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The Lottery Experiment

2/27/2016

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Others have done it before me.  From my initial Googling, I found a few people who did a scratch off lottery experiment using $1 scratch off tickets.  I know the house always wins, but I keep finding myself going through spurts of playing, and when I have a spurt, I feel lucky.  I buy a ticket; I win; I buy more tickets until the streak ends.  I feel like I usually end up on top, but I never really keep track.  I have fun, and I only spend money from my weekly spending money (we use an envelope system).  In the lottery experiments I checked out, one man bought a $1 scratch off ticket every day for a month.  He had some wins, but ended up down.  Another man bought 100 $1 scratch offs all at once.  He won more than the first man (apparently you have a better chance this way), but he still ended up down.
Am I really lucky or do I just fool myself into buying tickets every now and then?  Only one way to find out.  I need to keep track and do my own lottery experiment.  Although I have a feeling I will not want to play again when this is over, I've decided to buy the equivalent of one $5 ticket a week for the rest of the year.  I started the first week of February.  My first three tickets lost, and I wanted to give up on my lottery experiment already.  Instead, I decided to save my $5 for four weeks and buy four tickets in a row.
One of the lottery experiments I read donated all of the winnings to charity.  I have decided to donate 20% of what I win and 20% of what I spend to charity.  So, in addition to spending $5 on a lottery ticket each week, I am setting aside $5 in savings to cover my donation and give me a little reward at the end.  Since I didn't start in January, I will end up with $240 in savings at the end of my experiment.  I will also end up with a minimum donation of $48.  
There are a couple of charities I am considering including Alpha Pregnancy Center (a non-denominational Christian based pregnancy crisis center in our area) and the Shriner's Hospital.  As a child from a low-income family of five, when they discovered I had scoliosis, the Shriner's Hospital in Tampa, FL provided my medical care free of charge.  I've never utilized Alpha Pregnancy Center, but having started motherhood as a single/pseudo-widowed teenage mother, I have a place in my heart for women who are in need of support during and after pregnancy.
If I win nothing in the next year, then I will donate $48 to one of these organizations (in addition to the regular donations we make to Alpha Pregnancy Center).  If I win enough to increase the donation size to at least $100, I may split the donation.  Either way, we'll see how it goes.  

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Book 2 is out!

2/20/2016

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For those of you who don't already know, book 2 in the Jade Hale series, Dreams in the Midst, has been released.  Both books are now available on Amazon.com for $2.99 as e-books.  They are also both available in print.

I'm very excited to see how book 2 does.  There was so much time in between the first two books that book 1's momentum has just about vanished.  However, I am just happy that these books are out there in the world.  I know I have become a better writer, and with each book I finish, I am closer to the dream of becoming a full-time writer.  Even if it doesn't happen until I am officially "retired" from my day job, I know the day will one day arrive when I can claim my only career is that of a writer. 

Now comes the hard part--really focusing on marketing the first two books while continuing to write.  I recently started a Specialist degree at FSU (August).  I finished my first two classes without writing anything not related to work or school.  I racked up student loan debt.  So I stopped.  I am too grown to amass debt to go to school for something that, although I love it, is really my secondary dream.  Writing MUST take a front seat in my life at some point, right?  Obviously, God and my family are also up there, so unless my vehicle is going to take up the whole road, I've got to draw a line and throw some things into the back.

So here I go, writing every day, and focusing on what is important today.  Goal?  I'd like to finish and release Guardians in the Midst in one year or less from the date of this post.  Hold me to it!
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    Author

    A teacher, a writer, a mother, a wife and a friend.  All people wear what feels like a million different hats at any given time.  In this place, I choose to have freedom.  That doesn't mean I'm not still juggling my hats; it just means I choose which of them I balance on my head as I write.

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