What Were You Doing?

9/11 20 year anniversary

I had another email written for today because today is my 10th wedding anniversary, but then I realized that tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of 9/11. And, well, everything else kinda pales in comparison. It’s the day that we lost almost 3,000 people at ground zero and thousands more military personnel, and almost twice as many in cancer-related complications were diagnosed. For many of us, we can remember where we were and what we were doing that fateful day.

Joe doesn't like listening to bad news, either. If he turns away, it didn't happen.

At the risk of sounding glib, I do not remember. That’s because, believe it or not, I didn’t know about 9/11 until a week later. At the time, I was pregnant with my daughter, and I wasn’t feeling well so I stayed home from work.

We didn’t have social media and the internet raging news like it does today. Things were not instantaneous, except maybe television news, and even that was easy to ignore. You just didn’t turn on the television. And I did not really watch that much television. I still don’t.

The issue with not watching television is that you generally don’t know pop culture too much. Things have a way of passing you by, and quickly. This made me a target of some bullying and passive-aggressive teasing while in law school. I mean, I was in law school. Shouldn’t I be paying attention to the world?

After being made fun of, I decided to enter into the newest century. I turned on the television to watch the news. I got a Twitter account.

What followed was not pretty. I became angry. I mean, like, really angry. Everything pissed me off. I was righteous in my fury! What was happening in this world? Why did everyone do these things to each other? I was suddenly inundated with everyone’s thoughts.

And I learned that just because everyone has a thought … doesn’t mean you should publish it on social media.

I stopped. I made a conscious effort not to watch the news. I now carefully avoid anything political. I look at cute doggy and kitty pictures on Instagram and ignore anyone on Twitter that is angry and righteous.

Of course, the down side to this is that you don’t know about catastrophic events like 9/11, and therefore, you can’t remember what you were doing when you heard the news.

Since I can’t tell you what I was doing, you can tell me what you were doing. Drop me an email. I’d love to hear your stories.

The Book Promos

This newsletter, I am participating in the Mystery and Suspense Giveaway. If you are a fan of the genre, then I encourage you to head over for some free reading treats.

Happenings

Lately, I’ve been interested in reading some romance novels, and I bought a series: Temporary Wife Temptation, Secret Crush Seduction, and Off Limits Attraction by Jayci Lee. I was interested because of the Korean-American characters (as well as the Korean-American author).

I will be taking down Joe’s website and instead using the domain name for this newsletter. But, speaking of Korean stuff, I will be putting up my other website soon!