New Art + Not Living In Tropical Climates

This is my latest artwork, called "Snowbird (In Reverse)".
A coupla things inspired it, the first being that it is 192°F outside and that kind of heat causes me an overabundance of distress so snow pictures calm me down as I hide from the sun and heat inside my wonderfully darkened, air-conditioned house.

The other thing that inspired this piece is that a friend of mine just moved to Florida yesterday...which got me thinking that, although I am happy for my friend whose longtime goal was to move to Florida, I am so thoroughly happy that I do not have to live in Florida.

When people move to Florida, a lot of people will say things like "you're so lucky" and "I'm so jealous".
I know that Florida is the end-all for a great many people.
I used to be one of them.  In fact, for a long time I was a snowbird (someone who winters in Florida) as my parents and I would pack up and head to Miami Beach every January.  I love(d) Miami Beach and when I was younger I was pretty convinced that I would one day have one of those things Florida people called con-do-mini-ums (they hadn't caught on in NJ back in the 70s) when I was old enough.

Then as I got older I realized a few things:

Summer Hell & A Big Life Transition

The past weekend was brutal.
It was consistently at least 172° for the past three days.
That might be a slight exaggeration - but I don't think I'm off by much.
When the weather is that hot there is nothing else to do but sit in the house doing a whole lot of nothing which is exactly what we did.
Well, we also watched the clock a lot - counting down the hours until the weather people said the heat would start to wane - so at least we did do something.
And I checked the air conditioners regularly to make sure they were running fine.




Because of my persnickety lungs, I can't go anywhere near outside when the humidity/dew point gets above a certain point so I hunker down in summertime the way other people do in wintertime.  I also have to take a ton of precautions in summer to protect my lungs so the entire season is mentally exhausting with the amount of hypervigilance I experience worrying about my health.
My neuroticism level - which is usually pretty high to begin with - goes off the charts in the swelter of summer. 

I will never understand the glorification of summer.  It's hot, sticky, and unhealthy.

Needless to say, I spend more time indoors in summertime than in any of the other three seasons.
It's like sometime around May I pull out the two or three outfits that I will wear all summer long which consists of articles of clothing that are at least two sizes too big for me.  As a rule, I cannot feel any kind of constraint or uncomfortability with clothing at any time but that is exponentially worse in summer.  I will melt down and have an actual fit just because my clothing is uncomfortable.


me in summer


Also, I have heavy, thick, very long hair so I also have to make sure that I have an ample amount of hair ties on hand since my hair will be in a high ponytail for the next several months. Heavy, thick hair is like having a wool blanket on top of your head at all times which is of course not fun in summer (but very handy in winter).
So in other words I spend the entire summer season looking homeless.

Then I wait.
And wait. And wait...and wait...and wait...and wait...and wait...
Just sitting around working from home day in and day out not going anywhere waiting for summer to finally be over.

Currently, fall is 61 days away and I am looking forward to getting back to my normal (stylish) self.

In other way more interesting news, after 8 years JP left his job at the dealership

Sharon's Big Police Chase Adventure

I lived in a really safe town for a really long time.
We had crime there, but it was the stolen bicycle kind of crime.
If you forgot to lock your door at night it was no big deal.

Then we moved away from there and every place I've lived since has been very crime-y.

I have not adapted well to this (<--- really big understatement). 

I also have PTSD so you can imagine that living around crime is not the best thing for my mental health.  Hypervigilance is a symptom of PTSD so I am always on guard to begin with; throw in living in a crime-y climate and I'm like this guy, pretty much 24/7:

Flag Day 2019

Bay Head, NJ

It's Okay To Not Forgive

It happened again this morning.

I was on Facebook, scrolling as I drank my first cup of coffee.  One of the pages I follow posted some platitudinal rubbish about for every person you forgive, you heal a wound of your own.

Platitudes are high up on the list of things that are the bane of my existence.
By definition, they are dull and insipid; a banal, trite, or stale remark.  You know, the kind of thing that inspires eye rolls.  The kind of thing that is a blanket statement that is supposed to apply to every single person, no matter the/their circumstance, as if the entire population of the entire world should all be doing the exact same thing all the time without exception and then we will achieve some kind of Stepford Wife-ish nirvana.

