What do Puzzles, Painting and Crocheting have in common?

by Diana McCollum

First off I take a break from technology. Put my phone in my purse or another room, turn off the tv and shut down the computer. 

I do put my phone in my pocket if I'm taking a walk or working in the flower bed. And I do use the computer if I'm doing a YouTube exercise or yoga video.

Sometimes I put on instrumental music. I can listen to it while I crochet, work on a puzzle or paint. Doing things with my hands such as crocheting or painting really relaxes me. 

(current puzzle I'm working on. There must be 100 pieces of just the bear, and it is hard)

I forget about my stress and concentrate on what I'm doing. Those are my three best go to relaxers.

(took some watercolor classes over the holidays)

Now I practice the tecniques at home.

Outside I enjoy going for a walk and getting some fresh air along with exercise that I do 3-4 times a week and I try to be in the moment. Watching as squirrles scurry across the sidewalk and up a tree, listen to the birds singing,  and stopping and sitting on a bench to just listen to the wind in the trees.

I'm a much happier and relaxed person when I include some of these things in my daily routine.

What is your go to relaxer?

My “Go-To” Activity by Lynn Lovegreen

 This month’s blog topic is “My ‘go to’ activity when I want to relax and take time out of my real life.” The obvious answer is reading, but since most of the Genre-istas (and writers and readers in general) could say that, I’m going with my number two answer: physical activity.

 

I usually participate in a virtual yoga class twice a week. I discovered yoga several years ago. I started for the mental health benefits—it helps me stay centered and take a brain break now and then. But I also enjoy the physical advantage of keeping my strength and balance as I get older. Yoga is great because you can modify poses or do alternatives if your body doesn’t like to do certain things. (In my case, downward dogs bother my wrists, so I replace that part of class with other poses.) Each of us is different, and it’s good to listen to what your body is telling you. 

 

I also like to walk when I need to get out of my thoughts and be in the moment. That usually means a walk around the neighborhood, or walking at the gym if the weather doesn’t accommodate that. Taking a walk helps me notice the world around me and think about something other than my troubles or whatever writing problem I’m stuck on. Looking at the sky, trees, and birds helps me get out of my head. The best times are when I can walk someplace more exciting, like on a trail or other beautiful place in Alaska. And my husband and I walk when we travel, too—we hiked in the Lake District and on the Hadrian’s Wall trail when we went to England last year.

 

Maybe you choose a different physical activity for yourself—no problem. But I do encourage you to find something that moves your body while helping you relax and take time out of your daily life. It’s one of many forms of self-care, which is super important in today’s world. You can’t help others if you aren’t taking care of yourself, too! 

 

Hope you find the perfect “go-to activity” for you. And happy 2025!

 

Lynn Lovegreen has lived in Alaska for most of her life. After twenty years in the classroom, she retired to make more time for writing. She enjoys her friends and family, reading, and volunteering for her local library. Her young adult historical romance is set in Alaska, a great place for drama, romance, and independent characters. See her website at www.lynnlovegreen.com. 

 

At the Tipping Point - a personal history

 I am aware I'm supposed to be writing about something relaxing this first month of 2025. But if you've read any of my other posts, you probably already know that I tend to wander off target. This is you're warning that I'll be doing the same for most of this year.

 I have lived a long life. A very long life. During those endless decades I've watched the evolution - expansion - mutation of the tiping culture. I'm not old as dirt, so I wasn't't around when tipping was first invented. But I do remember when the standard tip was ten percent. And that was for great and timely service. The wait staff arrived at your table with a smile and a pot of coffee so hot steam rose as they filled your cup. They never messed up orders, kept water glasses filled and cheerfully replenished the coffee cups. You never had to ask for butter for your bread or cream for your coffee. They were serious about customers, and, in return, for many customers that ten percent was only a starting point.

Decades passed. I looked up one day and realized the standard had grown to fifteen percent. Some restaurants had little cheat sheets for those too mathematically impaired to calculate the fifteen percent on their own.  Smart phones with calculators were not yet a thing. [I realize some millennials are having trouble visualizing the world I describe, but I promise it was real."

I rolled with the flow. As a girl who always loved math, and who ended up working as a computer analyst in a Fortune 100 company, I never had trouble doing the math in my head, easy-peasy. As long as I got good service, they got their tip.

The next step in evolution was the twenty percent mark. Suddenly things were serious. Customers began voicing annoyance at the whole tipping concept. More people were expecting tips as their right. The friendly server was disappearing, replaced by unhappy workers who used social media to inform customers they shouldn't go out to eat if they could not afford to add on that twenty percent. I fell in on the side of customers who feel that restaurants should not list artificially low prices on the menu when they expect customers to routinely pay more to support their workers salaries. Obviously they restaurants must be overflowing with customers so they can afford to keep doing this.

