Drink more coffee and catch lots of butterfly kisses - great ideas for a life renovation

Today I resumed a project that I'd started back in 2012 - renovating my office. I decided we needed to get stuck into it when I read an article in The Guardian about 'False Hope Syndrome' and I began to wonder if I was suffering from it - when one makes a new year’s resolution to better themselves and then gives up a week later.   Yes, this was definitely me.  I'd made a NY’s resolution to renovate my office back in 2012, when I was watching fireworks explode over the yatch club at Hamilton Island. The moment I stepped back into my house less than a week later, I had started stripping the paint off the banisters leading up to my office. And that's as far as I got. Four years down the track we're still living with half stripped railings and banisters and carpet ripped up off the stairs exposing bare, unpolished steps covered in paint splotches.

It not even that much of a major job, it’s not like we're going to move walls... well ok we've got a small wall to change so that a pair of 100year old French doors can go in ... or do any major building works, though there are plans for a wall-to-wall-floor-to-ceiling bookcase to be installed. No it'll be pretty easy stuff to do such as ripping up the carpet and laying floorboards that we got for free - compliments of a lovely young couple who were modernising a 1890's workers cottage and were skip-binning those dented old bits of wood - and finally putting up the lights we brought and carted all over Turkey, paid a small fortune in excess luggage to bring back and then to have rewired and have ever since sat reboxed in the linen cupboard taking up room while the towels sit in the corner of our bedroom on one of the dining chairs.

 

So as I cajoled Mal into swinging the hammer and supervised the installation of sliding tracks for the storage door.... did I mention that I wanted to move the inbuilt cupboard from one end of the room to the other...?  and I set up a temporary office on my verandah, I thought about how I would renovate my life for the better.  I'm not normally one for making new year’s resolutions - I couldn't think of anything more boring than giving up wine or dieting - bugger that! there's no way I'm giving up croissants or New Zealand South Island sauv blanc for anyone...not even me.   so this is the list I came up with

Give up ironing underpants
If this was a gold medal sport, I'd be a serious contender - as a writer, I'm a world class procrastinator. Even writing this  has seen me doing lots of everything else except write – I’ve pulled staples out of boards, cleaned the bathroom plug and walked up to the shop to buy an onion and lettuce, even though I don’t need either for dinner tonight and I’ve been for two walks already today  But this year I’m going to try my hardest to wring out 1000 words every day.  It’s not that I don’t know what to write about, I've still got to finish the blogposts for the Bhutan trip, then Nepal and Singapore, and I’m 20,000words into a new manuscript on traipsing through Bali and  toying with the idea of a historical memoir - the stories are there,  I just need to 'get out of my way' and tap them out.

Drink More Coffee.
... that is, drink more HOT coffee with OTHER people. I spend a lot of time spitting out cold coffee as I tap away in my little writing cave (or ironing undies) or when I'm at my business' office shuffling through invoices I'd like to set fire to. As both activities are best done in solitude - especially when mumbling expletives over the bills - I don't catch up with my wonderful friends as often as I'd like.  I'm so blessed to have such forgiving friends who understand I'm not really an anti-social hermit, just a self-absorbed dreamer - these are the same beautiful people who read and re-read  and then will re-read again my manuscript and smile supportively as I babble on about my anaphora infliction or bore them to near death with my travel pics.  They are always there for me, rain hail and shine with a happy smile and joyful hug. Making sure I keep to this 'resolution’ I pick up the phone and organise a coffee date for this week with the fabulous Jan Pearson - fellow writer and author of Red Bird Summer and Tiger Autumn. 

Read more books
like all writers, I'm a reader, and like most writers, I struggle to find the time to read and the book pile keeps growing and growing.  Last week I took a peek at the titles sitting on the table waiting for me to crack the spine of and decided to sign up for the Goodreads 2016 reading challenge. My goal for this year is - 30 books.  I have to admit, I’m wondering if I should have picked a smaller number like 10, but when I think that I easily read 15 books last year, I thought why not double it.  It’s a diverse list, with a mixture of fiction and non, many are authors I saw at last year’s Byron Bay Writers Festival and whose books I brought and stacked on the floor waiting - beside my overstuffed bookcases - while I read through the previous year’s festival buys.   First book off the pile is Di Morrissey's – Tears of the Moon.  The size of a cheese platter, it's light and fluffy, but absolutely perfect as the years starter as it combines my side interest of digging around the family tree with travel, more importantly, this year’s travel destination for me – Broome.  After that I'll pop on my green boots and go find some ‘Optimism’ with Bob Brown.

