Sep 13 2024

A Fundamental Shift for Fall

Author: Jamie DeBree • Discussion: No Comments

Happy Friday the 13th!

Fall is fast approaching, and with it, vacation days that will be spent on publishing tasks rather than traveling, which I’m looking forward to. I’ve enjoyed the change of pace this summer, though a lot was getting prepared, but I’m somewhat relieved to go back to not trying to fit travel into our weeks along with everything else. We may end up taking another short trip before winter, but nothing to long or intensive.

Last weekend while struggling to get everything done even though I was on a break from making dog food, I finally admitted to myself that I’ve taken on too many responsibilities here at home, and I need to either give myself more time to deal with them, or dispense with some of them. This after buying two more fish (pretty platies – pictured above) for one of my aquariums because I’d planned to merge it with the other large one, but I’m definitely not going to have the time or money to do that until early next year, and I didn’t want to look at a mostly-but-not-quite empty tank for the next six months (there were/are several khuli loaches in there, but they spend most of their time in the sand).

It’s difficult to impossible to decide what to give up. I love my aquariums, my plants (Do I need so many? No. But can I decide which ones to get rid of? Also no.), my writing, crafting, and while I don’t love cleaning so much, I need to do more of that, just because it needs to be done.

So, I’m working on figuring out how to spread things out more over the week, and do little bits every day instead of trying to do everything on the weekends. It’s definitely a process, but I think that will allow me to keep what I have, at least, and if I adjust my weekend sleep schedule to be more “normal” (*sad sigh*), I should have more time for writing and crafting things on the weekends, when I need bigger blocks of time for those things.

It also occurred to me last weekend when I was thinking about all of this, that a major theme of my life is trying to organize everything enough that I can do all the things I love, and perhaps that should have a larger focus in the books I write (or some of them, anyways). I know I’m not the only person who struggles with this, so it would be a relatable thing for readers, and it’s what I know and am constantly thinking about.

Perhaps this will be the next series idea I’ve been looking for? I’ll play with it a bit this weekend, and see what shakes out.

The Magpie novel is coming along well, and Alex hasn’t started the spooky story yet, so we should both probably keep/get moving on those. And I really want to get the print formatting done for Alex’s Death by Veggies collection for an October release. So that’s what we’re working on at the moment in publishing.

And that’s all I’ve got for this week. Until next time,

That’s it for this week! If you have a favorite thing to share, or want to recommend a book, TV show, video or podcast, comment below, email me at jamie@jamiedebree.com, or catch up with me on Facebook or Instagram.

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Sep 03 2024

Showers Are a Peculiar Sort of Magic

Author: Jamie DeBree

I’ve loved long showers since I was a kid (much to the chagrin of my parents, as you might imagine). The average time I need underneath that warm, inspirational spray is twenty to thirty minutes, and while I might try to be quicker if I have to, I’ll often postpone a shower just so I can take a properly long one.

During the week, I do take a couple of quick “wash & shave” showers before work (no wet-hair involved), but even on those days, I have an alarm set on my watch for the time I need to be out, and I’ll push those 15 minutes every single time.

The thing is, my mind relaxes in the shower, and it’s one of the few places on earth that no one bugs me. I have ideas, and they just sort of explode in that warm, humid cocoon of steam. My brain goes a hundred miles a minute, and I often solve problems, make plans, plot stories, plot series, get to know characters, and I come out with both a laundry list of ideas and at least a half-formed plan on how I’m going to work on all of them.

It’s exciting, exhilarating, and I wish I could go to bed at night with the same enthusiasm (and results). This weekend, I took a shower, and came out with a whole plan for how to incorporate some flash stories in with a Christmas idea I had earlier, and also some epiphanies into my current drafts and characters. It was fantastic, and I’m excited to get to work on making those ideas reality.

Are your showers inspirational and fun? If not, where do you go, or what activity inspires you in a way that nothing else can?

Until next week,

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Aug 02 2024

This & That

Author: Jamie DeBree

I’ve been trying to make the time to blog regularly…obviously, that’s going well. I keep telling myself I’ll figure it out eventually, and then my hormone supplements run out, or I make the horrible decision to eat myself into 12 more pounds (which affects not just my hormones, but also my overall sleeping/living/daily life), or life just happens and I try to swim with the current and end up getting tumbled against the rocks.

