A KEY TO HAPPINESS

So our theme this month is organizing. By this time you realize that I'm not much for organizing my house. My thought with this blog is to help with another type of organizing. Organizing one's well being. A key to happiness. I don't have a magic wand, but I believe one key is knowing what makes you happy. My husband. My children. My family. My doggies. Those are a given and an easy answer. But today I'm not taking about who or what you love that makes you happy. I want to talk about what you do to make yourself happy. 

So what makes me happy?

  

I'm happiest when I'm busy. I'm like my father that way. He always had a project or two underway when I was younger. My father was a high school teacher and basketball coach. He was also a workaholic. My siblings and I used to cringe if he didn't have a summer job because it meant one thing- we were going to be busy. And I mean busy. One summer my father thought we should get a feel for what real work was like. He had us hoe out a whole cotton patch. Yes, manually. Yes, he had a tractor that could have plowed it nicely. But we wouldn't have gained that experience in life. Experience he always contended was important.

Over time I have come to realize one thing. I have become my father. No, I have never made my children hoe out a cotton patch, but it wouldn't have hurt them if they had. No, I have come to understand my father better, because in a sense I have become him. I have to be busy. I don't need a lot of sleep. I can't stand it when I don't have control of a situation. And I have become a workaholic myself.

I'll admit it. I like to work. I like my job at the hospital. I love to write. If I had a little more time, I'm sure I would like to clean my house...but I have all these projects. I read what most authors recommend- to complete one project at a time when it comes to writing. I'm sure that would be a good idea. I have only one problem with that- I can't do it.

THE JUDAS KISS

I'm happy when I'm writing. I'm not even organized when I write. I'm a panster. I don't follow an outline. I go with the flow of the story. Oh, I know where I want to go. It's just the journey to that end - most of the time, I'm not exactly certain how I'm going to get there, but I have faith in my story. It comes. I have to feel the story. But that means I go and come to my writings. When I'm in the middle of writing, I become obsessed with the story or that portion of it. If I'm stuck at a point, I move on to what I am feeling.

Why am I telling you this? It explains why I have so much going on this year with my writing. Everything seems to be finished at one time. THE JUDAS KISS was just released. It's my first book in the Tide of Charleston series. I'm so excited about The Judas Kiss because the series is set in Charleston. I love the mystic of Charleston. I have two more releases with the Tides of Charleston, The Promise in May and Another Night Falls is September. Under my pen name, Carrie James Haynes, I'm continuing on with the Whispers of a Legend series releasing, Vision of Destiny, hopefully at the end of February. Then I have Daughter of Deceit (historical paranormal) set to be released at the end of January.   

So much to do...but I'm happy. So what about you? What do you do that makes you feel better?

Check out my new release, The Judas Kiss, a historical fiction book sweeping from Charleston Harbor to the ballrooms of London during the turmoil of the American Revolution. Also excited- Whispers of a Legend, PartOne-Shadows of the Past has gone FREE on Amazon! 

SHADOWS OF THE PAST

Can find me over on Novel Works, my historical blog, and 

Castles in the Air.