January 16 2023

Failing to Win

I started playing Wordle on a Thursday because my friend Ruth was able to explain it so I understood it. I began sharing my results the next day, on Friday 2/18/2022. My husband had previously tried to get me to join in with him and the kids and play daily but it didn’t make sense when he explained it, so I didn’t try.

Let me attempt to explain the game. You have six chances to guess the correct 5-letter word each day. You can only play once a day. If a letter is the right letter in the right spot, it turns green, if it is a right letter in the wrong spot it turns yellow. It just makes sense to use what you learn in each guess to help you choose your next guess. You can play at https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html

When I first learned to play, I didn’t worry about how many guesses it took me to get the word, I just didn’t want to fail. I was excited by the fact that I could get the word right in 6 guesses or less. My immediate family has a group text titled Wordle where we post our results each day. . On the group text we often comment on the cool patterns created by our unique guesses that day. I also share my daily results with Ruth. I try to remember to play daily.

I have discovered many of my friends and acquaintances also play Wordle. We have even had discussions about whether it is better to start with the same word every day or pick from a variety of words with 5 of the most common letters. One of my favorite words to start with is STORM, another is FRUIT,  but I also use LEARN sometimes. Sometimes as I think of which word to start with, a word pops into my brain and anything else I think of using just doesn’t seem as perfect as the one that popped into my head, so I go with it. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not so much, but I have learn to trust the words that push themselves into my brain. I have trouble guessing words with two of the same letter, or with an X or Z, these just seem so unlikely that sometimes it causes me to fail. A few times the word of the day made me say, “Really?!?, with 14,000 plus 5-letter words to pick from they chose THAT?”

Today a comment by my friend Ruth inspired me to write this post. Her inspiring post is shown here. “Wrong guess between two possibilities. RATS. Have to start a new streak.” My response to her was, “It’s not about streaking. It’s about challenging your brain to think every day. It thinks longer on the days you fail than it does on the days you get to the right word in 4 or fewer guesses. So as long as you were thinking and not trying to fail, every fail is actually just you exercising your brain longer, and when muscles get exercised longer, they get stronger. So you win.”

It has been almost a year since I began playing Wordle, and I want to share my stats  here. I will take that 98% win rate and ignore that it also means I have failed a few times.

Sounds almost like a life lesson, I thought. Maybe worth sharing. Could turn it into a blog post. That seems like a good idea. So here I am writing my first blog post in almost three years, and it’s all Ruth’s fault!

The longer we stay away from something, like posting to a blog regularly, the harder it is to come back. I was in the habit of posting once a week every Thursday without fail. I posted March 5, then March 12, 2020. Then on March 17th the company I work for sent almost every employee home to work and only a handful of us, considered essential, continued to show up in person. My creative impulse was stifled. I tried again, on March 26th, after missing just the one weekly post. Then I posted again after skipping three weeks and a day, on Friday April 18, 2020. I wanted to share the cheerful Shaun the Sheep statue photos I had taken in September 2015 on our last trip to London. I took so many photos because they were all so colorful and cheerful. That seemed like something everyone could use after living more that six weeks in a pandemic world. After that, I stopped doing anything creative and haven’t started up again.

All my writing groups and crochet groups had gone dark, not meeting for the foreseeable future. I saw almost nobody I knew or recognized except the handful of people at work. It has taken a long time to make sense of the new normal in life. I didn’t intend to stay away so long, but making a come back is hard. I got yarn from my daughter for Christmas and at first I felt bad that she had spent her money on something I would never use. Then I figured I should give crocheting a try again, and that perhaps the yarn cakes she gave me that were so colorful a pretty should be my inspiration. So on Christmas Day, I found myself searching for crochet patterns that would take just the one cake she had provided and I wouldn’t have a bunch left over. I wanted to use it all up, but not need to buy more to finish the project. That was tougher than I thought it would be. So I am back to crocheting having done almost none since March 2020. I am using the less colorful of the two cakes she got me (Baby Cake Pool Party) to make a baby afghan. No for anyone I know, just because. We shall see how well it turns out before deciding what to do with the slightly larger and much more brightly colored Big Cake Rainbow Jellys.

Since I have jumped back into one of my former creative activities, it only seems logical to give writing a go again too.

I can’t promise I will get back to posting weekly, but now that I have created one post, maybe the next one will be easier. I can tell you that I have made the commitment to keep this domain name for 5 more years and paid for hosting for the next 3 years. So it would seem silly not to use it. Stay tuned…

Category: Blogging, Come Back, Crochet, Writing | Comments Off on Failing to Win
December 5 2019

My 7th NaNoWriMo – Did I Win?

Every November for the last six years, I would tell myself I CAN win NaNoWriMo this year, I know I can because I have done it before. What always takes me by surprise is how different each of my seven, consecutive NaNoWriMo wins has been. This year was a real struggle. I was working at the same company as last year, but this year, the job I have is almost completely in front of a computer screen for eight to ten hours a day with only a few walks down the hall to the ladies room as a break from the screens and to stretch the kinks out from sitting so long. I work through lunch. The last thing I want to do after working all day staring at a computer screen, or in this case three screens, is go home or anywhere really and do more of the same. So this year was difficult in a different way than it ever has been before. I did not end up writing at work at all.

