Online Business Secrets for Women

Online Business Secrets for Women is a well-written and thorough guide for anyone wanting to start their own business. She discusses everything from finances and anxiety to finding your niche and everything in between. As someone kick-starting a freelance business, this book is a valuable asset to my planning process as I shift to working from home.

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She starts by confronting the lies that everyone tells themselves when they lack the confidence to start something. This is my biggest hurdle, so having her address that first was nice. It made the rest of the book seem achievable.

The second chapter is about finding your why (which is cliche and overused, but whatever). Covid brought business home and accessible, so she encourages readers to use its momentum for their own projects. The writer was forced into her personal business pivot due to Covid layoffs; now, she is encouraging others to take the leap before they potentially end up in her position of desperation. So many people forced into home businesses or remote working are finding themselves happier and more fulfilled than in pre-Covid positions, even four years later.

An online business is perfect for introverts because all interactions are through online written communication. I know this is big for me. I’d prefer written communication when establishing a business interaction, but as a writer, that isn’t terribly surprising. But whether you’re an introvert or just nervous about something new online, written communications are a great way to kick-start your new endeavor.

Some other key things she talks about are:
*Financial changes are scary when it comes to changing jobs, and there are many things to consider. She dedicates an entire chapter to this.
*Working on your time management is key for a work-from-home/life balance.
*The most important thing is to figure out your asset skills to determine which are both marketable and will feed your soul using them daily. When you own your skills, everything else falls into place.

I have to say that for a book about starting your own business, Online Business Secrets for Women is a great and comprehensive guide. And I love that it is completely geared toward women since almost all other business books are geared toward men.

Freedom with Food and Fitness

Freedom with Food and Fitness was a great read. It was informational but not pushy. It was nice to read a book about nutrition that didn’t come across as shaming readers for having a tenuous relationship with food and exercise.

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Reading about nutrition and fitness are things that I do regularly, but this book hit a bit differently for me. I found a lot of great notes to make about my eating habits, but I also found myself connecting food control goals and triggers to other areas of my life.
I have never been a dieting person, but the cycle of starting a venture, failing at it (or thinking that I have), and restarting a new venture with a clean slate mindset is something that I do with other aspects of my life, typically my writing career goals. I will begin a program for a new certificate or writing project, but when life kicks in. The momentum wanes, and it isn’t easy to keep going. Hence, it drops, and I inevitably feel like a failure. Then I make a new plan, start again, and the cycle continues.
As I dive into the new year and a new decade of life, all of this hits me quite strongly. It reinforces that it is time to focus on what feeds my life and soul, both in food and work. It is time to get rid of the intense, unfulfilling, frustrating things and focus on what satisfies and fulfills my life. So now it is time to treat my career projects like eating. Do what I want and what will feed my soul. And, also remember that if things get put on pause, it isn’t because I failed; it is because that is what my life and mental health need.
I had all of these deep thoughts about life because I chose to read another book about nutrition. That means that reading about food also gives us food for our thoughts.

The Many Lives of Mama Love

Overall, I enjoyed reading The Many Lives of Mama Love. Reading memoirs can be tricky because you get invested in their lives while reading their story. There were a few points where I got angry with her for making repeated choices that she knew were wrong; there was a whole interaction with her husband in the car that had me livid. But I also found myself cheering for her.

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I have never had addiction problems or been arrested, but much of her story felt familiar and something that resonated and related to me. I felt a kindred spirit in her fight and struggle to find acceptance and purpose while trying to fulfill the obligations she had to fix her circumstances. The battle for self-acceptance and satisfying self-fulfillment is complex, and I’m glad to see someone win that battle as it gives hope to the rest of us.

This book struck some deep parts of my soul. Her career determination hit me deeply because she worked herself from the bottom and built herself my dream job. I’m not going to lie; some of it made me feel a little bad about myself and my work ethic, but I also haven’t had my life depend on digging deep and pushing through; I have been privileged to not have everything taken from me.

