Blog – Page 4 – Shelley Burbank, Writer

☕️ 2020 Vision

The start of a new year is like opening up to the first page of a new book. I mean, it has that new book smell, right? The pages are unmarred by coffee stains or chocolate smears. Neither bathtub water nor rain has warped the paper into waves and bubbles. The corners aren't dog-eared yet. Nobody's underlined or written in the margins. It's all ahead for you to discover, a wonderful adventure waiting to unfold.Something about the first page of a new book excites me with possibilities. Sure, ten pages in I may be disappointed. Midway,…

The Coziest Time of the Year

In which I try to make amusing excuses about neglecting my blogging responsibilities.

San Diego Open Mic June 2019

Dear Reader: Every second Friday of the month, San Diego Writers, Ink hosts a Dime Stories open mic event. I love these readings. What better way to spend a relaxing Friday evening than listening to some short personal narrative, memoir, or short fiction while at the same time honing my own public reading skills and also making some friends and connections in the San Diego literary scene? This was my third time at The Ink Spot, a gathering room big enough for about fifty people, a podium, and a sign-up table at the back. The atmosphere…

Success: What is it Good For?

Shelley Burbank
May 22, 2019
Good Life Crazy Times / Mindful Monday / Uncategorized
15 Comments

I’ve been thinking about success a lot these days--what it means, what happens if you fail, what happens if you don’t fail. Is the journey really the point, or are we just making ourselves feel better about our failures when we invoke the journey? Is it better to aim high and land somewhere south of the benchmark? Or is it better to aim low at first and then set our sights a little bit higher the next time? And always, always the question: does any of this really matter at the end of the day, week,…

Bullet Journal for Beginners

So, a few years ago I was at a craft store and saw some pretty, sorbet-colored journals. They came with stickers and insert packs, and the part of me that loves the idea of being all girly and organized just about fell into a swoon looking at each variation and imagining myself sitting at a perfect, tiny antique desk every morning and planning my day while birds sang outside and some Vivaldi streamed through my computer speakers. Of course my fingernails would be perfectly manicured, too. No rain would ever be falling. Every piece of my…

A Good Life In Crazy Times

“Once upon a time . . .” Several years ago now, I wrote a blog about sustainable and local living. It started as a log of the year I attempted to stay out of “big box” stores, exploring, instead, local options: locally produced, locally grown, or at least locally owned retail stores. The topics expanded into DIY, especially knitting and other fiber arts, and gardening, cooking, and storing of food. I shared fashion finds from Goodwill and other second-hand stores. The initial year turned into two, three, five before winding down to a close in year…

San Diego Open Mic Debut

So this happened. One week after arriving in San Diego, I jumped right in to the literary scene and signed up to read at the 2nd Friday Dime Stories open mic event at San Diego Writers, Ink. SDWI is a writing organization that offers classes, workshops, writing groups, and other events for writers of all ages, styles, and stages. In conjunction with DimeStories.org, SDWI hosts a three-minute prose open mic night every month in their meeting room at Liberty Station in the Point Loma area of the city. Hubby and I went for a pre-event drink…

Pink Is My New Favorite Color

I used to love the color red. I loved it so much I painted my bedroom walls a deep, vibrant poppy. This despite the common knowledge that red is too exciting for a sleeping space. Not to mention the passion/anger factor. You don’t want to go to bed angry in a scarlet bedroom, right? Well, let’s see . . .Cindy Bailen, in an online article for USA Today Network’s site Reviewed reported on a study conducted by Travelodge. The hotel surveyed 2,000 households about how the colors of their bedroom walls affected their sleep . .…

Fiction: I Never Was That Fond of Kafka

I never was that fond of Kafka. We had to read “The Metamorphosis” in high school, and I just couldn’t feel sympathy toward the main character because all I could picture was this giant bug scrabbling around a pitiful room full of shabby furniture. I mean, insects are pretty gross. June bugs thumping against screen doors on summer evenings give me the willies. Japanese beetles fornicating in disgusting insect orgies while turning my crabapple leaves into brown lace make me positively murderous. I have no problem grabbing the pickle jar full of bleach and water and…