The Tiffany has been used a lot on this site do to the fact that it is my name. I want people to be able to search and find me easily on search engines.
Now it is typically used if there are big or important updates in my life that I want you to know about.
The twirling pen yearns. It yearns to kiss the paper again; like a caged bird who desires to fly free. It sees the unstrung violin; the beautiful instrument that can only sigh.
Yes, instead of releasing it’s ink, as it is meant to, my pen twirls and whirls. It dance through my fingers, the same pattern repeats. It yearns to kiss its beloved paper once more. Yet it only spins, like the unstrung violin, its purpose is unfulfilled.
Sometimes I feel like I should have already started a more creative life. I want to be further along in my creative career. This makes me feel like my life is passing me by. I forget to look at all the great stories I now have to pull from. I ignore the fact that each year, month, week, and day have shaped me into the unique artist that I am.
It frustrates me to see where I want to go and not be there. It is also frustrating not having a clear path laid out before me. If feels like I’m in Californian traffic during rush hour and I’m not even sure if my gps/ plan is actually correct. Perhaps there is a better path for me, or at least better steps that I can be taking.
If you want to be a doctor there is a clear plan. You go to college, then med school. Then I believe there is an internship or residence. After that you are a full on doctor. You apply to jobs, go on interviews and get a job.
If you want to be a lawyer, you go to law school, take the bar exam, and apply to jobs. Then you are a lawyer.
Being a professional artist is a bit different. You can go to school, but you don’t have to. Some people apply to jobs or get freelance jobs, but other do not go that route. Some will work on finding commission jobs, others will not take commissions.
You basically do what fits you and your art the best, but it takes time to figure that out. Of course, more and more I believe a lot of life is just like that. You need to figure out what works best for you and your life.
Sometimes it’s learning from others that will help you down your path in life. Other times it’s trial and error.
I think as long as you are moving towards your life goals, no matter how slow or sloppily, you are still going down your path and that is a good thing. This is one thing I need to remind myself when I think I’m going to slow or not seeing enough progress.
Want More?
If you would like to read more about my Journey To Me there is a full series on the topic. I also have more portfolio writing available too. If you want to get to know me better you can do so on Instagram , Twitter, or Facebook.
Quietness fills the air as my mind relaxes; an eerie sensation. My mind draws a blank, wanting to be wrapped up with the hug of a blanket. I yearn to sleep the day away, instead of doing work, I dread. Still, if sleep was an option my mind would not allow it.
Home is where the heart is or is home where a heart is? How do you know where a heart lives? A home may be messy. It may be clean. Loud noises may prevail, or a simple quiet hum. The smell of cooking paint or farm animals live among the walls of a home.
So what is a home? Memories are made within the wall and pictures display the heart’s love. Styles along with dishware are mixed and matched; meaning hearts are mingling, meaning that the home has lasted. Loved is displayed with knick-knacks and photos of family leaving lingering love in the air.
It has been awhile since I posted an update. I don’t like that fact, but that is the way my life is at this moment.
I have been more focused now have many writing projects at different stages, work has been busy, and you can study God all your life and still have more to learn.
Things are coming along, though. I finished my second draft of Duality, my novel, and one chapter of its third draft. I also have all my notes and rough drafts of the other three projects printed out, so that I can hand-write the first drafts of them. I also have a few visual art work pieces roughed out for my Poetic Art Poems. This project is a poetry collection with visual art that goes along with them.
Finally I have great news, for those that don’t follow my social media. I have published the second edition of Growing Poems. This is my first poetry book that I published. The first edition was on Lulu and that didn’t sell at all. I figured I would edit it, change up the cover, and try on a platform that people go to.
I’m excited for this new step and I am looking forward to the next ones. Hopefully the next steps will involve being able to post more blogs. Stay tune, at least two more are coming soon.
My trip to South Africa was amazing and eye opening. The speed of life was different, the entire way of life was different. The only technology I used personally was a ipod shuffle and a camera. The shuffle was only on the plane ride over there and maybe a car ride when we were leaving the Church’s compound/ area. Inside the Church that we stayed at was a electric kettle, but besides that, lights, and the electronics other people brought there was not any other high tech things there. This alone created a great time of focus on God, the community, and each other.
The people there were also something different. They had so little, but were happy. True they would try to get as much as they could, but when you have nothing even a lollipop is a wonderful treasure. The community we were in was filled with such pain. Family members would either die, most of the time from AIDS, or leave to find work. This left grandmothers caring for grandchildren and the older kids helping to raise the younger ones.
