First Cup of Coffee - February 4, 2019

A bit of a touchback to Friday's podcast - which blew up more than I expected! - on thanking authors for blurbs. A few people mentioned to me, and Darynda Jones commented on the website post here (https://jeffekennedy.com/first-cup-of-coffee-february-1-2019/) that we should cut these others a break because they may not feel confident in addressing an established author, or realize that thanks are appreciated. So, I'm reminded to practice Compassion & Tolerance. Maybe one day I'll get good at it!

Also thoughts on yoga, making progress, and very important closet reorganization news. 

The blog post I mention is here. (https://jeffekennedy.com/finding-solutions-to-conflict-in-life-and-in-fiction/)

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy and I'm here with my first cup of coffee. You know how like it just sort of gives you that shiver of delicious delight. Let's see, so today is Monday. Monday again, February 4th. I think February's gonna be good, don't you guys? I think we're I'm feeling good about February, really good about February. Um even though the cat has my chair. Apparently not that ready to take uh a sort of control of that aspect of my life as I she just looks so happy. But I had a very productive weekend. I feel very accomplished. Um first of all, on Saturday morning, my eight o'clock vinyasa yoga class, which I've been trying to get to regularly, and it's my favorite teacher, and she teaches the yin yoga class too. And of course, yin yoga is so nice because you do so much with these um very, you know, a lot of reclined poses and a lot of these very long, slow that you're not supposed to use the word stretch, or people argue about that, but you know, you're you're basically adding liquidity to your tissues and muscles and everything. Um so it's it's a very it's a very relaxed way of doing yoga by definition. Uh, she's always talking about that you need to keep an active component to it, that you don't just lie there. But it's um it's low-key. Whereas the Saturday morning vinyasa yoga class is all levels, and she's very good at addressing it to all levels. So she'll introduce the poses, the asanas. Um, you know, here's the basic version, and if you want to add this, or you could add this, and the third phase is this. So, and there are people, some of the other yoga teachers come to her class, which I think is a very compelling uh testimony to just how good she is. But um, she that class is brutal, so hard for me, you guys. Um, I have not been doing yoga, seriously, for more than a year. I did little bits when I did Tai Chi and various other martial arts for a long time, but it was just a smattering. And so, really, I've been doing yoga for a year. I started a year ago, January, because I felt like I really needed to do something for elasticity on my body, and it's helped hugely. I mean, I cannot believe the progress I've made in a year. My back is tons better than it was, but um so now I really want to get into this vinyasa yoga um and build strength because I'm working on weight loss right now, building up muscle, and so I'm really trying to get good at doing this, and um, you know, it's just it's just strenuous. There's oops, let's see, hang on. Oh, okay. It was weird it popped up this little screen for microphone adjustment, but it looks like there wasn't a problem. Anyway, this class is it just kicks my ass, people. Uh, and I feel kind of pitiful. And there are some things I just can't do. Like I'm not that I've I'm very it's hard for me with my knees to do stuff that's really folded me, like kneeling. I can do most of the other stuff. And then there are the balanced things. I am not as good as I would like to be. But you know, I I'm not too bad. I'm I'm not completely miserable at it, so I shouldn't uh be too sorry. But I finally asked her a question a couple weeks ago because we do this whole sequence of poses where you flow from one to the next, um, where you go from basically you go downward dog, for those of you who know, you go downward dog to plank, which looks like a push-up, and then you actually go into another one where you bend your elbows as if you're doing a push-up. So you go all the way down like your chin to the mat, and then you lay your and that's with your toes curled under, so you're sort of propped up. Why are you jumping around? My phone is being weird. No, it's still recording though. Huh. I wonder if I'm like hitting the screen or something. I'll set this over here and see if that solves the problem. So I'm probably gesticulating as I'm showing you guys these poses. So you go almost all the way down, put your chin almost in that, and then you lay your feet flat and do upward dog or cobra, where you put your hands flat on the floor and you arch back, and then you go back down and back into downward dog. And I felt like I should be having I should be more flowing as I did that and shouldn't have to adjust my foot position. And I never really knew like which thing I was supposed to be doing when, and I always felt kind of flustered. You know how that is. It's like back in the day of aerobics where you spent most of your time figuring out the steps. So I asked her the question. She said, No, that's actually no, I said, for your remedial student. She said, No, it's actually a really good question. She said, because I just assume that everybody knows all of this so well that I don't go through it each time. So she in a class a couple weeks ago really went through in detail talking about positioning, and it it was one of those things where you know, like more people have the question than you. And so she um, because