Floating through life

Sometimes I feel like I’m swimming through life, never quite aware of whether I’m above water or already below, whether I’m floating, paddling, crawling or doing this dolphin stuff, whether I’m in a peaceful lake, in a river swimming up- or downstream or in an ocean in the middle of nowhere or just 5 meters from the beach. All I know that my feet don’t touch the ground and when I stop moving, I’ll drown.

I feel compelled to do so many things, but I have no clue if they get me any closer to the land. My land. The land where I belong, where I was meant to be, where everything makes sense, including myself.

There are moments where I am floating weightlessly on the warm water, the sun is shining down on me and the full beauty of this Earth is revealed in front of my eyes and I feel totally happy, content and blissful. And I live for those moments. I fight for those moments, I work hard for them, never giving up, never loosing hope, because each time, there is the chance that the current of these moments will gently carry me to my land.

But currents are slow and unpredictable. I would reach my land so much faster if I only saw it and could swim towards it. If only…

Yet, if I was one of those people whose feet have never left the ground, I wouldn’t know this feeling of weightlessness that frees you from the bounds of the world and lets you experience the realm of inspiration, caught in the creativity of my written word.

Soon on all major ebook platforms: An Insider’s Travel Guide!

Since “The Fenris Clan”, my time travel thriller, is now finished and going through the editing process, I have used the available time to write an Insider’s Travel Guide. “The Beauty and Mystery of the Languedoc” (Southern France). It will be published in May this year on all major ebook platforms as part of the “BiteSize Travel” Series of the renowned UK ebook publisher “Collca” (www.collca.com).

If you’ve ever dreamt of going on a very special holiday in Europe, that offers much more than just the usual tourist sightseeing attractions, where the first thing you have to do is to line up, then this is for you!

This guide will offer much more than the standard A, B, C…. generic stuff. It will feature entertaining short stories about this amazing place, real insider info and background stories and it will pull you into one of the last remaining mysteries and one of the last real treasure hunts of this world!
It will also include many as-of-yet unpublished pictures of all the sites described!

The Holy Grail, Adolf Hitler, Jesus, Isis, Maria Magdalena, Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code”, Bérenger Saunièr, the Knights Templar…. they all have ties to this place – and that is just the footnote!

Stay tuned for the official cover picture and the precise publishing date.

(Featuring in the Saunière Society Journal and 42mysteries.com)

Why online, interactive, text-based role-playing is the best hobby for writers/authors!

Dear fellow lovers of the written word,

some of you might think, that online interactive, text-based role-playing is something for nerdy kids.

Au contraire!

Maybe it was ten years ago. Today it is an art form of writing and it can be highly enjoyable and a very good training for professional writers!

Let me first explain what it is, for those of us who haven’t spent most of their lives online.

Online role-playing is available for many different fantasy worlds, which are mostly based on famous TV shows or movies. As an example I will take one that is based on Star Trek, an epic TV show that 99% of all people have seen at one point in their lives.

Anybody can join this text-based role-playing game. The first thing you do is to create a character (sound familiar?). The only condition is that the character traits fit into the Star Trek Universe, so you could make a Vulcan character, but not an Ewok, because that’s from the Star Wars Universe.
You will then be placed as a crew member on a starship (one coherent role-playing unit within the game), with the entry rank of “Ensign”. On this ship, you have all the other characters too (Captain, First Officer, Chief Medical Officer, Chief Engineer and so on) and each of them is played by another member of the RPG (RolePlayingGame) community.
Each ship (or role-playing area) has a Gamemaster. He or she guides the the ship and its crew through a specific mission (the equivalent of one TV episode).

So for example, the GM might write:
‘The bridge crew saw a Romulan warship de-cloak right in front of them.’
Then it is up to the players whose characters are on the bridge, to react to this. If you were playing the Captain, you would respond by writing for example

‘John jumped up from his chair and shouted “Raise shields, go to red alert.”’
If you participate in this game on a regular basis and write well, your character will advance in rank. Once you are a Captain, you can get your own ship and you can choose your own crew. But for writers, the job of a Gamemaster is much more alluring. Think about it!

You constantly get to create new characters if you wish to interact with the crew during a mission – very good training!

Planning an episode for the crew of your ship is almost like planning a book. Running an interactive episode is even more challenging, because you have to stay very flexible and react on the reactions of your crew. The job of a GM is not to shine him-/herself, but to write a great story that challenges each player to respond with more depth, feeling and quality that make them shine! You are the equivalent of an entertainer running a show on TV, only what you do is much more demanding.

