When Getting Things Done Feels Like A Vacation

Superstition Mountains, Arizona
Photo Credit: Doree Weller

I moved over two months ago, and I haven’t gotten nearly as much done as I wanted to.  I’d hoped to be further along in unpacking and writing than I am.  I had set a goal to get my novel out to as many agents as possible, until I realized that my novel still needed some heavy editing.  *sigh*  I’ve just been “too” to get anything done.  Too tired.  Too busy.  Too unmotivated.  Too everything.

I expected last week, the first week of NaNoWriMo, to be more of the same.  I was determined to keep going through the entire month, even if I didn’t meet the goal of 50,000 words, just not to give up.  I was also determined to get some things done around the house.

I was pleasantly surprised to feel motivated and to get more done than I expected to.  The unpacking went well, and so did working on my novel.  I’m forcing myself to work on it even when I don’t want to, and it will definitely need rewriting, but at least I’m getting the skeleton on paper, which is the point of NaNoWriMo.  I also managed to do some editing on my completed novel.  My writer’s group gave me positive feedback, and I feel really good about the edits.  I’m changing some minor things in the novel to make it better.  Finally, I feel like I’m on the right track.

Getting things done feels good, and for the first time in two months, I actually feel like I’m off work.  I haven’t worked a job for pay since the beginning of August, but I’ve been so busy and stressed that I haven’t felt like I had any “time off.”  Now, it’s finally starting to feel that way.

As an added bonus, I’ve decided to try doing yoga again.  I did my first session last night, and it was wonderful!  At first I had trouble keeping up (for those of you who don’t use yoga, it moves faster than you’d think), but once I got into the groove, I feel like I did pretty well.  I got a very good workout and I stretched out all those achy muscles.  Of course, I have new aches today, but that’s the good workout kind of ache.

Maybe I didn’t get started as quickly as I wanted, but I’m finally doing all the things I wanted to do during my time “off.”  The clock is ticking until it will be time to go back to work, so I’m making the most use of this time that I can!

Philosophical Graffiti

I’m a fan of graffiti.  Not gang tags or kids destroying stuff for the sake of destruction, but I understand the need to carve your name in a wooden picnic table or write on a bathroom wall.  I’ve never done it, but I admire the artwork and creativity of others.

I don’t understand the need to destroy, when others deface artwork or “tag” things that were clearly not meant to be tagged.  I once saw petroglyphs in a rock where people had carved their names into the stone around them, and I wondered who would destroy something like that.

This post isn’t about acts of destruction though.  I recently ran into graffiti on a bathroom wall that made me smile and made me think.  When I read it, I thought, “This is kind of a low-tech Facebook.”

As seen on a bathroom wall stall…

I really enjoyed this conversation.  In black, is:

“Don’t (sic) ever fall in love.  it’s a trap.”

“<– thats depressing.”

“<DONT (sic) EVER FOLLOW SOMEONE ELSE’S HEART.  THATS (sic) THE TRAP.”

Then it gets interesting.  (Extra points because she used mostly used proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling).  In brown, it says,

“Love is a choice, not a feeling.  Those butterflies are from infatuation.  Love at first sight is a Feb 14 hoax.  We should strive for love and grow more deeply in it daily with our partners.  Because when I see him for the last time I want to be more in love with him then (sic) I ever have been before.  But, Just my opinion. -CK”

It’s clear that the first girl had a bad experience, probably not long before she wrote that.  I picture her in the bathroom, getting a disappointing text message from her beloved.  Maybe her beloved broke up with her via text just then.  Maybe they had an argument over dinner.  Maybe her beloved didn’t send her a text when she expected one.  In any case, at that moment, she was moved to write those words.  She could have updated her Facebook status with that, and maybe she did that as well.  Or, maybe she didn’t want her friends and family to know that her beloved disappointed her yet again.

The girl in brown wrote that “Love is a choice, not a feeling.”  I agree with her sentiment, but not exactly what she says.  Anyone who’s ever been in love, especially after they’ve made it past the butterflies in your stomach feeling, knows that long term love is both a choice and a feeling.  Once upon a time, I dated a wonderful man, but I just didn’t have that feeling for him, and ended up breaking it off.  I could have chosen to stay, but without that love feeling, it can be hard to get through the ups and downs of a real relationship.  In contrast, with my husband, I’m long past the butterflies in my stomach stage, but I still have that warm and fuzzy feeling.  And that warm feeling helps me choose not to bash him over the head with a very heavy object when he irritates me.

In all seriousness, I don’t believe that you can choose who you fall in love with.  I believe in chemistry, and I believe that the chemistry between two individuals can be love.  I’m not just talking about romantic chemistry/ love, but also the platonic chemistry/ love that happens between friends.  Sometimes you just know that you’re going to be wonderful friends or lovers, and the relationship doesn’t take years to build.  Sometimes those relationships start immediately because of chemistry.  But at some point, there’s clearly the choice to put the hard work in or not put the hard work in.

Love isn’t the trap.  Thinking that love should be easy is the trap.  But, just my opinion.  🙂

Chaos and Contests

I just wanted to do a quick update.  I know I’ve been sporadic about blogging lately, and I miss it, so I wanted to tell all y’all what’s going on.

First, the new job is still stressful, and I’m still adjusting.  I think I’ve almost got it down now though, so hopefully I won’t use that as an excuse too much longer.  

Second, I’ve been fighting off my third round of this weird cold that’s going around.  I learned that it’s called a “crud.”  Yep, look it up.  It really is.

