Unprecedented times are upon us all.

If you’re like many of the other individuals otherwise affected by the outbreak of COVID-19/Coronavirus around the world, but can still breathe normally (or breathing at all), you’re likely one of the luckier ones. My prayers are with everyone, especially those in Italy, and back home in the United States.

There are people literally dying right now from something we seem to have little likelihood to control any time soon. Things are probably only going to get worse, before they get better, over the next few weeks. It’s scary to say the least. And, unless you’re one of the brave souls on the frontlines fighting this disease, you and I have one priority. Just one thing to be as helpful as possible:

Stay the heck home.

The trouble is, of course, that now many of our jobs and businesses are in dire threat of going belly-up because of no one leaving their homes, and because of mandates forcing non-essential businesses to close.

What are we to do, then?

Well, probably because of the effects of pervasively runaway capitalism, many of us feel that we aren’t valuable unless we’re being productive in some shape or manner. Or, something like that. I try not to think about it much. Gives me anxiety.

So, my point is that many of you are stuck at home, and probably wondering how you can be as productive as possible. Especially if you’ve waiting to have more time on your hands to focus on personal projects.

Well, this may not have been how you were hoping to finally have all that time, but . . . here we are.

Might as well make the best of it, yeah?

I went ahead and wrote a quick article on How to Stay Productive During Quarantine for my sponsor, Wacom, on their website:

You can read it HERE.

Just as well, I went ahead and made a quick infographic for you all, which summarizes the main points: (feel free to download it)

Being productive during quarantine is important, but so is the overall health of our global community.

Please, please, please stay safe, and stay strange.

God bless you all.

The post How to Stay Productive During Quarantine: 5 Tips appeared first on EOTERA.

Part #1: Dyslexia

I have dyslexia.

It’s a condition that affects millions, so I know I’m not alone in this endeavor. But, for those that do experience it, especially for young children first beginning their learning and reading efforts, it can feel very isolating.

I was one of those kids.

If you don’t already know, dyslexia affects your ability to read. It causes your mind to flip and distort the letters that you see, making words just a confusing jumble of incomprehensible squiggles. Dyslexia varies in severity from individual to individual, but every single person who has it will tell you that reading out loud is one of the most panic-inducing experiences you can ever have in a social setting. Which always seemed to be every teacher’s favorite “game” to play with their students; taking turns to read a paragraph out of the book everyone has to read.

Now, if you have very patient and caring teachers, dyslexia is something that you can “grow out of,” or at least get to the point where it doesn’t make you too uncomfortable in academic settings. Unfortunately, I never had any of those teachers growing up. As a result, learning was always a challenging and demoralizing experience with always feeling like the dumb kid in class. So much of our lives are influenced by the circumstances in which we grew up, and mine made it such that learning, reading, and school in general were never things I enjoyed.

Which definitely makes it odd that I decided I would be a writer and illustrator, eh?

Trust me, all of those thoughts have gone through my head, and still do!

Even when I was that same little kid who couldn’t read a sentence out loud without being laughed at, I still always loved drawing and making stories. I would always get lost in my imagination (which was just another thing I got in trouble for in school) and stories upon stories would just spring forth from those imaginings.

The funny thing?

My ability to draw was just as bad, if not worse, than my ability to read and write! (That’s a story for another time)

As you can see, I had my work cut out for me, with no shortage of obstacles to overcome just to get started. Yet, I knew that this was a task that I was here on this planet to do

But, dyslexia was the first issue that caused me the greatest amount of grief, and still to this day makes my spelling atrocious. If you’re wondering why the spelling on this post seems to be oddly well-done, that’s because my husband acts as my editor and also types up these blogs here on my website. Yet, you’ll notice if you go on Webtoon that you can still find many, many of my typos. (*rubs back of head in embarrassment*)

Knowing that I’m not alone in growing up with dyslexia, I knew I wanted to do everything I could to show others that you can still accomplish the things you want to do. Additionally, I wanted to make the stories that I write easy to read and digest for my audience as literally as possible.

Which is why I actually publish all of my books in Dyslexie Font.

This font was made to intentionally help those who have trouble reading normal fonts due to their dyslexia. All of the letters are uniquely shaped, which helps the dyslexic reader distinguish the shapes and not confuse them for others. It’s really helped me be a better writer, and it really does make reading that much better and enjoyable. I hope it does for you too.

Well, I’m not too sure what my goal was in writing this, but I just wanted to give you, my readers, a little more of a glimpse behind what I do.

Until next time.

Stay stranger, strangers!

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