The Passionate Dreamer's Notebook

Dysthymia – Dysthymia, also called dysthymic disorder, is a form of depression. It is less severe than major depression, but usually lasts longer. Many people with this type of depression describe having been depressed as long as they can remember, or they feel they are going in and out of depression all the time. (Harvard Health publications)

  It’s fast-forwarding to the future, to better days,…

The Call from Japan

Sanagawa River in Toyokawa

Sometimes it strikes you in the middle of a hot August afternoon, the desire to get up and leave everything you know and love behind for a bold new experience.

I was sitting on a lounge chair beside my aunt’s pool in Georgia, my eyes squinting from the sunlight pouring between the leaves in the tree branches above me, when the voice in my head said, “You should go to…

It’s raining. In our despair, In our fear of death, Each of us, all of us, Individual black holes, We create stories, As countless as the stars, Stories not for entertainment, Stories to survive, To march forward to the end. We craft stories of hope, triumph, of Good conquering evil, A beautiful romance, An inspiring dream. But today, our stories are failing us. We have nothing. And we watch as…

DAY 3: Don’t Let “Positive Thinking” Hurt You

Hello! This is 60 Seconds with Dasist Winter. :)

Positive thinking. Sigh.

Positive thinking has its role in your life but there are days when you try hard to get your mind to think constructive thoughts and you only feel worse.

Why? Because you’re told to put your brain in a box labeled “positive thinking”, but your brain’s more like an ocean, and you can’t put the ocean in a box.

Sometimes you…

1.) PROPHET FROM THE MOON: THE MOON’S EDGE BOOK ONE

Description: 

Alyssira “Aly” Beaulieu had a full ride to college, a loving grandmother, and a troubled older sister to take care of. Then the bombs fell.

Three hundred years after the destruction, she awakes in the streets of an unfamiliar Boston in a whole new body. Lost and buffeted by shock, she searches for help but instead ends up in the…

“You getting out?” the taxi driver asked.

Tessa glared at the man through the rearview mirror, her gloved hands gripping a black leather handbag, a gift from her late grandmother. “Where I come from, a driver opens a door for a young lady and helps with her suitcase,” she said.

He snorted, wiggling his blonde moustache. “I see no young lady here,” he said in a thick Southern drawl. “Now, you…

Day 2: Your Self-Healing Cocoon

Hello! This is 60 Seconds with Dasist Winter. :)

Everyone needs a self-healing cocoon. What’s a self-healing cocoon, you may ask? It’s that special space away from everyone where you heal yourself from life’s problems.

My self-healing cocoon consists of pillows on the floor, a huge blanket to wrap myself around with—like a cocoon—and meditating music. Right now, I’m struggling with unemployment,…

Hello!

This is 60 Seconds with Dasist Winter. :)

One thing that has been on my mind lately is accepting your feelings. Sometimes you have a range of dark emotions like anger, sadness, and frustration, and the people around you may want you to suppress those feelings. They send unspoken signals that your sadness or frustration is directly or indirectly affecting them and that you need to get that…

The Awesome Abstract Art Used in My Twitter Timeline

Hello Dear Readers,

I’ve written a BOOK and it’s called PROPHET FROM THE MOON (THE MOON’S EDGE, #1)!

  I’m calm on the outside but my insides are EXCITED!

This book’s journey is five years long from conception to the final edits. You can read the description and first chapter HERE!  My pen name is Dasist Winter.

Because I want to people to read, rate, and comment on my book, I have to promote my…

THE MOON’S EDGE – CHAPTER ONE

Description: When intergalactic deities resurrect Alyssira in a post-apocalyptic Boston, she goes from HS senior to soldier to prevent elites from selling Earth to aliens, but her inability to obey orders could jeopardize the whole mission.

CHAPTER ONE

Tonight deserves a Grammy for ruining my hearing.

Military helicopters swarm the night sky like angry wasps, their blades thunderous with…

Picture the Face of Freedom

Picture the face of freedom for one moment. Don’t give it a passing glance, but let’s carve out a piece of time for it in this life, this brief walk often burdened with sorrow, anger, and pain, this flickering flame bursting also with joy, laughter, and the love of family, friends, neighbors, even passing strangers.

Stare into freedom’s eyes and listen to what it has to say, to offer, to what it…

Patience or Waiting to Live?

“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.” ― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

PATIENCE has been on my mind, its feelers rummaging through my brain, reminding me of its scalding presence in my life. I breathe its stinging fumes in the morning as I awaken and condemn the day before…

PITCHWARS PIMP MY BIO

Howdy! Welcome to my #PimpMyBio page for #PITCHWARS 2016. Woot woot! Writers from all over the world enter their works for a chance to win the help of a mentor. Why is that awesome? Because these amazing mentors whip a mentee’s manuscript into tiptop form for the Agent Round. Hello? Awesome opportunity? You betcha! (I swear I’m not related to Sarah Palin). Anyway, learn more about it from the…

Warning: Inside the Mind of a Highly Functioning Depressive 1.0

Warning: Language

It’s 1:30 in the morning as I write this now with my mind unable to sleep thanks to the millions of thoughts flitting across my head at 240kmh (that’s 150mph for us non-metric folk).

I feel the pain of the world too easily with all the tragedies unfolding this year, this week, today, right now, threatening to tear my heart and mind apart. Hopelessness sets in along with my…

Being Alone and Lonely in Japan: An Introvert’s Perspective

Listen, you’ll need lots of cheap wine and beer, 500+ tracks of good music, some of it mindless like 2000s pop, a deeper appreciation of introversion, a good activity to speed up time—mine is writing (thank God or else I would’ve jumped in front of a Shinkansen already)—Netflix playing in the background, a quick dismissal of whatever qualms you’ve had about talking to yourself in public, a tablet…

Feeding on Rejection, Criticism, and Reality Checks

This is how it goes. I submitted a short story to a horror magazine last month and received a response about four days later. Before I clicked open the email, I knew it’d be a rejection, and lo and behold, it was a rejection. I promptly dropped it into my Rejections Folder, bringing the count up to 63 big fat NO’s from literary agents and magazines.

Now some might say I brought the rejection to…

Feeding on Rejection, Criticism, and Reality Checks

This is how it goes. I submitted a short story to a horror magazine last month and received a response about four days later. Before I clicked open the email, I knew it’d be a rejection, and lo and behold, it was a rejection. I promptly dropped it into my Rejections Folder, bringing the count up to 63 big fat NO’s from literary agents and magazines.

Now some might say I brought the rejection to…