NotesFromtheVoices

This is some of the 65 magazines I receive each month!   My name is Jackie and … I am a magazine addict. Besides having a love for books, there is enough in my heart and apartment for magazines. My goal is to read at least one book a month. The rest of the time is spent with magazines. While some people glance at Facebook throughout the day, I can be found at either Magazines.com or Amazon looking for magazine subscriptions. I love magazines. To those who know me, this is an understatement of the year. It started when I was about nine, I would buy soap opera and wrestling magazines with my allowance. I needed to know what was happening on the Young and the Restless and the Guiding Light while I was in school. As for wrestling, I had to make sure my grandma and I were prepared when we watched it on Saturday nights. And each year, my grandmother would get the Publisher’s Clearinghouse thing in the mail and let me chose one magazine subscription...

Most days, I feel like I am just holding everything together and then the cracks will start showing. I celebrated two years at my newspaper on Friday. Yesterday, I found the person who is in my previous job got promoted to regional editor. I wondered if that could have been me. Am I going nowhere here? Sometimes I wonder what I should do. Sometimes I wonder if it is spending too much time on the couch. Being out of commission for six weeks did something to me. I'm having a hard time getting mojo back. On Friday, I decided it was time to try to get it back. I had to do a work assignment in Wilmington on the riverfront. This is a picture of me and my big bag. My friends thought I had a date hidden inside it. I decided to stay and hang with my friend and her boyfriend. I had a wonderful time. Normally when I do a road trip, I always do the sight seeing and then head to a library or bookstore. This time I stepped outside my comfort zone. I headed to Wild Wing Café...

It has been over a month since I returned to work. I feel like I am 90 percent myself again but on long days with meetings, I am usually exhausted when I get home. I watched them from a distance. About a month ago, I got an assignment for Southeast North Carolina magazine that intrigued me. I was being sent to Bolivia to do a feature on a llama farm.  And for a few moments, I thought ‘I am going to South America.’ I wondered why but figured I would just go with the flow. Then I learned there was a Bolivia in North Carolina. I learned something new that day. To get to SundMist Pastures, I took an interesting journey across several bridges (my nemesis) to meet some of the coolest animals in the animal kingdom. Llamas are domesticated South American camelids that are independent minded with lots of personality. They are herd animals so you can’t own just one because it would die of loneliness without others. And you can’t keep two llamas in your backyard because they need sp...