HAPPY NEW YEAR!

December 28, 2020 by Z.A. Maxfield

So much haas happened this year. We’ve all had a lot of challenges. My family had to learn how to live together in a whole new way, with five adults sharing a fairly small space. I had to accept that one of my kids is in a different bubble, which meant not seeing him (and his wonderful girlfriend) as often as we’d have liked. I’m wearing the extra pounds gained from my failure to exercise. I miss having lunch with friends. I miss traveling to conferences and seeing my colleagues.

What I gained is a new appreciation for the people I love. An obsession with pretty fabric face masks. A willingness to find new ways to communicate with the folks I know. An opportunity to support those in the “gig” economy by truly valuing their service and making sure they’re paid accordingly. Gratitude for my family’s current virus-free status.

Wherever you are, and whatever you’re up to, I wish you a Happy New Year full of joy, health, wealth, luck, mystery, and the good kind of madness.

May all your wishes be fulfilled and your dreams come true.

I know I’m looking forward to a great year, I hope you’re part of it!

ZAM<3

Happy New Year!

January 7, 2019 by Z.A. Maxfield

It’s January 7th already!

It seems like I haven’t been out on the interwebs forever. Part of that is because my family has been home for two weeks, and part is because we not only have holidays here, we have three birthdays right after Christmas. Busy, busy!

But now that everyone’s back to work, I have breathing room to think about what’s going on in my life.

I hate making New Year’s resolutions. I never keep them. I don’t expect that after the first of a new year I’ll suddenly become a gym-goer, or a radically clean homemaker. It’s way too much pressure.

What I can do is continue making the small changes I started a few years ago. Cook more healthy food. Tidy things on a schedule, move a little more each day than I really want to. Look forward, not back.

I’m not gonna lie–I lost ground at the end of the year with regard to some of my goals. I held on to healthy eating by my toenails, and my 80-20 rule (eighty% of what I eat is supposed to be nutritious) got flipped around to maybe 20% nutritious and 80% Lord Have Mercy. And that’s on a good day. I really do need to get more exercise. I have yet to put away the holiday decorations. But I don’t see any of that as a drastic change. It’s all more of a course correction.

I don’t see my life in terms of what I’m not doing right. I’m all about enjoying the people and things I love. My life is about loving a journey that isn’t always going to go in a straight line.

Every day, I learn new things. Thanks to a Christmas gift from my family, I’ve become a proficient sous vide chef, so we’ve been enjoying a LOT of perfectly cooked fish. I have an Insta-pot, so we can make healthy meals in a flash. I have a local gym membership, and I might decide to actually go. Or I might lie in bed for a whole day reading, and I’ll feel good about that too.

What I believe is every day is a wonderful opportunity for a fresh start. Every day can be the beginning of a brand new journey. All it takes is one step.

Where do you want to go today?

Generosity of Spirit – My List

June 5, 2018 by Z.A. Maxfield

Generosity of Spirit has been the rule, not the exception in the author community as I’ve experienced it. I have been privileged to see my name on lists of authors who have helped with other authors’ careers, and I want to make my own list, here.

At first, I was tempted to put our willingness to help one another down to the obvious–writers cannot stop talking about writing or they’d have to do it.

But that’s not all this is about, is it? Because I have a theory that every real writer starts out as a reader. And for them, books aren’t simply commodities that can be packaged and marketed like the latest celebrity perfume, using a hint of this. A touch of that. People like this color this year so why not use that on the box?

Every reader/writer wants books to be good.

Most important, every real writer wants to do the impossible: Write the book no one has ever written before, so brilliantly that it breaks all sales records, without being a commercial success, because ew. Amiright?

When writers talk ideas are born.

There’s no reason your ghost written-in-a-week novel, dressed up with a fabulous cover, stuffed with fifty backlist titles, can’t be good. But the statistical chances of it being as good as a novel by a proven author are unlikely.

Marketing those books, buying ads, generating sales is hard work. So is day trading, or running a Ponzi scheme. So is grinding Texas hold ’em in Vegas, don’t ever let anyone tell you the life of a professional gambler is easy. But buying a book someone wrote and putting your name (or a fake name that pays into your PayPal account) on it, has to be the ultimate delusion.

