Home Articles posted by Erin Zarro (Page 3)

Why Perfectionism Sucks

About a week ago, I read an awesome poem on Instagram. I follow a lot of poets on there, and I collect prompts and post my own stuff and generally try to participate in the poetry community when I can. Anyway, this poem inspired me, and I commented to the poet that I “might write an after poem inspired by it.” (An “after poem” is basically that — a poem inspired by another poem, or a response to it). The poet was obviously excited and happy to read that because she said, “Please, please do!” So I did. The poem was on “All the Places I’ve Lost Myself.” But my version didn’t quite hit the mark; in fact, I believe I veered completely off course. As one does. Oops? I wasn’t happy with it. Well, it wasn’t bad per se. It just wasn’t what I was hoping for as an after poem. If you recall, these Instagram poems are part of my Bad Poetry Project, so they don’t have to be perfect. But all of a sudden, the perfectionism monster reared its ugly head. One revision, I told myself. Just to get it right. I had some better ideas. I was sure I could nail it. And…I almost did? But not quite. Not quite. Now, here’s the problem. I am a total perfectionist. I know this about myself. I’m not allowed to make mistakes, not allowed to be anything less than 100% perfect. Why? I suspect trauma — being bullied,…

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Gluten-free FTW

So, last month I talked about how I’d switched to a gluten-free diet due to a gluten intolerance. I’d just started it, and it was going well. I wanted to give a bit of an update about my progress. 🙂 For the most part, I’ve been doing well. I’ve either been making actual gluten-free recipes, or modifying my own to make them gluten free. That hasn’t been too hard…yet. Except when you are running late and are starting dinner and have completely forgotten that some ingredients aren’t gluten free and you aren’t sure if you have any gluten-free equivalents on hand because this is the first time you’ve made it since going gluten free. Yeah. That happened recently. Luckily, it worked out. I just omitted the ingredient in question and checked that the other one was in fact gluten free (the brand was, thankfully) and all was well. Thing is, my cooking, since the pandemic started, has been what I call “fast and loose” — meaning that instead of figuring out which day I am making which meal on any given week like I used to, I literally decide the night before. Sometimes a few nights ahead if it’s more complicated. So things unfortunately slip my mind. I’m human. And I’m still adjusting. I’m sure at some point this will become more normal and natural and I won’t have to think, “Oh crap, is everything gluten free?” because all of my ingredients will be. I’m still in transition. Which brings…

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Second Chance

Part 4: Manifestation a serial ghost story by Erin Zarro Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 “Oh my God,” Shelley said softly. “I’ve never seen this before.”               The dogs and cats went crazy, but Shelly managed to calm them down. Still, Larry and Moe, the two cats, stood at attention, ears perked, ready to defend us from the intruder.               I was looking at Adam.               Well, sort of. He was transparent, but he had a body. He wore what looked like jeans and a Bon Jovi t-shirt — unsurprisingly. His face reminded me of a ghost’s — his eyes were simply two empty holes filled with darkness. He had a mouth. And he glowed so brightly that it almost hurt my eyes to look at him.               And he was not sixteen anymore. He looked to be about my age. But I did not believe in ghosts. So, what was going on?               I probably should have been scared, but oddly enough, I really wasn’t.               Shelley’s hand grabbed my wrist before I could move closer. As if she’d known what I was about to do. “No, don’t go to him. We don’t even know if this is really him.”               Bubba growled softly as if he agreed with her statement.               Not taking my eyes off of Adam, I asked, “What do you mean? It’s clearly him. I feel it.”               “Lower-vibrational beings can do all sorts of things to make you think they are someone you…

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Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes…