In any case, a lot has happened since the last blog post, some of which will become posts all their own eventually:

– Hubby and I took another daytrip to collect Montana Bookstore Trail stamps. We went northwest this time, to Livingston and Bozeman. Briefly, five bookstores in one day is too much when you have to drive a ways to get to them. Also, I may need another bookcase.

– During our trip, our newly installed windshield failed in a rainstorm, and water was leaking into the car on the passenger side (right onto my bare legs). Our van’s been in the shop all week, and we should get it back Friday (“today” as you’re reading this, maybe).

– There was one day this week that was absolutely beautiful walking weather. I’m calling it the Avocado of walking days, and I so wish I could reliably find them more often.

– My husband turned 60, so we celebrated with more food (and requisite sugar) and a rare trip to the theater to see Despicable Me 4, which was hilarious (naturally).

All that and a bit of stress at work (shaken, not stirred), equals not a lot of time left over. However, I’m trying to use that time more wisely, so I’ve managed to stop playing games (aside from Pokemon) during the week.

Now I just need to do something more productive with that time, like rewriting blurbs and planning “next scenes”.

I have been writing a bit – I’m stuck on something in the Magpie draft, so that’s sitting and waiting for me to get “unstuck”. Luckily, I never work on just one draft, so I also have a little short story started.

However, Halloween is coming! And Alex would really like to have another story out this year, so we’ll be working on that periodically as well.

So, things are happening. And I will eventually figure out how to document them here more steadily.

What are you up to? Reading? Writing? Taking walks because your weather is cooler than mine (where?!)? Comment below, email me at jamie@jamiedebree.com, or catch up with me on Facebook or Instagram.

Until next time,

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Jun 28 2024

Worth the Wait

Author: Jamie DeBree

I’ve been writing rather sporadically lately (fiction too, not just these blog posts). With fiction, I’m working on a tale of the old(ish) west, wherein a woman (or two, actually) runs away from her life on the east coast to find herself and hopefully make space in a male-dominated world here in my home state (newly minted just then) of Montana.

The part I’m working on is her journey – getting from point A to B, which in the late 1800’s was not a comfortable or particularly “fun” feat, though most of it would have been accomplished by train. Uncharacteristically, I had the first two-thirds of her travels planned out with a nice/odd little meet and hand-off, but when I got to the final third leg, I was stumped.

Not being Tolkien (or particularly liking descriptive passages of the landscape spanning more than a page or so), I had to take a break and figure out what I wanted to make of that final leg of the journey. I did some brainstorming and outlining (yes, I used AI for that, because it is very well-suited for such things and without that kind of efficient help, my very long-winded notes and research would most definitely never have been organized). I did a little more granular plotting, and got sidetracked by yet more research (because history is fascinating, which is why I have a history degree).

Then a couple nights ago, I sat down to write. My method for that when I don’t know what to write (dictation is useless if I don’t have some idea of where I’m going with a scene), is just to write the next word that logically follows the previous one, and keep typing, and eventually I find my way back into the story flow.

Well, I found my way into the flow that night, all right. I overshot my writing time by a good fifteen minutes just because I really had to get all the things out “on paper” before I left them to stew for the night. And I ended up with a nice little plot point that will add depth to my heroine’s story, fit in nicely with one of the overreaching themes of the book (that of how difficult it was for women to do anything on their own back then), and it will add a nice amount of both internal and external conflict to that first act of the book.

Not that I was thinking about any of that while writing, of course. Once you get into a writing “flow state”, the story literally just writes itself for the most part – I’m just the typist. And that is what makes writing so much fun.

I could have forced myself to keep writing when I got “stuck” on that part, and when I was younger, I probably would have. I’m glad I didn’t in this case, because the result was so much better than it would have been if I hadn’t waited. Patience was key, and I’m really glad I waited and just did more creative work “around” the story instead of bulldozing through. There’s a time for the bulldozer, of course, but in this case, it definitely benefited from a more patient touch.

Have you been rewarded for waiting lately? I think we should all be rewarded more often for that, don’t you?

Comment below, email me at jamie@jamiedebree.com, or catch up with me on Facebook or Instagram.

