Monday MEME

Where do you Blog? is the Monday Meme


Again from surfing the WordPress tags, I came across another idea for meming our Monday’s away.

Today’s topic is the space from which you blog. Mainly I blog from the office in our home, a rather unkempt room converted from a guest bedroom or the dining room table. Both places are not terribly well lit or ergonomic in any way and the chairs make my bum ache.

Me at my desk Christmas Morning 2007

Me at my desk Christmas Morning 2007

I also write and blog from the public library in The Fort before yoga or at Starbucks over in the Safeway. And of course on my travels it has been from various hotel rooms with my absolute favorite being The Hampton Inn.

So where do you blog? Show it. Describe it. Link it.

A Bucket List is the Monday Meme


Ran across this while tag surfing WordPress from my sick bed last week. Apparently a bucket list is a list of all the things you want to do or achieve before you “kick the bucket” and was the basic story line for a Jack Nicholson movie.

A fairly straight forward plan really. One simply makes a list and presumably puts time and effort into checking each item off.

So what would my bucket list include? Well, I think like most things it would be a living list/work in progress sort of thing that would be subject to revision over time.

My Bucket List

  • publish a novel
  • live in a house I helped build
  • visit Vancouver
  • learn to speak French
  • be published in Analog and Apex
  • write an op/ed piece for Time or Newsweek
  • be able to run 5 miles daily again
  • teach at the university level
  • take a summer writing seminar at Iowa
  • be interviewed about my writing
  • make a living that will allow my husband to be a kept man

Okay for a start, I guess.

I am reading an ebook about owning and operating your own book store and it talks a lot about the importance of planning. Interestingly, I read an article on mapping career goals in a writing magazine on the drive back from the States just prior to the ebook. There is something for writing it down. Wishes. Dreams. Goals. Call them whatever you like, but there is power in naming.

Although one would not recognize me these days, I used to be the teacher who had her year plotted out and the first quarter’s lesson plans done on the first day back. My organizing methods were strictly my own, but I was organized. All this talk of bucket lists and mapping and planning in general has put me in the mood to recapture a bit of my inner school marm and harness my life a bit. Taking things day by day is not a bad way to go about life but it will not take one too far from the point he/she begins at either.

And so what is your bucket list? As always, write it in the comment or blog it and link back.

Dream Jobs are the Monday Meme


If you’ve read my post yesterday, you know that I am considering the idea of becoming a used book store proprietor. I had at one time thought that if I stayed in education I might pursue a library degree because I thought librarians had kick-ass jobs. No regular classes. No lesson plans. A room full of books and computers and their own offices to boot.

Okay, there was the “kid” thing. A school librarian does deal in students, but as they get older their needs are fewer and as far as I could tell the high schoolers merely used the library as a place to be rather than a place to work on being a successful student.

Used bookstores are far more attractive than new, but I can lose myself in either. If it were not for the awful hours I would have likely gotten stuck with I would have applied for a job at some of the local stores when BabyDaughter starts school full time this fall. I really can’t work weekends or nights because I am selfish and suffer from middle aged entitlement delusion I need to have that time free for husband and children.

I am still writing. Still waiting to hear from the Sci Fi magazine in Edmonton on my “call back” short story. When I was last at Barnes and Noble, I treated myself to a handful of sci fi and fantasy magazines to read and get writer’s guidelines and have plans to plague them with my prose because traveling for days on end gave me plenty of time to come up with story ideas – disturbing ones – but ideas regardless.

So my dream is to be a published writer and truthfully, I love sci fi/fantasy more than any other genre when it comes to writing. I found this great writer, Lavie Tidhar, in Apex. I found Ryck Neube there as well. To this end much more SF reading needs to be done.

But if I have to have a “day job” – there is no “hafta” in my life and I am luckier than most in that respect – then working in/owning a book store would be a dream day job. It even comes before owning a coffee shop which is primarily because I don’t like coffee at all and only frequent those places for teas. I have never heard of a tea shop. I suppose though you could be a tea shop that serves some coffees, but bookshop would be an ultra cool job despite the work. And there is work I am discovering in my research. However, who couldn’t hang out with books all day?

So here’s the meme: if money weren’t the issue (or tangible benefits of any kind really), what would your dream job be? Where? Why?

Remember you can write about it here as a comment or blog it on your own space. Don’t forget to link back if you go with the latter.