When Less is More

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

Last week, I was in Florida with my sister. She’s battling metastatic breast cancer and she had chemo yesterday. In spite of how bad she feels, she plodded through the days like a trouper, letting nothing keep her from the tasks at hand.

She cleaned out a lifetime of stuff. You know the things we all collect when we’ve been married forever. Sis is a keeper of many things. It isn’t in her nature to discard much of anything. In her mind she says she doesn’t know when she may need it again.

To support this theory, as we were preparing dinner one night, Sis’s daughter-in-love searched high and low for her egg separator, to no avail. She commented that she guesses she cleaned out and got rid of too many things. Well . . . maybe. 

Decisions, Decisions

Sis managed to sort through a great many boxes. We made donations, keep, and throw-away piles of things. All in all, a good, but tiring week. Every box was  looked at and decisions made about its contents by the end of the week.

With this in mind, I hope you will forgive me for such a short blog post this week. My husband was there helping along with one of our cousins. None of us is in our youth or even middle age any longer. Frankly, we were very tired each nightt. We’re all thankful for having been able to take on such a big chore. (Hubby and I are back home in Florida tonight after two days on the road.)

As we went through all those things, making decisions about what to do with each item, we all thought maybe Marie Kondo isn’t too far off the mark when she talks about living as a minimalist. Less stuff, means more time for all the things you love and time with the people you treasure.

More Time for Fun

I think Sis is going to have a lot more time to do those things she truly enjoys rather than having to worry about cleaning out a lifetime's accumulation. She honestly is looking forward to being free of the burden of too much stuff. 

How about you? Have you jumped on the clean it out and down-size movement? Was it hard for you to part with things? Share your experience with us.

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HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY, EVERYONE! Thankful for my freedom and for those who gave their all that we may be free to this day, 243 years later. 
God Bless America!

A Plan? Don't I Wish

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

Today my husband and I tackled a chore that we had completed a couple of days earlier. Yes, you read that correctly. We had finished this job earlier in the week. Yet, here we were redoing it. Why? You may ask. Well, we didn’t have a plan. Do you know the quote, "A goal without a plan is just a wish?”  How I wish we had made a plan.

It’s amazing how one little four letter word can make such a huge difference. If we had had a plan to begin with, we could have simply sat back and enjoyed the fruits of our labor. Instead, we found ourselves working at least as hard as if not harder than we had the first time.

We moved into our condo about eighteen months ago. We knew that our backyard needed to be revamped but we decided to wait until we came up full time to tackle that job. 

Using All the Tools and Having Fun, Too

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

I’m at that point in my writing journey where I must bring all things together and put a brand to me and my writing. It’s called branding yourself. I’ve been to a lot of conferences and I’ve met a lot of authors along the way, and I understand what branding means, but applying it to oneself is a lot more difficult than one would think. 

But the good news? This is the fun part of writing. Don’t get me wrong, I love sitting down and putting words on the page, but I also am a creative person in other ways, and I enjoy those aspects of the writing process that allow me to use all the gifts God so graciously granted to me.

 

I’m no artist. Not a trained one anyway. I’ve been known to dabble in paints or with fabrics to make something lasting and hopefully, beautiful to at least a few.

If you are a writer and you haven’t dipped a toe in some of the things at your disposal, you will not believe how much fun this can be. It’s time to bring out some of those tools.

9 Password Protection Ideas

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

I am not a happy camper. And I’m sure I’m not the only one. Today, when I logged onto one of my frequently visited sites, my search engine informed me that my password for an associated site had been compromised. Now, I’m no techie so I may not be using correct terminology here, but you get the idea.

Now, how they knew that is beyond my pay level, believe me. They informed me that I need to change all my passwords. Bummer. That’s about all I have to say about that. If you’re like me, you have a hard-enough time creating decent, hopefully secure passwords in the first place.

One thing I do which is not highly recommended, but I do it anyway, is I keep my passwords written down. What can I say? I’m old. No way could I remember all the passwords I must maintain.

In reaction, I went looking for what the latest thinking is about what a good, secure password should be. Here are a few of their suggestions. I got these from various places, and some are just my own ideas, some things my hubby and I have done for years. 

Depressed? There is Hope

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

I did something for the first time yesterday that I should have done years ago. I had an appointment with my GP and I spoke to him about my bouts of depression. Now, I’ve never been diagnosed with clinical depression, but I am well-aware of those feelings. In me, they come and go like hills and valleys. They are not long in endurance, but they do affect the way I see and react to the world around me when they show their ugly heads. 

My GP informed me that his office has at my disposal, a psychologist on staff. I was able to speak with him yesterday for about twenty minutes, just for a short evaluation. He asked a few pertinent questions, family history, etc. things of that nature. Let me insert here that I am in no way suggesting that you do the things I am outlining here, but if you feel you have any form of depression, do speak with your health care provider about it. Depression is nothing to ignore and help is readily available.

A Mountaintop Experience

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

Before you read my post, let me apologize for the tardiness in getting this out to you. The internet at Ridgecrest simply wouldn't let me get this done. Believe me, if you read my post about being technology challenged, you will undertand, it is likely the poster and not the entity with which she tried to post. Thank you for your understanding and your grace.

This is the week many of my writer friends and I eagerly await. The Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference is being held this week at Ridgecrest in Black Mountain, North Carolina. I’ve been coming to this for six years, ever since my first one in 2014.

I wish you could experience this with me. Imagine five-hundred writers, all feeling called to write for the Kingdom of God. Add to that, a fabulous faculty, a staff dedicated to making our experience one we will want to repeat, and two brilliant, creative, lovely, godly women who give of themselves all year to make this the best it can possibly be, and you have the makings of one spectacular conference.

Headstone Rubbings or Cleanings Could Lead to Grave Consequences

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

Most of you know that I have a novel under contract with Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. I am thrilled to the marrow, to say the least. This week, I finished all the major editing. At least for this round. I have no clue how LPC will change it once they see it. Suffice it to say, I have many more rounds of edits to go before this book comes out.

While working this week, I had to do some Google searches for one of the scenes in the book—Grave Consequences: A Charlotte Graves “Digging Up Dirt” Southern Mystery. Charlotte spends a lot of time in cemeteries. In one scene, she is preparing to do headstone rubbings.