This year was different in another way, because, as I mentioned in my update post a month ago, I was sharing my current word count every day that I was at work in a very public way. It helped to motivate me to try to stay on par with my word count, just knowing others would be checking in on my progress. A few are still asking me if I really wrote 50,000 words last month. Yes, I did, how could I not? Today, Danny asked if I wrote 50,000 unique words, and I admitted that there are some words that show up more than once in the entirety of what I wrote, like a and the for instance. I think it amazes him, and I understand completely. It still amazes me too.

So in case you are wondering, the top graph shows how far above or below par or goal I was each day and the bottom chart shows how much or how little I wrote on each day. I finished the challenge on November 29th, and did not write at all on the 30th. There was no point since they took away the badge for writing all 30 days this year. I was over it and so ready to be done writing by then.

If, like me, you are a chart nerd and want to see the stats from my previous years, you can see my 2017 results and my 2013 to 2016 comparisons. There is even an entire category devoted to NaNoWriMo because it has made such a huge difference in my life. The thing that impressed me the most after seeing the newly revised NaNoWriMo.org website was the total number of words I have written for the various events I have participated in since November 1, 2013. (See below, 422,170 words!)

That words written total doesn’t count all the blog posts I have written and shared, including the guest blog post from August 21, 2017 on the NaNoWriMo Blog, I was especially excited to be asked to guest write for them. I had no idea back then that I would someday see that I had accomplished so much writing in just seven years. I still tell myself when I am faced with doing seemingly impossible things, that I can do impossible things and I continue to do impossible things. I am a writer. I push myself to do what most would consider crazy and impossible every November, I write at least 50,000 words. Someday, I might convince myself to actually edit them and get them out in the world, but not this year. That is future Karen’s project.

I learned that I can still do it, that I am a winner, that it isn’t always fun, but I am always glad I have done it and pushed myself to get the words in my head down in the computer file. Will I always write in November for NaNoWriMo? Always is a huge commitment. Right now I must say that continue the streak that is now seven years long is hugely motivating. This year I learned that I can still get my words down mostly at home and that ten to fifteen minute word sprints can be very productive. I am so happy to have gotten so many of my childhood memories down to edit later. Will YOU be writing with me next November? Don’t you just love the theme this year? It is gorgeous! Happy 20th year of NaNoWriMo, may it continue indefinitely!

Category: Goals, NaNoWriMo, Writing | 1 Comment on My 7th NaNoWriMo – Did I Win?
December 20 2018

Writing An Annual Family Newsletter

Holiday Newsletter

I penned my first official holiday newsletter in December 1994 and let me tell you it was a sad little thing. I typed it on one of the school’s computers in a huge font with some really bad clip art, and I was so proud of myself for actually writing a page and a half. I printed it out in color on a dot matrix printer and most likely copied it in black and white because color just wasn’t a possibility for us back then. It was just meant to go inside the Christmas cards as a way of updating everyone on what was happening in our family. I’m not sure if I didn’t have the nerve to write another one for years or if I lost a couple, but the next one I can find a copy of wasn’t written until 2001.

I have been very consistent from 2001 on only missing 2004 (a year after losing my mother, I just didn’t have it in me) and 2008 (not sure why). I used preprinted holiday-themed stationery for the letters between 2001 and 2007 which kept the printing costs down. I remember having prints of a photo of the boy printed to include in cards one year, but that was pricey too. In 2006, things changed because it was the first holiday season after I began working in the print shop. One of the perks was knowing what the possibilities were and getting a super cheap price on printing the photos in sheets and in color then cutting them apart to include with the letter.

I found a great little template on Microsoft Publisher that would change the look of this holiday newsletter forever. The little newsletter I affectionately dubbed Beidelman Bits was born in December 2009. Publisher let me insert photos and wrap the text around them and divide the newsletter into sections to cover each of the four of us and what was going on with us. By that time, the kids were teens and I had to resort to finding photos on Facebook in some cases because much of their lives took place away from the home and family life of days gone by.

I discovered really quickly that a picture really was worth a thousand words and began writing the letters by gathering the various photos I would use and writing the words to tell about the photos to fill in around them. I may have gotten lazy with the writing or carried away with the number of photos I would include, but they looked good and many of the relatives that received them each year commented on how much they looked forward to getting them and enjoyed reading them each year.

I always included the ages of the kids and what grade they were in at school. I tried to keep everyone updated on what activities we were all participated in and what family trips we took. I even included news of pets and the occasional photos of the pets.

I tried getting the kids to each write a paragraph or two about their year, but that just didn’t go over well with them. I usually didn’t let any of the family read what I had written until after it was in the mail.

