Day 2 of Journal Posting (date unknown)

I'm gonna preface this one by saying my brother and I fought...a lot...when we were kids.  That was just the type of sibling relationship we had.  We're fine now, but being close in age while going through grade school and high school did not help our relationship.  That being said, I took out a lot of this next entry because it falls into the category of things I didn't filter when I wrote in my journal.

Dear Journal,
   ******************************** stop their random fighting, it's starting to annoy me every time I come home from school ***********************.

************************************

My friends are all still bothering me.  The other day Jessica (the one I dislike the most) told Jeanette and Sarah to wear skirts and not tell me.  I was so furious!  In fact I'm still mad!  What should I do?
   Maybe just make new friends.

                               Millie

So back in my school days us girls coordinated when we'd dress up on a day for school.  I think it had something to do with dependence and being too shy to wear a skirt or dress up without knowing your friends will do the same.  I was pretty obsessed at that time about what other people thought of me or how they perceived me.  Unfortunately, I think that's pretty common for kids that age and it's one of the main reasons why bullying is so rough on them.  I wish we could just teach our kids to truly be independent and not care what others think.  What is it about human nature that makes that so difficult?  Even today I have trouble not caring what people think of me and I'm 30 years old with a child of my own.

Reading 3-Year-Old Blog Posts - First Journal Entry (From 2-17-96)

This is a good way to get yourself in trouble, or make yourself smile.  It's like reading an old journal..which is something that, more often than not, makes me smile.  Apparently though, reading old blog posts is more apt to get me in trouble.  I found the post I wrote back in 2011 about writing my journals and I realized I very quickly abandoned that writing project.  I have over 14 finished journals I have written throughout the years. If you know me, you know I'm not one to feel at all shy about my personal life.  I write mostly everything on Facebook and post pictures constantly.  Sometimes I use this blog as a sort of journal and don't always filter what I should and shouldn't be writing about.  Where I'm going with this is sort of embarrassing.  I checked, and I still have the images of my entire first journal saved in my Dropbox account (I wrote the journal in 1996 and it's one I didn't completely finish).  I'm considering putting the journal in this blog.

Actually...all my journals.  The thing I'm worried about is the fact that I wrote about people I knew and still know...I didn't hide who they were, I didn't sugar coat my feelings toward them, and I certainly didn't filter what about them made me angry or (even more embarrassingly) the opposite (like when I had a crush on someone).  So if I do proceed and type up my journals to this blog, I'm going to have to censor a lot of stuff so I don't get myself in trouble.  I think if I'd be embarrassed by what I wrote, the person I was writing about would also be embarrassed.  There are pretty good chances I'll have to omit whole journal entries for this reason.  In my defense, when you're a regular person growing up and you happen to enjoy writing about your experiences, it's hard not to write about the people in your life.

So here goes:

2/17/96

Dear Journal
   Hi!  I guess I should tell you about me.  I am Millie Komski and I am kind of short for my age (5 ft).  I am 12 but in 2 weeks and one day I will be 13.  I have brown hair (a little longer than shoulder length).  I also have brown eyes.
  Now to get to what I'm supposed to do in a journal, write about my day and write about what I have learned today.  Well lets get to it.  Today I got home from Sarah's house, actually I slept over her house And 2 people other than me were there, Jessica and Jeanette.  When I was there Jessica and Sarah and Jeanette made fun of me.  At first I could take it but after a while I just started gettin sick of it.  I didn't think Sarah would because I actually thought she would never do that cause she always tells me how she don't like gettin made fun of just as well as me.  Well that's all that happened and I guess you ust can't change every person because if I made all my friends stop makin fun of people than there wouldn't be nothin left now would there be!

from Millie
:)
Smile or try

Holy shit.  That was a rough first one.  I was always kind of picked on when I was a kid.  Kids are mean, especially to a girl with frizzy hair, braces, and a nerdy attitude.  I changed the names in here but I kind of wanted to just admit who it was.  Mean girls should know how they affect people.

So I don't plan on putting an entry a day in here (maybe....but I doubt I'll be able to keep up...aside from the emotional tole it'll take, I just won't have time).  At least it'll be a place for my journals to go digital.  One of my greatest fears is a fire or other disaster destroying them all.