Then later, adding insult to injury and also on Facebook, I saw a post that said:

Road To Nowhere

Sitting Still On A Friday

More evidence that sometimes something good comes from something bad:

Last week Sherilyn was not feeling well with a pretty good cough and general malaise and so I got to work making a vat of chicken soup for her.  This is what I do whenever any one of us is sick as a pot of my very garlicky chicken soup has been known to cure most ills.
Then I got the idea to mix up a batch of fresh juice for her and us, too.  The more vitamins, the better, right?  But I didn't want to drag out the juicer because cleaning that thing after usage is a nightmare, so I decided to use the Ninja thing with the big attachment.

This is really boring so far but here comes the good part.

Reverse/Summer Seasonal Affective Disorder - What It Is and Isn't

I have mentioned before but in case you're new here, I am one of the 1-6% of the population who has Summer - or Reverse - Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Yes, it's a real thing and I want to tell you about what it is and, more importantly, what it is not.

When you think of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), you probably picture someone slinking into depression when the cold winter comes along and the clocks get set back, enveloping them in darkness before dinnertime.  The lack of sunlight and the cold temperatures sends them spiraling into despair, counting the days until the clocks are set back giving them more time for their idol, the sun, to shine down upon them again until late in the warm summer evenings.

Bossy BS

So this gem popped up yesterday - International Women's Day - on some government site I follow:

Stuff like this gets up under my skin like nobody's business.

Bossy is not good.
Bossy has never been good.
People don't like bossy people.
Not caring if people don't like you as long as you get to continue being bossy is a really weird outlook.  What's the payoff?

From the time you are little you would recoil whenever anyone tried to boss you around.
You stopped being friends with people because they were too bossy.

I know the bossy thing was a thing awhile back.  It was cool to be bossy; somehow even "empowering".

Beyoncé wanted/wants you to be bossy.
And you know you're supposed to do whatever it is that celebrities tell you to do. ::massive eyeroll::

I used to be a boss. In fact, I was a boss of a lot of people when I ran the freelance and editorial departments of two major publishing firms*. But I was not a bossy boss.  Instead, I was a leader boss.

I was a leader of my people!

A bossy boss is a jerk that no one likes or respects or is loyal to.

A leader boss is well-liked because they lead by example and respect the people who work for them. In turn, leader bosses have a happy, loyal team.

Being a good, non-bossy boss is not hard.  Like all good things, being a good boss is rather simple: you start with a foundation of treating people just the way you would want to be treated, aka the Golden Rule.  See?  Not hard at all, people (I'm looking at you, bad bossy bosses)!

I have had bossy bosses, both female and male. You know what they got from me and the other people who worked for them?  A whole lot of not much, that's what!  When I used to interview people for jobs one thing I always told them was that they would not last long working for me if they were just warm bodies.  A warm body is someone who shows up to work and does the bare minimum so that they can just collect a paycheck.  Warm bodies are the kind of employees that bossy bosses have. I have been a warm body so I know.

Well, that doesn't sound right, does it.  

I have been a warm body for bossy bosses.

Nope, still doesn't sound right.  Forget it, you know what I mean.

Anyway, I really think that quote above by Miss Sheryl Sandberg needs a little makeover.

How about:

I want every little girl to be told she has leadership skills and that one day she can be the boss but she doesn't have to be bossy 

to be effective.
-Sharon O'Brien Huey, COO at Huey Enterprises

Much better.

Take that, Beyoncé!






*Easily verifiable; contact me for list of publications in which my name appears in masthead.

Messages From The Universe

This quote has been popping up at me everywhere lately.

Clearly, it's the Universe sending me a message.

Writing hard and clear about what hurts has been on my mind for...oh, I don't know, maybe 30 or so years?  

Did I mention my tendency to procrastinate?  World class.

So it might finally be time to actually start. Today.

But probably tomorrow.

If you are someone who has been nice to me at some point in my life, I will remember to thank you in the Acknowledgements section of my book(s) when I finally write them.

If you are not someone who has been nice to me at some point in my life, I will not be thanking you in the Acknowledgements section of my book(s)...but I do otherwise thank you for all the material you've given me to write about.

