Writing for sale!

Hey all -- forgive the irony of using this platform after so long. But I've decided to start selling my writing, excerpts of my book, to start a fund to self-publish! Amazon has a really great self-publishing program that includes editing AND using their platform to sell. This has been a dream of mine for a long time, and I'm hoping to publish by the end of 2019!  However, self-publishing can be a bit of a financial burden and I definitely don't have much extra cash these days.

That being said, Rudy bought me this gorgeous typewriter for graduation and I want to use it to help fund this project. I will send you a random excerpt from the book for $10 or framed for $25 (this includes shipping and handling!) However if you see anything in the pictures you specifically want I'd be more than happy to take requests.

Please facebook me, Instagram me ( @littlemissbleah ), or email me (bleahpatterson@yahoo.com) with any requests. I can only accept FB, Apple Pay or Venmo (PayPal and I don't get along). I look forward to hearing from you! Thanks so much in advance. Every inquiry proves to me that this book DESERVES to get written, published, and shared.

Additionally, anyone who BELIEVES in this book, and that it will get written can donate an extra $15 and reserve a copy once it's published.

A post for 2017

...since they seem fewer and farther between these days. 

"The New Year, like dawn, comes ringing with promise and a cool breeze rises with the sun bringing with it the inevitability of both burden and promise. But this new beginning cannot come fast enough, a keen excuse to leave everything behind that has had my attention for far too long. Every over-thought thought, every under-loved love and to give new priority to everything I almost lost but was lucky enough to be given a second chance." - 12.6.2016


Something I wrote when the birth of a new year was far enough away that its hope and promise was endless, and here I sit three days into it knowing that it's caught me red handed. A million well-intended promises to myself and those around me only to find myself staring at an empty fridge -- eating day old carbs -- and thinking of every way I could have prepared better for this.

But I have to stop, and think, and say to myself that pressure is too much and too burdensome, and for what purpose?

Forgive the convolution for a moment, but what is a New Year except for a new day with a lot more pressure to change? How many thousands of days have we procrastinated, only to feel the impending weight of a new year after 365 days that don't feel different enough?

So my fridge is empty save a partial six-pack of beer, a half-empty bottle of wine, coffee creamer, various condiments and old cilantro. The fresh fruits and veggies can wait for next payday and the world won't crumble beneath my feet until next year comes along to mend it. The gym will still be there in a couple of weeks when the resolutioners have started sleeping in again. And the people I love will still be there this time next year if I continue to focus -- as I have every day before the task of a New Year was at hand -- on loving and forgiving and trying again every day in private. Because life is a little sweeter without the grand display of it all, I'm learning.

Steps to reconciling with this season

For many of us, roughly 59,938,290 of us, we've entered a season of grief. And many of us will sit in those different stages of grief for longer than others and even bypass certain stages altogether.
Unfortunately, the masses have made impossible for us to be in denial, but they've definitely cultivated the anger in us.

So how then do we reconcile what's happened?
I don't think we ever make sense of it, and I certainly don't think we ever become okay with it.

But I think that we come to find some peace within ourselves.

As we continue in this season of heartache, anger, and great impatience with those who don't understand why we're feeling what we're feeling we must learn to rest in our identities. And to rest in the communities who support us.

And as I learn that I need to take my own advice I'll say:

Let's take a break from social media for a little while. Let's stop interacting with those who's minds cannot be changed, stop wasting our precious breath, and talk with those who CAN empathize with us. Let's find love, peace, and hope in one another.

Let's sit back with a good book (preferably not a dystopian, thanks) and escape for a little bit. Let's have a cup of tea, put some lavender in the air, take a bubble bath, take a nap and rest. Let's lower our heart rates and reconnect with the peace that lives in us. The peace we had before this election season stirred so much concern and pain that lay dormant.

As much as it hurts to hear, what's done is done. We cast our vote, we did our best, we tried to spread the word and everything went contrary to what we'd hoped.

