About Me

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I live in beautiful San Diego with my husband of 20 years and our two gorgeous, young daughters. I'm a pharmacist by profession but a writer by hobby. Honestly, I think I spend more time writing than dealing drugs (I mean dispensing medication).

Sunday, December 30, 2012


This is a little something that I wrote a few months back while working through one of my moods.  

The Call of the Midlife Crisis

It’s not a whisper in my ear or a soft beckoning from afar; it is deafening.  It is here now taking control of my every action, infusing it’s gray hued doubt into my every decision.  Midlife should bring contentment, a time to reflect upon the fruits of our labor, not a time to panic, overanalyze each step along our journey.  Midlife has turned into one never ending what-if for me.  What if I had did this or that differently.  Could I do something differently now and get a new and enlightened outcome?  I am in the thralls of a midlife crisis like a ship trying to weather the heaviest of storms while out to sea.  I am working double time not to get dashed against the rocks where the Sirens sing their sweet songs.  Their songs are sweetest on a Sunday evening.  
Would life be different if I went to the rocks where the Sirens perch?  The reasonable person in me says I would be careened against the rocks and broken, but the person who is deep in the midlife crisis doesn’t care.  I DON’T CARE.
But I do.  That’s the problem with overanalyzing every decision.  I can’t even be content to just give in and enjoy the ride as I hurtle toward the rocks all the while listening to the call of those wickedly deceptive Sirens.  They lie but somehow to go back the way I came seems almost as destructive as riding the current toward them.  
So I fight.  I don’t give up.  I persist.  I exist.
Some may think that women don’t have midlife crises but we do.  With so many expectations on us to keep up with our male counterparts in the workplace, all the while all too often still the primary coordinator of all things Family, is there any wonder that we develop fissures in our personas, question our actions, fall off the deep end, drown in our thoughts all right around middle age?  We want more, we want less, we want someone to sweep us off our feet, we want to be independent and not need anyone.  We want ... something, but I don’t know what it is.  
To say I’m a planner is an understatement.  Those around me know that I plan out almost every action in my life to the best of my ability.  Well, it’s worked and not worked.  I plan, I get an action that I am not happy with, I alter course.  Most of us do this, right?  But what happens when the system stops working or rather you are no longer happy with the results that you get?
The call of my midlife crisis is here, now.  I can’t escape it so I try to outsmart it, but it seems to find me wherever I am, whatever I am doing.  I hear it more going through the valleys of my roller coaster life but the call is there even at the peaks.  I just don’t always hear it over the hollers and noise of the ride.  
What is this midlife crisis of mine?  I can make lists of the positive in my life and the positive far outweighs the negative when put on the scales of time and yet it is the negative that I focus on.  It is the negative thoughts that fuel the beckoning of the crisis.  What drives this crisis?
Alone.  I am alone.  This seems to be one of the driving factors behind the surmounting crisis in my life.  The reality is that I’m not alone anymore than I ever have been.  Are we ever really alone?  Are we ever really with someone else?  The answer is no to both questions.  We are no more alone than the day we were born.  We are not really with anyone regardless of the titles you might put on your connection to them.  They are individuals just as you are.  True we have people that come and go in our lives.  Some stay for extended stretches.  Some have brief stents in our lives.  But to say we are alone is not true.  We are social creatures and do better with others around us.  So why do I feel alone when I am surrounded by people everyday?
The answer to that is simple.  I may be surrounded by people but I am closing myself off to fully connecting with others.  To say that I don’t connect with anyone would be false though.  I have a couple close friends that I am truly open with.  I can share my deepest secrets of my soul to them and only have love reflected back.
So why do I feel alone?  This sense of aloneness is after all a driving factor to this midlife crisis knocking at my door.  
I plainly see the answer to my question.  I need more close friends, soul mates if you will.  My soul is not resonating with most around me and it feels lonely. I have had two close friends move away from me in under two years.  The connection with them was strong, brilliant if you will.  In them, I found myself.  I liked that person.  I would very much like to find her again and this time keep her around for others to see.
While those two friends are always a phone call away and will always be in my life, I am now convinced that my soul is missing them. I miss them.  Both came into my life truly without looking for them.  I must add that gender is irrelevant to this story but one is female and the other is male.  
Why can’t I connect intimately and wildly with new people and by intimately I don’t mean sexually.  I am referring to connecting with those as my truest authentic self where I don’t have to hide who I am.  I am just me without pretense, without self manipulation, without explanation.  Me.
As adults, our intimate circles seem to get smaller with time. I think we don’t connect with others as easily as we did when we were children because life or what we perceive as important in life gets in the way.  We make choices and choose to focus on our careers, our portfolios, our children, our bank accounts, our cars, our homes, but not the connections that our souls need to thrive.  I could have all the money in the world right now and I would feel the exact same way.  The call of my midlife crisis is getting louder.  I hear it bellowing to me.  I sometimes wonder how others don’t hear it.
This sense of aloneness is like a hole in my life.  Sometimes it is gaping and the loss of something, and I don’t know what that something is, overwhelms me with a sense of impending loss or doom.  Loneliness.
I have found that I can dodge the sense of impending doom by planning.  There’s that word again.  I am a planner.  One would think that I should know by now that I can plan and plan and plan and I will still feel this way.  True that I can sometimes plan out every minute of my day, filling it with this party or that party, this family event or that one,  but until I STOP planning and just be in the moment, that midlife crisis will continue to chase me and I am definitely getting slower with age.  It will catch me if I continue to run the same race, competing in my life as I have always done. 
I must face it head on.  I know this.  I must show up for my life right now.  I need to stop planning, connect with those around me.  I must be here now.  There is no tomorrow.  It’s not here yet so there is no sense in worrying over it.  I’m not saying that I should forego all planning for the future because I find that to be irresponsible but I am saying that it is irresponsible of me to not show up for my life which is right now.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Since November