other people were asking for, you know, after she explained, they were saying, okay, so is it this? So it turned out that was really good. And it was immensely helpful to me because now I finally know the steps, and I felt like I could concentrate instead on what I was doing with my body and doing the work. So I was pouring sweat, so that could have been a clue. But anyway, at the end of class, I was heading out and I thanked her, and she said, Um, she said, You did really good work today. She said, That was a lot of hard work. I was like, Yes, it was a lot of hard work, and I did good. So I was very pleased with myself. And then I posted this to like Facebook and Instagram, but I'll put a photo on uh the blog put on the podcast here. I um reorganized our closet. So the whole deal was was we got these recliners. Uh, for I got them for David for Christmas. The whole family kicked in and got him these recliners to replace our couch so that he could have a better angle for when we're watching movies in the evening. And it's been great. They pivot, they recline, they're so comfy, we love them. So we'd move the couch and we were gonna get rid of it. But instead, we decided to do this sort of whole massive furniture reshuffle. So for my mom and for others who know my house, what we did was we decided in the master bedroom to move the dresser into the closet. We moved the futon couch that was in, it's supposed to be a dining room, but we have it as kind of a library, from that room across from the kitchen into the bedroom where the dresser was under the window. And then we moved the bookcases that were on the north wall under the sconces to the other two walls. So they're sort of in an L now on the south and east walls, and we put the brown leather couch on that north wall, under the sconces, under Kathy's painting. And it looks amazing. Actually, that room looks so much bigger now, and now it actually looks like an on-purpose room, it looks like a little library area. Um, so because I was moving the dresser into the closet, I needed to reorganize the closet to accommodate this. So I thought, you know, like how often do you really clean out the entire closet? So I pulled everything out, absolutely everything out of the closet. I emptied all the dresser drawers, and I cleaned out all the cobwebs and I cleaned up all the dust, and then I put everything back in, and I ended up switching closet sides between us, which we had not changed in nine years, nine and a half years since we first moved in. So now David's on the side that I was on, and vice versa, and we're using different dressers, and I got rid of so many clothes. I pulled out all these clothes that I think David never wears anymore, and I sat him down in his recliner, and I held up one thing after another, and he got to say yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. And he only picked like five things that he still wanted to keep, and everything else I was pretty spot on that he never wore. So I have a bunch of things ready for consignment. Um, there are some sweaters that he's just never worn, he's funny, like some things he just doesn't like and won't wear them. So I'm gonna take those in for consignment, and then the rest is I had to throw some things away, they were so ratty. The rest is going to goodwill, and people, I have four garbage bags full of clothes going goodwill, both his and mine. And now the closet is beautiful. So between the strenuous vinyasa yoga and the huge massive closet clean out, uh, my body was very sore and aching. But the great news is that I busted through one of my weight barriers, and so I'm coming down very nicely, and I have lost um something like three pounds of fat now. So that's great. And I'm doing better on the jump roping, so it's like, okay, we're finally getting some elasticity. Sometimes I think you just have to keep chipping away at that stagnation, you know. You kind of put on that fat, you kind of start to get stiff and you know, lose muscle tone, and you just have to keep pushing, pushing, and then it kind of clicks over, and it gets a little easier. So, so it was a good weekend. I've I really got a lot accomplished. I handled a lot of financial stuff, a lot of payouts to the anthology folks, got some tax stuff ready, so so yeah, I'm feeling feeling good about things. I did have a little touchback to Friday's podcast about um blurbs and the protocol around blurbs. Uh, a couple things. One person said that I shouldn't have called it a rant, which I probably shouldn't, because I don't know, I use that word a little too easily. Um because she felt like it was a very informative post. And I really do try not to rant. I'm not a terribly ranty person, I don't think. So I should come up with another word. And then, second, um, Dorinda Jones commented on it today, and a couple other people commented to me in various places, off and not all of them in public, saying that they thought that sometimes newbie authors are so intimidated by established authors uh that they feel like they shouldn't bother them. And Dorinda has a really good comment on the um podcast, on the blog post essentially, um, on my website, if you want to go read it, where she said that when she got her first blurbs from these incredible authors, because they did get some amazing people to blurb her, that she thought that she shouldn't reach out to them because they were already so busy and had so much to do and wouldn't want to hear from a newbie like her, until like a month later, she finally asked her editor if she could thank them. And her editor was like, of course, and gave her their email addresses. So Dorina's point