I loved loving on them and helping them. We gave some huts food parcels and dried soup. We also gave out quilts, since in the winter it actually gets cold. Each day that we taught the kids they went home with something special. One day we even were able to give them each a new outfit. They were so happy about that. The girls showed off their new dresses and the boys were super happy to have new shorts and a new shirt. We also prayed with the people who came to our eye glass clinic, where they also got new reading glasses. One day we prayed with the kids during their lesson. It was great fun to see how much we helped, even though they need more help.
Again, I need to say how awesome this trip was. We went on a few adventures, but I already went into more detail than I was planning on going into. I am sure I will be writing short stories about each fun adventure or story that was created during the trip.
This post was going to be telling you all about my new goals and only referencing Africa as the catalyst to my new goals and views on them. First big change is I went through and took out the goals that were just stressing me out. They were like the stale bread on my plate that I thought I needed to eat.
The first goal that I slid off my plate was my website. Once I have time I will come back and redo everything. For now it is up and running. It needs improving and if I have free time I may play around with it, but it is not a goal. Plus, it wasn’t really a working goal any ways. I was just poking at it and thinking I needed to work harder on it. It became a littler stress note.
The major thing I am taking off my plate is acting. It’s hard to do so and I love it, but my life right now can’t actually fit it on my plate. I am hoping that once I figure out how to free up my time I will reinstate this dream. At this moment I can’t try to act and write and work a full time job with at least 45 minutes of commute time. I mean I was trying to find monologues still and watch little lessons or tips when I could, but hadn’t been practicing, since right now my heart is focused on my writing projects.
I also tweaked my other goals and made them more do-able. My main focus will be on Godly studies and writing. I may write about my new goals, but for now the big changes to my life has been covered. Plus this is getting long and I do like keeping my updates on the shorter side.
If you know me or a random cashier that rang me up last night, you know that I am going to South Africa soon. I mean really soon, so this will be my last post for a few weeks. I will try to post a video on YouTube. If I don’t post my send off video there I will at least tweet a signing-off type of tweet.
I don’t really have any other updates besides my trip. I mean it’s a big trip and I have been focusing on that all week. Plus I am working a little bit on my other projects, but nothing that I can really talk about. It’s all just working stuff out with them.
When I get back from my trip I am sure I will have more updates and things to talk about.
Hello you wonderful people. As you can tell from reading this post, my site is back up. It took a longer than I thought and hoped for. Plus, it’s not what I had been planing, but I will work on separating and cleaning everything up from this point forward. I just really wanted some sort of website up.
Now, there are a few updates I should be sharing here. The biggest thing is that I am going to be going on my first out of the states missions trip soon. I am super excited for that. I will be going to South Africa at the end of this month. I actually made a video while the site was down explaining it a little bit more. Here is that video
I am also working on different projects that I will be publishing. Right now I am focusing on getting the first five out. I am hoping that I will be able to have finish products starting close to when I get back from South Africa and others being published every quarter. This seems like a feat and it is. It is do-able because the first one is a re-publishing/ second edition of my Growing Poems and the most of the others are short as well. I will be publishing them all on Kindle unlimited and may even look into publishing them through Amazon’s self-publishing company CreateSpace as a hard copy.
I mentioned Growing Poems, but I do have other ones and plans for them. After Growing Poems I will be publishing Poetic Art this is another poetry book, but it has a twist. These poems are coming from my more recent writings and from this blog. You may have noticed that about 100 posts have been removed. Now not all of these are being used for Poetic Art but some are. The twist with this book is that as of right now it will only be published as a hard copy, because after I have all the poetry pick, edited, and printed out I am going to draw, doodled and maybe even paint around the boarder and white space of the pages. This will bring another aspect to the poetry. I do have the actual poems pretty much edited how I would like them. Most of the work now will be the visual art.
I was going to do this next book a little farther down, but it seems to be the next easiest one to edit. This is a compilation of my short stories. Some are taken from this blog, others are taken from classes and I believe there may be one or two that I just never shared. I am going to be editing them and maybe expanded on a few micro stories. This one will need some more work and a title. For the title I’m thinking Stuff and Things, but I’m not sold on that. I feel like I should mention that if it is a series of short stories or was suppose to be a series of short stories I am not adding them to this book. This means that the I Am A Bagel, Story Time With Pink Sunshine, and Space-Riders will not be in this book. I also am going to try to revisit those series for this blog more, but we’ll see.
