading Resolutions

1. Read 1 non-fiction book each month.

2. Read 1 book from my TBR pile each month.

3. Read 1 book from my TBR Kindle pile each month.

4. Read more adult books.

In 2014 I read a total of 51 books most of which were Young Adult books. I loved most of the books I read and read a lot of new to me authors. I want to read even more books for 2015 and read more diversely. I also want to review some of the books I read and do a weekly post on what I read each week.

Do you have any reading goals for 2015? I'd love to hear about them.

NaNoWriMO 2014

NaNoWriMo 2014 starts in just 6 days on November 1. NaNoWriMo challenges you to write 50,000 words in 30 days. It breaks down to 1667 words a day. I tried it last year for the first time and fizzled out at about 15,000 words. I lost steam, motivation, and ideas. This year I'm trying again.

My idea for this year's writing came from a dream I had a few weeks ago. The dream gave me two main characters, their names, and occupations. Plus a vague idea of what should occur between them. When I woke I wrote down as much as I could remember and knew I needed to find out what would happen next. I'm very excited about giving this story a go.

Have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo? If so, how did you do? If not, why not give it a shot?

Being scared

     

     I am a sucker for a good quote. I recently read this one from Chris Guillebeau.

"That's the promise: you will live more curiously if you write. You will become a scientist, if not of the natural world than of whatever world you care about. More of that world will pop alive. You will see more when you look at it. Writing needn't be a formal enterprise to have this effect. You don't have to write well. You don't even have to "write" exactly - you can just talk onto the page."

     I have two journals going at the moment and plan on copying this into both. I love the idea of talking onto the page. It makes writing seem so much less formal and like anyone can do it. So if anyone can do it it certainly means I can do it. Writing scares me but if I don't write then my brain just fills up to the point where all I hear is the incessant chatter and I can't sleep at night. For the most part I've only ever written down thoughts that had to do with life or my feelings about something. 

     Only once have I written down the stories that play in my head. I think up the equivalent of a 3 hour action movie in my head all the time. I play out different scenes, change the characters, scout locations all in my head. I often wonder if I would be any good at writing them all out. I tried out NaNoWriMo last year but didn't get very far. I don't have the writing skills at this time to make things flow. It's all very chunky and pieced together. I know that if I write more this will get easier but yet.........I don't. 

     I will hit this great big wall of China type resistance and nothing happens. I suddenly think all my story ideas or dumb or have been done before. I think I need to type it all out because it's faster then hand writing it but then never take the time to do either. I am full of excuses and I know that's all they are. It's funny what you can talk yourself into or out of if you try hard enough. Might be time I focus all the energy on making things happen. 

   What do you find yourself resisting?

Link Love with a Twist

I love to see the weekly round ups of every one's favorite links for the week. I thought it would be fun to include a few of the ones I visit each week. It's nice to have them all handy in one place. Hope you enjoy.


Nubby Twiglet

Blog Society

Elise Blaha

Susannah Conway

What are some of your favorite link round ups?

Book Talk

Where I talk about the books I've read in the past week, am currently reading, and what I plan to read next.
The synopsis link will take to each books Goodreads page. I am giving my opinion on each book with very little to no spoilers whenever possible.

 Synopsis

I read this book the end of last week. When I first heard about it it seemed to be either a book you loved or you hated. I fell somewhere in the middle. For me it was just okay. It was a unique take on vampires and I found it to be entertaining. Though the story wasn't anything extraordinary I still felt compelled to come back to the pages just to see what would happen next. I liked it enough to try another of Holly Black's books. I gave this book 3 stars. 

Synopsis

This book was mind-blowing, amazing, heart wrenching. I loved every page. It tells the story of two best friends during WWII. Maddie is a pilot and Julie is a spy. That right there should be enough to make you want to read this. There were so many twists and turns. I didn't see any of them coming. I stayed up late to read this and tried to keep reading even when my eyes were screaming at me to rest. I did a lot of yelling out loud about this book. So many times I said "that did not just happen". This book was incredible. Five stars for this wonderful tale of friendship. 

Synopsis

This is the second book in the Covenant Series by Jennifer L. Armentrout. I love this series. It's a quick easy read and I fly through each book. If you like books with some paranormal aspects and romance I recommend this series. Four stars for this second book in a series. Looking forward to reading the third book. 

Now on to what I am currently reading.

Synopsis

This is the third book in the Vampire Academy series. If it wasn't for all the great reviews on Booktube I'm not I would have ever looked at reading this series. Each books gets better and better. The series is seriously addicting. 

This weekend I plan to read:

Synopsis

and then the companion novel to Code Name Verity:

Synopsis

What are you reading?

Random Rambles #1

     Random Rambles is going to be a weekly feature where I talk about whatever random thing is currently swimming in my head.

     I was talking to my dear friend Anna about how I get all these ideas in my head for things I want to do or write about and instead of taking a few minutes to write them down I let them fade away. I wondered why I do this when at the time I really think I have good ideas. It occurred to me that it is at times easier to let the ideas fade then to take the time and effort to make those ideas come to life. How crazy is that? I don't want my ideas to fade away. I do want to act on them. Especially the ideas for writing topics. I admitted to Anna that what I really want to do above any other creative idea I have is to write and write often. I want this feature and a new one I'm posting about later on in the week to get the writing juices flowing. I have wasted so much time in thinking and not acting. It gets tiring to hear my inner monologue on how I'll do it tomorrow or next week or after I do the dishes.
     I am not a particularly busy person. I don't have a lot of activities or events to attend. My responsibilities are few. I have tons of time!!! I cannot continue to let fear hold me back. What is fear holding you back from and what can you do to push it out of your way?