It is HOT in Phoenix

I've had trouble not thinking about the weather since the days started getting up into the 110s here in Phoenix.  For instance, driving to Joann Fabrics today (the first time I've been to the one near me...and I've lived here since October, so that sort of shows how reliant I am to online ordering for my jewelry shop) <---sorry about the tangent....I realized that most of my trips to the Joann Fabrics in DuBois, PA were spent in the rain.  I don't know if I just got more of an urge to make jewelry when it was rainy (you know, cause I'm stuck indoors), or if it just rained there that often (both are really good possibilities) but it just felt weird driving there today in 105+ weather with the sun shining and palm trees lining the streets.

When I got home, I decided to soak up some of that abundant and reliable sun.  Since the heat of the summer started, I've been getting less and less Vitamin D, so I figured it'd be good for me...plus, I always feel like I'm pampering myself when I put on my bathing suit and lay out.

I know I haven't mentioned it here yet, but I'm 11 weeks pregnant, so putting on that bathing suit is getting more and more depressing, especially considering it's too early for me to look obviously pregnant, so I just look generally pudgier than I did a few months ago.  I gotta figure out if I have any maternity clothes in this house.

To try and prevent death by heat stroke, I dumped out an old spritzer bottle of crappy hair straightening product and rinsed it until it was cleaned out, then replaced it with ice cold water.  I was so excited about my innovativeness until I actually laid on our fold out chair and started spraying myself.  The mist was so thin and fine that most of it just blew away in the slight (disgustingly warm) breeze.  Not the most refreshing half hour of my life, but I think it still falls into the category of 'the thought that counts'.

He insists on coming out when I'm out there.
He moved into the shade almost immediately.

When the toddler wakes up from her nap (we're going on 3 hours...woohoo), we're heading to the gym.  I'm trying to stay physically active with this pregnancy, since I've been regularly exercising since November, 2011, and I'm just now feeling myself again.  There were a few weeks there where I was nauseous all the time and feeling ridiculously exhausted.  So since I'm feeling good again, I'm trying to get back into running and exercising regularly.  Hopefully that will help prevent me from gaining 60 pounds with this pregnancy, like I did with my first.  That was no fun.

Okay...baby girl is awake :)

Exciting Response

So back in March, a few weeks after I finished my first edit on my manuscript for Earths Project: Book One, First Earth, I decided to try out my first batch of querying agents to represent my book.  I sent out five queries.  Within days, and then weeks, I received my standard rejection letters.  Each one looking similar to the next.  Sorry, try someone else (and usually nicer than that...but obviously standard emails that they just mass send out to each manuscript they don't consider at all).  One response was actually really short and sort of mean...but I am prepared not to take rejections personally (you know, unless someone takes the time to actually personalize a mean rejection...something like "This is the worst idea for a book we have EVER seen"...then I would have no choice but to cry for a little while).

Annnnnyways.......like I said, I got four out of five rejection emails.  I always assumed the fifth would just never come, but could be brushed off as another rejection.  My response came on 6/10/2013 at 2:38 pm (EST).  Don't get too excited, it's a rejection, but I'll put the letter here to show you why it still made my heart race a little faster:

Carmella Dillman,                  

 

            Your query regarding “The Earths Project: Book 1, First Earth” has been evaluated. The concept of numerous Earths, with each unaware of their origins or the existence of other Earths, is definitely a novel concept. The journey of the protagonist as she uncovers these truths and learns what must be done to save her own Earth have a lot of potential and could make a solid place for itself in the sci-fi genre. Unfortunately, ******* is not able to represent your manuscript at this time. We concentrate on high-quality fiction and non-fiction works that have the strong possibility for crossover to film and television. Additionally, as digital technology and social media has advanced, it has become a fact that it often takes more than good work for a publisher to recognize the value of a manuscript. A strong social media presence is necessary to demonstrate a guaranteed readership and assure publishers that the cost of publishing and distributing a book will result in commercial success. Should you bolster your social media presence or otherwise demonstrate a dedicated following of your work, please resubmit your query to ******@**.*** with evidence of this for re-evaluation. I wish you the best with both this and future endeavors.

 

Additionally, a Time Magazine article featuring one of our clients, Sir Ken Robinson, is enclosed regarding his book, “Finding Your Element,” which will be on the New York Times bestseller list June 16th.

 

Regards,

*******

They even took the time to take a photo of the Time Magazine article and attach it as a jpg.  So, I'm super psyched that from such a small batch of queries, I got one real personal response (granted, it's a rejection, but it's still something they took the time to consider).

As you can see in the response, it might be helpful to start focusing more on the whole social networking world.  I certainly have the tools and knowledge to be more active through those avenues, but I'm just unsure of how to go about getting more followers.  I don't even have enough followers on this blog to ask for advice.  But if you happen to be reading this and you're an expert at building a large amount of followers by blogging and/or tweeting, please comment!!

