Tag Archives: resolution

YCN #1

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Well, it is official. YCN is gone and you can no longer find my articles online. As I said, I plan to post them maybe once per week, but I will only post the good ones.

Parenting Resolution

My parenting resolution for 2013 is to let my son get dirty!

In today’s society, overuse of anti-bacterial soap and hand sanitizer has led to some antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. The belief that keeping ourselves clean is keeping us healthy is not always the case.
Just like a muscle, the immune system gains strength from use. If we do not let it “workout” every now and then, it becomes weakened and cannot fight even the simplest strains of bacteria. Every cold makes it so the immune system has the ability to tackle larger, more persistent strains. Treating illnesses before giving the immune system a chance to fight them in essence makes one more prone to illness.

A study done in Finland found that children raised in homes with dogs were 73% healthier on average than those who were not. This is because dogs frequently bring the outside in. The dirt and all the goodies that are in it expose children’s immune systems to the natural things that their bodies need to be able to fight off more major illnesses.

I want my son to get dirty. I want him to play with the dog and roll around in the dirt. The antigens his body will absorb can only help him be a healthier boy overall. His body will fight off bacteria and infections that my husband and I, or even my son, will not know about. I want his immune system to be strong so if, heaven forbid, he becomes seriously ill, his body will have had the practice fighting and it will be able to more efficiently protect him from what ails him.

I know it is a little dorky, but it was my first one! I was very proud of it at the time.

Should be Working on Other Things…

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Today, as I was driving home from work, I heard a song on the radio that made me very sad. It was not so much the content of the song that touched me so, but the fact that it made me think of a scene in my head.

I have many ideas that I wish I could bring to fruition. I have notebooks filled with outlines, plot summaries, and character info. When it comes down to actually writing, I do well for a while and then peter out. I can achieve maybe one page at a time so any project seems to take forever. The project I am currently working on has the scene that the song today made me think of.

I recently made a Twitter account and started following one of my favorite authors. Today’s tweet of hers had to do with how she hammered out 6,000 words of the novel she is currently working on. All done today! Maybe it is just something that comes with time; the ability to write with that much speed.

This is something I aspire to. Maybe, someday, I will be able to write something “full length” with some kind of speed. I have been published in the college newspaper and in a short story anthology, but it is my dream to have a work that is just my own published. Writing anything of length requires time and determination. The more I work on my piece, the more I realize that it is different than anything I have ever tried to do before.

Poems, short stories, newspaper articles, all these things can be done in short periods of time; weeks at most. Without being able to produce thousands of words per day, I know now that I am in for a long and arduous process.

One of this year’s resolutions will be to give my stories the time and attention they deserve. Of all the BIG wants in my life, this is one of the few still left unfulfilled in any way. I thank CJ for his constant love and support and for not being near as hard a critic as I know he should be when he reads my work.

I have given myself a limit. If any of my work has not made it onto a bookshelf near you by the end of 2017, someone please come kick my butt into gear.