Music Tells My Stories

There's that blank page again. Staring at me. Daring me to change the pure simplicity of the clean, fresh, white page into something fun, useful, interesting. Pristine, the page challenges me to put my thoughts into words. It pecks at my subconscious, a steady dripping faucet in a silent house. What can I share with you today? How am I feeling? What tidbit can I pass along to you?  To start with, greetings, my Lovelies! (Yes. I decided on a nickname for you all and after much consideration, Lovelies seems apt.) I have so many directions I can take this blog, but I'm finding that I really enjoy the randomness of my topics. When I started this I assumed that I would be talking quite a bit about my books, and/or explicit topics and situations, hence the warning each time you pop in to read the fruition of my insanity. However, if you have been with me since day one or have read through my past blogs, you can see that I've let my mood and current events/situations guide my path...

Greetings faithful followers! (You guys seriously need a nickname. Suggestions?) I come to you this morning having gone through a night without any sleep whatsoever, followed by a night of broken sleep. With any luck, this blog will make sense and not just be an array of disconnected, rambling thoughts. Let's talk about dreams. There are dreams we have of how we want our lives to be, dreams of our future, our children's futures. There are dreams we have that are more existentially encompassing, peace, love, hope. There are actual dreams, those captivating, odd, hopeful, scary, and sometimes sexual scenes that take over our brains while we sleep. (Why do I suddenly feel like I'm in a bad production of Les Mis?) We have so many different ways that we dream and our dreams are important to our health and well-being. In college I took a psychology course that I absolutely loved. One of our assignments was to write a massive paper about the meaning of dreams. I may well have been...

 Greetings my faithful followers and welcome to another episode of "Shelly is probably losing her mind." Buckle up, please keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times, settle back and hold on tight. Would you like a pair of 3-D glasses? This week (hell probably longer than that) has been a struggle for me. My mind has raced while my body has refused to move. I've not been able to gather my thoughts so writing has been all but non-existent. I've found that I've had to force myself to get up and move, force myself to plan and prepare dinner for my family, force myself to do my job. I've had to force myself to care, to care at all about anybody and anything. Depression. Most of the time I move through life without a hint of it showing, to the point that you might not know I'm affected by it. I live and do day-to-day things by normal standards. I talk to family and friends as if nothing is wrong. I laugh, joke and carry on, enjoying the craziness of th...

 Forgive me, faithful followers, for I am two days late releasing my blog. I would try to justify this, but let me leave you with two words instead. Life. Employment. Let me begin by saying that each and every time I sit down to write this blog I find myself wondering if I should be using this platform for truly important matters. Should I be writing about the state of our Country? Should I be discussing political matters, or other important topics? Would it be better if I tried to make a difference by enlightening my friends and followers with my own beliefs? The answer is a resounding, NO! I feel we are bombarded by things like this on a daily, minute by minute, even, basis. Don't you want a break? I sure as hell need one. Also, who's to say that what I spout here isn't just as, if not, more important? To that I say, let's talk about relationships. There are many different kinds of relationships, connections we have through blood or marriage, or make with the people w...

Happy New Year! I hope 2021 brings us all happiness and some much-needed relief from the miseries heaped upon us in 2020. I was going to blog yesterday, but one thing and another got in my way and it just didn't happen. When I woke this morning I was given some news that makes me happy and sad at the same time. So I'm glad that whatever forces worked against my blog made their appearance, and caused me to share this with you instead of the trite crap I was ready to spout yesterday. A little background for you. After my failed, but amazingly fun, one-year attempt at college right out of high school, I had no direction for where I was going or what I wanted to do with my life. I took a job at a restaurant, then a grocery, then a T-shirt factory. (Just to fill you in on my ambition and work ethic, before I left that factory I could do every damn job they had.) By the end of my time at the factory, I was floundering. Floundering with career decisions, floundering in my first marria...

We all have things that make us happy, things that bring us joy, things that we love to see, feel, and experience. This time of year I always find myself reflecting on some of my favorite things. Christmas for our family was always this amazing experience. Our home was always warm and inviting. My mother worked hard to make our house a home, and every year when Christmas rolled around, she went above and beyond to make our holiday more special than you could ever imagine. Our living room, kitchen, dining room, even our hallways, were decorated with loving care. Our tree was put up and an evening set aside where my grandmother would join us and we would all sit around going through the tree decorations, reminiscing on where each one came from, what it meant, how it came to be. Inevitably my brother and I would argue over who got to put the star on top, but it was done good-naturedly, and it is a memory we find we can laugh about as we've gotten older. Special candles, garland, ribbo...

 Last night I met up with my girls, my amigos, my favorite bitches, and we had dinner and drinks to celebrate my birthday. (Thanks again, guys! Love y'all!) Now, it doesn't take much to get any of the four of us talked into having a drink. Pretty much all you have to say is "do" and all four of us will say yes without you coming close to finishing your question. We don't always do shots, but if there is a birthday, special occasion, or if one of us has just been having a hell of a time of it, then set 'em up barkeep, because we're gonna knock 'em down. When the waitress came to take our order the funniest thing happened. One friend said, "Not Sambuca!" Another friend said, "Not fireball!" My response was, "Well, then, what? Tequila?" A resounding chorus of "NO" went around the table and made me laugh. That poor waitress. I'm sure she thought we were crazy. We ended up with Cinnamon Toast Crunch shots (Rum Cha...

Recently it was brought to my attention that I'm not the same person I used to be, and when this was pointed out, my first instinct was that I agreed with that statement. But the more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that this person was incorrect. You see, I really am the same person I used to be. I'm the same person I've always been. However, I will concede that I am different than I used to be. But I am different only because I made a decision a few years ago to no longer hide parts of myself that I felt would be disagreeable to those around me. Parts of me that have always been there, parts that I suppressed in my people-pleasing ways. I no longer try to do and say just the right things to get people to like me or continue to like me, to make people comfortable being around me. No. I'm at the point in life where if you like me, you like me, and if you don't? Well, that's fine, too. Plenty of people not only like me as I am but love me as I am. ...

 I had said that I wasn't going to Blog more than once per week and that is still my intention, but I have so much on my mind this morning and I need an outlet. Welcome to my chaos! For you to understand my turmoil, you have to first have some understanding of me. Now, if you have followed along from day one, you know a little of my people-pleasing background. For you newbies, just know that throughout my life I have rarely done anything for myself, always keeping in mind the ramifications of my actions as pertains to those around me. I was always the "good girl" growing up, at least until college. College brought out the best and worst in me. My older brother rocked the boat enough in our house and I always felt that I had to be the go-between, the voice of reason, the dependable kid, and in doing so, I suppressed my actions, I suppressed my voice. It took me many, many years to realize how unfair I had been to myself and how unfair it had been of those around me to expe...

 As usual, Blog day showed up without me having any clue what I wanted to talk about. Before I sat down and opened the page to begin writing I had a dozen different ideas run through my head and I'm sure I will touch on those topics at some point. Today, however, I've decided to share a little about my mindset when it comes to my body; specifically, my tattoos. There was a time in my life where I would have said that tattoos were not for me. The older I got the more my mind changed until one day I decided to just fucking do it. Now, I touched briefly on the fact that I have an older brother and we've had our moments of getting along great and other times, eh, not so well. (That has definitely changed the older we've gotten.) I haven't always thought my brother had any idea what he was doing, but when it comes to tattoos, there is no question that he has a great deal of experience. So, on a solo trip home about eight years ago I picked up my phone, sent a text to my ...