In the meantime, I'll try and decide the best way to approach that suggestion.  I also have to finish doing a second round of good editing on the manuscript, but with the job I have now and the jewelry shop doing really well lately, I've had a really limited amount of time to focus on the book.  I'll have to come up with a better system...

So, hopefully I didn't put too many readers to sleep through this long-winded blog post.  Everytime I think about that query response I get excited and feel more motivated, so I couldn't help but share :)

Have a great weekend!!

David Baldacci

I absolutely love how inspirational moments can happen completely unexpectedly, in any place, at any moment (I guess I was a little redundant there but I'm currently in the car, driving up to Lake Pleasant with the family, so that's how random this moment was). I started listening to the audiobook of Absolute Power, by David Baldacci, and was treated to a short letter from the author about how he went from being a lawyer to being a full time successful novelist. It was one of those 'this is what I was meant to do' type stories...where he would almost give up but then persevere. Stories like that rejuvenate every creative desire I have. Anyway, more about this and why I am in love with libraries and books and technology later when I have a more appropriate moment to write a proper blog post. For right now, family time and gorgeous views deserve my full attention.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:W Glendale Ave,Glendale,United States

Today

I'm so glad I cleaned my house yesterday.  I've been keeping it tidy since and whenever everything around me is tidy I feel so much more optimistic about the day.  This morning, after I'm done injecting caffeine into my veins, I'll be taking the toddler for a run in her jogging stroller.  We've been semi-regularly going for runs over the past few weeks, which I have been loving.  I wish I had the time and self-motivation to become a real distance runner.  When I do 3+ miles I get this rush and the whole day I delude myself to thinking I'll do 4+ miles the next day, then I always end up not running at all the next day.  In DuBois, through Treasure Lake, that wasn't the case.  I was tracking how many miles I would run per month and I did really good at going longer and longer distances (about 5 miles was my furthest).  I did that with my dog though, for the most part, and I haven't put the time toward finding good routes around here that I can go longer distances on and it's harder to map them out when I know I'll have a jogging stroller that I'd rather not take on roads without sidewalks (or busy roads).  We didn't have sidewalks in Treasure Lake, but the roads were never busy with traffic like they are here.

Anyway...I didn't mean to take such a tangent there.  After the jog, I'll take the kiddo to the park for a while, try and let her burn off some of that energy so she goes down for the nap on time and not as late as 3:30 like yesterday.  She'll take a bath, while I take a shower (the bathtub in our masterbath is separate from the shower, which is super handy for killing two birds with one stone while also keeping an eye on her).  Lunch, then nap.  Then at 4:15, I have a haircut scheduled at the LifeSpa in our gym (Lifetime...I'll have her play in the daycare area while I get my hair done).

I like days like this.  Lots of things on the to-do list and none of them unpleasant in any way.  Most of them involve getting to spend time with my daughter but in a way I know she'll enjoy, which is tough with a 2.5 year old.

So maybe I should postpone scheduling this blogpost since reviewing it made me realize that if anyone wanted to stalk me today, they wouldn't even have to make a real effort to figure out where I'll be at any particular time.

I hope to edit during the playtime at the park and/or during naptime.

Back to Work

I've finally been offered a job! I don't want to go too far into details but it'll be with the Arizona Hemophilia Association and everything about it seems amazing. I start April 22nd so since I only have a little over a week left of the unemployed life, I'm catching up on crappy TV shows and over cleaning my house so I'm ahead of the game when I'm adjusting back to the 40 hour workweek lifestyle. For the first time in my life, I only have a few extra things on my plate when I'm back to work. Used to always have graduate school on top of everything else (which was definitely a huge extra time burden), but now it's just the jewelry shop and the time I'll put toward getting the book edited and queried (until it's published). Along with spending time with the toddler and husband, I'm going to be busy, but very very fulfilled and happy. I can't wait to get this next chapter of my life started!!

As far as the jewelry and book goes...I've been busy with the jewelry and taking a longer than comfortable break with the editing. I NEED to get back into the editing and making it a major priority again. Like always, I'm the only thing standing in my way.

As for now, my baby girl is napping (for another hour probably), I'm feeling achy from a mild cold but my house is clean and I'm looking for that renewed motivation to edit, edit, edit. That's sort of what brought me here...my other neglected outlet.

Time to lay down, try and overcome the achiness, and maybe crack open the Goodreader app to do some editing.


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Location:Litchfield Park,United States