Life sometimes gets in the way, but life is supposed to that, right? I was almost seven days away from steemit and I see nothing much has really changed. Crypto is still down, people are still enjoying their holidays and those that are still active on steemit (the number seems to get smaller and smaller with each day) are loving their time creating quality content and spending time with great people. Me? I have been busy with a lot of things but no spoiler alerts! Read on and find out...

Summer hit my city hard and there are times when I feel like I am melting on these high temperatures. I am awake in early mornings, during evenings and nights. Days are reserved for surviving the heat and trying to find a way to cool myself down. August is my month and I always feel like this is the time to create and enjoy creating. Since my birthday is coming up, there is not much time left to finish the past year of my life and complete all those projects that I planned on completing.

Yeah, I have sold some paintings in my time but I never considered myself a great painter. An artist yes, but not a really good one anyway. I love to create and if anyone likes it, great! It was more important to enjoy creating than to be appreciated for it but sure, being appreciated is nice too. My father had his birthday a couple of days ago and I decided to play with colors a little and after finding some great ideas on Pinterest, I went on to create my first abstract lion. Noone sees a lion in it. People like it but none have seen the lion before I told them it was, in fact, a lion on it. Only one person did. Do you see a lion?

My father loved it but then again, he has two sons and only one daughter. Whatever I do, he likes so he is not really being objective. The only person who saw the lion and got really mad that others did not, was my ten-year-old niece. The kid got annoyed and started explaining the picture to adults pointing to parts on it expressing how they were crazy for not seeing it. It was adorable. I guess I have a little artistic successor there...

You know that friend of mine that I mentioned who made me into his little project and is working out with me and helping me lose that annoying extra weight? Well, he has a special lady friend and that special lady friend has a kid. What better way to get a mother to like you than to make her kid like you, right? His intentions are good, trust me, and he is a great guy so sure, I decided to help. I never liked to embroider but I guess August is really pushing me out of my comfort zone.

I made a felt kitty, stuffed with cotton and have embroidered the kid's name on it. I am still waiting for my friend to give this to the kid so I can find out if the kid loves it or not. It looks good enough to me but then again, I am being subjective and everything that is cute looks good to me. What do you think?

After working on it for almost a year, my book is finally done. I am currently in "polishing the details" phase and I hope I will be satisfied with it by the end of next week so I can start sending it to agents. It was a great thing to do and I enjoyed every moment and every word that I wrote. Sure, it was challenging at times but it gave me great pleasure. It is a collection of short stories that all have the same narrator, a Goddess that is talking about her experiences with humans. Every story is one of her encounters and every story can stand on its own. The last one is not in the form of a short story but in the form of a pagan deity invocation. I wrote that one to circle the collection and to make it easier to understand some things that were said in the rest of the book so the book has 8 stories and 1 poem.

Goddess as the narrator is not here as deus ex machina unfolding of the story with divine intervention as the only possible solution. It is here to draw attention to human’s ability to reach any outcome independently, regardless of higher interventions that are or are not there without us realizing it and without necessarily exerting influence of any kind. Goddess is here more in the role of an observer than She actually is in that of a narrator because her storytelling supports the archetype of a wise old woman who is recounting her life experiences. Like any other teacher, she is sometimes accepted and sometimes rejected. Through her various encounters with people, she is a guide and a mentor but never a guru. She will show the door but it is up to each individual character whether they will pass through it or search for another. Through repeated references to every action having a consequence, I do hope that I was able to indicate how it is absolutely irrelevant whether the character listens to given advice or not. The whole point is the behavioral metamorphosis from that one who is asking the question to the one who makes a decision and by that a transformation from a passive observer of life into its active implementer.

My choice of women for the main characters was intentional and comes from a wish to honor all the historical writers who portrayed them in black and white fashion with no grey areas allowed. Women were either rotten whores or perfect saints. They were despised or put on a pedestal with no deeper understanding. Even in those instances where a woman was given a major part in a story, an author was more inclined to explain how the male characters perceived her than to show her layers and provide deeper insight into her mind. There are exceptions, of course, but why those exceptions always chose to kill themselves or be martyrs is a topic for a different discussion. Every female character in my stories is making her own decision and experiencing the consequences from them. Honoring women in all layers of society is more pronounced through a female deity. She is illustrated by aspirations and abilities to do whatever she wants or enjoys not because she is a divine being but because she is a female being. Her female aspects are different than those from a man but equal in their aspirations and possibilities to fulfill her dreams and intentions as long as her physical and psychological qualifications are allowing her. She is in many different roles so she is a director in one story and a cage fighter in another, sometimes a doctor and sometimes a cleaning lady, changing herself to best fit the needs of those she needs to help and to express herself in everything she wants.

I started running on July 10th and on that day I performed an initial training to get some info on my current fitness level and I took my measures and weight. The plan was to exercise every or almost every day and repeat that initial training and again take my measures in one month. Two more days and I will see the results (if there will be any). I do see progress because I can run longer and faster now and my body is starting to show improvements so that is one of the reasons to be even happier than I usually am. Since it is really hot, I usually run late in the night, sometimes not before midnight because the temperature outside is just too hot. Here is a photo of me sweating like crazy after breaking my record on 3.5 km run.

Yeah, I know, 3.5 km is not that much compared to what other people are running but keep in mind that a month ago I could not run for more than 100 meters so this a huge progress for me.

Even though my birthday is not until the 23rd, I got some early birthday presents already. My mom bought me sports clothes and my friend gave me MI BAND 2 watch. IT IS AMAZING! I really have to make a post and properly review it for you since it has so many features. It measures my heart rate, counts steps and since it comes with an app there is sooooo much data that I can see, from sleep patterns to gps tracked routes that I have been on with info on my speed and oxygen intake. This little thingy is one of the best and useful gadgets I have had a pleasure to use and I promise, I will soon make a post about it. For now, check out the info about it on amazon.com where I took that photo from, or even better, see the web here: Miband2

After finally getting my computer to work, I am back on steemit and yes, I did miss it a lot. I missed all you special and lovely people. Thank you for expressing your concern but I really am fine, just had to fix my computer :) Yes, yes, physics explained series, meditation, psychology, and philosophy of happiness are back too. Did you really think you could get rid off me that easily? Nope, not a chance :) To all you amazing people, here is a kiss, I love you all and am sending you my happy fairy dust to keep those smiles a bit longer on your faces!