I chose which kid to highlight on the front page by who had graduated that year from either high school or college and made sure to include plenty of photos of course. When they went off to college, I included the school mascot and the kids’ mailing addresses. One year my son got a package out of the blue with a Big Bang Theory TV show t-shirt from a cousin of mine who knew from reading my newsletters that my son was a physics major and would like the show.

I really had trouble scrounging up photos of the kids once they were away at college, and the news was not as plentiful about them and what they were doing. Now that they no longer either one live with us, I wonder if I should even be including the kids in the newsletter anymore. There is really very little to report. We don’t hear from them often and other than working hard and paying off student loans and trying to make ends me while “adulting” there is not much to report.

We still have the pets and our trips to report on, oh and there was that little matter of being unemployed for seven months. Which reminds me, since I no longer have a job at a print shop, the color printing has become cost prohibitive again. Last year we went through two complete sets of cartridges for our inkjet printer to get the newsletters printed in color and that was still considerably cheaper than printing it at any of the local printers because they really overcharge for color printing. I’m not sure how we will handle the printing thing this year. The photos just really don’t have the same effect when printed in grayscale, but the budget doesn’t allow for very many options. We could almost buy a color laser printer for what it would cost to print fifty two-sided color copies at any print shop. The inkjet printer just doesn’t do that great a job, but it is still better than not having color at all.

I am beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just email the newsletter out, but a number of the older family members would never see it then and I am told that many people have saved all of the newsletters to either reread or compare the photos from year to year.

As I look back on the newsletters which I keep in a binder in sheet protectors I can really see in the early years how my computer skills progressed. In the later years, mostly the only things that progressed were my photo cropping and placing skills as I added more and more photos to each year’s issue.

If you have any suggestions, tips or know of a low-cost printing solution, please let me know. Do you write an annual holiday letter? I wish more people did. Usually, all we get are Christmas cards with a signature or a printed name inside. All that tells me is that the person is most likely still alive to send the cards out and that I haven’t been cut from the list yet. I’d love to get news of what is happening in their lives or even see pictures of the kids, grandkids, and pets. In some cases, I’ve never seen their houses so that would be cool too.

If you thought this was going to be out newsletter posted for the whole world to see, sorry to disappoint you. If you are one of the chosen fifty or so households that regularly receive our newsletters and your address has changed, please shoot me an email or text me your new address, please. I save the ones that are returned and sometimes mail the missed year out the next year so you will have it because I can’t bring myself to throw them away. Invariably I get one or two back each year no matter how carefully I check the address list.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Category: Family, Writing | Comments Off on Writing An Annual Family Newsletter
December 6 2018

NaNoWriMo Wrapup

The first part of this post was written when I was in the middle of November and needed something to write, so I thought I’d record my thoughts on how my month was going as of Tuesday, November 20, 2018.

This year, I tried something a little different with NaNoWriMo. First I should probably mention that I started a new temp job on October 22nd and that didn’t give me a lot of time to do last minute story planning and such.

I had a general idea for a story that sounded pretty cool and was working on planning it on October 25th at the Thursday night writing group, but I just never quite got the whole plotting and planning thing figured out. At some point, before that, I had seen a contest where they were giving away “Novel Kits” and all you had to do was choose which of the three they were offering you wanted to win and leave a comment with that and a couple of sentences about why you wanted to write the story in the novel kit. So, knowing that there was little to no chance of my entry being one of the two winners, I figured I had nothing to lose by throwing my hat into the ring. I kind of forgot all about it until I was cleaning out my email and fond the notice in there with the novel kit I had requested attached.

Now I am not one to question when Providence moves on my behalf, so I figured if the novel kit fell in my lap practically on the eve of NaNoWriMo then I should take that as a sign that it was meant for me to use that as my NaNo novel this year. I read through it and printed it out. I wasn’t really even sure what a novel kit consisted of when I entered to win one but figured I’d never win, so it didn’t matter. I sure didn’t have the funds to buy one so I would just keep trying to muddle through planning my story idea. Continue reading

Category: NaNoWriMo, Writing | 1 Comment on NaNoWriMo Wrapup
August 2 2018

6 Writing Idea Generators

I hate to admit it, but sometimes I have no inspiration to write. I know, shocking, right?

When this happens, there are several things you or I can do to get over it. I am going to share six of them here.

1) One-Word Prompts

One of my favorites is using the one word prompts given each week at FiveMinuteFriday.com. These one-word prompts always seem to turn into something, though I won’t even pretend they are always easy to write to. Knowing that at least fifty other people are going to be writing and posting about the same word in the next week helps me not to admit defeat and give up on any specific week/word.

So, what if you randomly opened any book with your eyes closed and chose a word by pointing your finger down on the page? It could work. Since no one else would know, you could always pick a different word on the page if the one your finger landed on doesn’t inspire you to write for at least five minutes the way one of its neighboring words does. Once you have your word, set a timer for at least five minutes and see how much you can write. Remember to use the word you chose at least once. Continue reading

Category: Writing | Comments Off on 6 Writing Idea Generators