You will have to train your skill to improvise and re-write your story-arc as it develops. At the same time, this is a very creative and inspirational process, because the inspiration goes both ways. You will find that the reactions of your players inspire you and make you do things in writing that you have never even thought of before!
The same happens when you play a character of course, but as a Gamemaster it is happening on a much larger scale. I can not stress enough how much you can learn by writing interactively!
You learn new ways to use language. Those games have players from all over the world. American, English, Irish, Canadian, Australian and even non-native English speakers whose English is good enough to participate. They will teach you expressions you have never even heard and enrich your vocabulary greatly.
You gain like-minded friends. Yes, it is possible, even on the web. If you have interactively written with some people for a long time, you get to know them very well. Besides, most of those online RPGs have their own community sites, where people meet up to chat. It is easy to become part of them, because everybody knows one trait you all share: In this case the love for Star Trek.

In short – it is the perfect hobby & enjoyable training for writers!
You get to immerse yourself into an alternate world that you like/love, you get to create deep, believable characters, you get to train your spontaneous writing skill and you learn a lot from those who interact with you in writing. Contrary to common belief, you do not need to be online at the same time, nor do you interact via email. This wouldn’t work for a community who has a large number of members all over the world.

My personal experience

Interactive, text-based writing has changed my life, by giving me the courage to go public with my writing and get published!
I have learned a lot through it and I have made real friends in six different countries, two of which I have already met in person.

After a long day of writing for my next novel, I am still looking forward to go online and interact with my characters in my RPG. It is a different kind of writing and I feel it to be very relaxing and fun. At the same time, it can become incredibly intense and deep, because you know the other character is not just another part of your own mind, but a real person. Some of the threads I have participated in or read truly reach the “Tolkien level”.
I have been a Gamemaster in my RPG for many years now, but I’ve just recently read my first book for authors and their “tools of the trade”, the “How to..”.
It read like a description of what I have been doing in all those years as GM! But then of course I had to train to become a GM too. I did a course and the exam. All this is offered at no charge by my RPG.

If you would like to know more about this great hobby, feel free to comment on this post.
If you are indeed a Trekkie like me, this is your game: www.star-fleet.com

All yours
Julia B. Kingsley

Books that changed my life 1: The Power of Now

I read this when I was around 27 years old and it caused a radical change in the way I thought and in my quality of life.

I have always been a thinker. When I was a child and later a teenager, I spent a lot of time alone for various reasons and I spent this time either reading or thinking. Even today I’m one of those people, who sometimes spends hours lost in thought, something that is simply inconceivable to some of my friends, but I quite enjoy it.

The problem I had back then though, is that I spent 90% of my thinking time either in the past or in the future. I thought for example about past situations and how I could have mastered them better, what I could have said or done. Back then I was rather introverted and not well equipped to deal with people my age, so I always was able to think of much better ways that I could have behaved. Of course that constantly dampened my self-confidence, which made the overall situation worse, not better.

Alternatively I thought about the future and what I would do differently/better in that future. I thought about my dreams and how to reach them and what could possibly happen. For important events I had a plan A, B, C and D! I’d say it’s rather normal for many Germans to have a plan B, but C and D is really obsessing. When things took a different turn, that I had not pre-calculated, I was mostly unable to adjust.

Then I read this book! I realised that I was living in the past and in the future, but rarely in the Now. I tried the exercises in this book that help you stay in the Now. They were extremely difficult for me at first. But I kept at it and my life transformed. I changed my job, I became much more extroverted, I was suddenly able to react spontaneously and to improvise, to jump into cold water. It was like somebody had lifted an enormous weight from me, truly liberating.
I don’t remember who it was who said it, but many wise people have voiced this concept: “You are what you think you are.”
You build your Universe, the way you perceive the world with your thoughts and if theses thoughts are rarely in the Now, in a way you do not really live, because life is NOW!

In my opinion it is secondary if you gain “enlightenment” (a term very misunderstood and abused nowadays) or not. But to discover what life has to offer in this moment is a great experience, especially for people who tend to “fuss” 

PS: Eckhart Tolle is also an author who wrote books in English and in German, only he did it the other way around. His first books were written in English and then he switched back to German. However they all got translated of course.

The Meaning of Life

I do believe I found the meaning of life this morning after waking up, while I was still lying in bed and watching the sun rise. Although I do believe in certain spiritual concepts, I also think that some of them obscure things more than they reveal. I also heartily dislike extremes, because I believe they are harmful in whichever way they manifest.
So people who, for example, denounce every patriarchal religion and every male god and turn to a wholly maternal religion and the divine feminine, did not really get any further in their development in my opinion. They just turned the coin around, but they didn´t get rid of the need for money!
Hence, I try not to do that. And while it has been said very often in the last decade that using the right half of your brain is so much better, and that basically all of the bad things that happen are due to the fact that people only use the left half of the brain, I believe that you need to use both in the same measure if you want to really find a solid solution to something.