Like the song, I’ve had a pretty big change in my life recently. I started having symptoms of what I thought was another food allergy. For the record, I was diagnosed with quite a few nut allergies — including a deadly peanut allergy which did not manifest in childhood, oddly enough — and fruit allergies, as well as a few other random ones (latex and wintergreen, I’m looking at you). Fun fact: If you are allergic to either latex or bananas, chances are, you will be allergic to the other one, too. I didn’t know that. I’d known about my latex allergy for years, having worked in foodservice and was forced to wear latex gloves and basically suffer with hives going up my arms every night until they allowed me to start using non-latex gloves later. But the banana allergy took some time to figure out. Anyway, this all happened in my twenties, and I am forty-six now, so it’s been awhile. My symptoms were similar to hay fever: runny nose and tearing eyes, and also some fun digestive issues. (We won’t get into that). So after making a list of the culprit foods (a very varied list, I might add), I went to my allergist and got a scratch test. Which, by the way, is no longer a scratch test but more like a poke test. Anyway, nothing came up as an allergy. She told me that it was possible that these symptoms were due to an intolerance, which…

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When I’m Not Writing I’m…Thinking About Art

So, due to some health stuff, writing has had to take a back burner and it totally sucks. I expect this to be temporary, and I fully plan on being back at it as soon as my fingers can get typing. But in the meantime, I’ve been doing some serious contemplation about art. Specifically, Tarot and Lenormand decks. For those who don’t know, I started on a dog deck for my sister about twenty-five years ago but never finished it. So that’s on my list of things to do. I’d like to expand the subjects to include other dogs and our cat, Hailey, as the only subject at the time was our dog, Emmy, who is of course now deceased. So that’s a thing. But lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about life in general and healing, affirmations, self-care, and other self-empowering type stuff. I just turned forty-six last month, and it dawned on me that I could use a bit of healing, being that I had been bullied and made fun of as a child and was in an abusive marriage. And I thought a healing/self-empowerment type Tarot deck would be so cool. There are so many out there, you can’t even believe. Kickstarter is literally my Kryptonite — I got turned on to it last year and went on a bit of a backing spree on Tarot decks. Of course I stopped before things got out of hand, and I backed them with the idea that…

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Buh-bye, Springing Forward and Falling Back!

Just in case you’re wondering, Kit and I switched blog slots this month, so you’re getting me a week early. Lucky you! 🙂 I just found out that the Senate passed a bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent. By unaminious consent. I found that interesting. They all agreed on this. Everyone. It still needs to go through the House and to President Biden, so we’re not quite there yet, but I am optimistic. I’ve said for years — years — that this crap needs to stop. It’s antiquated and from a time long past (1918 apparently). To save energy. But the world was so different then, right? Now…I don’t know about you, but every time we change, no matter which direction, it takes me about two weeks to adjust. I’m irritable, basically jet-lagged for all intents and purposes, and I’m completely out of sorts. My body even rebels. I used to end up in fibro flares, too. Back when I was a kid, and there was no internet to quickly check what date we were changing (yeah, imagine that), we’d end up either early or late for church on Sunday because we never knew. Now, with my Esperanto study? My friend just moved back to the States. So, we have time zones to consider and DST. Because where he lived previously, they hadn’t changed yet, but where he is now, they did, and so did we, and they were different. So this afternoon, we’re sitting here trying to puzzle…

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So how is the two-computer setup going now, Erin?

Oh, God. Don’t even. I had a really important editing job that needed to be done quickly so I was waiting before ordering the new computer (and I’ve decided to go with a Windows computer — long story), so I am still doing the two-computer thing. Except I am not really using the main one, except to do one thing for one client that requires a specific program that’s only on the main. Because it is extremely dodgy at this point. So I am spending 90% of my time on the spare. It’s going. I was finally able to do a Facebook call on it today! That was cool. It hasn’t worked until now. So one good thing. Although the volume was completely borked. I had it up to the highest setting and I could still hardly hear my friend. I’ve had issues with files saving. Even after freaking checking the dates and times to see if they saved. Even after getting that lovely “do you want to overwrite this file?” message. THEY DON’T FREAKING SAVE. I am not kidding. I’d go to pull a file up from the day before and none of my changes would be there…a serious problem when you are editing and you are on a deadline. So I started emailing myself the file every day after I was done. The one day I freaking needed that emailed file? IT WOULDN’T LOAD. I’m telling you, I’ve never had so many problems in my entire life with…

