Sunday, December 7, 2014

To Be Honest, Riding the Gloom Train, A Little Link Love

I took a test online recently to see how good I was at detecting when people are lying. I expected to do terribly because I’m gullible and prone to believe anything anyone tells me, but I actually scored above average. One of questions I got wrong asked “If someone prefaces their statement with ‘to be honest’, is that statement likely to be lie?” I answered no. According to the test, the correct answer is yes, which I find puzzling, since when I use that phrase, I use it because I am, in fact, about to be honest.

To be honest, I’m still dealing with a lot of grief over the recent loss of my friend. To be honest, I’m struggling with holiday depression, novel-editing depression, and possible thyroid-related depression. To be honest, I am deeply uninterested in writing a blog post today. I don’t want to bore everyone with my ride on the gloom train. (Gloom is at its essence, boring.) I want to write honestly about what’s going on with me, but I have limitations to how much I wish to expose in a public forum. Most of the time, I can muster the energy to write around that, but muster is in short supply in this typist’s life of late. So I’m going to shamelessly cheat today and leave you some links to pretty/funny/useful stuff instead.

I love this series of artwork depicting people in their private spaces. I find them fascinating. Click the magnifying glass for zoom to get the full effect:


Here is Slate’s Best Books of 2014 list, none of which I have read:


Recipes for cheap, nutritious and tasty dishes—posted for college students, but good for anyone wanting to economize on meals!


Some wise words for hard times:


A free game!


Relax. You fret too much:


And the inimitable Maria Bamford!



I’ll be back next week with a real post!

3 comments:

masterpoethere@gmail.com said...

Always enjoy your blog posts, Kristen. This one no less so. Two corrections you may want to make asap are: you need the word "be" in the second sentence of the second paragraph, between "to" and "honest." And in the sentence that introduces the websites to visit, the last word should be "effect" and not affect. I know you know the difference. We all type malapropisms, especially us professional writers. 'Tis an occupational hazard. Anyway, to be honest, I think you are a top-tier writer, and I hope you will be feeling better soon. Have you written any new poems recently? I'd love to see one.

Kristen McHenry said...

Oh, drat! I will fix those; thanks, John. It has not been my week. I appreciate you reading. Grief apparently attention to detail difficult.

Kristen McHenry said...

Oh, and no new poems...I've been going full speed ahead on the novel for the last year. But I do have some ideas for a new poetry series, so maybe soon!