So you will have to bear with me for a while, if you want to find out what the meaning of life is, because first of all, we have to lay a common ground by looking at some scientifically acknowledged definitions.

Definitions:

1. Definition of an “organism” (source: Wikipedia)
In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system (such as animal, fungus, micro-organism, or plant). In at least some form, all types of organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homeostasis as a stable whole.

2. Definition of “evolution” (source: Wikipedia)
Evolution is the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations.

3. Definition of “homeostasis” (source: Wikipedia)
Homeostasis (from Greek: ὅμοιος, “hómoios”, “similar”,[1] and στάσις, stásis, “standing still”[2]) is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, relatively constant condition of properties such as temperature or pH.

Now, in order for you to gain insight from this article, you have to concur with, or at least consider open-mindedly a few generally accepted assumptions which are, however, not fully scientifically proven. If you can not do this, you can stop reading now and do something more useful.

Generally accepted assumptions:

1. How does this “change” (=>; evolution) in the inherited characteristics of biological populations (=>; organisms)” happen?
It happens when a organism encounters a chaotic element that threatens to destroy it.
Example: The flying fish (source: Wikipedia Flying_fish). In this example the chaotic element could have been the fact that the fish didn´t have enough food for some reason and were facing extinction, so they evolved into flying fish to add flies and other airborne organisms to their menu. Of course there is no proof of that, because it happened about 240 million years ago. But there was undoubtedly a reason for them to evolve in that way.

2. Evolution is not just a theory, it is reality and the reason why human beings have evolved to this stage.

3. The planet Earth is a living organism as per definition no. 1 above (which we will examine more closely below).

The meaning of (human) life:

It starts with the third generally accepted assumption. Without doubt, the Earth responds to stimuli, I think we can all agree on that. If you need an example, watch the news at any given time anywhere on the world!
It can maintain homeostasis as a stable whole (see definition No. 3 above).
It gets a bit more wobbly with reproduction. Of course the Earth doesn´t give birth to little baby worlds… or does it? Do we know this? How long is the pregnancy? Say, the Earth is pregnant for a few billion years and its pregnancy works different than ours, just like a sea horse has a different way to reproduce than a horse.
Can we really make judgement about it? I leave that up to you to ponder.

Now, what about growth and development?
This is where the dog bites its own tail and it is the reason I have listed it under “Generally accepted assumptions”, no. 3!
So let us assume, that we human beings are an integral part of the living organism Earth. Just like the bacteria (bacteria are micro-organisms by itself) in our stomachs are part of our own organisms and help us digest better. What would our use be for the organism Earth, if not growth and development?

At that point my cat joined me in my bed and wanted to be petted. My cat has its very own mind about when it wants to be petted and when not, so I asked myself:
“But why give us free will then? Why not make us similar to the healthy bacteria in our bellies, designed to do one thing only, which is to be born/grow/die as human beings, so that through us and our actions, planet Earth could live healthy and happy. It would be so easy! We would all just strive to live ecologically, we would all recycle, we would all pursue only what is best for us, for those around us and for the planet. There would be no destruction, no wars, only the occasional natural catastrophe to regulate our expansion and maintain a healthy cycle of life in co-existence with the animal world. In fact, that sounds a lot like the Christian concept of “Paradise”.

The answer is of course, because there would be no development, and in extension, no evolution (see “Generally accepted assumption no.1 above). The planet could exist quite happily without us, but then it wouldn´t be – as per definition – a living organism! Our free will introduces the chaotic element that the organism Earth – of which we are part of – needs, in order to not only be a live organism, but to evolve!

So what is it, that makes a cell in our body useful? What is it that makes a certain kind of bacteria in our body healthy for us? The answer is again simple: If that micro-organism fulfils its full potential and does what it was designed to do!
We, as human beings, have the free will to decide whether we choose to fulfil our potential and do what we were designed to do, or do something else. Something that earns more money for example, or something that we`ve seen others do, or something our parents or our teachers told us to do, or something we just happened to do and now are too lazy to discontinue….

If we use our free will to decide, that we do not pursue fulfilling our potential (or even finding out what it is), then we are not part of the organism Earth, we may even become a chaotic element. But the chaotic elements are crucial for the evolution of the whole organism.

