A Christmas Adventure

Happy Holidays, readers! I hope each and every one of you has had your fair share of chocolate, baking and other assorted Christmas excesses. I, myself, have been surviving almost entirely on chocolate, liquor-filled chocolate and ridiculous amounts of coffee this holiday season. I have not just wanted but NEEDED those few luxuries to keep me sane.

Why, you ask? Were the holiday festivities, shopping madness and general chaos causing my near, almost-there, could-still-happen, mental breakdown? Perhaps, but I believe it had more to do with my somewhat unrealistic goal to write and post a Christmas eBook.

I have to start by saying that this will be my first Christmas since my favourite kindred-soul, Riser, passed away. He was my first Irish Wolfhound and I absolutely adored him. It may seem silly but my favourite time of year isn’t the same without Riser. I still enjoy all the sparkly lights, decorations, festivities and Christmas cheer. I just enjoy them slightly less without my enormous sidekick.

Of course, it really doesn’t help that I lost my job unexpectedly. That is where my sort-of adventure began.

I’m an optimist, for the most part. Though it’s admittedly difficult to maintain, I’m a firm believer in the positive mindset. Focusing on negativity has never gotten me anything but — you guessed it — more negativity.

One of my first thoughts after losing my job was, “Oh goody! I have more time to write!”. That thought was soon followed by “Oh! I’ll write a Christmas story!” which led to “I’ll write a Christmas eBook!”.

I wrote, rewrote, and finally finished an eBook entitled ‘Maggie’s Christmas Adventure’. It was only a few days ago that I managed to complete this project.

Of course, then I ran into problems formatting the eBook. After that I had issues with this site’s theme and had to do a lot of work preparing the site for the eBook. Then I had multiple issues trying to add a functional PayPal button.

It’s rare that I lose my positive attitude but I almost gave up a few times. Three things prevented me from throwing ‘Maggie’s Christmas Adventure’ into the recycle bin:

1) Tremendous support from my fantastic friends,      Cassie and Wade.

2) The nagging voice in my head that kept reminding me that it’s not acceptable to give up and especially unacceptable to give up on yourself.

3) A stray dog that jumped in front of my car while I was driving on an icy road this afternoon. No, I didn’t hit the dog. Yes, I did try to steal him but he wouldn’t get into my car. He kept trying to get me to chase him and play.

This dog was particularly rough looking – not in a generally unkempt kind of way. He was very thin with extremely matted, black and dirtied white fur. His eyes were yellowed and blood shot.

The dog didn’t look very healthy at all but his humour, playfulness and wagging tail suggested that even though he clearly wasn’t living the ideal dogs’ life, he was, indeed, happy to be alive. And here I was feeling sorry for myself because I couldn’t post an eBook on my blog site. That’s just wrong.

I gave myself an instant attitude adjustment. I played with my dogs, took them for a run and tended to some of the long-neglected household chores. With my optimism renewed, I then decided to give posting my eBook another try.

Wouldn’t you know it? JennyJuice.com has an eBook! One point: optimism. Zero points: negativity. It’s definitely been an adventure.

If you’d like to check out my ebook, you can download a free, 17-page preview of ‘Maggie’s Christmas Adventure’ here or visit my eBooks page .

Merry Christmas, everyone!