Books enlighten us, inform us, and direct our future actions. They create empathy for our fellow travelers on this planet, even if those people are not like us. They are own-voice stories, and fiction, and fantasy. They speak of faith, and ethics–of the possible dangers of rigorously applied morality or cutting edge science, because writers can make hard concepts easy to understand. They invite discourse. They challenge perception.

Like cameras, they kill fascists.

And in my experience, writers have preferred lifting their fellows quietly, relentlessly, and lovingly rather than attempt to gouge or steal or bully or set attack dogs on their colleagues.

Twenty people without whom I would not have a career*, are:

***I knew I’d forget important people. Edited to add the amazing Heidi C. and Marie S. who came into my life with Coffee and Porn (figuratively speaking.)

Terry Black
K.A. Mitchell
Josh Lanyon
LB Gregg
James Buchanan
Louisa Edwards
Samantha Kane
Deidre Knight
Treva Harte
Laura Baumbach
Kris Jacen
Belinda McBride
Lynn Lorenz
Heidi Cullinan
Marie Sexton
Damon Suede
Caitlyn Willows
Christopher Koehler
Amy Lane
Rhys Ford
Louella Nelson
Debra Holland

*Many more are not listed here as I gave myself a not so hard limit of ten… headdesk.

The Epic Saga Continues…

September 8, 2017 by Z.A. Maxfield

I bought a vacuum cleaner as my prize for finishing my super secret project. It’s a canister vac with a HEPA filter. Part of the reason for this is–you may remember my decluttering? First we did the garage, then the office, then the kitchen?

We are not done. The first rule of declutter club is once you’ve figured out where something goes, you don’t rest until it’s there. But we were foolish, and old, and one can no longer work a twenty hour day. And now we have to regroup, rediscover what was in boxes we thought we marked, and go from there.

Unfortunately our 8-hour cleaning days (the only time we can afford to spend doing this) aren’t enough to finish a project. So there are things…making me crazy. On the other hand, we’ve unearthed closet floors we haven’t seen in ages. We’re getting a good look at what was underneath all that clutter and it’s not pretty. Why do things stick to the bottom of the game shelves? How long has that been leaking? Which long dead dog do you suppose left that half chewed rawhide bit…

It’s not like I was hoarding, or buried alive but I was living in a little bit of foolishness. That, “I’ll get around to that when I have time mindset” was taking over. Plus, nobody pays me to dust, just saying. With three kids in college last year? I was working!

My old upright vacuum, which seemed to worked for carpets, but not at all well on our wood floors, isn’t doing its job. It weighs a ton, plus, every time I vacuum I get a sinus infection.

I wanted a really expensive German deal. I got a Kenmore. I hope that people in America made it but I doubt they did. LET THAT NOT BE THE last sacrifice I make to common sense. Nobody needs an $1100.o0 vacuum cleaner. Even if it’s on sale.

So, today we will pull that out of the box. I have my eye on using it on the walls and floors and under all the furniture in our bedroom. Most people feel like doing their big cleaning in the spring, but I guess I’m kind of contrary. I want my house clean and warm and welcoming, with the fireplace going and a clean kitchen full of the vivid scents of stew and baking bread in the winter.

Weather. Or not.

August 29, 2017 by Z.A. Maxfield

In Los Angeles, we tend to think of weather in apocalyptic terms because we’re not that used to it. One drop of rain falls, and we go into crisis mode. It’s a stereotype that I freely admit has a basis in fact. I have seen weather on the ground in Arizona, New Mexico, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Iowa, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Kansas, Hawaii, and Florida, and some of the stuff they’ve got? Wow. (Florida, if all that delicious rain is why you have flying cockroaches, I’m staying here.)

We do have weather-related winds and wildfires. And we have random earthquakes, one of which will no doubt hit us as hard as Katrina or Harvey someday. Earthquakes are not as random as we’d like to believe. But seeing Harvey…

Houston is in my prayers.

