Goal 9: Getting Our House In Order

I haven't checked in with my 2011 goals in quite a while, but lately I've been all about goal 9: Getting Our House In Order. Matt and I spent the weekend before last cleaning and rearranging our living room, FINALLY finding permanent homes for the furniture we inherited from his mom and making it look a lot more orderly in here. And I can't even tell you what a huge relief it is not to have to navigate around that huge sofa (and all of the clutter that formed up on and around it) every time we walk through the room.

I didn't bother taking before & after pictures, partly because the before embarrassed me so much (it was pretty bad), but also because we still have all of the old hand-me-down and pre-fab furniture left over from our twenties. So nothing exciting happened decor wise (other than putting out some fall and Halloween decorations); we just made better use of our space. But even though Better Homes & Gardens won't be knocking on our door to do a photo shoot any time soon, the living room looks so much better than it did, and it's so much more comfortable and homey. We're actually hanging out in here instead of spending all of our time in the back of the house. And I'm thrilled that there's actually enough floor space for me to do workout DVDs when the weather turns too cold to keep up my walking routine.

Apart from that, I've been spending most of my time over the last week and a half cleaning and rearranging my office. I'll go into more detail about that over at my other blog, but I'll say here that I can't believe what a huge undertaking that turned out to be. I'm trying to get rid of about half of what's crammed in there, but right now "getting rid of stuff" means moving it to the garage until I have time to haul it off to the recycling place/the Salvation Army/the used book store/eBay/whatever, and I'm running into the problem that our garage is already filled nearly to the brim with my late in-laws' things, and I'm quickly running out of temporary storage. So one of my big goals for next year will definitely be to clean out our garage and deal with all of the stuff we had to bring over from their apartment. Also, to finally buy a ladder so we can access our attic, which I totally forgot we even had until the other day when my mom asked why we don't put some of their stuff up there. But the cord on the pull-down door/ladder thing is missing, and without a ladder, we might as well not have an attic.

Yes, we've been here three years now, and we're still getting used to actually living in our very own house. By the way, we also have a shed, but the doors don't close, so we don't keep stuff in there, either. Fixing that might also be on next year's goal list.

Meanwhile, I'll keep working on my office and being mystified at how two people can barely cram all of their crap into a three-bedroom house. As it stands I have no idea where we'll put a baby if we actually manage to have one.

1st Quarter New Year's Goal Review

Well, the new year is one-fourth gone already. Nope, I can't believe it either. So how are all those new year's goals of mine coming along? I think about as well as can be expected, all things considered. Here's the breakdown.

1. Make my business more profitable - In progress. The 1st quarter of the year was filled with not-so-successful attempts at bringing in additional income, and I haven't been able to close any deals with new client prospects. But I'm about to launch my Blogging for Business class, and I have a good feeling about it. I really hope and pray that it takes off, because between developing this class and writing for Demand Studios to make ends meet, I barely have time for anything else.
   
2. Get health insurance/get ready to try again - In progress. Obviously, the health insurance depends on the first goal, and I'm nowhere near there yet. But I started Project Oven Repair to improve my health and eliminate my PCOS, if indeed that's what caused the baby failures. I'm hoping we'll be in a good position financially for trying again right around the same time my health is sufficiently improved for it.
   
3. Write at least 6 days a week - In progress... sort of? I've got the letter of this goal down, if not the spirit. My intention was to write fiction 6 days a week, but I haven't written any fiction since NaNoWriMo. Instead I've been blogging, writing DS articles and writing promotional copy and course materials. I do, however, have plans for Dominion of the Damned once the blogging class is launched and out of the way.
   
4. New camera/photography classes - Still on the list. This is, of course, dependent on Goal #1, and it's really more Matt's goal than mine. I'd still like to take some classes with him, just for the fun of it, but he's got some actual photography career aspirations. We still have to do our taxes and I have no idea whether we'll be getting a refund, but if we do, it'll probably go toward a new camera so he can get started.
   
5. Run a 5K - In progress, as part of Project Oven Repair. And this goal is more to be able to run a 5K than to actually run an official one... although if Li'l Sis and Ash do the Autism Run again this year, I just might join them.
   
6. Practice my bass - In progress, albeit slow. I'm not able to practice as much as I'd like, but at least I'm doing it consistently, and I'm improving. I don't think it will be too much longer before I'll be able to keep up with Matt and his guitar.
   
7. Learn a new language - Still on the list. If we're counting scripting languages, which we are, then I got a good start on learning javascript in early February, but then Rob's death derailed it, and I just haven't had time to squeeze it in since then. When I get back to it I'll probably be back at square one.
   
8. Learn a new yarn craft - Still on the list. When I added this goal I was still hoping to get a yarn spinning kit for Christmas, but apparently Santa missed that memo. I've watched some videos on crocheting granny squares, but I haven't yet had the time or energy to dig out my yarn and crochet hooks and actually try it for myself.
   
9. Get my house in order - Heh, yeah. Still on the list. I'm practicing Random Acts of Housecleaning to try and stay on top of the mess, but neither of us has had the energy to deal with rearranging the furniture or putting away Mom's things, so the stuff we kept is still sitting right where my family left it on the day they helped us move it over here in December. It's a little chaotic and overwhelming, to be sure.
   
