A Look At The Year Ahead

I can’t predict the future. But I can plan in advance. So this is my attempt to look at the year ahead.

I’m currently in my second semester of my third year at university. That’s crazy. Still, I’m looking forward to being in fourth year. Even though I’d love to ace everything, I’m content with not failing anything.

Right now, I’m excited for the upcoming baseball season. I don’t know why. Unfortunately that also means I’ll be making a lot of bad similes and analogies.

I have no idea what kind of work I’ll find over the summer, but I’m hoping to find something. On my own time, I intend to keep doing what I love.

It should go without saying that I want to continue reading and reviewing books all year long. My wallet will hate me. But my brain won’t.

This blog isn’t going anywhere. I promise to be more creative and less repetitive. My aim is to create content I enjoy. Here’s hoping you enjoy reading my work. Let’s see if I can keep up with being a good blogger and commenting on blogs. Probably not but a girl can dream.

I never know where writing will take me. I lied. It takes me to magical places. As always, I have some fun projects in the works. I can’t wait to share them with the world.

Somehow, I start my fourth and final year of university in September. That feels so far away, yet too close at the same time.

I also plan to drive more once I’ve fully recovered from the accident.

What are your plans for 2018?

Picking One Of My Passions

I love reading, writing, and blogging so much, they’re daily habits of mine. At least I try to do them every day. I had the brilliant idea of making myself pick one of my passions over the others. This will be fun.

Reading or writing?

I already hate myself for doing this. I can’t give up creating stories. I say this while staring at all the books on my shelves. They used to be empty, but it’s slowly filling up.

Writing or blogging?

I’m reminded of the time I thought I could only take a writing class or a blogging one. Turns out, I could take both, so I did. Interestingly enough, I did slightly better in the blogging course, but my heart still loves writing more. Also, I’ve skipped more days of blogging than I have writing since I started both.

Reading or blogging?

This is tough as well. I can’t imagine myself not reading ever again. After all, I’ve been reading almost my whole life and blogging for only one fifth of it.

Hopefully, I never have to give up any of my passions. I feel grateful I’m able to do the things I enjoy. I wouldn’t be the same without books, blogs, and baseball. The latter is a story for another day however.

22 Things I’m Terrified Of

A list of things that scare me to some extent.

1. Driving. It still terrifies me.
2. Failure. I hate failing.
3. Rejection. Not as horrifying as it used to be.
4. Being late. I have nightmares about this.
5. Getting drunk. I like being sober and in control.
6. Living in a world without baseball. I wouldn’t want to live in such a world.
7. Noise. Loud noises to be exact.
8. Heat. I don’t want to burn myself.
9. War. Any kind of violence.
10. Blood. Other people’s specifically.
11. Band-aids. More unsettling than anything.
12. Germs. I’m a germaphobe.
13. Forgetting. Especially anything important.
14. Twisting my ankle while walking down the stairs. Happened one too many times.
15. Being out at night. I feel unsafe.
16. Darkness. I used to be afraid of the dark.
17. Dying before I realize my dreams. No need to elaborate there.
18. Dropping money. I’d prefer not to.
19. Losing IDs. What a hassle to replace them.
20. Drowning. Let’s hope I don’t die in a body of water.
21. Getting lost. I’m terrible with directions.
22. Car accidents. This might explain my first fear.

What are you terrified of?

Take Care Of Yourself

When I’m not feeling well, I’m torn between doing nothing so I can rest or doing everything in hopes I’ll get better because I’ve been productive.

A part of me knows I’m allowed take a day off from writing or blogging. But another part wants to persevere. The latter wins out more often than not.

I compromised. I didn’t force myself to go above and beyond. Even though I didn’t want to do too much, I did a little. I’ll take it. Some progress is better than none.

My head hurt. It was especially painful to be inverted. So while dancing I tried to keep upright as much as possible. Although I hate feeling ill, I like rebounding from a bad day or three. Knowing I took it easy even out of necessity motivates me to try harder when I’m feeling better.

Unless I’m beyond saving, I won’t nap during the day. I don’t know why. I think my body doesn’t know how to fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon. I could feel awful, and I’d still be awake.

I shouldn’t be hard on myself. I am human after all. Obviously, I would’ve liked to do more. But why work myself until I burn out?

I’m reminded of baseball. It’s easier and better to give athletes a day off even when they don’t need one. It’s worse to push professional athletes to the point where they get injured, only letting them rest too little too late. They’ll take longer to recover from an injury then.

Better to give someone a break before they break something.

I never know if my analogies or examples make sense to anyone not named Herminia Chow. But if you need a sign to take a break and relax a bit, here it is.

Do what you can to prevent yourself from getting injured or ill. Prevention beats cure any day of the year.

Control the things you can. And deal with what you can’t. Always be kind to yourself because if you aren’t, who will be?

Writing, Editing, And Watching Baseball

I love writing. But editing is not nearly as fun as baseballing. It’s happening. I’m making up words. If only I could be the next Shakespeare.

I spent the day writing and editing.

I spent the night watching baseball instead of working because procrastination is so much easier than being productive.

When I first started writing this post, I was trying to think of parallels between editing and baseball. I’m sure there are some, but my tired brain can’t think of one.

After writing most of an essay earlier in the day, my brain was ready to shut down. In a perfect world, I would have a lot more time to write and edit all my essays.

I don’t enjoy trying to write an entire paper in one session, which is why I prefer not to procrastinate until the last minute. More often than not, I give myself enough time. After all, I know myself as a writer better than anyone.