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May 17 2024

Respecting the Process

Author: Jamie DeBree

I’ve always been very goal-oriented. I’ve pretty much spent the entire first half (or more, but we’re thinking positively here) of my life focused on reaching goals. Graduating high school. Moving out/buying my first house. Getting my first job. Developing my first career. Paying off debt. Writing/finishing a book. Getting married. Publishing my first book. Writing more books. Paying off debt again. Working towards retirement. Trying to get to a point where I can focus solely on my writing. You get the idea.

The thing I’ve noticed more and more lately is, I’m far less patient with the process required to meet big (and small) goals than I used to be. I’m in such a hurry to just get a project done and move on to the next thing that I’m just annoyed and irritated at all the little things that need to be done between the start and end of the project.

The issue with smaller projects (individual books, for example), is that I need the smaller projects done before I can advance the larger projects. And those larger projects are parts of bigger projects yet, and so on and so forth. Since I’m always looking ahead, I’m focused on what I can’t do *yet*, rather than what I am doing *now*.

That’s really not a healthy or productive perspective, I don’t think.

The only way I can really complete those bigger projects/goals with any kind of good knowledge base and experience is to *not rush* the process needed to actually “level up”. Constantly trying to “go faster” or circumvent the whole, detailed process of whatever it is I happen to be working on at the time is not going to help in the long run, and it could certainly hinder things later on if I have to go back and learn things I missed earlier.

The trick then, is to learn to respect the process itself rather than focusing on a goal several steps ahead. It’s a tough shift when I’ve been looking at far-off goals my whole life, but I think it’s very necessary, especially at this point in my life.

Writing, weight loss, gardening (indoors and out), and dog training are all projects I’m working on now where I’m actively trying to respect the process and focus on learning all I can before it’s time to move on. I’ll freely admit – it’s difficult more days than others. But ultimately, I want to break down my own barriers to such things, and find a way to…if not enjoy, at least respect the process I need to go through.

With writing, revisions are my major issue at the moment. I think I’m starting to make progress as far as my attitude towards them goes, with the help of some new software and techniques I’ve been playing with. Sometimes just changing *how* I move through a process helps me to tolerate it – and sometimes even appreciate it – more easily.

Are you someone who enjoys the process? Or are you less enamored with the “journey” than the end goal like myself?

Drop a comment or email me at jamie@jamiedebree.com, or catch up with me on Facebook or Instagram. Discussion is always welcome.

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Mar 21 2024

The Makings of Places

Author: Jamie DeBree

Surprise! Not a post about the store, for once…yay! Though that is coming along nicely, now that I’m figuring out how to use the WooCommerce software. But I digress….

I’ve been thinking a lot about places lately. Settings, in writer-speak, but ultimately, how being in a place affects people, and how different places affect people in different ways.

Being mostly a “pantser” (wherein I write “by the seat of my pants” without hashing out a plot first), I often struggle with my settings. I don’t like to write about places that exist, because I don’t want to risk “getting it wrong”, or worse, (because my perspective will most certainly be different than the people who actually live there) malign someone else’s love of a place because of my markedly different and possibly negative perception.

I wasn’t really too worried about that last bit until I read a book set here in my hometown, by someone who moved here from elsewhere, and their perception of the place, valid as it is, really took away from the actual story for me. I spent the whole book focused on the things they didn’t like about the place I love (not that it’s perfect, but my perception of certain things didn’t match theirs, obviously), and constantly telling myself that it wasn’t something I should take personally (which I totally shouldn’t)…but just having to do that left a sour taste in my mouth for the book itself.

I don’t want to do that to someone else’s hometown.

I decided years ago to write in my own made-up places, and then a few years back, I decided to create a more concrete setting where I could place the majority of my stories, and not have to keep making up a new city or town every time I sat down to write. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out if the place names I wanted already existed in those forms, and a lot of time looking at maps so I could situate my growing city and adjacent small “tourist-trap” town somewhere that nothing else was, and that the topography matched what I needed for a specific subset of my stories.

I’ll admit right now – this is far more work than trying to get the details right for an existing place (though less work, perhaps, here in Montana than it would be elsewhere, since we still have a lot of open space to play with). But I’m all in now, and some of my drafts are rooted in these places, so they are “real” in my head and these stories couldn’t happen anywhere else.

