First Cup of Coffee - April 13, 2021

How building a writing habit will do the work for you in getting back into writing after time off. Also a bit more on how doing something I didn't want to do, but that was the right thing, played into serendipity for me.

You can watch the You Tube video of the podcast here (https://youtu.be/XiMgdseqYHA).

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy, author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Oh, that's good. So today is who knows? It is Tuesday, uh, April 13th. And I am back from my traveling. Uh had a wonderful weekend in Tucson, seeing my mom and stepdad. Um had some wonderful meals and good conversations, a lot of wine. My mom bought me new clothes, so that's a real treat. Uh so yeah, um, got back yesterday evening feeling a little tired. Uh, that's par for the course, right? Um, but it was really good to go, really good to do both trips. And now I am ready to um get back to work. You know, it's funny, I I do enjoy the vacations, but um I don't know, it's like this weird. Maybe it's like along the lines of an addiction. I am happiest when I'm writing a book. Um I do think that that's something about once you get over that dread and procrastination and you develop a solid writing habit, that's what the habit does for you. It um, you know, that's the thing about habits, is like when you have bad habits, it's hard to resist them, right? You know, like you develop a bad habit of, I don't know, picking at your cuticles. Um, and then it becomes something that's so ingrained that it's almost impossible not to do it. Well, it's the same thing if you develop good habits, or I don't know, you know I'm not comfortable with a good, bad dichotomy, but um, but if you develop habits that serve the things that you're wanting to do, then it does the same thing for you. It becomes very difficult not to do the thing. And um boy, you know, for me, there's nothing like actually drafting a book, actually writing it. So doing the business that I've been doing, even doing the revisions, the revisions come close. But um, you know, like those three days that I was home last week, uh, between our trip the weekend before and then before we left for Tucson, uh, you know, I um I was busy non-stop. It was crazy busy, but it was all getting Sorcerer's Queen and the Pirate Rogue ready to go. Which it is, it's all uploaded um and going to release a week from yesterday. That's exciting, isn't it? So um early reviewers are loving it. Um everybody's calling it Jack's book, which I think is probably fair enough. Um Stella wouldn't mind. So um I do have today is a little bit of a bridge day. Um, I'm going to be starting writing right familiar. So I need to get that document set up, get my thoughts into that. I need to write up a synopsis for Agent Sarah, um, something that I've owed her for a long time and did not have the brain space to do. So I'm going to try to do that. And then I have all those emails to wait through. Yeah, catching up on things. Um we're gonna be home, I think, pretty solid now for all of April and May. And then in June, we're going to have several different house guests by the sound of it. So that is galving us, galvanizing us into further um home renovation things. We've got our list, David and I on in the car were having a long conversation about stuff we wanted to fix up. So we're we're going to get after that. Some of it's a continuation of what I started with uh changing up the master bath. I really am going to uh take down and get out, take down all the art, excuse me, get out the art that um I have had in storage, and I'm gonna be more deliberate and thematic about decorating. So we're gonna to redo his office. He's excited about that, and finish redoing the kitchen and then do a few other things. Um, and we'll get to do some outside stuff as well. Uh, as it warms up. It was kind of funny coming from um, you know, Houston, Tucson was so beautiful, uh, just gorgeous, and just getting up into the upper 80s, so it was lovely, and everything was in bloom. And same place with the place that same thing with the place we went the weekend before, everything was in bloom. And it's not quite here yet, it's getting ready to, but um very stormy today, uh, which is why I'm not outside. Cold wind blowing and snow this weekend. So, you know, here in the uh the high mountain desert, it's uh or high desert, the desert of high desert of and the mountains, whatever. Uh, here in the high desert. And I'm I'm a little bit more in the mountains than the rest of Santa Fe is. So yeah, spring comes a little bit more slowly here, but that's alright. That's the uh the pace of things and a a cooler, slower spring. It means a better chance for uh avoiding big fires. We did see a couple as we traveled, uh, one on the way into Tucson near um Mammoth. Uh they we got to see the helicopters flying in and dropping water, pinpointing the the fires. But when we came through on back the same way on Monday, it was all out. They still had a sign saying fire scene, please slow down. But then there was there was nothing, there was no equipment or anything. So and then we did see another fire in the distance. Um, where were we when we saw that? Let's see, we were coming out of like around Springerville and Kimato, so it might have been like in the Gila wilderness. For those of you who care, uh, we couldn't tell exactly where it was, but um it was kind of towards the southeast of Kumado and Springerville. So I'm only seven minutes in and I don't know if I have much to say. All this socializing, all this people and talking to people. I wonder if I have any notes of things that I've been meaning to talk about. I um meant to tell you all another piece of the uh how we moved to Santa Fe story that I related whenever it was. I don't know, did I tell that last Thursday? Hard to say. Um but a piece of it that I had left out was when we came, when I had that conversation with David, uh, you know, standing up above the lights of Santa Fe and saying, well, how about Santa Fe? The other thing that happened that week as I was working was our human resources director for the company lived in an unincorporated community outside of Santa Fe. And you know, we were a funny company that way because you know I worked from a home office, you know, even though the company was based out of Boston, she lived in this outside of Santa Fe. And so our whole team from the company was there, and she wanted us to come out to her house and have cocktails and uh dinner. And my boss was like, you know, I really feel like we should go. It's good for us to make contact with her and do all of that. And I was frankly cranky about it. I was like, uh, because she lived like 15 minutes outside of town. I'm like, I don't want to get in a car and drive outside of town