Category Archives: Friendship

Dragon Tales

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I’ve been nominated for the Dragon’s Loyalty award by my friend, Tosha Michelle. She writes beautiful poetry, has a fantastic sense of humor, a wonderful singing voice, and a huge heart. You should check out her blog here.

According to the rules of the award, I’m supposed to write seven interesting things about myself. Here goes:

1) I’ve loved to read since I learned to at a very young age. But I discovered a love of writing when I was eleven years old, and the school curriculum focused heavily on writing. The more I wrote, the more I loved it. And I never stopped. I’d love to be able to do it for a living.

2) Most people see me at my most outgoing. So people are usually surprised to hear me say that I am an introvert. I attribute that to learning good people skills. I can be friendly with almost anyone. And I’m not shy. But very few people really know me well.

3) I’ve been interested in Astronomy for a long time. If I understood math and science better, I probably would have pursued a career as an astronaut or astrophysisist. But Physics got in the way, as I understood just enough to get through my Astronomy classes in college.

4) I come from a very musical family. Lots of my family members can sing and/or play an instrument, such as my Mom and brother.  But I only have a basic understanding of piano, guitar, and percussion. And I wouldn’t subject you to my singing voice on purpose.

5) While the rest of my family has brown hair and blue eyes, I have hazel eyes and reddish/blonde hair. So I always felt like I stood out growing up. Speaking of hair, a lady who cut my hair a couple of times when I was a teenager told me that she wished she could bottle my hair color, because I used to have natural highlights.

6) Despite being quiet and reserved in crowds, I enjoy public speaking. One day, I’d like to find a part in a community theatre play to audition for. It might go terribly, but at least I could say I tried.

7) Ever since my first visit to the Great Smoky Mountains, I’ve dreamed of living in a log cabin in the mountains one day.

World Wide Web

This post is inspired by two friends who shared their experiences of finding and learning their way around the Internet. My introduction to the Internet was 1997, while I was a college undergraduate. My family already had computers with word processing and games. So I was already comfortable with computers.

Do you remember the Encarta encyclopedia? I remember getting lost for hours reading about all kinds of topics on the Encarta cds. For me, the internet was like one big cd-rom with all of that information on it. This is one of the things that is so great about the Internet. I am a curious person, so the ability to read about and research any topic I want is wonderful. Also, by the time I was in college I had friends who were living and/or studying all across the country. Getting my first email address enabled me to stay in more frequent touch with friends and family members who lived in all these different places. To this day, along with standard mail, email is my preferred method of keeping in touch with family and friends I don’t see often.

In my experience, people can be skeptical about referring to those you know online as friends. The idea is that you can’t really know someone unless you have met them physically. I disagree, and point to the old practice of pen pals as evidence to the contrary. But I digress…

After email, the next significant way to connect with people is the groups and web forums that sprung up. If it’s a hobby, there is a group about it somewhere on the Internet. I have been a member of a few. And some people I have met from these groups, forums, and social networks have become close friends. One such friend is Tosha. I happened on her page on Myspace and could tell we had a lot in common. Roughly nine years have passed since then, and she is now one of my dearest friends. We talk often since we recently started a podcast called La Literati. She is a fellow bookworm, writer, and introvert; the wise sister I never had. Her quick wit and generous heart are among the many qualities I love about her. We are alike in too many ways to relate here, but different enough to keep each other on our toes. I look forward to our friendship and La Literati partnership for a long time to come.

Then there is my friend, Anna. I met her through a writer and mutual friend, also from Myspace. As an aside, it’s strange talking about Myspace so much because I haven’t even logged in for years. My page is probably gone by now. But back to Anna. She was much younger than I. But she experienced so many hardships during her life. Despite these hardships, over the four years I knew her she filled me and everyone who knew her with love, joy, and the fruits of her creativity. Her poems and stories made you laugh, cry, and feel proud to call her friend. Anna is no longer with us. But I am thankful that the internet allowed us to connect for the time that it did.

Truth is, I could have talked about so many more people in this post. We hear about the dark, dangerous potential on the news often. But it is also able to enrich our lives in wonderful ways. I am thankful for all of the friends I have met because of the World Wide Web.