My most recent problems are visualization and growth over time. My ability to design the layouts of my settings in my head is very limited – I have severe tunnel vision when it comes to visualizing places. I’m not a cartographer, I’m not an architect or engineer, and while I can visualize individual houses and to a limited extent, streets, I have a very hard time visualizing an entire place in my head at once (even an existing place).

I recently decided (after repeatedly trying to draw rough sketches of what I thought my towns might look like and failing spectacularly because my drawing abilities are cave-painting at best) to see if Copilot (because it’s easy to access) could give me a reasonable visual representation of my made-up towns, and more than that, since my stories span generations, if I could get a visual of how those towns/spaces would possibly change over time as far as architecture, size and skyline go. I have to say, I was really pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to have an image created of what my made-up “spaces” might look like, and how they might evolve through the decades. I went back and forth a bit on details, and got them looking like a real small city and nearly abandoned tiny town, and worked on getting the topography to look how I needed it to, and…yeah.

Now I have working visuals I can refer to while writing, that will keep me from having to explain why the saloon is in one spot in one book, and an entirely different spot in the short story I wrote during the same time period (hint: in that case, it would be my inability to remember where things are, so, writer mistake). Super handy, super helpful, and it’s going to save a ton of time having those to refer to as I’m writing.

I’ve also been doing a lot of research on how towns were formed in the late 1800’s (when my saga is starting) – the whys, the hows, the whos…and it’s all very fascinating. This is all information that will go into the stories, but not directly. It’s more that all these things will imbue life into the characters and their backgrounds, which are inextricably linked to the history of these two settlements.

And of course, the people who settled there came from somewhere else – another important part of their general makeup.

So…Meadowlark and Magpie Montana. As far as I know and can find, they only exist in my head, but they’re becoming more and more real thanks to a lot of research, some map-peeping, and some AI rendering.

Fun stuff…I’m excited to keep writing these stories and see how they turn out!

If you feel like it, tell me about one of your favorite places. I’d love to read about how it sounds, smells, tastes, and feels to be standing in the middle of a place you dearly love!

Mar 06 2024

New Store, New Perspective

Author: Jamie DeBree

In case you were wondering, setting up an online store from scratch is a pretty intensive and time-consuming process. I suppose if one uses Shopify or one of the big pre-packaged store builder services, it would be somewhat less so, but I did that when I first started selling books (in 2011), and ended up not making enough money to pay the rent, so to speak.

So this time, I decided to be smart, use my web developer skills, and set up a store (check it out on my BSB site here) that wouldn’t cost me more than it will possibly make back. If I eventually start making enough money on a regular basis, I’ll move to a “prettier” solution, but for now, it’s free WooCommerce and a few choice plugins. Plus PayPal as the sole processor, because they’re the only remotely affordable processor willing to process transactions for the more adult ebooks my Trinity alter-ego writes (if you’ve noticed her site was down, yes, I know – it was my mistake, and I’m working on it. It’s back online, but still needs some backend fixing.).

Yes, I know lots of people just ignore the Terms of Service, do what they want and hope for the best. I’m risk-averse, so I’d rather have permission before anything bad happens, thanks.

Anyways, that’s where all my blogging energy has gone lately. Setting up the store has required a lot of futzing and learning new things from taxes to shipping to order fulfillment and just managing to create and list products. Plus securing the store forms, and testing, testing, testing everything. And now that most of that (not all, but most) is out of the way, there’s the tedium of simply creating and listing all the books – and testing the delivery for each ebook to make sure it works. I’m trying to list at least two books per day (I have about an hour each night to work on this). Once I get all the ebooks up, then I’ll work on print.

In the meantime, I’m still writing, and I have several micro-fiction stories that I really want to make into bookmarks and story cards. I also have several little bits that need to be slotted into larger works-in-progress, and still more that will make very nice short stories and novellas as they’re expanded.

The new perspective I’m really trying to cultivate with all of these projects is one of not having to do everything “right now“. Being able to be okay with working on things in small chunks that don’t require a lot of focused brainpower for long periods of time. It’s very much a workflow and mental shift for me – all my life I’ve preferred to start and finish a project in as few “large chunks” of time as possible, and as quickly as possible, so this doling things out in a trickle is new and somewhat uncomfortable for me.