Write more thank you notes.
A few years back I read a wonderful little book called '365 Thank yous' by John Kralik – at the risk of sounding so clichéd – this was a book that literally changed my life, it made me reassess how I felt gratitude and what made me feel blessed.  I’ve always written thank you cards when I’ve received a gift or someone has done something nice for me, but it wasn’t until I read this book that I realised why I felt such gratitude.  Thanking others makes me feel blessed to have such lovely people in my life and how appreciative I am because of what others might have done for me.  These days’ hand written thank yous are becoming scarce as email and texting is more the norm, then last week I received a beautiful handwritten letter from a person I didn’t know but felt very grateful to have made happy.  She had read my book and it reminded her of her own trip to Nepal.  After receiving this letter, I floated on a cloud of warm-fuzzys for the next couple of days – not because she had read MY book, but because I’d brought back to her some wonderful memories of a trip she had done with family – incredibly precious memories. 

Catch lots more  butterfly kisses.

This won’t be such a hard goal at all to keep - this year…or any other year.  Those soft little hugs and butterfly kisses from my little grandbabies lighten my day and paint joy in my heart, and will make this year an incredible delight.

Ah yes,  I think these ‘resolutions’ will be achievable and if not, well I’m not going to stress too much about sinking into the depths of ‘false hope syndrome’, just as long as my office is ready in the next couple of weeks …..

Buddhas, Bombs and the Babu - Book Trailer

Once upon a time, in a time long, long ago,  a little girl had a dream, a dream to sit in a room all by herself.  This room would be filled with books, lots and lots of books spilling from the bookcases, stacked on desk, covering the floor and anywhere else there was space. It would have a desk covered with stuff - pens, writing pads, scrunched up balls of paper and cups of cold coffee,  and it would have a big overstuffed chair with a side table covered in  remanent stains of coffee rings.  This girl dreamed of sitting in this room and stare at the wall while her fingers tapped furiously away at a machine, pounding out words, turning words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs and whipping it all into a story.  Her whole life, all she wanted to do was sit in the room and write.  

Well not quite all. 

She also wanted to dance across the contours of borders, wander an open road, to fly across a sky of uncountable stars and then write all about it.  That was the dream.  To be a writer, to be an Author. 

And in a few weeks time the 'Author' dream is about to become a reality.  So as I await the realisation of this dream I find there is much more to being a fully fledged author than just tapping out a few words, seeing it bound and maybe ringing up the local radio station for a speal on the book. 

I have to build a BUZZ.             

                             Cause a vibration.

                                                            Start a wildfire.    

I knew I had to do some marketing work - organise some bookmarks and postcards to send out to book shops,  poster here and there, contact a few book groups and libraries to chat too, but as I googled the sites on "marketing your book"   I learn there is so much more.  Amoung the fountain of ideas was The Book Trailer.  

Now up until a month ago,  I'd never even heard of a book trailer.   Sure I'd heard of trailers for movies and I'd come across countless videos of author chats and 'how too' videos but not book trailers.  So a little google wander sent me of a whole new journey, and it turns out, book trailers have been around for years - huge in America - and are now becoming the norm in Australia,  most of the big publishers make and send them out to the bookshops as part of the marketing package.   I had a chat with a bookshop owner friend of mine and she explained they are a brilliant Author Package Tool as they bring an auditory emotional feel to the book,  if the trailer is engaging, just like a movie trailer,  it'll entice the shop owner to put the book on the shelves.  Turns out my book will be competing with 7000 titles that hit the market every month - anything to give an enticement,  that got me interested in definitely making one. 