Heart > Mind

If you have read any of my previous posts, you will know how much social media gets under my skin but, oh my goodness, it is a treasure trove for ideas of stuff to write about!  It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Today, someone on Instagram posted a lament about how frustrated she felt that posts about her upcoming wedding garnered tons of attention (i.e. likes) whereas her posts about her business or creative accomplishments didn't get as much attention as she would like, or felt she...deserved.

She went into a big thing about how she noticed that posts about engagements, baby showers, birth announcements, etc. on social media resulted in the same thing.  It made her feel uneasy.

She suggested that maybe we should throw business showers instead of  baby showers for each other.

Of course, 153,296,702 women agreed with her. (That number might be a slight exaggeration.)

Use Words Not The Like Button

If you read the 'About' page on my photo art website Land O' Make Believe , somewhere in there it says: I needed to find a way to make people see and feel again...to make them slow down, to pause for just a minute. 

That sentence or something similar is also in multiple newspaper articles about me.

For awhile, it worked.
My artwork did make people slow down and really see what they were looking at.  I knew this because they told me so. I would receive messages about how some people would linger on an image of mine and let it sink in, feel it.  Or how it brought up a beloved memory.  That sort of thing.

I treasure those interactions like you would not believe.  My husband will tell you that I get more excited about that kind of thing than I do when I make a sale (but sales are really nice so please feel free to go buy something of mine right now!). 

But getting people to slow down and see is not working anymore and the reason I know that is because of LIKES.

Every single time I talk about LIKES I am always compelled to add a disclaimer along the likes of "of course I always appreciate receiving likes" because right after that there is a big old BUT.

I appreciate receiving likes BUT they make me crazy.
I appreciate receiving likes BUT sometimes I don't.
I appreciate receiving likes BUT I wish there was no such thing as the like button.

I'm so frustrated by the epidemic of 'liking' that I am in serious reconsideration of how I do things so that I can not rely so heavily on social media.  Oh I know there are 700 bazillion businesses and people who are A-OK with getting likes but, you know, it just ain't me.  The like button makes me feel hollow.  That's the truth.

A week or so ago on Instagram someone posted a beautiful poignant photograph. She had captured a real moment between two people with her camera - it took my breath away. 
I noticed she had a couple dozen likes for it but no comments.  So I left one.  I told her how it made me feel, that it was the best thing I'd seen on the internet in days. I wanted to show my appreciation with words and I wanted to make her feel good. She never responded to my comment which maybe is her style but I could never in a million years not respond to the kind of comment I left for her.

When was the last time you showed your appreciation with words instead of or in addition to the nanosecond like click?  Why not NOT click the like button and instead leave a comment?
How many times did you mindlessly click the like button as you scrolled scrolled scrolled or swiped swiped swiped?  At the end of the day do you remember what you really saw that day?
I mean, really saw. 

We're too wrapped up in this like thing.  I almost never use the like button because it's so awkward to me + well, I kinda really just hate it.  Sorry.  Still just being truthful.

We're so inundated by images.  I don't think our brains can handle it.  We're rapidly losing our attention spans and that is really, really bad. That's one of the big reasons I have to come up with ways to do things differently instead of posting on social media.  If I sent you an email with my latest art you couldn't click a like button, but you could potentially look at for longer than a second or two because you wouldn't be under the spell of social media. The trance of scrolling and swiping.

Can you imagine walking through a museum really fast saying "like...like...like..." as you walked past amazing artwork?  Hopefully you wouldn't do that.  But you are doing exactly that on the internet.  It's not good.  I think we all should be horrified that we're no longer in awe of...much.  When was the last time you saw something that made you talk about it at the dinner table? 

The following link is to an article that nailed this topic better than I ever could.  I urge you to read it.  Here's a sample from it:

The Like has become the currency of carelessness — a way to show we approve without being deeply invested. In many cases, it covers for a lack of attention. It helps fake news propagate, discourages meaningful conversations, encourages shallowness, and exacerbates the most psychologically damaging effects of social media. 

Yikes, right? 
Here's the link:  Why Facebook and Instagram Should Kill The Like Button

I hope you slow down today and really see some stuff and show your appreciation for it with words.