But that’s how we grow, isn’t it? By doing uncomfortable things, and allowing ourselves to change and flex depending on where we are in our lives at the moment.

I’m mostly just happy to be making the time to be creative. Even if it’s not as much time as I’d like, and it’s still somewhat frustrating to work in such small chunks, it’s better than being frustrated at not doing anything creative at all.

I’m also happy to be working on the business side of things again – something I haven’t done in a long time just because it was just too daunting, and often overwhelming to even try. If I wait until I “have time” to sit down and do the whole thing at once (whatever that “thing” happens to be at the moment), it won’t happen.

So I’m working on tiny pieces at a time, and accepting the fact that it’s not work that will ever actually be “finished”. It will just go on until I decide it’s time to stop.

Hopefully that won’t be anytime soon. Oh! I almost forgot. Smashwords is having their “Read a Book” week sale, and some of my books are on sale over there until Saturday. If you like cheap ebooks, check it out! You’re sure to find something interesting and entertaining!

Also, my apologies for having to add Captcha to the comments. The amount of spam written in Cyrillic was just seriously getting to be way, way too much to keep up with. And since most readers comment more on social media than here anyways…I figured it would affect a minority. Please do let me know if it gives you problems, and I’ll see what else I can figure out.

Feb 20 2024

A Story of Adaptation

Author: Jamie DeBree

As I mentioned in my resolutions post, I’m focusing on short and micro-fiction so far this year. I’m also working on creating a daily writing habit, so 50 words per (week)day is my minimum. I’m quite enjoying it even though most of the daily words aren’t going anywhere, and others need to be fleshed out into longer short stories.

But I have written a few things that I really like as micro-stories, and those, I’m turning into exclusive bookmarks and cards for my new online shop. I wouldn’t sell them as just a single tiny story, of course, but packaged into a handy bookmark (I love the prototype I’ve been using) or a card to give to someone else? That seems like the perfect use for these bite-sized bits of fiction.

As a bonus, it allows me to explore my love of paper crafts and it’s starting to make me more excited about sharing my stories with the world again.

To start this endeavor, I used a little story I call “How it Ends/How it Ended” to create a batch of simple bookmarks with a cover, two pages, and a back cover bound by a grommet at the top that allows the pages to swing out for reading. It took a bit of finagling to get things formatted and positioned correctly, but I’m really quite pleased with how they turned out in the end, and I’ll be making more bookmarks with different micro-stories throughout the year.

While I was making those, I had an idea for a card to go with the story. I think we’ve all been in a position at one time or another of seeing or running into a person within our normal sphere of life that we never quite talk to or chat with, but it feels like we know…or should know them.

Well, “How it Ends” is one of those “missed connections” stories. So I’m creating cards that read “I Think We Should Meet” on the front, and then when you open the card, you’ll read that little story, and then under the story on the right side of the card, it simply says, “Hi”. A little gift to tell someone that they’re someone you’d like to know – or at least like to talk to once in your life.

I love this on several levels…it’s self-publishing at the smallest denominator, it allows me to create both a story and a physical, hand-crafted object, and it’s something I think some people might actually find both entertaining and useful. I’ll be playing with different types of bindings and formats over time, which will be a lot of fun.

It’s allowing me to write, finish, and publish on a micro-level, using the smaller bits of time and mental energy I have available after the intensity of the day job.

Adapt and change – that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? With my current day job, I simply don’t have the mental capacity to write and publish larger works on a regular basis (though I am still working on them when I do have more energy). By changing how I work and what I’m working on, I’m enabling myself to still do what I love, on a different scale, and when my circumstances change again (eventually I’ll be able to retire), I can change up my focus and processes again.

An important life-lesson for me to remember, as I tend to think that if I can’t do exactly what I want, how I want to do it, then I should just not do that thing.

I need to be more flexible, and this is a great step in the right direction, methinks.

Have you adapted a process in order to continue doing something when your circumstances changed, just in a different way? Share your story (here, on social media, or if you’re reading via email, feel free to hit “reply”)! I’d love to hear it!

Oh! And while we’re on the subject of change – the Brazen Snake Books site has a completely new look! I’m working on incorporating a store there, so there are several links that don’t work simply because I haven’t built the store out yet. But it’s coming! Check it out if you’d like, and let me know what you think (or if you run into anything that doesn’t seem to work).

