by Laura K. Curtis | Feb 18, 2015 | Books |
This post is part of Wendy the Super Librarian’s TBR challenge.
What is the TBR Challenge? Simply put, it’s where readers pick up a long neglected book from their TBR pile, read it, and comment on that read on the 3rd Wednesday of every month. The idea is to read those long neglected books that you just had to get your hands on at the time, but have been languishing in your pile, all lost and forgotten.
This month’s theme is “Recommended Read,” as in, read a book that someone recommended to you.
If you’re reading this, you probably already know that I suffer from depression and anxiety. My life has been spinning out of control for the past several months and I turned, as I often do, to my friends on Twitter and asked what they did when they felt the pull of the vortex. Several of my tweeps recommended that I read Feeling Good which they said was much better than the corny title might suggest.
I bought this book about three months ago, which means it is far from the oldest thing on my To Be Read pile, but I was having a hard time concentrating on fiction, so this seemed a good choice. I bought it in paper, too, because I prefer not to read non-fiction that I want to focus on in paper, while I read fiction in e.
In Feeling Good, David Burns explains the tenets cognitive/cognitive behavioral therapy. I’ve had minimal experience with cognitive therapy in the past, though I studied it years ago. The basis of cognitive therapy is that negative “automatic” thoughts cause your emotional swings.
These automatic thoughts include things like all-or-nothing thinking or fortune-telling. For myself, the largest category of things I tend to do are over-generalizing and mind-reading.
So, for example, instead of saying “wow, that didn’t work out the way I planned. I’ll try something else next time.” I tend to say “nothing I try ever works.” Or instead of saying “she didn’t notice me over here,” I think “she’s deliberately ignoring me because she hates me [for whatever reason].”Does it work? I’m only about 2/3 through the book, so I can’t say. It takes a lot of practice to change the way you think. So even though this book doesn’t introduce me to any particularly new concepts, it’s useful because it reminds me that I have to keep practicing, and it tells me how to do so.
by Laura K. Curtis | Feb 15, 2015 | Movies |
While the talk of late has been “don’t bash 50 Shades or moviemakers won’t make love stories,” people seem to be missing the big screen love story that’s not about a stalkery billionaire and his red room of pain. Reviews tend to focus on the fact that the Cinderella story of Jupiter Jones doesn’t quite work out—she starts out scrubbing toilets and she’s still scrubbing toilets at the end.
But the problem with these reviews is that Jupiter Ascending isn’t a fairy tale. It isn’t supposed to end with the heroine marrying well and never having to do a lick of work. No, Jupiter Ascending is a genre romance, and for that there has to be an ending where the heroine does something worthwhile and her lover enhances her life in significant ways but does not remove her from it. She is an active participant in her own life, making decisions and sacrifices, growing and changing. In a romance, it is not necessary that she stop cleaning toilets for a living; what has to happen is that her life has to improve in some fashion and that improvement has to be precipitated by the presence of the hero.
In Jupiter Ascending, it is Caine who literally transforms, and whose daily life undergoes a massive change. Jupiter’s alterations are quieter, not so visible, but just as fundamental. As in all good romances, both grow and learn to find satisfaction in their lives, satisfaction that would not be possible without the other’s presence.
Yes, it was glowing and glitzy and chock full of crazy. Yes, there were plot holes. Yes, you can pick it apart with relative ease if you think about it too hard. But at heart it’s a lovely, romantic story with the trappings of sci-fi.
by Laura K. Curtis | Jan 28, 2015 | Books, Writing |
In about six weeks (on St. Patrick’s day—talk about lucky!) my new book comes out. It’s called Echoes and it’s officially the first “Harp Security” novel. (Pay no attention to what it currently says on Amazon—the title’s wrong and there’s no picture yet.) If you read Lost, you’ve gotten a glimpse of Nash Harper and his security specialists, but in Echoes you’ll see a lot more of the organization and get to know Nash a bit better.
