Sunday Update

I've been struggling with this blog lately...well, even more so than usual.

Of course, I've considered quitting again. But I've tried that and failed way too many times. Also, dead blogs kind of depress me. I mean I don't like finding other people's blogs out there that have died. So I guess I also don't want the same thing happening to mine. 

What happens often lately is I start writing a post. I spend too much time on it; then I get frustrated and delete it. I end up feeling like I've wasted a chunk of my day.

So...anyway I've decided to try doing basic update posts where I, at the minimum, list what I'm reading, watching, working on, etc.  If something inspires me to ramble a bit, I'll do that. But I won't feel obligated to. OR I should say I'll TRY not to feel obligated to.  

I'll also try not to feel obligated to shut up if my rambling goes on too long...feeling that whoever reading this can skip past those paragraphs if they're bored.

Anyway. I should start.

I'm watching Coronation Street....like always. My favorite couple on that show lately is Shona (Julia Goulding) and David (Jack P. Shepherd).

I just finally noticed that name Jack Shepherd. What kind of Lost fan am I?  Although it's spelled differently. Maybe that will be my excuse for not noticing.

Shona is brain-injured and her personality changed. I was missing the old Shona, but now I'm quite liking the new version.

Also on Corrie, there was this storyline where Tim's (Joe Duttine) long-lost mom Elaine (Paula Wilcox) gives him all the toys she had tried to send him through the years. His abusive father (Ian Bartholomew) kept returning the toys. Elaine held onto them and then gave them to Tim this Christmas. He then stupidly agreed to letting a neighbor (Maureen Lipman) sell the toys. His wife (Sally Dynevor) made him realize how awful a mistake that was, and he and his friends worked on getting the toys back.

That storyline stressed me out. It was very suspenseful. Fortunately...it seems things have worked out in that department.

My two other (solo-watching) current shows are season three of The Fosters and the first season of Shameless.  I had a hard time deciding whether to watch the British or American version of Shameless. I love watching British shows, but from when I can see online, it seems the American one is more-liked. 

Tim and I are watching the first season of Broadchurch. I'm not loving it. It's dark and depressing, but I feel if we quit, I'll be left hanging...and the show will haunt me.  

Still...I don't enjoy seeing the 13th Doctor in severe emotional grief-agony and the 10th Doctor being all grouchy. I can't imagine things are going to get better for 13, but maybe there's hope for 10. Although I think he might be dying...so maybe not.

I have a feeling that the whole point of Broadchurch is to be utterly depressing.  

On my virtual bookshelf: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. I love this book so much, and unfortunately I'm almost finished with it.

The book is about a Canadian woman who finds the diary of a Japanese girl.  The Japanese girl wrote the diary sort of as a letter to the person she hoped would find it. It's that feeling of writing to a hoped for audience. 

As a blogger without many readers, I could really relate. It's that idea of reaching out with our writing and hoping that someone out there will eventually find us and care enough to read.  

Speaking of blogs for the last several months, I've been reading the travelogues in Jeff's Dog Food For Chairs blog. 

Lately, I've been reading about his family's 2014 trip to Peru. His post about having stomach problems during Water Fountain Adventure Day is pretty much as stressful as the Tim's lost-toy storyline on Coronation Street.

Also open on my browser....

Duolingo. I've been working on French for the last several years. Then also, Jack gave me the idea of going through and doing each language up to the first checkpoint. So right now, I'm on Turkish.

As for French, I'm currently on the Emergency lesson. No. It's not an urgent lesson. It's about emergency things like car accidents, a strange man on the street, and robbers. Oh, also there's a big spider in the shower.  

I'm slowly listening to the recording of Trump pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to give him 11,780 votes. I promised myself I would listen to the whole thing...but only a minute at a time. I did that so it wouldn't seem like such a huge stressful, assignment. The problem is, now I'm kind of wanting to just move on from Trump. But I feel obligated to finish listening.  

At this point, I'm at 37 minutes.

I have my screenplay The Dead are Online (Version A) opened for more proofreading and revising. I've already entered it into a few screenwriting contests, so hopefully I won't be finding any horrible mistakes. But...I feel I should keep working on it, so it's in even better shape for future screenwriting contests.

I took my novel The Dead are Online which has a LOT of characters and split everyone up into three different pilot screenplays.  

The problem is, after breaking them all up, it started to look impossible to put them back together again...which I'm hoping to do for a miniseries screenplay.

The main problem is I added these scenes with people becoming possessed in order to make the pilots more exciting. But put together, there would be too many possession moments. It would be major overkill. Just take them out, you say? Well, the problem there is, I love all the possessed scenes. It's going to be hard to say good-bye. Although I'll just remind myself that they live on in the pilot screenplays. 

What else....

I have a voting tracking website open on my browser to keep track of votes in the Senate and House. 

I've been keeping stuff open on my browser, because I bookmark too often and then forget to look at the bookmarks.

BUT...I do have some bookmarks I manage to keep track of on a daily basis.

I'm still looking at Covid stats for Tarrant and Denton county in Texas. And I'm now also looking at vaccine data for Texas. 

Well, that's about it for now. I'll update again soon. I'm thinking of doing this 3 or 4 days a week.  But we shall see what happens.  

How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-beloved to talk to us via the Internet?   

The Dead are Online, a novel by Dina Roberts