I had no idea that it's been almost 11 months since I last wrote a blog post!  Shame on me!  So some might wonder (or not - which is likely the truth) what the heck has been going on since then.  I really have so much to tell you but I think it might be best if start a separate blog for that - an anonymous one.

Life has been interesting, but unfortunately it gets a little overly full at times and some sacrifices have to be made, such as this blog, such as my writing.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Still Here

I know I haven't written anything in awhile but life has been busy and oh so exciting.  I was trying to decide if I was suppose to be upset with myself for not writing lately and then it dawned on me that my real life experiences lately are only going to better my writing and my writing material when I finally sit down and start writing again.  ;)
We leave for Hawaii in 2 days so I know I won't be back to my blog for a couple of weeks but I plan to try in the month of December to complete my short story that I'm about half way through.  I can't tell you much about this story - not on this blog anyway, but let's just say it's fun to write and read.
I absolutely plan to get back to either Fairy High or Year One or both in 2011.  It's time for me to pen another novel!
So what about Sage?  Maybe 2011 will be the year that I find a home for that book.  That 400 page story will always have a special place in my heart.  :)

Friday, October 22, 2010

Year One -- The Evolution of a Thought

I love how a dream can linger and that small kernel of a thought can fester and grow into a story.  Just for the fact that this is the second time I've come back to this story and began to organize my thoughts, I'm hopeful that this is the new story I'm going to get super obsessive over.
Here's a newer version of the prologue of my little alien invasion story.

Year One
Prologue
            The year is 2082 and the world is reeling from 30 years of World War III.  Death, poverty, and terrorism are a way of everyday life.  Liberty and the American way do not exist.  The world population is half of what it once was.  Despondency is the human condition and starvation reigns throughout the land.  Human trafficking poorly disguised as indentured servitude is commonplace amongst the rich and well-placed citizens of the newfound World Union.
In what is known as Year One, the visitors identified as the Liberators come to save us from poverty, from despair, from war, from ourselves. 
They claim they had been watching us from afar, monitoring our condition.  They had been weighing their options, debating how to help us and when Earth’s most intelligent inhabitants, humans, were finally at the brink of destroying their world, they could not just watch anymore.  So they claim.
Some feel the visitors have been here all along.  Some feel that our perfectly timed saviors are the cause of our current state.  