There's still a fight, to protect the rights some might wish to steal. But if beat our heads into a wall (no pun intended) that cannot be penetrated we'll run out of the energy we'll need to climb it.

So please rest with me, for a few days or a couple of weeks. However long you need to reconcile what's happened, and then we'll come back. We'll focus on the right things, the things we can effect and protect. But until then, let's regain our strength. This season has been exhausting for all of us.

self-love + 1 || part two

I don't know who said it. I couldn't find a definitive source. But I've heard this quote so many times in the past decade I couldn't possibly add them up. Yet, I never knew what it meant in any sort of applicable way. Accept where you are in life? Stop looking for greener grasses? Maybe.

I could never quite grasp the idea of it, and maybe it had less to do with my comprehension of a quote and more to do with the handicap I've been putting on my own life.

In the last five years I've had seven (physical) homes.
I've found "home" in so many people who are no longer a consequential part of my life.

I've boxed up, moved, boxed up, moved, donated the excess, boxed up and moved again. I'm expert now. I can transport my things from one place to another in one car trip if I put my mind to it.
When I left San Marcos I got the call to leave around 8pm and by 4 a.m. all of my belongings, in an apartment I had no intention of leaving, was ready to go.

I'm a minimalist in my own rite. And I've made more trips to Platos Closet and Goodwill then you wanna know.

What I'm trying to say is I've never tried to bloom where I was planted. The moment the soil beneath me get's a little tough to till I pull everything up by the roots and find said greener grasses.

But enough with the cliches.

I'm ready to work on myself where I am. Because I've found a home in this little life. And I want to stay here, I want this to be the home I keep. The home where my heart lives.

Sorry. I couldn't help the added cliche.

But how do you do that? How do you take a deep breath and learn to deal? That's the journey that I'm on. And I think I've found a few things to help.

1.) Accountability. Letting people know what I want, and letting them know that I'm gonna get scared and pretend I don't want it so much anymore, is important. I've learned to surround myself with people who will say "yeah, I know you're scared and I know you're sad. But, Bleah? You have to keep going."

I've surrounded myself with people who believe in my potential and believe that my desires are really what's best for me, instead of people who will let me back down or people who will try to discourage me for their own gain.

2.) Gardening. Leaning back onto the metaphor: if you don't like that grass you're in, garden it. Plant new grass.

I can't keep leaving, going to someone else's well-tending yard and neglecting it only to pick up and leave yet again. I have to stay, pull the weeds and invest in fertilizer.

What does this mean for me? It means acknowledging that yeah, my dreams are a little brown right now. A little wilty. But that doesn't mean they're dead. It means I have to keep pursuing them. I'm in a really great relationship, but I can't just hope that sun and rain all by itself will keep it healthy. I have to tend to it, take care of it.

I have a career I want to pursue, but I've gotta put myself out there and get some experience and get a degree to make that happen. I can't let fear of failure stop me.

I wish I had a third point but I'm not that far into this endeavor yet, I don't know if I can even pull these first two off. Only time will tell. But I'll keep you updated.

self-love + 1 || part one

I've read a lot of articles lately about learning to be alone. And it wasn't until today that I've been able to articulate the feeling that settles in when I see the headlines and occasionally read the articles.

Often I see an association between toxic friendships and unhealthy relationships with an inability to be alone.

I have to admit, I always wanted that to be the answer.

"Oh Bleah, you just haven't learned how to be happy by yourself. That's why these things never seem to work out."

I think in an effort to identify with this rhetoric I've erased my entire past and everything I learned from it.

You see, I spent my whole life alone. I was homeschooled and not particularly well liked by people my age growing up. I was driven and confident but I was lonely and solitary.
I was social when I needed to be but I didn't build or sustain lasting relationships. I didn't feel I needed to. I didn't correlate not being alone with investing in others. So I invested in myself and I grieved being alone, friendless.