Things are worse now. Apparently some feel the standard tip should be thirty percent [twenty-five was completely bypassed]. As  a result, I have not eaten in a restaurant in over a year. It's not a protest. I doubt my absence has been noticed. It's not about money, either, I have money for a tip. Just no incentive to keep patronizing this business model. Even when my daughter and her boyfriend offered to take me out to eat over the holidays, I chose not to go out to eat. 

I agree that servers have a right to a living wage. But I don't agree that their employers should expect customers to make up the pay they won't give. In the back of my head I still hold the childish belief that tipping should be my choice, a reward for great service. Not a requirement because the boss pays sub-minimum wage.

Relax and Unwind by Paty Jager

It's the beginning of a new year. I always find it invigorating to know I have another year to entertain myself and my readers. I've lived 12 years longer than my mom did so I tend to celebrate each year, month, day, and hour I have on this earth. 

One of my favorite places to go to relax, unwind, and yes, write, is the Oregon Coast. The sound of the waves, the smell, and walking on the beach all rejuvenate and relax me. I usually go twice a year for a week at the coast to work on projects, enjoy friends, and walk the beach. 

My hubby isn't a beach person. He'll go and stay with me for a night or two but then he's had enough. but he know that I enjoy it so he tells me to take a week and enjoy myself. He knows that writing and the beach are two of my favorite things. 

It doesn't matter to me what the weather is like. I enjoy a stroll on a sunny day as much as I do on a windy or rainy day. The waves sound different, they burst into the air or roll in lazily. It doesn't matter to me, I find the different sounds and swells interesting. 

While I only do that twice a year, I use walks on the ridges and hills on our property for my relax and unwind time. I like being in nature, taking photos, and enjoying the fresh air, blue skies, and plants. 

I usually walk every day after I feed my horse and the two shop cats. But if the ground is slippery with snow, ice, or just greasy from too much rain, I don't walk. I took a couple of falls last winter and don't want to do that again. I usually get up unscathed but it jars my head and that shakes up the crystal in my head and I feel yucky for a couple of days until the crystal settles. 

The walks are good for my soul as well as my health. Most days I walk two to four miles depending on the route I take. some days it's mostly flat and some days it's a lot of uphill climbing. My little dog likes to go with me, and has learned how to navigate around the sagebrush with her leash. 

I have to keep her on a leash so she doesn't get too far away. We have large birds of prey that might think she's a rabbit and coyotes who could snatch her up. 

Walking, being in nature, and breathing in the scents of the area are my favorite things to do to relax and unwind. 

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 50+ novels, 11 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

Website: https://www.patyjager.net

Blog: https://writingintothesunset.net/
Newsletter: https://bit.ly/2IhmWcm

Relax, Escape or Just Because

Hi, I’m Judith Ashley, author of The Sacred Women’s Circle series, soul nourishing romantic women’s fiction with light paranormal elements. My stories show you what life could be like if you had a place like The Circle where you are unconditionally accepted, supported and loved. And where, with this support, you make choices to overcome the darkest nights of your life to choose love and light.

What activity relaxes me? Takes me away from my every-day life? The one that has been a part of my life for the longest is reading. I have clear memories of curling up in the comfortable over-stuffed club chair with a book in hand. Back in elementary school, I liked reading about princesses in towers being rescued by shining knights. In the 1950’s, that was the only kind of book that transported me away from my life.

Courtesy of Deposit Photo

I was a duck out of water in many ways and would have been more suited to being a son than a daughter. I did not appreciate the dolls, clothes, powder, etc. I got as gifts much preferring the cars, trucks, etc. my brother’s received.

College? Yes I went and I’m grateful to have graduated. Doors, I had no idea I would need to be opened at all, opened for me in the future. In my day, most “girls” went to college for their Mrs. rather than a B.A. or B.S. much less as Master’s degree.

However, as my life progressed, as most lives do, with ups and downs and surprises aka challenges, my ability to lose myself in a book helped me survive them.

In the 1980’s I mainly read non-fiction or self-help books looking for the recipe that would smooth my path in life.

In the 1990’s many of the books I read were thriller or maybe suspense. I loved Tom Clancy’s books as well as John LeCarre’s. However, my reading favorites took a major change in direction in 1998 when my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. Days in the hospital after surgery and hours in waiting rooms while he underwent radiation therapy followed. I needed something to whisk me away from the finality of his life and the toll it was taking on my mom.