Dec 29 2023

Year in Review: 2023

Author: Jamie DeBree

Well That Was…Something.

You may want a snack and a beverage…it’s gonna be a long one. 🙂

This past year has been the weirdest and least productive I can remember in recent history. That includes 2020. Looking back at my resolutions and goals, it was mostly a bust, with pockets of unexpected and redefined success. But that’s not unsurprising considering how much of this past year revolved around medical procedures, including the anxiety leading up to them and various significant side effects after that added to my recovery times.

In many ways, it was a “lost” year as far as doing the things I want/like to do, but for the most part, the medical concerns that have been plaguing/distracting me for the past three years have been resolved and/or explained, which is good. I have some residual issues that will either heal or they won’t, but they’re things I can live with whether or not they improve, so I have zero plans to interact with medical personnel next year with the exception of my optometrist, because I really need a new pair of glasses, and my dentist for the normal preventative stuff (and that’s only ’cause I like and trust him…otherwise I’d be skipping that too, honestly).

On the other hand, I’ve experienced a few significant mental shifts as well, and those are really shaping my perception of the future and what direction I want to take things moving forward. One of my goals was to cultivate better impulse control, which I pretty much failed at. But I’m well aware of it and I’ll definitely be working harder at reigning that in for the long term.

The fact that I made a goal of 6 hours sleep per night is laughable – my sleep has been all sorts of messed up this year with over 12 weeks combined surgical recovery, and even now, some nights I can’t get comfortable. Add the absolute gem of menopause & hot flashes waking me up mid-sleep to the mix, and I’m doing really well to sleep a full 5 hours in any given night…and even luckier if I don’t pinch a nerve doing it.

Needless to say, I’ve given up on sleep goals. I gave up trying to get to bed before 1am as well, and now the “quiet time” I had scheduled for 11:30pm – 12:30am runs from around midnight to 1am. It’s working for me, and that’s a resolution I did successfully keep, which was to spend an hour every night planning for the next day and then reading before bed. So that’s a “loss-win” combo.

Speaking of reading – see that empty white rack in the photo above? That was overflowing with comic books at the beginning of the year. One of my goals (not resolutions) was to read a comic book every morning to get caught up with several year’s worth of back issues, and…that was a resounding success! The only unread comic books I have now are the larger graphic novel formats, a Spider-Man huge issue I plan to read this weekend, and then a few more Spider-Man and Venom issues that are now in my hall TBR rack. Which is where my new issues will all go from now on, because I am officially caught up! Huzzah!

I did not meet my goal of journaling daily, but I did start the year journaling, and I’m ending the year having discovered I like “art journaling” (a cross between traditional journal writing and scrapbooking, basically), and while I don’t have a definite schedule for it (yet), that will continue on into the new year with me.

My exercise goals were thrown way, way off track (and down a hill, as I couldn’t even do yoga for long stretches of time), so that was a complete bust, and I’m both heavier and more out of shape than I have been in quite awhile (currently rehabbing a wrist that atrophied more than I realized during “recoveries”, and then got strained when I started lifting weights again). Alas, there wasn’t really any way to avoid that, so…onward, with more movement in the new year.

As for my writing goals…I started out okay and then with everything else going on, I found myself trying and repeatedly failing every night during my allotted writing time. I just…couldn’t, mentally speaking. It sucked. I found myself seriously considering quitting for the first time in a long time – giving up the business name and packing it in.

Which is where one of the more significant mental shifts comes in, and I’ll talk about that more next week.

Financially, I’m not anywhere near where I wanted to be by now, but…medical expenses. Next year will be better. I also spent more than I should have on things like my rediscovered love of fishkeeping and plants, but I’m not going to feel guilty about that. This year wasn’t a good one, financially, and I’m just going to keep working on it and hopefully have better luck (and less medical issues) in the coming year.

All that said, this time last year, I was in a much worse place, constantly worrying about the near constant pain I was in, anxious about what would happen in the coming weeks, and feeling like a total failure for being unable to focus on anything productive and *yet again* having gone through another year without publishing anything.