Third, and most important, I was getting my entry together for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest.  I’m super excited about this.  Amazon does an annual contest, and the grand prize, as well as a few first prizes, are publication.  I read one of the contest winners from last year, On Little Wings by Regina Sirois, and it was a great book.  I plan to work my way through other previous winners, but the point is that they publish good stuff.  On March 18th, 2000 entries will move into the next round of judging.  They only accept 10,000 entries, so that’s a pretty significant number that have been dropped in the first round.  On April 14th, 500 entries will move into the next level of judging, and the public gets to rate the excerpts.

I’ll keep you posted, even if I don’t make the first cut.  I think it’s really important for readers to support contests like this, because as an author, it can feel incredibly difficult to get noticed.  When readers take the time to look at contest entries, you’re telling publishers clearly what you find interesting.

So, that’s my excuse for not blogging.  But no worries; I hope to get back to it this week.  🙂

Endings and Beginnings

Dead Horse Ranch State Park: Photo Credit Doree Weller

 

“He who rejects change is the architect of decay.  The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.”  ~Harold Wilson

I’ve worked in Mobile Crisis for 3 years, and it’s time to move on.

That may not seem like a long time to most people, but this is a job where it’s not uncommon for people to do a ride along, or work one shift, and then never come back.  It’s clearly not for everyone, but it’s in my blood, and I love it.

I’m sad to move on.  The hours are awful.  I go into all sorts of homes, with bedbugs (and other bugs).  I stand outside in the intense heat, and sometimes the cold.  I also meet wonderful people.  People who are struggling, and they call because they don’t know what else to do.  I’ve met vets.  Mothers and fathers.  Children, teachers, doctors, lawyers.  I’m going to miss it.

I’ve been talking about moving on since the day I started.  You see, I’m a Licensed Associate Counselor, and in order to get my Professional Licensure, I need to have a certain type of supervision and a certain type of counseling experience.  Although we meet everyone with every type of issue in crisis, we don’t do intake assessments or treatment plans.  I can’t get my Professional Licensure if I stay.

I could stay at crisis.  It would be easy.  I love it there.  I love the people I work with, and especially the TV Guy.  I could see myself staying on at this job forever, but that would mean leaving my long term goals behind.  I didn’t want to wake up one day 20 years from now and wonder what happened.  I didn’t want to stay past when I was happy there.  Why wait until I wasn’t enjoying it anymore?

I think this sums up my feelings:

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.”  ~Anatole France

I have to buy new clothes.  Grown-up clothes, I’m calling them.  At crisis, we wore jeans or shorts and our uniform polo shirts.  At my new position, I’ll be wearing business casual.  I tried on dress pants, and I swear, they felt like pajamas.  Everything is going to be different.  Different clothes, different co-workers, different commute (shorter!), way different hours.

I don’t like change.  Change is hard.  But, I want the end result, so that means I have to do the work to get from point A to B.  So, I can choose to complain about it, or I can move forward, determined to enjoy the next leg of my journey.  No matter what, it’s a wild ride!

30 Days of Gratitude- Day 1

Day 1 of the 30 Days of Gratitude Project. 1. I’m grateful that I had such a wonderful Halloween/ Anniversary yesterday. Nearly perfect days like that don’t come along all that often. 2. I’m grateful for my strong body that allows me to do everything I need/ want to do. 3. I’m grateful I have a job and partner I love, so that going to work isn’t something I dread!

Crazy, aka Ultimate Blog Challenge

I decided to join the Ultimate Blog Challenge for July.  Because, really I didn’t have enough to do.  🙂

Though if I’m really honest, blogging doesn’t take up that much of my time.  I really do enjoy blogging, but I need to hold myself accountable, and a blog challenge, where I have to do it daily, really helps me.  The goal is to blog every day for the month of July.  Apparently it’s a quarterly challenge.  The other nice thing about blog challenges is that I get exposure to other people’s blogs, ones I might not read otherwise.

So, here we go… today is day 1 of 31 days of blogging.  I’ll be “cheating” on Sundays, as I’ll continue to leave that to The TV Guy.

Wish me luck.

 

 

Unfocused, Multitasking, and Re-prioritizing

I took sort of an unexpected break from blogging.  It wasn’t planned; it was just that I didn’t do it for a couple weeks, and I’m not quite sure why.  It’s funny; I didn’t even check my stats, and with my addiction to numbers… I love checking my stats!

I wasn’t reading all that much either in the last couple of weeks.  I started writing again, really writing.  I wrote a couple short stories, did a couple of submissions to anthologies, and started thinking about what’s next for me, writing-wise.

Focus is a huge issue for me in general.  I usually have so much going on that it’s hard for me to do one thing at a time.  I read an article awhile back that people take pride in multitasking because they like to show they can do a bunch of things at once, but in reality, they tend to be less productive overall because each “switch” of task costs time and energy.  I read the article, nodded sagely, and thought, “Well that’s true for everyone else but not for me.”

I know the trap and lie of being special, and I still bought it.  That came to mind recently when I realized how unproductive I’ve been.  I do a million and one things and some days feel like I get nothing done.  I start lots of things, but don’t finish much.  Right now, I have four novels started.  In my readerly opinion, they’re all good stories.  But currently, they’re lying dormant because I’m not focused enough to finish anyone of them.

I’m going to have to stop that, and one of the ways is going to be to draw up a schedule for myself.  It’s not because I’m rigid or anything, but I like having a structure.  Let’s face it… if they didn’t tell me what time to be at work, I might never get there.  I like my job, but there are other things I’d rather do.  It’s the same thing with writing.  There’s nothing I’d rather do, but it’s so easy to get distracted by all the things I think need to get done.

So… I’m going to make myself a schedule.  We’ll see how that works out.  🙂