All posts by Gina Edwards
Your Inner Kid Has Something to Say About Your Writing. Start Listening.
Between the options of reading a book and talking to a person, I usually go page-turner.
This truth has been self-evident since I can remember, or in other words: elementary school.
While all the other boogers bounded off to the crumb rubber for recess, I roamed my mental playground, pondering whatever glossy-covered paperback I’d glommed onto that week, while noting ideas to scratch down in the mucked-up composition notebook I toted around.
This youthful indifference toward socializing powered hours of quiet, private activities —unleashing my creativity through fitting together puzzles, sketching pictures, scribbling in my journal, and most exciting of all… sticking my nose in books. Belle fan from way back.
Stop Comparing, Start Writing — How to Become a Real Writer
“He thinks you just need to get a job.”
My brow furrowed while I took a quick, defensive inhale of breath. I’d been sitting across the table from my aunt on a hazy, summer afternoon, discussing my career path and where it might lead over lemonade and paninis.
She mentioned that my uncle, apparently, thought I was unemployed.
“But… I’m not…,” I stammered, nearly choking on my swallow of sandwich.
“Ohhhh yes, yes, I know. You do that blogging,” she zipped back, tapping her fingers in the air on an imaginary keyboard.
My eyes swiveled downward, a millisecond-long “Is it worth it to bother explaining/correcting?” internal debate raging my head, and I decided that I would not spend the afternoon teasing out the semantics of my job description.
You Are Not What You Wrote Once — How to Write Online With Confidence
My alter ego would definitely be a detective.
Blame my childhood addiction to Encyclopedia Brown and Mary-Kate and Ashley whodunits, or my fervent viewing of Harriet the Spy and Inspector Gadget shows. (Not to mention my Nancy Drew computer game hobby. I one hundred percent definitely do not still play on junior detective mode.)
Something about sleuthing around with a notepad watching people spoke to my quiet-yet-irreverent self (in college, I would become a journalism major, and leave the crime-solving to the people with real badges).
So as a young lass of 13, with nothing but time on my hands after school and the luxury of parent-paid cable TV, naturally I became obsessed with the MTV show Room Raiders.
Let me explain.
Not Part of the Plan: An Organizer’s Journey to Being Flexible
Since the day my first grade teacher handed me an assignment notebook (analog tablet, for all you teens reading), I’ve been hooked on planning my life.
Carefully penciling in daily activities, to-do lists, and passing thoughts … once I found time management, I never let go. Just ask the teetering pile of journals in my childhood bedroom.
While my nervous, scribbling little self may have been somewhat of a childhood oddity, it turns out my planning habits prepared me for 21st century adult life here in the United States.
You know the one — where we all hack our days, our time, and our sleep, in efforts to make every minute count. Squeeze in, optimize, achieve, repeat.