At one point, she talks of writing as a source of health and healing, how not writing added to her spiral, but writing kept her sane and clean. That resonated as my mental health is better when I write, but if I am having a rough day, it is hard to write, but writing fuels my soul. Like her, I have always wanted a career in writing, but a lack of support in critical areas put it on the back burner, and the dream fell away. As I’ve gotten older, had better support, and learned to feed myself and my soul, the drive and desire to build a writing career has returned. I just need to follow Mama’s lead by doing the work, putting it out there with effort, and seeing what the universe has in store.

If you or someone in your life needs to know that redemption stories happen in real life, pick up a copy of The Many Lives of Mama Love. Let her story show you that better is always around the corner.

Wintering

I have wanted to read Wintering by Katherine May since it was published, but I just got to it this summer. I am glad that I waited because this was a read perfectly timed for my soul.

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I couldn’t binge-read it because I repeatedly found myself having moments of feeling down or somber after reading a chapter. I think it was because I could relate to what she was saying. But going through it slowly also gave me time to reflect on what I had read and how that fits into my life.

I am also grateful that I didn’t read it while in my own wintering season because I think that I would have related too much, and I would not have been as fed by her words. By reading it at an “off-season” time, it helped me to recognize my preparations when I see a wintering season coming or the things that I do to get through to the other side of a season.

Thanks to this book, I feel like I finally have a word for the not-quite-depressed stage when it is more that I am overwhelmed or so mentally and emotionally drained that it’s challenging to feel and function like normal. Wintering isn’t about working through depression; it is a definition of those times when you aren’t depressed but you’re definitely feeling down for an extended period of time. Wintering is about learning how to get from a feeling of blah to a feeling of understanding where you are currently with your mental health.

No matter where you are in your mental health journey, or if you don’t feel you have a need to work on your mental health, Wintering is a valuable read because we all have times when we are going through this season, and everyone can use a little help to get through it.

More After the Break

At one point in my life, I wanted to become a journalist. That changed in the spring of 1999 when journalists invaded my community in ways that were unforgivable at the time. To be fair, we were the exception back then. In 1999, a school shooting was instantly national news, especially one as destructive as ours.

Even so, they still felt intrusive. I remember walking into church on a Sunday morning after attending a classmate’s funeral the day before and having someone offer me condolences because they saw me on the news the night before in a camera pan clip of funeralgoers. I did not even know that news crews were there.

I recently read Jen Maxwell’s memoir, More After the Break, in which she revisits some of the news stories that she covered that have had the most impact on her over her years of reporting. Through her stories, I have gained a new perspective on those reporting through the tragic moments that happen. Looking back almost 24 years later, I see how the reporters and news crews were just doing their jobs. Some of our local news people were possibly trying to find information on their niece or nephew; maybe they were related to a staff member.

I had never thought to give them that type of consideration before. Until I had read Maxwell’s book, I still saw them as unfeeling, cold-hearted leeches. I mean, they had us on the news for months without any appearance of sympathy or understanding for our situation, so why wouldn’t we hate them.

Maxwell’s entire book is interesting, but the last two chapters really tugged at me. I cried, smiled, and saw the side of journalism that interested and intrigued me in my younger days. I remembered the pre-Columbine girl who wanted to tell stories about her community and the world around her. I never lost my desire to write or share stories about what is happening around me. And now that I realize that doing their jobs on the worst day of my life wasn’t easy on the newscasters either, I feel bad that I have spent over 20 years being angry with them.

A Hidden History of the Tower of London

England has been in the news a lot this year. Many things not seen in decades have been on display due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles III. England is filled with history and tradition going back centuries. The Tower of London has been a part of everything from essentially the beginning of what we know as England.

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I’ve recently read A Hidden History of the Tower of London, which tells of the history of this most notorious of English buildings. Having been built over 1000 years ago, The Tower of London has evolved from a prison to a safe house to a highly visited tourist site. To quote the author, this building is so highly respected that “legend has it that should the tower fall, so would the kingdom.”

This book is well-researched and documented. It starts at the very beginning and works through the centuries up to the modern day. He focuses on the building’s role throughout each monarch’s reign, as that changed depending on who was on the throne and the political climate at the time. And while he touches on known stories such as Anne Boleyn and the lost princes, he is very deliberate in telling the stories that we don’t typically hear. I am a huge Anglophile, and there are stories in this book that I have never encountered in other books or documentaries. He does this because he understands that everyone who stayed in that tower influenced what the country has become today.