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La Literati

A while ago, my dear friend Tosha asked me if I might want to host a podcast with her about books and writing. She and I are always reading, writing, and talking about those subjects. One of the things I miss most about not working in a bookstore is the chance to talk about books and writing with lots of different people. And Tosha and I both know lots of cool creative types. Tosha wrote about it here, and I reblogged it. But I thought this was a good time for a reminder. 🙂

A part of me was scared of the idea, though. Being an introvert, I am much more comfortable sitting back and listening while letting others do all the talking. But, truth be told, I couldn’t turn down the chance to team up with my friend and do this. We consider this our way of helping the writers, bloggers, and publishers we know get more attention. We had our first show last night with best-selling author Mara Purl as our first guest. And it was so much fun. I look forward to many interesting conversations in the future. We hope you will join us! Below are links to our page on Blog Talk Radio, where you will be able to listen to any of our shows, and our Facebook page. We would love for you to take a look as you have the chance.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/laliteraticarpelibrum

https://www.facebook.com/carpelibrumblogtalkradio

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A Fragrant Friendship – Derring-Do – Ineke

My first post for “The Fragrant Man”

James Dennard's avatarThe Fragrant Man

Please welcome James Dennard.
This is his first story for The Fragrant Man.

Guest Post by James Dennard
Fragrance has allowed me to meet some wonderful people. It is often said among the members of the fragrance writing community and within the web forums that the fragrance community contains some of the most intelligent, kind, and generous people you will ever find. I believe this to be true. Also, this niche is filled with outstanding writers. For this last reason I have limited myself to commenting on other fragrance websites, and have not written fragrance reviews myself. But through these conversations about our shared interest, combined with social media, I have made and cultivated some close friendships with people all over the world. One such friend is Brie, of The Fragrant Man.

After commenting on one of her posts I ended up winning a giveaway. This began an email…

View original post 288 more words

Acceptance

I have written previously about the birth defect that I have: Spina Bifida. Because of this, I have always felt an uneasy sense of being an outsider. I have a lot of physical problems, but at the same time I am largely independent and lead a pretty active lifestyle. Many people are surprised to find out that I have Spina Bifida because as long as my braces are not visible, I seem to have no problems.

I didn’t have much of a problem with being self-conscious as a child because my parents taught me how to explain my disability in a way that my friends and classmates could understand. But as a teen I started learning more about Spina Bifida. As a result, I became more aware and self conscious, mostly, I think, because almost every teenager is worried about their image in the eyes of their peers.

This went on for a few years until I conducted my first sociological experiment. College gave me a good chance at a fresh start because I was a student at a new school and I only knew a few people. So, I decided I would start acting like I was comfortable with who I was and see how that affected people’s reactions to me. Something exciting and unexpected happened. The more I acted comfortable with myself, the more everyone around me became more comfortable interacting with me. This gave me more confidence and propelled the cycle forward.

I share all this because I learned some valuable lessons that have helped me enjoy my life, my family, and my friends. One of the most important is to be yourself and be nice to people and most people will be nice to you. But you won’t always be liked by everyone. That’s okay and very normal. Some people are just not going to get along. Hold on to those people who love you for who you are. They will enrich your life so much. Listen to them and pay no attention to people who don’t know the real you. Love others and allow yourself to receive the love of others.

My hope is that someone who reads this will find something to take away from my rambling that will help you learn to love yourself for who you are, and to accept and treasure the love of your family and friends. Lastly, I leave you with a very appropriate Dr. Seuss quote.

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Pen Pals

I’ve talked before about how much I love to write, and how much I enjoy sending/receiving mail. I started to act on this a few Christmases ago when I mailed a few Christmas cards. Since then my mailing list has grown, and I am very happy about that.

I was thinking that this year I would like to write occasional letters to friends, not just for birthdays or Christmas. So I wanted to see how interested some of you would be in getting mail from me and, when you have time, having someone to write. This will be open to anyone, no matter where you live. Just let me know and I’ll be glad to have new pen pals.

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