When I'm alone -- single -- I'm the most motivated, productive, self-disciplined person on the planet. I workout and I lose weight. I study hard and I pass my classes. I pursue my dreams, keeps jobs, land internships, and make myself really proud.

But once there's someone of consequence in my life to invest in -- all of that just kind of disappears. I stop deep conditioning my hair, I stop taking long bubble baths, I stop consuming books at the speed of light, I stop writing and pursuing and fulfilling dreams. I get lazy.

So I guess you could say it dawned on me this week that maybe my issue isn't learning to be alone or love myself when no one else is around; my issue in fact may be learning to love myself when people are around, and building a life that can include my own success and the presence of others.

And thus begins some tricky road down mending that.

What's black, white, and grey all over?

“All great discoveries...are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents.” 

- Mark Helprin

Today I made a pot of coffee but I forgot to pour the water from the pot into the reservoir. I got angry, unplugged the whole device and walked into my room before I realized what I'd done. How I was, in fact, angry and disappointed and upset but it was because of something I hadn't seen all of the way through. I'm sure you can weed out the metaphor here.

I've been feeling angry. Disappointed. Upset. Frustrated about a lot of things lately. And the act of being constantly let down is exhausting. But what do you do when you're constantly being let down by yourself? You can blame other people, surely. Or you can accept that the circumstances you've stepped into are in fact that: circumstances that you have utterly chosen and accepted and allowed.

Normal doesn't exist except at the most base and personal level. You create your own version of normal, and if that version of normal feels abnormal then it's your job to change it.

I was recently voicing my frustrations to a friend and they told me to make a T chart which I inevitably couldn't complete.

I found that too many things fell somewhere down the middle, in a grey area. Everything at the cost or exception of something else. Everything had a subtle "but..." at the end.

And I guess that's when I realized that creating some neat and tidy pros and cons list is just ... not conducive to making a life worth living. It's conducive more to bulldozing the life you have and starting a new one.

But I'm more interested in investing in what I've already got -- the foundation is good, it could just use some touching up -- instead of scrapping everything because I lost my job, or my mental health is a little in flux, and my boyfriend and I argue about stupid things.

Instead I'm more interested in going into my proverbial house, fixer upper though it may be, and repairing it one room at a time. Until, with it, my confidence is rebuilt and everything else falls into place.

Time Lapses

"To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away ... Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.”

- Michael Cunningham

I could write a whole paragraph bemoaning the last six months and wondering where they have gone, offering apologies I do not owe (I've become an expert at that), but instead I'll just dedicate one sentence to it: I'm sorry, where has the time gone? 

The last six months have been, well, a hell of a six months. But I've done a lot of new things, a lot of nice things, and a lot of the same things. The one thing I haven't been doing much of is writing -- I guess you could say this is a haphazard way of starting again -- I guess you could say I'm grasping at straws.

 I've been trying a lot of new places and new things. Lately it's been takes on latin food, interesting food fusions (this cool little place in South Town called Hot Joy has become a favorite stop), and remodels of a good 'ole eggs benedict.

I've also been cooking more than I've ever had much interest in before. I think I've got a pretty good idea how to make a carbonara, though I've only ever been allowed to assist; I've established I can make a mean biscuit and gravy dish from scratch, but everyone is tired of it; and I can utilize the crap out of goat cheese.

Okay so maybe I'm not a master chef, but my boyfriend is pretty good at it and he's been getting me out of my comfort zone ... like, making me eat veggies and stuff (even though I usually just feed them to the dog).

But I still frequent coffee shops, indulge in a good espresso shot or tea brew, and scarf up fresh and flakey pastries accompanied by a good book (lately Michael Cunningham has been the author of said good books, 3 down 2 to go).

So I'm very much the same, and very much different -- perhaps more evolved would be the term for it -- and I guess you could say this is growing up. Who'd-a-thunk I was capable of it, yeah?

Follow me on instagram (@littlemissbleah) if you wanna see how old these photos REALLY are, and see some other's I thought were less remarkable/applicable.