This year, I’m in a far better place both physically and mentally, and I’m looking toward the next year with a healthy optimism and plans for making it much more productive. And even without any of the successes above, that would make this year a win.

Next week, my resolutions, goals and plans for 2024. I think I’m gonna need a (new) pair of shades. 😉

How was your year? Did you accomplish any goals you might have had, or learn something while missing them? What are your goals and/or plans for the next year?

Dec 22 2023

It’s Tradition!

Author: Jamie DeBree

Traditions = Memories

I’ve been thinking about tradition a lot lately, as one does when faced with the decision to either maintain, replace or just get rid of them a few times a year. I like tradition for the most part, but I don’t like being inflexible about it to the point of stress and hardship.

In fact, I think that’s the main problem with traditions. We tend to hold on to them so tightly, and try to recreate them so exactly that we lose sight of what we’re actually trying to preserve and hand down, which is the spirit of the thing. Experiences will be different for every person based on their perception, and that will happen whether the experience is exactly the same every year or not.

Take my Christmas tree, for example. I have two trees of different sizes – a four foot tree that’s easy to maneuver and put on a table, and a six foot tree that is beautiful and was given to me by a friend of my mom’s when I first moved out of my parents house. I love having a tree, not so much because it’s “a tree”, but because I have a nice collection of ornaments that I enjoy getting out and seeing every year. I have some ornaments that I got because they’re just pretty, but I also have a lot of ornaments that were made by other people, or hand-picked and given to me as a gift, or made by me.

I don’t put all the ornaments out every year. And I don’t use the same size tree every year. But I do like the tradition of having a tree, and there are certain ornaments that I want to see every year, so I focus on putting “a” tree up, with a minimum of the special ornaments I really want to see. Preserving the tradition without being too hung up on getting it exact from year to year.

I would love to dispense with the gift tradition altogether, but can’t seem to convince my family of that. Since we can’t get rid of it, my next preference would be to limit ourselves to giving one gift per person, preferably something small and funny/amusing, or something homemade. Alas, the older generations still cling to the “give me a list I can pick from” style of giving, so we do that, but it’s just going through the motions for my husband and I (we don’t exchange gifts for holidays…rather, if we see something the other person might like, we buy it and give it to them right then).

I do like baking, and I only really do it once a year, so I keep the cookie tradition alive. I make one cookie for each person in the family – I try to make a batch of everyone’s favorite, and then everyone gets a box with some of each type in them. My way of mingling everyone together into one big family unit through food. I don’t see myself giving that up anytime soon – it’s work, but I like it, and food is one of the most instinctive and visceral ways we show someone we care (I like/love you enough to want to help you to *survive*).

But I have no qualms in mixing up what we have for Christmas dinner. Some of the traditional foods, sure, but I see no harm in beef one year and ham the next. Actually sharing the meal with family is what’s important there.

I think the most important tradition is just spending time with friends & family (friends, if your family isn’t one you want to be around!). Making the time to sit down and play a game of Scrabble or cards, watch a movie, and just “be” in the moment. We should probably all do that more often, but the holidays are a great excuse, even if it does require a lot of energy and I’m very glad to go home after and be done with it. I just wish I had more time on either side to rest and recharge without worrying about work.

I’ve spoken to several people this year who would prefer to just dispense with all traditions and treat the holiday like any other day. I hope they are able to do that for themselves, but personally, I like punctuating the passage of time with set days to think about…well, things like this. And I also think that having so many different holiday celebrations in the same shortish time frame across the globe is a major similarity that can make us feel closer to our fellow humans…if we let it, anyways.

What are some traditions you want to preserve “as is”? Do you have any you’d like to change or update?

Writing News

Last week’s post was preempted by the need to finish the Christmas story I always send out with my cards. I did finish it though, and now I’m taking a writing break until January, when I’ll start in with my new writing goals.

Recommendation(s)

My only recommendation this week is to relax and enjoy the long weekend, whether you’re celebrating or not. Happy Holidays!

Jamie DeBree

Writer | DBA | Dog Wrangler

Writing Notes

A Fundamental Shift for Fall

Showers Are a Peculiar Sort of Magic

This & That

Worth the Wait

Respecting the Process

The Makings of Places

New Store, New Perspective

A Story of Adaptation

Year in Review: 2023

It’s Tradition!