Echoes is a big departure for me. Where Twisted and Lost took place primarily in Texas, Echoes goes international right at the outset, beginning in St. Martin, a little island in the Caribbean. From there, it moves to New York, where Harp Security has its home base. Calliope Pearson, our heroine, lives just outside of “the city,” as well, so the second part of the book is decidedly urban.
Given that Harp Security Enterprise will have a whole series, it probably needs its own logo and slogan. I’m going to have to do it sometime, right? It should be on the door, stuff like that. So here’s what I have so far. I think it would look pretty good embroidered on a shirt or whatever. I’m undecided about the lettering, though. I might just like the abstract harp with the extra “leg” to make the H.
What do you think?
When I first conceived this, I wanted to use “Harp Security: We go where angels fear to tread” because I liked the “harp” and “angels” combination. But then I realized that people might think they were rushing in, which would make them fools.
Nothing else came to me in terms of angels, so I decided to go for a more justice-oriented theme. I am partial to Disraeli’s “Justice is truth in action,” but there’s also William Lloyd Garrison’s “as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice.” Something along either of those lines would do. Or something like “In Your Darkest Hour.” Basic.
So I’m asking for help: thoughts? ideas? Bueller?
by Laura K. Curtis | Jan 22, 2015 | Prompts 2015, Stuff! |
Photo by Randy Robertson, used with permission
One of the questions one of the prompts2015 contributors asked was: “If you could eliminate one thing from your To Do list without actually having to do it, what would it be? How would the task get accomplished?” That’s an easy one for me: Laundry.
Here’s my issue with laundry—you can’t ever get ahead. Even if you do it stark naked so that you can wash every item of clothing you own, you’re just breaking even.
When I lived in St. Louis, I went to a “Duds ‘n’ Suds,” a Laundromat that was also a bar. This is a great idea except that by the time your clothes are dry, you’ve lost any urge to fold, which means your clothes get shoved into the hamper and then you go home and pass out and wear them wrinkled.
Nowadays, I have my own washer and dryer, but I still hate folding. And putting away. Honestly, it’s easy enough to shove the clothes and linens in the washer and dryer, but then you have to deal with them.
As to how the task would get accomplished if I didn’t do it…well, once in a very long while my husband does the laundry. But if I had a lot of money, I’ve always wanted to have one of those services that washes and irons your linens. I adore the feeling of ironed sheets, but I am certainly not going to do that myself! Heck, I don’t even fold my fitted sheets. No matter how many videos I watch showing how to do it, they always end up like a ball. And they’re going to be stretched out on the bed anyway, right? RIGHT?
So, yeah, if I could afford it, I’d have someone else do my laundry. Preferably someone who came to the house so they could put everything away once it was clean and folded.
And just in case you didn’t realize that you could fold fitted sheets flat, I leave you with this video explaining how it’s done (in theory).
by Laura K. Curtis | Jan 15, 2015 | Prompts 2015, Stuff! |
One of the things I wanted to do this year was to keep in better touch with my pals who follow the blog. So I reached out over social media and asked whether anyone else wanted to get together and write up some blogging prompts that we could all share. We came up with a long list that I hope will allow me to chat with you all even when my own well is running a bit dry.
One of the prompts was “do you journal” and I figured it would be a good place to start since I talked a while back about my planner.
I don’t journal in a formal way, though I have in the past. My most successful journals used tarot readings as prompts. But two weeks into 2015 I have found that I spend time with my planner every single day. I decorate it, fill it out, check things off, and generally review my day’s accomplishments and…lack thereof. I think about what I need to do the next day, or next few days, and try to keep my to-do lists up to date.
I have also found some friends on Twitter who are almost as planner-obsessed as I am. So we swap links to cool stuff for our planners, etc. It’s fun! And productive!
What about you? Do you journal? Use a planner? Do morning pages? Track your life in any way, shape or form?
(I hope to get a page up with all the folks who are doing #prompts2015, but I have to collect their blog addresses.)