Monday, October 18, 2010

Year One - A Glimpse

I had a dream that started last night early on and I remember telling myself "remember that".  Some time this morning, I saw the same bit of the dream.  When I woke I didn't remember it right away but when I was driving to work I sat there thinking "there's something I'm supposed to remember" and then I did.
This is a rough version of what I saw in my dream (names inserted as I wrote it out).


Year One

Prologue

            The year is 2082 and the world is reeling from 30 years of World War III.  Death, poverty, and terrorism are a way of everyday life.  Liberty and the American way don’t exist.  The world population is half of what it once was.  Despondency is the human condition.
In what is known as Year One, the visitors known as the Liberators come to save us from poverty, from despair, from ourselves.

Chapter 1

            “No, let him go!” I scream at the Liberators that clutch at my friend.  “Mack, fight!” I encourage as I continue to thrash and claw my way through the crowd at Liberty station.  I see Mack Steelsworth being pulled through the crowd backwards.  His heels are dug in as he flails and swings his arms reaching for me.  I reach out to him but can’t get to him despite my efforts.  My legs won’t move faster.  I suck the air in through my parted cracked lips but to no relief for my lungs.  I feel the world spin as the fire sets in my lungs from desaturation.  The oxygen hunger spreads through my limbs and finally to my brain.  As I suffocate, the world goes soft and then black.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

What's The Next Twilight In Theaters?

I'll be the first to admit that I was a crazed Twilight fan.  I stood in line at midnight at Barnes and Noble waiting for Breaking Dawn to come out, and I wasn't the oldest person there either.  I was just as eager as the 13 year old girls that were waiting in line with their fathers or mothers.  My heart raced when I was finally the next person in line to buy my book.  I promptly sped home at 12:05 AM and immediately went into my office and climbed into the recliner and settled down to read until 3 AM.  I did take a short nap and got back up at 6 AM and kept on reading straight through the weekend.  By Monday morning when it was time for me to return back to work where I'm a pharmacist, I was tired but absolutely in love with Bella and Edward as a stronger more likable couple.  I still believe that Breaking Dawn was the best of the four books.

Fast forward a couple years and I'm still a Twilight fan but I'm also a Sage, Anita Blake, Meredith Gentry, The Hunger Games, and The Mortal Instruments fan.  I've come to have a relationship with other characters that have managed to weave themselves into my busy life.  Of course Sage is a part of me by now.  I am Sage, Sage is me.  I have to think most writers identify with their characters one way or another --- but maybe that is only new writers like myself.

Anyway I'm getting off the topic.  Sorry.  Back to what you think will be the next craze for book to movie adaptation.  I'm not sure that the Twilight phenomena will be duplicated but I will be one of the first people in line to see The Hunger Games movie!  If The Mortal Instruments gets made into movies - I'll be there too.

Soon there will be no more new Harry Potter and Twilight movies.  Other movie studios have tried to make that leap from the page to the silver screen but the movies didn't take as well as HP and Twilight.  I loved all of the Percy Jackson books, but the movie was so-so.  I actually liked The Vampire's Assistant movie but the books only slightly appealed to me.  Those books appealed more to my 8 year old than me.  

So I ask --- what book to movie adaptation do you think could possibly top Twilight's success?

Friday, October 15, 2010

What Would Your Pen Name Be?

I've been thinking some about pen names.  Lots of famous writers used pen names during their careers.  Some did it because they were female and times were different back then, so they used a male pen name.  Others use pen names because they don't want to associate their other writings with whatever it is their penning under a fake name.  Whatever the reason, pen names can have a lot of meaning and sometimes a lot of thought has went into choosing them.  If you had a pen name, what would it be?