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Second Chance

Part 3: Awakening a serial ghost story by Erin Zarro Part 1 Part 2 “Kristen, wake up.”                 The voice was distant like a dream. I struggled to come to the surface of consciousness, to open my eyes. Hands shook my shoulders. “Come on, I know you’re in there. Wake up.”                 My eyelids released, and the bright light of our office speared into my retinas. I wanted to close them again, because pain, but forced myself to look into Shelley’s eyes. “I am…here. What…happened?” I yawned, suddenly exhausted.                 I was at work. No one was around except Shelley. The clock said six-thirty.                 The notebook.                   What was my last memory? The notebook.Hi, sweetheart. “You passed out after seeing—”                 “No, he…that isn’t possible,” I said.                 “I didn’t write it,” Shelley said. “And no one else is here. Look, I know you don’t believe in ghosts, but spirits can sometimes manipulate things if they want to communicate. I’ve never heard of it being so…overt…like this. He must really want to talk to you.”                 It couldn’t be. Adam was gone. In the ground. There was no spirit to manipulate anything. Someone was playing a joke. A terrible, nasty joke. That was all. “It’s not him.” I tried to stand, but dizziness stopped me. “Can you help me up? I think I want to go home.” And then I remembered that I’d be going to an empty home, and Shelley’s offer to stay with her. “Or, uh,…

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Not Dying.

Earlier this month, I wrote up a post with my goals on it for the next 30 days in a forum I frequent and I literally wrote as one of my goals “To not die.” Seriously. The past, oh, year has been particularly rough, not just because of the pandemic, but because of severe sleep deprivation. Things just aren’t going well in dreamland, and I have been feeling like crap — and my overall functioning hasn’t been 100%. Obvi. But to add insult to injury, technology has, once again, given me the finger. My phone, which is a fairly new iPhone 12 Mini, began inexplicably not returning to my home network after I was out and about. We ended up running through a whopping 75% of our data plan and got a text about it — gee, thanks AT&T — and finally I figured out the problem. Because I was the culprit, and we’d had a power outage recently, and yes, I had been checking my email (for business purposes!), but not that much. Sheesh. So I figured out that after coming home from the vet and finding myself still on cellular and not on Wi-Fi. Many hours later. Ugh. An update fixed that. But not after struggling with it for weeks. Then my battery started draining extremely quickly. I mean, lightning fast. That’s still kind of happening? A bit. It’s improved after the update, but I still feel like it’s not in keeping with my usage. And my battery…

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COVID Christmas, Year 2

Things are a bit different than they were last year. For one, we’ve gotten vaccines and boosters, whereas last year we did not. We’d had a full lockdown in March, and this year, we didn’t. Masks are not required now in Michigan but are “recommended.” And yet, COVID-19, the “virus in Seattle” from December 2019, is still very much with us. We’re on our, what, twelth variant now (second Variant of Concern) with omicron? There was a tweet the other day from a doctor about not wanting to learn the entire Greek alphabet due to the virus. I don’t mind that. I find it kind of interesting; kind of like the tropical storm/hurricane naming. I just want it gone. Last year, my family made the heartbreaking decision to not see my in-laws for the holidays. They’re elderly, and we were concerned about them catching the virus. We did a FaceTime thing on Christmas Day to open gifts and that was okay…and we made the best of it….but let’s be real. It just wasn’t the same. They were missed. Terribly. This year, we’re all vaccinated and boostered, so we’re going for it. We’re seeing them both days, actually. It is great to go back to some measure of normalcy, although the specter of this thing is still hanging in the background, always there. Siri Paulson, my fellow Turtleducker, posted on Facebook a meme about in the future, how we’ll be going through old stuff and run across a mask and it’ll…

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