It helps that I write every day. I know what I’m capable of, I know how long I need. So I can plan out my mess of a life accordingly.

Editing is tricky though. Again, in a perfect world, I’d have all the hours I want for revisions. Some papers take longer, especially if I wrote an extremely terrible first draft. Besides, the more words I’ve written, the more time it’ll take to make them better.

I know this isn’t the best idea, but occasionally I write and edit while watching baseball. When possible I mostly reserve such moments for shallow work such as typing up text messages or informal emails.

But I’m neither flawless, nor am I a saint.

I still haven’t thought of a parallel between editing and baseball. So much for that idea.

Whenever I need to edit, I want to write. Vice versa holds true too. Sadly, I want to do what I’m not doing.

Anyhow, I can’t wait to have a productive day tomorrow. I need to. Those papers won’t write or edit themselves.

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A note from real time Herminia:

Obviously, I wrote this post and many others while there was still baseball on TV. But I realized that some of the sentiments I wrote a while ago are still relevant today. I figured now is as good of a time as any to publish this blast from the not so distant past. Fear not, more will come. I’m horribly behind with blogging and horrible at catching up. Thanks for understanding.

Blogging During A Baseball Game

Baseball and blogging totally go together.

I know it’s not good to multi-task, but I’m not perfect. I either do nothing or do everything at the same time. There’s no in between. Besides, the commercials during ball games are frequent and way too long when I’m not doing anything.

The more I think about it, the more I want to blog about baseball. What’s stopping me? Better question, who’s stopping me? Myself.

The imposter syndrome is real. Who am I to blog about baseball? Who am I to blog about blogging?

Life has been a grind lately. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Fortunately, I enjoy watching baseball and blogging. Unfortunately, school gets in the way sometimes.

Trying to do two things at once isn’t the most effective way to go. This post has taken a long time to write, and I’m not even halfway there.

In a perfect world where I had 25 hours every day, I like to think my blog posts would be longer. But I do like the shorter format. It’s a nice change from 10 page academic essays.

If you were wondering, which you probably weren’t, I’ve picked up the pace a little bit on this blog post.

Something about doing things slowly bothers me. Most of my problems would be fixed with longer days.

I think I jinxed myself. I stopped blogging because the ball game got interesting.

Remind me not to date a blogger and a baseball fan because then I’d probably never get any work done.

A part of me wishes I had more discipline when it comes to avoiding distractions. Too bad I’m a weak mortal.

I don’t know how baseball bloggers get any work done.

Applying Baseball Advice As Writing Advice

What’s better than blogging about something you love? Blogging about everything you love.

I love baseball. I love writing. And I love advice.

Make the adjustment.

As a hitter, you adjust to the pitchers. As a pitcher, you adjust to the hitters. As a writer, you adjust to the reader. To your audience whether it’s one person or one million. The way you email an editor is different from the way you text your agent. But of course, that’s not the only adjustment you have to make. You and your characters have to adapt to different scenarios all the time.

When life throws you a curveball, hit it out of the ballpark.

Pretty self explanatory, right? Find the good in the bad. Then proceed to succeed.

Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.

I especially like thinking about this one in terms of rejection. Never let the fear of rejection keep you from writing, from blogging. If you aren’t afraid of rejection, replace with failure, judgement, whatever applies to you.

You can’t steal second without taking your foot off first.

My take on this: You have to move if you want to improve. And in order to improve, you have to write as often as possible. I’m all for writing every day, but I realize life happens. We’re all busy. Still, you’ll be surprised at the progress you’ll make over time with consistent practice.

Every strike brings you closer to the next home run.

Every rejection brings you closer to the next acceptance. The rare acceptances make the frequent rejections worth it.

If you think practice is boring, try sitting on the bench.

You have the right to shake me silly if I ever say writing is boring. The thought of not being able to write anything has me picking up a notebook and pen faster than someone can throw a 100 mph fastball to home plate. I don’t like boredom. Who does?

This has been fun. Even if no one reads this post or everyone hates it, I want to do a part two or something similar in the future.

Going Without The Internet For 6 Hours

So the other day my internet service provider decided to fail me for about 6 hours. It stopped working after 2 p.m. The company got it back up around 9 o’clock at night.

Without access to more modern technology, I read a bit. Then I spent a lot of time dealing with a stubborn kitchen sink. Not exactly how I imagined my day when I woke up in the morning.

About halfway through the baseball game, our TV service was interrupted. So I missed a good part of the game.

During that period, I made several trips to a hardware store in hopes of fixing a leaky kitchen sink. My family eventually replaced the old kitchen sink with a new one.

My original plan consisted of reading a lot and staying at home to relax. Unfortunately, I didn’t read much. Even more unfortunate, the faucet fix was more stressful than it should’ve been.

Life happened. Still, the world isn’t going to end. Somehow that day worked out okay. Not perfect or ideal but then again when is life ever either?

I kept reminding myself the sun will rise tomorrow, and so will I.

I was feeling antsy because I wasn’t sure if the internet would work before midnight. I try to publish a blog post every day, and I hadn’t published one yet. I shouldn’t procrastinate until the last hour. But I do all the time.

It’s been a transitional time for me. I’m doing my best to stay positive by looking on the bright side and appreciating the little things in life. Cliché, I know. But I’m being honest.

I’m glad I still have a safe space with this blog in a crazy world.