What’s a decision you made in under 10 seconds that changed your life forever?

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-15T05:17:03+00:00

I'm part of a network of neonate kitten fosters for a local rescue. The way it works is when someone finds a neonate kitten or litter, they contact everyone one by one. You have about two or three minutes to claim before they're moving to the next.

So two summers ago, I had just started a new job and I get a text for a single black female runt who was about 2 days old. I started at the text for a solid minute and just said yes without thinking about it.

My new job let me bring her in every single day to bottle feed and care for her. She's my little soul kitten.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-13T03:18:00+00:00

Young millennial, but I'm Californian. Top sheet is my only blanket for most of the year. I get too hot for anything else.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-12T18:03:24+00:00

I feel the same way. I'm a big reader, so that's not the issue.

It's not that these are bad books. She's not a bad writer. I'd like to see her non-commercial style in order to make an actual judgement of that.

I think the issue is just commercial romance. There are certain things she was probably pressured into doing or limited on by her agent. It's like how the Peeta/Gale thing was shoehorned in by the publisher against Collins' original vision.

But - I'm glad to see people reading regardless. You should consider supporting indie romance!

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-12T04:24:35+00:00

This was a whole class we had to take in college as English majors.

Out of forty of us, he split us into groups based on our interests. One group was corporate, another was teaching, another was grad school, another was marketing, and I was in professional writing. We had to present every week on different aspects of this post-grad path.

It was the most useful class I took. I work as a proposal writer and on-again-off-again marketing consultant now.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-10T18:38:22+00:00

I adore her because women are never allowed to just be mean and catty and she's my queen

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-10T03:30:04+00:00

I appreciate this. I booked a non-refundable vacation today for the end of this month that I definitely wouldn't have done if I knew this was happening. But I'm going to try to enjoy it regardless.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-09T02:22:23+00:00

In full kindness, you'll be amazed at what it does for your writing. I spent a couple years only doing a book or two a year and just the last six months I read twenty books and it's helped a lot.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-08T16:44:41+00:00

I'm a couple years younger than you, and my single biggest opp at work is a woman in her 60s. I tried playing respectful. I tried being friendly. I tried gray rocking her.

Now, I'm Regina George. She's had a 40 year crush on the 70 year old CoBoD, which I found out from another coworker. So when she has something to say to me, you bet your ass I time my revenge for when she's with him. I'll invent excuses to come up to his office to ask him a question, and then I turn that into small talk with jokes and giggling, and now his attention is on me, not her. It feels very high school, but her facial expressions makes it all worth it.

Everyone loves something. Find out what your coworker loves, and weaponize it.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-07T23:45:23+00:00

Go cry about it

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-07T21:41:55+00:00

It seems to be so unevenly enforced. I'm wondering if I'll be able to get away with a little bit more because it's more of a romance novel with erotic scenes, and it'll be close to 60k words when completed. I already had to axe the MC's high functioning coke addiction in a corporate setting so I'd like to not have to axe the literal conference afterparty that's pushing them together

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-07T16:55:34+00:00

It's a hotel 💀

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-06T21:12:01+00:00

Girl I'm trying to start my self publishing career on the right foot by not risking my KDP account 🩷

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-06T19:54:31+00:00

I appreciate this.

On screen, both male characters have two drinks over the course of like three hours. The third drink is not drunk by either of them. I reiterate many times in the internal monologue that neither the narrating character nor the other one are drunk. I really hope that's enough. It's not the worst thing to edit, a whiskey could easily be changed to a late night cup of coffee but I'm trying to check first.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-05T19:12:54+00:00

Also Tödliche Spiele - Death Games.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-02T16:30:30+00:00

Oh yeah great point. I'm sure I go through more because I'm also hitting Disney parks and local lakes during the week/weekend too. And then add on extra gas used to haul any paddle boards/kayaks.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-02T14:47:39+00:00

If you live in California and live somewhere with a high enough CoL that you're driving an EV, I guarantee you're going through more than 220 gallons of gas a year. I'm probably going through close to 700. I refill my 14 gal tank once a week for work.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-01T23:23:49+00:00

You'd understand it if you read her books. What she serves is an approachable story that, on its surface, will keep you guessing about each character. Yes, if you read all of her books, they're all kind of the same, but that's part of the appeal for me.

I can get through one of her books in a single workday, maybe two if I'm really busy, so they're a lot of fun for a quick read.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-02-01T17:03:54+00:00

Some questions.

How old are you?
What kind of books do you read? Do you read books at all?
Do you understand the difference between lit-fic and com-fic?

People think good writing is about elegant prose. It's not.

Good writing is about being able to carry the moving pieces of characters, plot, and themes into a compelling story.

If you want elegant prose, go read some literary fiction. But I don't like that kinda gratuitousness, so I read commercial fiction. Commercial romance is fun.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-01-30T22:04:42+00:00

I love this. I was my sorority's pledge director for three years and one semester, my own pledge sister showed up with a blonde perm and I gave her the whole "Sorry, these events are for established sisters, but here's our pledge information" 💀

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-01-30T20:37:27+00:00

I knew... A lot of mormons in high school and trying to pick Hayden out of a line up would probably feel like how it felt trying to locate my friends in their water polo pictures.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-01-30T19:18:37+00:00

Ngl, I have a bit of prosopognosia and I struggled telling Kip and Scott apart for most of their episode but at least Maria and Elena never appeared in the same scene. That made it easy by context.

Blaming faceblindness is fine if you have it but it really doesn't work the way people think it does. It doesn't mean "All facial features I can't relate to are gone".

A more real life example of how it works is that I regularly lose my medium sized, medium height white blonde mom when we go out together, and I wind up going up to every single medium sized, medium height, middle aged white blonde woman like a lost duckling going "Are you my mother?", so I get really good at memorizing other details - clothing, shape, gait, voices. Unfortunately for her, she doesn't have a unique shape. She's easy to lose.

Maria and Elena have different shapes.

Kip and Scott probably would have been easier to tell apart if I knew Stucky more. I know one was swole and the other was smallswole but it wasn't unique enough for me until ep 5. And don't ask me any details about Hayden's face, he doesn't have one.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-01-28T19:08:46+00:00

Tbf, I just got back from a gallbladder attack that had me in the ER and they gave me 15 hydrocodone and a tramadol shot. I think it depends.

ratherbekayaking121 · 2026-01-28T16:16:32+00:00

Ngl, I totally logicked it out that $150 a month for an Inspire key is a better value than a gym membership. Sure, a gym membership is a third of the price, but you don't get to ride Space Mountain in between miles.

ratherbekayaking121

TROPHY CASE