and that of a few other people is that we should give these folks a pass because maybe they don't realize that that's the polite thing to do. And they don't, I know people really don't know what a small community is, they don't realize um that it's you know fairly easy to contact most authors. Um I I know there are exceptions to that, but I hear readers say that to me all the time too. They'll ask me questions or they'll say things to me like, I don't want to bother you, but I just wanted to tell you how much I loved your book. And I always want to, I often do reply, but you know, I'm always like, the one thing I will always, always, always have time for is, you know, you can talk about how much you like my book as much as you like. I'm very happy to sit there and listen to you talk about how much you like my book. Um I think that uh pretty much all authors are like that. I can think of one who isn't. Um, and he was more of a literary nonfiction kind of guy, and I saw him in a signing, and I went up to tell him how much I liked his book and about a specific scene that I liked because I really like it when people tell me specific things, when they tell me that they liked particular characters or particular moments. That's always really valuable to me to know in particular what they liked. And so I told him that, and he just kind of, I don't know if he was in a bad mood or if he was just an asshole or what, but he were just kind of looked at me like, sure, fine, whatever do you want me to sign your book or what? You know, some people just have no social skills. He's also gone nowhere with his writing career, so that's me being a little mean. Uh, but go figure, right? You know, it's not that hard to be kind to the people who are telling you that they admire your work and enjoy what you've done and want to talk to you about it. It's not that freaking hard. So, so yes, I think during this point is well taken, and we should give these people a pass. Although I do know, here's me weasling around it a little bit, in the case of one person, they had um very prominently thanked a bigger name author than my friend, and and put it on social media saying, Oh my god, I can't believe this person did. And then they'd had a post where they said, Oh, and this was nice too. And it was kind of like an honorable mention, you know, and I think um, sure, there's a hierarchy, you know, we'd all be kidding ourselves if we tried to pretend that there's not, you know, some authors who are shinier, bigger sellers, more important, more famous, um, more your personal hero. But, you know, if you're gonna be nice, if you want to form good friendships, then you know, you might not make it obvious that that's your order of priority, right? Because, and and I can say this from personal experience, that today's superstar might go off the cliff and be tomorrow's nobody, and today's nobody might be tomorrow's superstar, and this happens all the time, you know. And what's the old saying, you know, is be kind to the people you meet on your way up because you'll see them again on your way down. Um that's a little fatalistic for my taste because I don't really like up and down so much, but this is life is this way, and the industry is this way, that there are always going to be ups and downs. Uh you know, nobody gets all the shiny things all the time. And even if it seems like somebody is, they are getting something else that's not working well for them. So, you know, I don't know, just just be aware that um even if somebody seems like they have a fantastic career and you know, like maybe a best-selling book or a best-selling series, and you think that they are on top of the world, that they are a person too, and that they are worried about you know, that their next book and their next series won't be uh best-selling, you know, and that they'll have a harder time selling books. And what is a you know, be kind to each other. I think that's a a very very good thing. Like I did a uh a good philosophy. I did a blog post last week on Wednesday on answering some reader questions, and she was asking me about how I how I portray the um perspective of of the bad guy, of the enemy so well, instead of presenting it as black and white. And I was trying to explain to her that one thing I do is try to imagine what their story is whenever I'm aggravated with someone, which is what Dorinda um very eloquently did, was point out to me what the story of these other authors might be. And I think that's really important to keep in mind, and that's why my personal mantra, which I use to remind myself, uh, not because I have it handled, is because is compassion and tolerance. You know, so whenever I get aggravated with someone in traffic, I try to imagine that, you know, well, maybe they're sick and trying to get to the store to get a prescription. You know, remind myself. Or maybe they're a tourist. And here in Santa Fe, a lot of times it's tourists and they don't know where they're going, or they're gawking in our beautiful city, which is why they came here and why we want people to come here. You know, so compassion and tolerance gets us through a lot. So I suppose that is the why I called Friday's Post a rant, because I don't often complain about people's bad behavior because I feel like I should be practicing compassion and tolerance instead. But it sounds like it was informative. Um, it blew up a little bit more than I intended. But that's good. That's good. So I'm going to sign off, get to work on Lone's Ring. It's progressing well. And I will talk to you all tomorrow. Bye bye. Oh, my screen faded right as I did that. Okay, now I'm gonna say goodbye. Bye.