So where to start - I didn't have a clue.  I am not a movie maker,  hopeless at even taking a video on the camera - a bit of a shaker, with an addiction to the zoomer -  so I wasn't sure how I was going to come up with something that might be worth even glancing at.   I also had to find some software. I might work on a computer all day, but I don't know the first thing about computers or software.   Thankfully I have a writer friend who  knows a little something about PowerPoint... that was a start, then when she had a look at what 'freebies' her computer had come with - there was MovieMaker.  With her generous offer of a day of her time, armed with a couple of photos I landed on her door step first thing in the morning and we began the day musing over the photos picking the 'best' ones - that was hard because I love all my Nepal photos equally... except for the ones of me... then we installed them, lost them, found them, lost them again, argued, took time out for coffee, then discovered they (the photos) had set up their own little file which we had to wrangle them from .  Finally the photos fell into a movie strip, and text and fades were added, only to lose the whole bloody thing again.  It was wine o'clock time by that stage.

 

Over the following week I scoured the websites for music I could use. Every tune I thought  might work was voted down by the new production team I'd suddenly found gathered behind me.   But seriously, it was all my fault in the first place for this happening, as I had come home with the put together piece and insisted that M, Bud and the Gorgeous Gal look at it and give me their thoughts.  A once over wasn't not enough,  I insisted they look at it,  over and over, and then some more.  So when it came to choosing the music, they felt they now had an invested right.  I eventually came across a fabulous website called 300Monks (royalty free music) and  after much shuffling through endless wonderful tunes, finally found the perfect beat we all agreed upon. "Chakra Superstar" from the A Magnificent beautiful day by The Winston Giles Orchestra (a Melbourne band),  is just so quirky and upbeat, and for me evoked the mystery and joy we had found in Nepal and its people on our first visit there.

 

As I uploaded the trailer to Youtube and Vimeo,  I suddenly discovered I was now a 'channel owner' good grief!  I have my own 'entertainment station'  WOW, next step, Ted Turner land... (you can tell I'm a bit of a social media luddite!)    I notice now my book trailer is looking a little lonely on Channel Kerry Tolson.  Might have to BUZZ it up!   Once again I hit the google train and find the catch phase "VLOGing" .  A new 'frontier' for me to discover.

 

This brings to mind a line from one of my favourite Book Trailers, How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying to Understand My Brain by Dennis Cass. 

                  Quote: "That's the dream, twenty years when I wanted to become a writer, a big part of the dream was being able to put little videos on the internet. That's why we do this.  Maybe I'll just stop writing and I'll just do downloads, apps and widgets..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxschLOAr-s

If ironing undies was an olympic sport....

As you know, this little blog is about my travels, both overseas and just outside my backdoor - if I could and if M would, we'd be stepping out the back door, locking it tight and popping the key under the potplant for a very looooonnnnnnnng time.  I love reading the blogs and pages of people doing exactly just that - drifting around the world living amazing awe inspiring journeys after selling up, de-mortgaging or were never mortgaged and will probably end up boomeranging in and out of the family home once their travels finish.  I have a lot of respect for them and appreciation of what they are doing - their spirit and tenacity is what keeps me going with the hope that one day, that could be me too. (Though I have promised my parents,  we would never move back into their house.  Bud on the other hand might not be so lucky to get such a promise.) I've even found inspiration from a woman who's travel blog is all about her yearly one month trips, where she buys a round the world ticket for thirty days and crams in as many countries as she can, then for the other eleven months of the year slaves away at her desk job  to save for the next RTW Ticket.  What really stirs my travel dreams is the experiences she 'infuses' into those 30days.... Ahhhhh dreams, they can become real!

 

While I continue to dream of an endless road around the globe and grab any chance I can in chalking up a some travel miles, even if it’s only for a few weeks, I'm also wandering along on another journey - that of a wistful writer who falls between moments of furious writing and industrious procrastinating.  I'm sure writers are the best multi-tasking procrastinators in the world -   there's even an actual name for it.... I looked it up... it's called MULTICRASTINATION :  the art of being proficient doing lots of unnecessary pointless things whilst at the same time never finding the time to do that one import thing. 
And I'm a wiz at it.

I have been known to iron undies and tea towels, wash the insides of CD case covers and rearrange my granddaughter's Lego blocks into colour co-ordinated units - if these were sporting events,  I'd have a wall full of medals'.

Though I do caution against using an ironing agent on the undies, for although the occasional waft of mountain breeze is all very nice, the crispness takes walking at a cracking pace, to a whole new perspective.