Our family was camping in the west when Katrina made landfall and because we didn’t have any media other than what we brought with us–our books, our videos, our favorite music–we were ignorant while the worst was happening and the flooding surpassed everyone’s fears. That time, we weren’t aware of anything outside our campfire light and I wonder now how I didn’t just feel the agony of it–like in Star Wars when the Death Star blows up a planet.

As Houston faces its crisis, OMG Gulf Coasters! People are doing heroic things. I am watching what you’re going through in real time and I am so sorry for the suffering and uncertainty you’re facing right now. I want do something meaningful to help, and thank heavens, through social media and community relationships everyone can…

I can’t recommend or comment or offer advice on which relief agency is best, but I trust NPR to present sources worthy of review through Charity Navigator. NPR’s page is HERE.

Meanwhile, on this coast…

There IS an excessive heat warning in Southern California as well right now. We all need to be on hyper-alert status for those vulnerable people: babies, the elderly, the sick, the homeless, and those with outdoor jobs.

It might be Monday before this heat breaks up. Use sunscreen, stay hydrated, and take shade breaks. Being locked in cars is lethal. Don’t leave pets or kids –for even a minute–in a car. Every second counts. If you see a person or pet locked in a car it is a true emergency.

Stay Positive.

I wanted to put positivity into practice, like rain does with rainbows but…I’ve got nothing. I planned to Aphorize, but politics is crap, the weather in Houston is crap, the heat wave here is crap. So… I’m going to randomly select a page from my planner and give you the quote that I find there. Ah…

“Leadership is the expectation that you can use your voice for good. That you can make the world a better place.” Sheryl Sandberg.

Which reminds me why planners are awesome; mine reminded me not to lose all hope because:

PEOPLE ARE AWESOME!

Ordinary men and women are heroes in Houston because of who they are. They’re heroes out of necessity and courage and good will. Some are such heroes they won’t feel successful if they don’t win every battle they fight against mother nature and human frailty, so some of them are going to come away with broken hearts. Most are probably not getting anything in return but the knowledge they tried and the nameless pleasure that being decent puts in one’s heart.

People are out there making the world a better place every day.

Patience is possible. (Or so I hear.)

I am not a patient person, but over the years I have learned ways to let go of the things that I can’t change, even if it’s just for a little while, say the time it takes to read a really good book. If I don’t have the capacity for narrative, I read cookbooks. I like to find ways to help and I use these to deal with the anxiety that crops up around disasters on the news.

I use apps like calm.com for mediation and others for white noise. I listen to audio books when I can’t turn the worry off. Unstuck.com can be an awesome way to get past something that’s keeping you worrying and I’ve seen professionals with regard to work related stress and the changing world. I’m making sure to double check my health goals every day because those healthy behaviors are always the first to go, and you can’t run from zombies (or nazis) if you can’t run, amiright?

Also. Ask for Help.

I don’t always know who to ask individually. I only know that if you’re drowning in rain or sweat or anxiety or the day to day pressure of living in a world that seems a little scary right now: #NEVERGIVEUP

De-cluttering week two.

July 29, 2017 by Z.A. Maxfield

Week Two –

The kitchen. The good news? I have the ladies coming again, Deb and Sharon, and they will force me to keep only one of everything, I hope. I have a bit of a sickness for kitchen things and clothing. And the ladies are about to find out exactly how deep that runs and exactly how brilliant I am about storing things. There isn’t a square inch of space in my kitchen that is unused. So that means the amount of things I’m able to store (before things start piling up on counters) is immense.

That’s one of those good news/bad news stories, though. It allows me to forget what I own, or lose it, which forces me to buy a second one if I can’t find it. I know this is a first world problem. That’s why I’m determined to set a lot of things free today. I’m determined to donate anything useful and either recycle or upcycle or responsibly discard anything that isn’t.

It’s a brave new world, chez ZAM. Possibly, the start of a brave new way of looking at life.

If you’re playing the home game, go declutter something and tell me about it in the comments! It’s never easy to admit that things have gotten out of hand is it? In my case, they’ve gotten out of hand sporadically, and will probably get out of hand again.

The only way out is through!

Be well!

ZAM