Me - Images

Prov. 15:31 "The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise."

This was me at three years old. What a cutie I was. They were my favorite slippers!

I was about 37 or 38 in this picture. It's a guess.

I was about 40 here

I'm 49 in our wedding photo!

51 years old. This was 8-21-17. Eclipse gazing

Summer of '17 and 40 lbs lighter than my wedding photo! 

God has been very good to me giving me a second chance to change the mess I made out of life.

Prov. 21:21 "He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, righteousness, and honour."

Audiobook Mania

Today I had the honor of writing a review on an awesome audiobook blog, Audiobook Heaven. Call me the guest author for the day.

Audiobooks is a craze that isn’t going away any time soon. It’s not a passing fad, instead it seems to be the end of curling up on the sofa and reading page by flipping page, by holding an actual book in your hand.

We have Ebooks, Ereaders, Audiobooks and the same with publishers. It scares me as a writer, to want to get my book ‘published’, because what does that mean exactly? Will it be on pages, read by people or will it be in an audible format or Ereader where no one will fill their hands with my actual words in a paper bound book?

Audiobooks are to the writing industry, what cell phones are to landlines, what email is to snail-mail, what the massive exodus of internet and social sites are to speaking face-to-face, they are a quick means to an end.

While I love the audiobook industry, ripe with bloggers-a-plenty. The Twittersphere is crawling with audiophiles; Facebook is streaming with pages of audio lovers, and I can also find a couple of the narrators there too. The internet is all abuzz with sounds; with the likes of YouTube, you never have to leave your desk chair. The audiobook community is a world of its own there.

Audiobooks are a sheer delight in that, you DON’T need to be sitting in a chair to read your book. You can be exercising on a treadmill, running the morning’s park-path, driving in the car, everything except shower (until they come up with a water resistant mp3 player)!

Audiobooks are here to stay just as the internet is here to stay and deliver you the information you just couldn’t get from a face-to-face conversation or leafing through a book. Sometimes an audible rendition is good for the soul, too.

We listened to the book I did a review for while driving to Omaha. It’s a six hour trip in the car so having an audiobook was a welcome distraction to the long drive ahead of us. This book touched my heart in many ways. This is a non-fiction book, and while I’m close to the author/publisher/editor of Audiobook Heaven, non-fiction is not his niche of audiobook reviews, as you will see when you visit his site, Audiobook Heaven.

Quotation Saturday

COURAGE

We must have the courage to believe that the world we have dreamed will one day be made manifest and that what we do as individuals makes a difference. We must have the courage to reject the idea of settling for work that is destructive to human happiness, or even indifferent to it.
--Laurence G. Boldt


Live courage, breathe courage, and give courage.
--Dhan Gopal Mukerji
Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon

RECOGNITION

“When you are able to applaud yourself, it is much easier to applaud others.”
-- Denis Waitley

“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”
-- Mother Theresa

“When someone does something well, applaud! You will make two people happy.”
-- Samuel Goldwyn

“We can secure other people's approval, if we do it right and try hard; but our own is worth a hundred of it.”
-- Mark Twain

THOUGHTS ON WORK

If you have fun at your job, I think you're going to be more effective.
--Meg Whitman


Making anything a success rests with people and commitment, strong will to always do the best, confidence in one another...and absolute determination.
--Jorgen Roed

“Take complete control over the messages you allow into your conscious mind.”
--Brian Tracy

“If your sunshine wants far outstrip your cold morning desire, have a talk with yourself. Then have a lot more talks with yourself. Convince number one that you can succeed--and you will succeed. If you don't believe in you, why should anyone else?”
--Tom Hopkins

You become what you affirm; positively affirm your greatness, genius and fullest potential.”
--Mark Victor Hansen


Allow me to say on this Quotation Saturday:
My JOB is writing. No need to go out and find something to do with my time now that my son is in school. Now, I move forward in my WRITING CAREER! Praise be to God for this GIFT!

2 Cor. 9:15 Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.

Worthy Wednesday

Acts 5:41 And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.
***

Did you ever feel unworthy? Gosh, I’m sure almost every single one of us has at some point in our lifetime.

