energy

Day 35: Fantasy Self

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Eek! It’s already been 35 days since I started this blog and I feel like I haven’t made much progress. I’ve made a bit, but not as much as I wish. Still I went to ballet class this weekend and I’ve been writing pretty consistently. But I want to have done more!

One of the main problems I have with myself is that I can never live up to my fantasy self. You know the one? The one who eats healthily and jumps up at the sound of her alarm to write. The one who exercises regularly. The one who writes like she’s running out of time. The one who is always in a good mood at work and ready to help.  The one who is ambitious, but not too ambitious to be slytherin-like. 😛

I call her my fantasy self and sometimes I feel so, so far from her.

She’s who I want to be; the person I’m striving to be with this blog. Too often I fall short, but that’s not such a bad thing, is it? To have something to strive for? To aim to be the person I want to be.  To reach beyond who I currently am?

No, I think it’s a good thing, but I also have to remember to forgive myself when I fall short. Tomorrow is another day to live up to my ideal person, but it’s okay if I skipped writing for one day because I was just too tired from my job which pays my rent. It’s okay if I skip yoga one day because I’d rather lay in bed and drink coffee. It’s okay to not be perfect all the time, to not be my fantasy self (she is a fantasy after all). It’s okay to fail as long as I make a note and course correct. And then there are the days I succeed – the days I align who I am with who I want to be – even if it’s only one moment at a time.

Day 31: Monthly Check-in 1

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Sooo…somewhere along the line my days got messed up and I’ve been numbering everything wrong for the past month. Typical, but that’s okay because I just googled how many days it’s been since July 23 and the answer is 31. Back on track! (Hopefully)

I’ve decided to do monthly check-ins to see how I’m progressing in the long term and where I can improve! TO THE EXCEL DOC!

Screen Shot 2017-08-24 at 9.23.39 PM

Okay, it’s a screen shot of the excel doc. Now let’s revisit my goals in Day One.

  1. Become a Novelist – The righthand column with the bunch of “Yeses” are every day in the past month (plus some) that I’ve written. Sometimes it’s only a few minutes, and sometimes it’s much longer, but the important thing is that I work towards what I want every single day. I’m not there yet, but now I can see patterns in my behavior. Weekends seem to be tough for me to write some reason. I know 8/5-8/7 and 8/15-8/20 were the days I was dog sitting. And the end of July was when I got sucked into Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. Still, I think I’ve written more consistently since I started this project and that’s a win. Hopefully next month it’ll be a row of green.
  2. Ballet! – I took a few months off of Ballet and I’ve just gone back. I’ve also tried to take up yoga, which I’ve gone to a few times and pop physique (groupon!), which I haven’t managed to go to yet. I’ve made a little progress in that I’ve started going to something once a week, but I really do need to go more and hopefully once I make it part of my routine, I’ll be more green and less red.
  3. Promotion – No movement on this front, but I didn’t think things would happen in a month, so I’m content to wait. I should ask for more opportunities at work to learn new things so I can be a good candidate when the time comes.
  4. Credit Card debt – Still chugging away on this one, but I’ve been set back a bit because I had to buy a few flights. Next month I hope to make a serious dent in it, but it looks like it’s going to take longer than expected. (As many things do.)
  5. In a relationship – Nada on this front too. Although I did try a few new activities and met some new people. Who knows what the future holds there? 🙂

So that’s my monthly check in. I’m doing better overall than I was a month ago, but I still have a long ways to go and need to put some serious work in.

Until tomorrow.

Day 25: Eclipse Day!

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I don’t really take much stock in astrology, but I like the idea of turning points and today is apparently a big one. I think big events that don’t happen very often have a way of making us reflect on where we are in life. New Year’s Eve, Big Birthdays and Historic Events whether human or celestial. They make us think about where we were in the past and where we want to go in the future.

Clearly I’m already thinking about what I want to be next year or even next month or even tomorrow. But the next Eclipse in North America is happening in 2024 – seven years from now. I put it on my calendar. And I’m wondering where I’ll be then. Will I be married with a kid on the way? In a different city? In a different country? Or will I still be in the same place I am now? Will I still be in my same apartment? Will I still be working for the same company? Will I be happy or will I be thinking how I wished I would have changed the way I lived seven years ago during the last eclipse?

It makes us think in the long term, whether in months or years or decades. It’s so easy to get mired in the everyday aspects of life: getting to work on time and eating right and exercising. But I think it is so, so important to think about where you’re going and to take small (and large) steps to get you there. After all, do you really want to be the same person seven years from now? And what are you doing to get you where you want to go?

Until tomorrow.

Day 23: Still Dog sitting

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Still dog sitting. She is lovely and it’s nice having the ever loving, ever forgiving presence of a dog in my life. But my goodness, she is A LOT of work. She is adorable and sweet and ALWAYS WANTS TO PLAY. Our schedule is as follows:

6 AM – A walk in the morning after she shoves her wet nose in my face. (At least half an hour.)

6:45 AM – Coffee for me. Breakfast for her, which she does not eat and picks at through the day. -_-

8:30 AM – Quick walk to pee before I go to work. (10-15 minutes around the block. Depends on how fast I feel like walking.)

6 PM – Long walk to burn off all that energy from sleeping all day (30 minutes) OR a quick walk and then an hour long trip to the dog park.

7:30 PM – Time to eat.

8:30 PM – TIME TO PLAY. GOSH I’M SO EXCITED YOU’RE HOME. TIME TO PLAYYYYYYYY.

9:30 PM – Another long walk (30 minutes) And bed.

I barely have time to do much else besides take care of her. I’m rather glad she’s going back home this weekend, although I’m sure I’ll miss her when she’s gone. Absence does make the heart grow fonder.