The gift shop at Providence St. Vincent’s in Portland, OR introduced me to Nora Roberts. I have no idea which of her numerous books it was but it helped. So, I read more of them. At one time I think I’d read virtually every book she had written under Nora Roberts. I never did make the change to J.D. Robb’s books.

Also in 1998, a friend of mine started Wild Women Writers. This eclectic group of women started meeting in December. At that time I wanted to take a workshop I’d created in the 1980’s and turn it into a self-help book. However, as I struggled to figure out basics such as formatting, etc., I began to have lucid dreams and visions where seven women showed up and I witnessed their lives: hopes, dreams and challenges.

When they wouldn’t go away, I began writing their stories. It took a while to finish the first one as I had many lessons to learn about not only the craft of writing fiction but also the intricacies of publishing.

Book One in The Sacred Women’s Circle series was published in March 2014. Lily: The Dragon and The Great Horned Owl shared that month with Books 2 and 3.

Elizabeth: The Lady and The Sacred Grove 

Diana: The Queen of Swords and The Knight of Pentacles.

Did I read while I wrote? I certainly did. My keeper shelves contain many of the books I didn’t want to end.

My favorite authors include

Jo Beverley’s Company of Rogues and her Malloren series

Stephanie Laurens’s The Bastian Club and the Cynster series

Most anything written by Nora Roberts writing as Nora not J.D.

Current favorite authors?

I’m waiting for Book Three of Eleria Grace’s Clubmobile Girls. I’ve reread the first two books a couple of times. Her research is fantastic and since I had uncles who fought in WWII, as well as clients who were veterans of that war, I’ve been able to understand them better because I understand at a different level what they went through, what they survived.

I still find getting lost in a book more satisfying than movies or television. I doubt at this point in my life that will ever change.

You can find my books at your favorite e-book vendor as well as through my website www.JudithAshley.net and Windtree Press. Print books are available at Jan’s Paperbacks in Beaverton, OR and Arte Soleil in Portland, OR. Get the addresses from my website. And be sure to ask your library if you’d prefer to read my books through that resource.

Learn more about Judith's The Sacred Women’s Circle series at JudithAshley.net

Check out Judith’s Windtree Press author page.

You can also find Judith on FB! 

© 2025 Judith Ashley

My Go-To

 By Robin Weaver

Happy New Year, Everyone!

My go-to activity when I want to relax/de-stress/cheer up/regroup or just relieve boredom is the same now as it was when I was five years’ old.  Imagination.

Granted imagination has taken different forms throughout the years. When I five, I imagined I was older and no one could make me go to bed. And while I stayed awake long after the tyrants who determined my bedtime, I created stories in my head.

When I was eight, I imagined I was Marie Curie. Even then, I knew radiation was a bad thing, thus my inventions were more practical. One could argue, I wasn’t Marie Curie at all, but hey…I was eight.  Anyway, I imagined inventing a phone that didn’t need a cord, one I could take with me anywhere and with a projection that actually created an image of person on the other end of the line; yes, projection—wasn’t smart enough to imagine a tiny screen. I really did envisioned this marvel prior to smartphones, but even in my wildest dreams, I didn’t imagine this same phone would be a camera, a television, a thesaurus, a news program, and a search engine with answers from all the world’s encyclopedias.

When I was a preteen, I had a friend who slept in a coffin. Not a real coffin, but a wooden box with a twin mattress he pretended was a coffin. I tried to imagine what he imagined. Guess my imagination wasn’t that good.

After I started actually writing my first novel, I imagined becoming a best-selling author. It was a nice fantasy. Now, I imagine finding a dozen beta readers who actually wanted to read a novel.

These days, I channel my imagination into glassworks—fused, mosaics, and stained glass. I look at a piece of glass and imagine it as something else. And when I really stretch my imagination, I imagine I’m much better at it.  Like most things, glass is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration, so after the creative process becomes work, I imagine I wouldn’t rather be on the sofa watching the latest series on Amazon Prime.

Today, when I’m not envisioning my next glass project or creating a new character for the novel I swear I’ll finish in 2025, I imagine a world where Heath bars are healthy, watching Netflix burns calories, and

neither Trump, nor Kamala exist. Instead, our government is led by a Churchill type person with no hidden agenda and a workable plan to get us off fossil-fuels. (BTW, he looks like Henry Cavill).

Too far-fetched?  Hey… Once-upon-a-time I imagined a phone that didn’t need a cord—that phone is now a conference center/health monitor/scheduling genius/movie theater that also allows me to communicate with the world.

Wishing you every stretch of your imagination in 2025.

Robin