About seven years ago, I started taking this writing biz serious. I took a two-year course, then I joined WVU via the F2K program but there was this little worm crawling around inside of me saying, “You’re not worthy to be a writer.”

“What? Not worthy?”

Well, when someone tells me I can’t do something it only makes me strive harder. When someone utters, you’re not worthy. I kick them in the butt and send them on their way, thank you.

I’ve been a writer almost all of my young life, and I continue to reach for an obtainable goal of being the writer I always dreamed of becoming. I read something today from a fellow writer, she said, “Long after I’m gone, my words and my writing will still be alive.”

Isn’t that the truth? This is the very reason I get all the words I can out there to be seen. When someone googles, Joni Zipp, I don’t want them to find nothing of substance, I want them to get a clear picture of who I am and what legacy I choose to leave behind.

My writing is my life. Money or no money, this craft has carried me through my pain and sorrows, filtered the sunlight so my world remains bright, sheltered me from harm, and has   made something bigger than even I imagined.

In a world where get rich quick schemes thrive, an earth where we tear down instead of build up, in a conscious where the ‘me’ factor is more important than the ‘you’ factor, we lose something of genuine beauty.

I’m not here writing for me, I’m giving to you all that I am, all that I choose to be, and all of my dreams. You know what?

I AM WORTHY!

Poetry Sunday ~ Joni- just joni

Pr. 27:19  As water reflects a face, so a man's heart reflects the man.

***

Joni, just joni
(c) Joni Zipp

I stand beside the column
that towers over me.
I’m small as the shadow
stretches across all I used to be.

I slip in and out of pillars
as they waltz in a gallant
stride of carrying me away
to the life altering talent.

I glide where no one takes
notice of the small shell
awaiting validation
in this wandering cell.

I walk with wobbling
feet that sustains my body
as I find a place to fit in
while I’m feeling  shoddy.

I exist as a human
my skin houses the bony
part of me that becomes
the me I am, I’m joni, just joni. 

All rights reserved: copyright © Joni  Zipp

Change....

Proverbs 24:21 My son, fear thou the LORD and the king: and meddle not with them that are given to change:

***

Change changing places...

Wow, I woke up this morning and as the songbirds sang a tune, I sauntered into the kitchen to make my morning coffee. Ahh, the fresh aroma of coffee filtering through the air. Almost as good as crisp morning springtime air.

It is spring in abundance out here on the farm. Robins are bouncing around the ground, poking their beaks into the soil, looking for a worm or two. Woodpeckers knock-knock- knock on wood, trying to wake up the entire tree. Squirrels are running about looking for last years corncobs that they buried, then there is me.

Me, I’ve been raking and cleaning up what winter left behind. Adam has been pulling dead weeds and raking too. We love this unseasonably warm weather, but with this warm air comes wind. Have you wondered all week why I have been making reference to wind? Twenty-five to thirty mils an hour, you just can’t ignore the stuff.

As I watched the sunrise this morning, not a trickle of wind. The birds were fluttering, doves are calling and me I just sit in awe of how much everything has changed in just one year. This time last year, the uncertain path laid before me was moving. We were finding Texas to be too much, we had hopes Nebraska was what was needed to help in our uncertainty, so we moved here. There has been nothing but change since we got here.

Not that change is bad, change is good and necessary to propel you forward to the next step in life. The winds brush you off the floor, push you and egg you on into the place where you are least comfortable, then WHAM, you’re standing in the midst of change, hoping beyond hope that it is all for the better.

I don’t even know if I like all of this change, I’m still in the accepting stages of what life is throwing at me. Writing is so much like life. One minute your writing what you know, the next thing you know, your character makes a hasty decision, moves along the story and then you stop, wonder what is going to happen next, then WHOOSH, uncertainty.

Life is like a box of chocolates, (brownie points for who said that.) Sometimes you never know what you’re going to get. Me, I got the nut. That’s my life story.  ha ha. Maybe life is like a jar of cookies, when it’s full you’re pleased knowing there is always something to munch on, but when it is empty, you feel empty too, never knowing if it will be full again.

And that my friends, is just the way the cookie crumbles.

Song lyric by who, I wonder? ;-)
Change changing places
Root yourself to the ground
Capitalize on this good fortune
One word can bring you round
Changes