On a personal note, if you’ve never been to see the tower in person, I highly recommend it. It is one of my favorite places in all of London. I’ve been through it twice, and I still feel like I have probably missed so many things. So if you are planning a trip to London, please go see the tower, you won’t be disappointed.

How to Eat More Plants

How to Eat More Plants is probably my favorite nutrition book. This book does not encourage going vegan or vegetarian, but just adding more vegetables where you can.

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Her approach is looking to add to your diet instead of taking things away. Her focus is to eat as you normally do, but just add more plants where you can. So if you have to eat meat at every meal, go ahead and just add more spices, vegetables, and grains because if it doesn’t bleed or breathe, it is considered a plant.

I love that she is encouraging a healthy, flavorful diet with no restrictions, just additions. What other diet tells you just to add things and doesn’t tell you to remove anything?

Food is essential but also needs to be enjoyed, so finding a means of eating well and eating whatever you want is a way that I would want to enjoy my life.

This is also the easiest thing I can think of as to how to adjust your health and wellness simply. And it is done in small, unnoticeable ways until you realize you feel better. 

How simple is it? Instead of plain scrambled eggs in the morning, add some new seasonings to them, or add some veggies and make them loaded scrambled eggs. Instead of just eating chips, how about chips and salsa? Or, here’s our dinner plan for the night: Burgers with tomato, lettuce, and mushrooms, and I think that instead of mayo, I’m using leftover guacamole. New flavors, plants, meals, and a healthy diet.

Things You Can Do

Things You Can Do is a climate book, but it is not the same as all the others out there. What sets this one apart from being another climate change book is that it breaks down the science and information into digestible bites.

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It is one of the more information-filled and detailed books that I have ever read about what is going on with our planet and what we can do to help save it. The entire first chapter talks about the science of what makes Earth unique compared to the other planets in our solar system. In another place, it breaks down the ecological cost-benefit analysis of electric vs. gas vehicles including the energy used to make each type.

The book is also illustrated, helping to give a visual to the concepts being talked about. The illustrations look a bit juvenile, but it doesn’t feel dumbed down.

This is definitely a top five on my list of eco-books, and one that I would purchase for anyone wanting to learn why it is important to be ecologically conscious.

Writers on Writing

Anyone that has a passion for writing is also constantly looking for advice on writing. We read books and blogs, and articles on how to better our writing. Sometimes it might seem like we learn about writing more than we actually write, but with each thing that we read, we find some piece of advice that sticks with us.

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Chip Scanlan’s book, Writers on Writing, is a book filled with brief interviews with authors and writers in which they share their favorite piece of advice that has stuck with them throughout their careers. It is a fascinating insight into the minds and processes of some of the amazing writers out there. And the interviews are brief, only a couple of pages, which makes it the perfect book to go through slowly with one person a day, or to binge on.

Some of the words of advice they share I have heard before, but many others were new. And I have a few that stuck out as things to try in my own writing.

If you are a writer, or you know a writer, this is a must-have book. And as graduation season approaches, let me help you cross someone off your list by saying that if you have an English major in your world, this is a fantastic book to gift them. 

Meat Me Halfway

Meat Me Half Way is a book about America’s history and obsession with eating meat.

It was interesting to learn about this side of our national and cultural history. It covers everything from colonists and explorers to the invention of spam and frozen TV dinners, to the creation of plant-based substitutes.

The author is a mostly vegetarian flex-diet eater which is something our house is working towards so I was interested to hear more about his journey into changing his diet after a lifetime of being a carnivore. He did talk about some of his struggles with friends and family understanding his food choices, but he didn’t talk much about why he made the change from meat-eater to infrequent meat-eater.

So I walked away from this one with mixed feelings. I felt empowered with my newfound food history knowledge, but I was disappointed that we didn’t get more of his personal story. All of the historical information is fascinating to read, but I do wish he had given more of his personal history that led to making the change. He also did touch on the environmental impact of meat vs. plant-based a little, but not as much as I was expecting.

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