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Podcast Unravels the Mystery Behind the Kristin Smart Disappearance
I think I first heard about the Kristin Smart case back in the late 90s on the TV show “Unsolved Mysteries.” She was a 19-year-old student at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo. The Friday before Memorial Day weekend, Kristin was ready to unwind and blow off some steam. She attended a party thrown by a local fraternity, and after walking back towards her dorm with a few other students, was never seen again. 24 years later, we still don’t know what happened to Kristin. But according to recent news reports, the mother of Kristin Smart has been told to prepare for new and breaking details about the case. When…
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Five Days of Meals on the MyWW Purple Plan
My weight has fluctuated ever since I graduated from college. Once I got into the routine of lunching with co-workers, eating take-out after a long day of work, and later, trying to make healthy meals for my family as an exhausted young mom, it’s not hard to see why it’s been a struggle. At the beginning of 2018 I was fed up once again. I had let myself get to a point where I was living in leggings and oversized sweaters, and reaching for every carb imaginable to combat stress and a busy schedule. Pizza and sweet treats were my biggest downfalls. I decided to join WW after I heard about their Freestyle…
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My Top Five True Crime Posts
Round-ups are some of my favorite posts to read, and hopefully this one will be no exception. In this post, I’ve gathered up my top five posts all about true crime–whether it’s discussing theories behind the addiction to missing people or specific cases that have stuck with me over the years. Situational awareness. A glimpse into the dark side of humanity. The adrenaline rush. In this post, I take a deep dive into Three Reasons Female Writers are Addicted to True Crime. The Case of Mike Williams. This story out of Florida intrigued me from the moment I learned about it, from the shifty wife to the “best friend” who sold him a…
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My 2019 EOY Writing Wrap-Up
It’s Dec. 31, and a lot has happened with my writing this year. Because I’m such a fanatic about listening to EOY wrap-ups from other entrepreneurs I follow, I thought it might be a good time to go over some of the accomplishments and setbacks I’ve experienced this year. Let’s get right to it. 2019 started with a bit of a quandary. To be honest, I was working in a job that made me question my skills and talents on a regular basis. I think a lot of it was that it was a structure (the company was a nonprofit organization) that didn’t have a lot of built-in support for my position, in…
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A New Decade of Writing
It’s hard to believe we’re about to conclude another decade. I’ve been reflecting on this a bit, and marveling about how far I’ve come since I graduated from college, with a stack of credit card bills and student loans to pay off, and working two jobs so I could support myself. And even then there were plenty of days where I was eating pasta with plain tomato sauce for almost every dinner. If I wanted to get fancy I would throw some feta cheese on top. Back then, I never dreamed I could make money writing from home, and that research for a million different topics would be right at my fingertips. I…
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Setting My Intentions Each Day by Journaling
A few months ago, I heard a podcast episode that pitched the product, the “Start Today Journal.” I started to shrug it off at first, because as much as I love writing, I haven’t had too much luck with journaling over the years. But as motivational speaker and entrepreneur Rachel Hollis began explaining the methodology behind this journal, I grew more interested. What a lot of us fail at is having too many goals at one time, which can lead to overwhelm, causing us to beat ourselves up time and again when we don’t achieve any of them. Hollis developed a practice that focuses on writing down ten goals over and over. And…
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Thoughts from Me During This Crazy Time of Year
The following is my editor’s letter from the December 2019 issue of Lake Norman CURRENTS, the magazine I work for, and I wanted to share with you all here. ‘Tis the Season!
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The Realities of Seasonal Affective Disorder
This is a time of year I dread–when the days are shorter, colder and there is less sunlight to go around. I never really realized how much it affected me until the last few years. Before, I would acknowledge that yes, I tended to stay indoors more November through March and reach for the carbs, and it became more of a chore to take my dogs on our daily walks. Now, there’s no denying it. Being in my early 40s, I’ve also struggled with insomnia the past two years. I will be perfectly fine, and then once in bed, I can’t shut my mind off. I start thinking of social situations where I…
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Review of “Stranger Songs” – A Musical Tribute to the Show “Stranger Things”
Few things make me happier than writing about pop culture. I just completed a post for WOW! Women on Writing about why I loved the Netflix Original Series “Stranger Things.” One of the things I couldn’t get to in my post was Ingrid Michaelson’s tribute album to the show, so I decided to continue with the theme and write about the collection of songs here. I hadn’t yet watched the show when I heard about the release of Michaelson’s “Stranger Songs,” and I waited until I was familiar with the show before downloading the album. There were a few songs that immediately drew me right in, starting with “Hey Kid,” a song about…
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Update on the Mike Williams Murder Case
It took 18 years, but justice seems to have finally been served in the Mike Williams case. I first wrote about the story in this post, “The Absurd Alligator Story: An Update on the Disappearance of Mike Williams.” As I stated in that post, it was pretty clear from the get-go who was responsible for the disappearance of Mike, a 31-year-old doting father and husband to wife Denise. I never believed the theory that Mike disappeared while duck hunting on Lake Seminole in the early morning hours before he and Denise were to set out on an anniversary trip, nor did I believe that he had been eaten by alligators. All the evidence…