Now about 3 months after that is published I am going to be publishing all of my writing prompts. I am working on editing them to be clear and helpful. In addition they are being organized into story, poetry and other prompts. It may have a fourth section if I decide to re-organize it with a ‘strengthening your writing skills’ section. I will also be adding more of a description into how the prompt could help you and adding some more to the book. My goal for this book is that it will be able to give a year of inspiration at least to one person, so 365 quality prompts. That is why I am shooting for a Q4 (end of the year) publish for this book. I also need a title for this one.
The last one, besides my novel, that I am actively working on is a book called To Love. I might change the title to To My Love, but I’m not sure. The basic premise of this book is that it is a long love letter to my future husband. I have written him little things in the past, either when I am lonely or wishing for him to be known. I am also adding short stories, poetry, and I think a few monologues in the book. In addition I did add the first chapter of the first novel that I technically finished. It was just the first draft and I lost the story half way through the second draft. I added the first chapter though, since the novel was my fantasy about how I would find him and who he would be. Now, some of the writings may find their way into the other books, but I am editing the writings in this book separately. This will cause/ allow each writing piece unique to each book and give the readers something new.
I also have a few others that once the ones listed are done I will be able to actually focus on. The first one is called The Listening Tree and will be a kids book. I’m calling the one after that Dear God right now and it’ll be like To Love in that it will be a compilation of writings to a specific person. Dear God will just be the poetry, short stories, or some of my prayers to God. I am hoping with this to share my relationship and journey to God. Lastly I have one I am calling Journey To Me and this is more of a memoir type book. It is also the one that I am most fuzzy about. I know the general idea will be looking at how I became the person I am. I think it will be goal oriented and explaining how I viewed myself along with how I now view myself. It may turn into a self-perception study and most likely will have some psychological aspects to it. I am not sure though. I’m not really focusing on that or any of the last three I rambled off.
Finally I am working on my novel. It is titled Duality and I am about half way through my second draft. I don’t really want to give myself a dead-line with this. I am going for quality not quantity with this one.
I did say pretty much all that in the video below.
With all that being said, I am still going to be doing weekly DreamWard Bound posts. However, I do not foresee being able to do much more than that. Perhaps if the books become successes than I will be able to free up my time and write even more, but as the plan stands I will only commit to one post a week.
It seems like a long week, packed with work and social media. I have reasons for feeling like this week was focused on social media and the internet. I took a webinar, my improv troupe created social media accounts, and I am starting a new project that requires accounts. There are reasons why you have not heard about the new accounts that I helped set up and will be working with.
The improv troupe is still getting the promotional information up. We should be tweeting and posting later this week. When we do I will be retweeting and sharing posts.
The other project still needs some definition and to be smoothed out. It also needs images or at least a logo. When we have everything ready for that I will also be retweeting and sharing posts. I will also be talking about it more and giving you details.
In general I am going to try to be more social on social media. I am going to try to share more things that I think are interesting and basically just be more active. I learned a lot of tips while taking Amy Jo Berman’s webinar about social media. I also had a few smiles when I realized I am doing some things right.
That being said once this site is on the right server I will be changing my site up. It will have 3 distinct areas. Each are will have its own feel and aspect of myself. This means that when you go to the home page there will be 3 sections to choose from (Actor, Author, and Artist). I will have the most recent blog post on the home page, but everything else will be under one of the other aspects. This way I can represent myself more clearly and fully. It is exciting to be making changes, but it will also be a lot of work.
Looking back on this post, it seems like a lot of it was what will happen. I promise I did do things. It takes work to set up awesomeness and I believe that all that is being set up now will be great.
I feel like I am getting back into being dreamward bound. My schedule is filled up with meet-ups directed towards my creative life. I am painting every month with a friend. I am writing/ editing with another friend every other week. Reading articles and tips about acting almost every day during breaks from work. I am also starting to work on getting my wardrobe audition ready. This means that I am trying to buy more professional looking clothes instead of just t-shirts and jeans. I am also getting back into shape and went back to BJJ for the first time in about a month.
Yes, after a hard time of being so busy, stressed, and drained my life if back on track. It may even be more on track than before. I at least feel more thankful and blessed now, which causes a greater happiness. Basically what I am trying to say is that life is good after a stressed out and draining month or two.
The only thing that is not so great is that it is taking longer for this site to be transferred over to HostGator’s servers, which means it is taking longer to get everything configured how I would like it and set up revenue. Also, since I thought my site was going to be transferred over this week I did not want to post/ write things that may disappear if something went wrong.
