Wonderful Writer Friends

I have some wonderful writer friends, two of whom kind of hold my feet to the fire. Particularly Ravyn Whyt whose blog, Random Acts of Writing, is steadily gaining quite a following. Another of my writerly friends, Kathleen Krueger, whose blog is Crafter of Words is also keeping me busy with learning new things. Between the two of them I've made a decision to resurrect Popcorn for Brain Cells. Thanks for the inspiration Ladies!

This blog began as just a fun way to get my crazy thoughts out in the world. It's something I wanted to do for quite a while but never had the nerve to do it. Blogging is simple enough, for sure. Only putting yourself "out there" in the world can be rather intimidating, especially if you don't really know what you are doing. So, I started the blog, then let it stagnate. Life happens!

When I stop to think about it, a lot of life has happened to me since my last post. My mom celebrated her 90th birthday. I won that second attempt at NaNoWriMo in 2013 and again in 2014. We will see how I do this year. I also won the People's Choice Award for two years running at the Poetry on the Wall competition in Brainerd, Minnesota. The pressure is on now! Can I make it three in 2016?

But the really exciting accomplishment is publication of one of my stories in the anthology Blues Vision, a collection of writings by African American writers in Minnesota including Gordon Parks and August Wilson. That is a special honor that I will always cherish. This project by the Minnesota Humanities Center and published by the Minnesota Historical Society is the first anthology of its kind to be compiled in over 30 years. The extraordinary thing is that this volume is going to be used throughout the state in high schools, universities and colleges and indeed is already being used is a variety of places to give voice to some of the missing pieces of Minnesota's literary history.

Well, I could go on and on about that. However, I think I'll save it for another post. After all if I am serious about resurrecting PFBC then I'll need things to write about. Lucky me . . . I can always find things to write about. The trick is to post them and hit Publish!!

If you are a blogger, what challenges do you have with your blog? I'd like to hear about them.

No, I'm NOT cockeyed!!

One thing I meant to do with the first post was to explain the title of my blog. First off, I'm not cockeyed. Well, maybe sometimes when I'm very tired and start day dreaming my eyes may go a little off center, but generally speaking, no, I'm not cockeyed. That part of the title is actually taken from the song in the Roger's and Hammerstein musical, "South Pacific." Great musical with a message that unfortunately still needs to be heeded. One would think we would have come a lot further along the way in social development considering that many of us witnessed the turn of a century and the dawn of a new millennium. But, I won't get on my soap box this time about that.

People who know me well know that I have a tendency to have random thoughts pop into my mind pretty much all the time. My kids get tired of me sending them texts about arbitrary things and they suggested I get a twitter account. I've always told people that I had popcorn for brain cells because of the way my brain seems to work and always be "on." It loves to make connections all the time and one thought always leads to another and yet another and.....Yes, it is maddening at times and I often find myself working hard to focus on the current conversation and not entertain the capricious thoughts that are popping off in my mind.

One day I decided to start blogging about my random thoughts. I figured it would be a good way for me to work on my "electronic footprint" in the world and give me some practice with my writing (which I am proud to say is at a five star level at both Guru and Elance freelance sites!) and be a way for me to share my random thoughts with whomever may be interested. And voila! Popcorn for Brain Cells was born!

So if you were to ask me what you can expect to read here, I'd have to shrug my shoulders and say quite honestly, "I dunno! It depends." A writer friend of mine suggested that I consider choosing a specific topic around which to blog. That makes a lot of sense to me, except then I'd probably end up with 20 different blogs. Just like I have about five or six different journals going at once because each one is dedicated to something specific even though entries in each may intersect regularly. Actually I did start another blog about dementia. It's called "The Dementia Dimension" and it's about my journey with Mom as we deal with her dementia. (I give credit to my daughter for the name. Thank you my little chickadee!) I'm going to try not to get a boat load of blogs going! Unless, of course, I'm blogging for someone else and getting paid for it!

Here's another example: my best friend in the world of all things crafty suggested I consider narrowing my scope of craft projects down to a few to have some consistency and order. I tried, but I just couldn't do it. I like too many things and my mind goes off in too many directions. The only thing I could almost stick with was doing things in blues and purples. I'm drawn toward sky tones, particularly sunrise and sunset colors and I love jewel tones. But I couldn't decide to just stay with making dolls, or cards, or jewelry, or... the list just goes on.

Well, there. You see what I mean? My mind just goes off wandering willy-nilly wherever it pleases if I let it. So this space allows me the luxury of sharing odd bits of nothing special to those who find it interesting or amusing. For all my eclectic friends out there - come and join me. I know I'm not the only one with popcorn for brain cells!