If nothing else, I’ve realized how much time I have on my hands and how much of it I spend puttering around not working on the things I want to be working on. (Plus I get many, many steps in.) And now it’s almost time for our last long walk of the day before we head to bed.

Until tomorrow.

Day 20: One Minute at a Time

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So back on track! Still dog sitting and still tired, but I’m back on track for now. And I’m sure I’ll miss a day tomorrow or next week, but for now I am here and I am writing.

And that’s pretty much the secret to my editing success. Originally I would set a timer for one minute and then write, write, write and then after sixty seconds I was done. You really can do anything for a minute. While it was tempting to do more than one minute, I get easily deterred and discouraged if I did half an hour the day before, but couldn’t manage it the next day. But I can do one minute every day – squeeze it in before I go to work, while I’m cooking or right before I go to bed. Easy peasy. And then suddenly you have a habit.

I’ve slowly been upping the amount of time I edit, so at the moment I’m at seven minutes. It doesn’t seem like a lot (and it’s not really), but something is better than nothing. I’m chipping away at the pages of my book slowly, but surely – one minute at a time.

Day 19:???

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Gah! I meant to blog, but then I kept forgetting! Dog sitting again has thrown off my whole schedule. It’s not that it’s hard…it’s just that she’s a high energy dog and takes up huge chunks of time, which I normally devote to other things. I am getting my 10,000 steps though!

Other good news is I did go to yoga today! I’m tired and it’s getting to be my bedtime, so I think I’ll have to share my writing tip another day. (Hopefully tomorrow…)

Until tomorrow.

Day 16: Be Focused

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Nothing really to report today that I didn’t say yesterday. I talk a lot about my goal of exercising more and I think that’s because it’s the one goal I find hardest to work on. They’re all hard, but for whatever reason that one in particular is the hardest.

Writing is hard too, but I can do it without leaving my apartment, so I don’t think about it as much. I wrote a book, or rather I’m still writing a book. Editing away. Day after day after day. Some days I make more headway than others.

When I started writing it was all stops and starts, but then I realized that I find targets really helpful. I set up my little word counter in my writing program and it has a little bar that turns from red to orange to green as the number of words you write goes up. Then – Ding Ding! – and 500 words later I was all done! (Yes, there was a literal ding ding. It’s the reward signal.)

I find editing much harder than writing. Writing flows out of my fingers pours out onto the page, but editing is like getting into the weeds. Everything needs to be pulled out and redone – whole chapters, whole paragraphs, turns of phrase, adjectives.  Everything is wrong. Maybe something is almost right, or could be right, but most things need fixing. It’s hard. But I found a solution,

I downloaded a timer called Be Focused. It’s a Chrome extension and is one of the many timer apps which is supposed to help you utilize the Pomodoro technique. That’s twenty-five minutes on and the a five minute break. Twenty-five minutes isn’t so daunting as 250 pages. Although it can be a little daunting. More on that later.

Until tomorrow.

 

Day 15: The Problem is the Journey

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Literally. Another Tuesday and another failed attempt at going to dance class after work.  I enjoy it. I really do. But it’s just a tad bit too far to be considered “convenient” and that is really the block in the road. The journey is the difficult part; the ending is the part I actually enjoy. Last week I said the lure of greasy food would be the place that gets me there, but that clearly isn’t the case.

Next week I’ll try breaking it down into smaller steps:

  1. Finish work
  2. Go into the bathroom
  3. Change into workout clothes
  4. Get in car
  5. Get on the highway (in the right direction – no towards home)
  6. Arrive
  7. Dance

Lucky number seven!

I’m the kind of person who really enjoys crossing off To-Do lists, so hopefully this will actually get me there!

Until tomorrow.

Day 9: Guilty

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I started the week off so well by going to yoga on Sunday. I had the best intentions to go to barre class today – I packed my bag, made sure I had a snack for before class and got a full tank of gas…but the end of work rolled around and my eyes were hurting for some unknown reason and I forgot to turn in my rent check this morning. So instead of going to barre class, I just went home and watched more of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. All the best intentions and none of the follow through.

I really want to got to class. And as soon as the clock ticks one minute past the start of class I feel really guilty for not going, but somehow I just can’t motivate myself to go. Especially after work. So I’m going to try a few different methods in the coming weeks to see if I can make it to class.

For next week I’ll let myself buy this fast food after class that I normally don’t, but like so much. There’s not one close to where I live, but there is one close to the studio! It seems counter productive to eat greasy, unhealthy food after I exercise, but it’s a small reward for something I find so hard to do! And  after I make my exercise into a habit, I can drop the reward. Stay tuned next week!

Until tomorrow.

Day 5: 100 Blocks

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Have you seen this? It’s from Wait But Why.

I saved it on my computer ages ago and every so often I’ll stumble across it and fill it out again. The idea is that your waking hours are broken into 10 minute chunks and every chunk or block you have you’re making a decision about how to spend it. So you fill out the chart and then you can see how you spend your minutes, your hours and your days.

It really is fascinating to see it all laid out before you – all the minutes wasted (or not) on Netflix. The huge chunk of time that a 9 to 5 (ahem – 6 or 7) job takes up. How much time it takes to cook and clean and generally be an adult and get done all things you have to do to be considered “responsible”.

(Hint: You really only have about three hours of free time if you sleep 8 hours, work a regular job and take care of all the things you need to.)

And here’s where it comes to deciding. Is watching one hour of TV worth five blocks? Is cooking (and then washing up) worth five or six? It’s laid out before you all the time you do and do not waste, and then it’s up to you if you want to continue to live your days in the same way. An excellent, more detailed companion to the article I mentioned a few days ago – How to Live Wisely. Happy blocking!

 

Until tomorrow.