I know better than you might think, that the crux in this is to find out what it is, that fulfils your unique potential and that is what you were designed to do*. I also know that every human being can find it, if they continue to pursue this knowledge!

Once you have found it, there is no stopping you! Once you work to fulfil your potential, everything around you will come to your aid, because the organism Earth recognises another cell that does what it is supposed to do and will automatically link you in with the whole and everything will work together.
This is one of the most amazing things, if not the most amazing thing that can happen to a human being and I believe it is the only way to attain complete, true happiness.
If you would like to know how this is done, then I recommend the book “The Magic” from Rhonda Byrne, bestselling author of “The Secret”.

The reason we exist as human beings, is because the organism Earth needs us for its growth and development which, in turn, makes it a life organism. And it needs us to have a free will in order to evolve, which also defines a life organism.

The meaning of life is therefore defined by the last word: Meaning of LIFE! It is no big mystery and you don´t need a religion or spiritual enlightenment or a guru in order to understand it. All you need is yourself and your free will to fulfil your potential.

All yours
Julia

Note: * I wrote about that in another of my blog posts (“What it means to be a Wolf”)

Disclaimer:
I don not presume to think, that there is only one meaning to life, nor that I am the first one who has come to this or a similar conclusion. In fact I know that there have been many great thinkers and philosophers who have voiced this idea in many different ways. Wolfgang van Beethoven, Rhonda Byrne (“The Secret”), Vincent Van Gogh and uncountable others. But I did really think of this specific way to explain it to myself this morning, while I was still lying in bed, and I used my own words to explain it. I know that every person on this wonderful Earth has a different way of understanding and perceiving things, therefore I believe that the more definitions of this concept exist, the more people will understand it and maybe profit from this understanding a little bit in their own, individual way. That is my only goal.

The new website is online!

Due to the fast growth of fans and feedback that I get, it has become necessary to launch a new website sooner rather than later. It is online since the 8th of January 2013 and I hope you like it.

What does it mean to be a wolf?

In fact it’s nothing that should be unusual. It simply means to fight for your own heart and its freedom continuously until you die.

When you are young, you feel like you can do anything, reach anything, be anything. Later, most people make the mistake and believe others, when they say that that was a teenage folly. It is not!

You can do anything, you can reach anything, you can be anything, but you have to fight for it. The older you get, the more you are enveloped by the so called grown up world, the more you have to fight for it. Bleed for it. Sacrifice for it. Endure pain for it. And just never give up.

The key is to find out what it is that gives you wings. Who you are, what you can do best, what you want to reach. That is the hardest bit. And yet it is so simple.

Just simply do the things that make you feel free and joyful as often as you can (even if you have to earn money in between).
And with patience, at one point in time, a pattern will emerge from them. You can’t force this, it just happens if you keep an open mind. And that pattern will reveal to you who you are, what defines you most, how you can unfold your full potential.

Then you don’t think about who you are anymore, you simply are, and it fills your heart with joy. Don’t censor your thoughts, don’t belittle your wishes, let nobody tell you how you should be and never ever give up on your dreams, because the moment you do, you’ve lost every chance to spot them when the chance to make them reality passes you by!

Fight for the freedom of your thoughts, fight for the free expression of your creativity, fight for the freedom to express yourself, fight to expand your horizon, to learn new things, to try out different ways, to taste strange tastes. Fight for freedom when- and wherever it gets cut down by those who have given up the fight.

And you can be absolutely sure that one day you will be rewarded for your fight in ways you can`t even imagine now. In ways that you have only just imagined faintly in your dreams.

Fight for freedom in all its many facets. Every decision is always up to you and never to anybody else, no matter what people do to put the responsibility of their decisions on others. It is always up to you, even if it is sometimes unimaginably hard.

It’s all in your hand and you have to decide what you do with the time that is given to you on this Earth. (Yes, that`s from Tolkien)
Take responsibility, fight for freedom and never give up on your dreams.That’s what it means to be a wolf.

Wagner didn’t listen when he was told he couldn’t compose a complete opera at the age of 20. Albert Einstein didn’t give a damn when his colleagues at work told him he was crazy to fancy himself a physicist. J.K. Rowling didn’t let people pull her down when she wrote her worldwide bestseller. Anja, who lived down the road from me, didn’t believe her husband, when he told her she couldn’t work as a fitness instructor with her figure.

There are so many people who didn’t give up, didn’t give in, who kept fighting against all odds for what they believed in, even if it was “only” their belief in themselves. And that set them free. You have it in your hands.

PS: Have I mentioned patience?

Sept. 2012 ~ When I started writing “The Fenris Clan”