to go have dinner at her house. And, you know, when there were so many fabulous places we could be eating in Santa Fe, you know, we could go to some amazing restaurant and enjoy the ambiance and all this. And my boss was all, I know, I know, but I feel like this is important. Do you think it's not important? And I was like, she was pretty good with me in that way. I was like, yes, whatever, it's important. So we went and we her house was gorgeous and it was in this amazing area. Spoiler alert, it's the same amazing neighborhood that I now live in. Uh, and I completely fell in love. As soon as I saw her house and saw the community, I realized it was everything that that had everything that David and I had wanted in a house for a very long time. And so when I suggested to him, how about we move to Santa Fe? You know, we made that turnaround. That was June. And, you know, we put all that stuff into place. We were able to walk away from that contract on the House of Victoria, and we came down here on David's 50th birthday on July 21st and shop for houses in this neighborhood. And we probably looked at two dozen houses in three days and found this one. Uh so Dave and I were kind of talking in the car about that, and it reminded me I'd forgotten that piece of the story. Another fun thing about, you know, like sitting around and just chatting with family is we were revisiting old mountains. Old mountains, that that's a foreshadowing um old memories. And we were talking a little bit about my Aunt Karen's first husband, Rich. And I was telling stepdad Dave, who was not around then, uh, that had he ever heard the story about how Rich fell down a mountain with me. And he was like, no. And I said, Well, I was like three years old, and I was riding on Rich's back as he climbed up a mountain, and he didn't really fall. He slid. And but it was scary. It was kind of, I don't know, it was a salient memory for a long time. Um, I was not hurt. I don't think even Rich was very hurt. But anyway, so we were texting my aunt and we're like, why, why was Rich climbing? What how did that happen? And my mom was like, Where was I? I was like, Yeah, how come I was with Karen and Rich and not with you? And so Karen replies, and she's like, Kathy, you were there. My mom's like, Oh, really? She didn't really, you know, she said, You had come to visit us. You brought Jeffy to visit us in Boulder, Colorado. And Jeffy said that she wanted to touch a mountain, and that was why Rich was climbing up the mountain to give her a ride. And David had never heard this story either, and he was very amused by it. And I was kind of amused by it too. Um, it was it was a nice thing to revisit about my younger self because I could absolutely believe that that is something that I would say, right? Um, you know, we'd been living in the south because my dad was in the Air Force, and I hadn't seen a lot of mountains, you know, unless we came back to visit Colorado where my mother's family was. And so apparently at that age, at three years old, and they're in Boulder, the mountains are right there, you know, right above you. And I was like, I want to touch one. And and in some ways, I almost remember that feeling. I remember that feeling of of wanting to touch them. And so, you know, how cool was it that Rich was all okay, well, I'll carry you up there. He was um of I think Buddhist, it's fair to say Buddhist um persuasion. He uh did a lot, uh followed a lot of the teachings and studied a lot of it. And uh that would absolutely be a Buddhist thing to do. If a small child says something like, I want to touch a mountain, a Buddhist would say, Well, let me let me help you do that. Oh my back's a little stiff from driving in the car, and that sneeze kind of grabbed my back. Oh, I should do earrings. I could totally do earrings. So today's are these long silver kind of, I don't know what you call them, like a post. So there's a silver disc at the top, and then just a long silver column that ends in a silver ball. Aren't those cool? I don't remember where I got them, except I'm pretty sure I bought them myself. And you guys know how I like uh long silver earrings, uh or silver or gold. I like the long earrings. And I'm thinking now, I forgot to do the earrings last week, right? I was wearing them, but I forgot to talk about them. Is that right? I'll have to go look it up. Let me know. Uh, we might have to do a little bit of an earring revisit, revisitation. Uh, but it's been fun for me going on these trips, being able to see my jewelry and have new things uh to choose from. I'm sort of deliberately choosing stuff that I haven't normally worn. You know, you get into these ruts, right? You know, where you wear the same thing over and over again. So I'm trying to break out of that. That's part of the same thing with like moving the art around, um, stimulating what I see and and how it um comes into my head and so forth. So I think it'll be kind of fun. I'm going to drag out all the art and lay it all around on the floor and group it according to like themes and colors and so forth, and then decorate around it. And I already know what I'm doing in the kitchen, so um, David will get to choose his for his office slash guest bedroom. And yeah, I think it's gonna be great. I mean, like I'm looking in the corner and I have a stack of paintings over there, and I think I'm just going to put the the book covers away, as I talked about before. Uh, you know, it sounds like such a such a blah blah blah, I don't know, standard. Like if you were staging, you know, if you were set dressing for a movie and you wanted to create a writer's office, you would put up framed covers, their framed book covers, right? But I don't want to look at my old book covers. I want images that stimulate new things. And I did get to go to an art show with my mom, and she bought me a new picture that's really super cool. And I also picked up a few other things. There was a painting I kind of wanted, um, but it was pricey, uh, and I didn't need it. My mom offered to buy it for me, which I mean, what a great mother I have. Uh, you know, I was like, oh no, you don't need to buy me that painting. But then we were back there the next day, and I said, let's go visit my painting, and it was gone. I was like, well, so it goes. But I do have a little card of it. So, oh well. So I am going to get to work, get some things done. Looking very much forward to getting back into the flow. I hope you all are finding some flow that things are going well for you. And I will remind you all that first cup of coffee is part of the Frolic Media Podcast Network. And I will, and you, you, not me, you will find more podcasts you love at frolic.media slash podcasts. And I will talk to you all probably tomorrow since I'm didn't do yesterday. You all take care. Bye bye.