Happy Valentine’s Day or Galentine’s Day or Friday  or whatever your preference is.

I’m afraid the holiday has caught me a bit by surprise.  I usually like to do a little holiday-themed decorating, but this year the assortment of random sized and colored hearts never even made it out of the storage box in the garage.  To be completely honest, there are still a few random Xmas decorations up around the house.  Guess I’ll just go directly to Marci Gras or St. Patrick’s -whichever comes next.

Though I don’t have any Valentine’s decorations around the house, I do have my writing notebook and pen ready and waiting for me to put them to use.  I think I’ll start with today’s writing prompt and/or random words..

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Happy Friday!

I don’t know how you spent your week, but I spent mine at an environmental conference in Arizona where it was surprisingly chilly.  My hotel room got down to 60 degrees before I finally found the heater control.  Thank goodness for fuzzy bathrobes and down comforters.

The conference itself was great, although like all environmental conferences I’ve been to, the tone did tend to fluctuate between “it’s too late, the world is ruined beyond repair” and “we can fix this!”.  Fortunately, there was excellent food to compensate for the emotional ups and downs and I had a great time using my fancy new work title. Really, it’s amazing how much enjoyment I get out of that.

Now that I’m home and unpacked, it’s time to get back to work.  I had a new story idea while waiting at the airport today, but before I dive into that, I think I’ll give today’s writing prompt and/or random words a try to warm up my creativity.

Care to join me?

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Welcome to another Friday.  Hope your week has been a good one or at least a trauma-free one.  Mine had a very busy start, but is having a relaxing end due to two days off from work.

Part of my “follow-through” goal this year includes following through on scheduling, and more importantly taking, days off work on a regular basis.  An unfortunate Catch-22 situation about having been at a company for a long time is that you tend to earn a lot of paid-time-off, but it can be very difficult to ever take any of it.

A recent New York Times article touted the benefits of time off (see quote below), so I’m doing my best to change my long-hour-working ways and start building time off into the schedule.  I’m feeling more creative already!

“[time off] literally makes us more creative, better at problem-solving, better at coming up with creative ideas.”

Now that I an well-rested with two fun-filled days of doing virtually nothing under my belt, I’m going to take advantage of my increased creativity and give today’s writing prompt and/or random words a try.

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Welcome to Friday – also known as Day 3 of the prosecution in the president’s impeachment trial.

What fun!

If you had told me months ago that I’d be spending time glued to coverage of the trial in the Senate, I’d have called you crazy (and maybe suggested therapy).

And yet, here I am, spending far too much time with the dial tuned to the news.  I’m sure the Hallmark channel is devastated by my current lack of viewership.  Hopefully their WinterFest will survive without me.  The fate of democracy, however, isn’t quite so secure.

With the trial in recess for the night, it’s time for me to do some work on my To Do list.  First up is giving today’s writing prompt and/or random words a try.

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Friday already?  How did that happen?

This week didn’t include much writing outside of the day job, but I did do a great job on my “get rid of one thing every day” goal.

At the end of last year Michille posted about the successful completion of her 2019 goal to basically “get rid of stuff.”  Inspired by her resulting empty drawers and clean mudroom, I decided to adopt the goal for 2020.  I don’t have a mudroom, but I’m visualizing a tidier garage and maybe some empty dresser drawers too.

It’s currently day 16 and I’ve already gotten rid of close to 100 items.  True, many of them were holiday decorations that hadn’t been out of their boxes for years, but I’m pretty sure they still count.  Next up is the household-goods cupboard in the garage.  Since I’m pretty sure I have pots and pans out there that came from my parents house, I’m sure to find plenty of things to part with.  I’m visualizing an empty shelf in my future.

Now that I have my tidiness goal well underway, it’s time to turn my sights on writing.  I think I’ll start things off by giving today’s writing prompt and/or random words a try.

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Happy Friday!  I’d like to say I had an extremely productive week, getting lots of writing done and tasks completed.

Sadly, that would be a  work of fiction.  In reality, I spent far too much time this week falling down the rabbit-hole that is Twitter following the RWA implosion.

On the plus side, I’ve been exposed to a whole new set of writers and learned a lot.  On the day job front, this week been a combination of wrapping up 2019 end-of-year stuff and doing 2020 planning.  We always say we’re going to get the planning all taken care of in November so we can hit the new year running, but it never, ever happens that way.

One bit of 2020 planning that I did manage to take care of this week was getting my calendar set.  I’ve scheduled regular days off each month and blocked off specific writing times.  I’ve also blocked Friday afternoons off for “quiet time” so I can get things done without interruptions – all part of my less stressful / more productive 2020 plan.  We’ll have to wait and see how that all works out.

I’m thinking this Friday’s quiet time will be a the perfect time to give today’s writing prompt and/or random words a try.

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Welcome to a brand-new year of Friday Writing Sprints.

I hope your 2019 had a happy ending, whatever you were doing and however you celebrated.   Mine ended with a whimper.  Well . . .maybe that was the dog whimpering in response to all of the fireworks the neighbors were setting off.  And maybe it wasn’t fireworks we heard, but the sound of RWA imploding.

I’m enjoying one last day before heading back to the office and hours of back-to-back meetings.  I don’t mind going back too much, but I will miss lounging around in pajama pants; although, considering all of the holiday baking (and eating) I did these past few weeks, I might have to stick with them.

Ah well, good thing there is a gym at work.   Here’s hoping all of those “I’m going to work out this year” folks are still on holiday so the gym won’t be too crowded.

Whatever else happens, I’m planning to give today’s writing prompt and/or random words a try, once I get home from work.

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