10. Will/life insurance - Still on the list. We just haven't been in the mood to deal with paperwork of any kind. But I know we need to suck it up and get this done anyway, and there's really no excuse. The last thing either of us wants is to do to each other, or to my family, what Mom and Rob did to us by not having this stuff taken care of.

So that's half of my goals in progress, which is better than I thought. I guess for three months that were as chaotic and depressing as the last three have been for us, that's really not bad at all. Now if I can just accomplish Goal #1, most of the others will fall into line.

At any rate, today I'm feeling a little more hopeful about the future. I'm afraid to say it and tempt those powers and principalities to show me what's what, but I have a strong feeling that we're about to turn a corner and actually have things be good for a while.

I really hope this feeling is right. I'm ready to try putting all of this grief and sadness behind me. I'm still taking it one day at a time, because if the last four months have taught us anything, it's that you never know what's going to happen, and it's best not to get too caught up in making plans. And you never know when latent grief is going to sneak up and put the whammy on you. But with my birthday only days away, I'm ready to call a mulligan on the year so far and declare a new New Year starting with my birthday - a new year that's full of recovery and hope and better things.

Here's hoping.

Those 2011 Goals Are Starting To Come Along

Lately I've had my head down, hard at work on Goal #1 - making my business more profitable. I wish I could say it's already done, but all of the marketing stuff I've done so far is just the tip of the ice burg, and so far I don't have any new clients or increased web site traffic to show for it. That's a little discouraging. But it's still early, and there's still a lot to do, and I know it's going to take time. I need to stick with it. I know that if I do, by the grace of God, things will take off eventually.

Last week, I got started on Goal #5 - Run a 5K. That should really be renamed to Get My Body Ready To Make a Baby, because that's the true goal. I've been reading up on PCOS, and apparently that condition can be controlled, possibly even eliminated, with a low-glycemic diet and plenty of exercise.

Of course, I haven't been officially diagnosed with PCOS, thanks to my insurance running out before the OB/GYN at the clinic could test me. But I have several of the symptoms, and I just have a gut feeling that it's what caused my miscarriages.

Reading about women who've dieted their way to controlling it and having successful pregnancies has given me a lot of hope, and it's motivating me to get back on/stay on track. I've found that when I'm faced with temptation, I just need to ask myself, do I want a baby, or do I want fill-in-the-blank-temptation? Be lazy and don't exercize, or be able to have a baby? Cake, or Baby? I guess maybe that's not quite as clear-cut a choice for some as cake or death, but for me, it's working.

So I guess that also ties into Goal #2, although I still need to get health insurance. But that comes back around to Goal #1, upon which most of my other goals also rely. And so: I'm keeping my head down, working on making that one happen. So it goes.

In with the new, and hopefully less troublesome, year

So how do you follow up a year bookended by job loss and a miscarriage? Apparently, by bookending the next year with a second miscarriage and the death of a parent(-in-law).

Yeah, we've had a rough couple of years there. 2010 wasn't without its high points -- I finally fulfilled my dream of having a pet box turtle,  we got to take our first vacation since our honeymoon, and I won NaNoWriMo for the second time ever -- but mostly it was some really deep valleys and a lot of middling ground.

Last year, I made the mistake of hoping for a better year instead of planning for one. This year, I'm not going to tempt fate to show me how 2011 could be even worse by offering up vague hopes for better times. Instead I'm going to set specific, attainable goals that should ensure a pretty decent year over all, no matter what else life throws our way.

Goal #1: Make my business more profitable. I've already laid some good ground work for this, and was on my way to making it happen when Mom's death derailed me. But I still learned a lot that will help me in this goal, and have started to get over some hang-ups that have been holding me back in this arena, so I have a good feeling that this will be a profitable year. I sure hope so, because a lot of these other goals pretty much depend on this one being a win. Such as...

Goal #2a: Get health insurance, which ties into...

Goal #2b: Get checked out for PCOS and see if that's what caused the miscarriages, so we can feel a little more confident about trying again toward the end of the year.

Goal #3: Write at least 6 days a week. This has fallen by the wayside in light of recent events, but as soon as things settle back down I need to get back on that writing horse.

Goal #4: Get a decent-quality digital camera and take some photography classes with Matt. We've been talking about this for a while now, and of course it depends on having the funds, but he's always had an interest in photography, and I'd like to be able to take decent pictures for my various web projects. And it just sounds like it would be a fun thing to do together. So it's on the list.

Goal #5: Be able to run a 5K by the end of summer. I flirted a little with running last summer, but as soon as the weather turned colder I wussed out and quit doing outdoor workouts, and undid all of my progress. But I figure having a specific goal like "run a 5K" is more likely to actually get me in shape than a vague goal like "get in shape." And I definitely want to be in good shape by the time we're ready for that "trying again" thing, so my weight won't be a risk factor going in.

Goal #6: Practice my bass on a regular basis. Matt got me Bass Guitar for Dummies for Christmas, so I have no excuses not to do this one. I don't have rock star aspirations or anything, but it would be nice to be able to jam with my husband and keep up with him and his guitar.

Goal #7: Learn a new language. Because I've been saying I want to for years, and if that whole "trying again" thing works out, then this might be the last year I don't have children to prevent me having any time for frivolous self-enrichment. The question is, which language? And do scripting languages count? Because I need to buckle down and learn Javascript either way.

Goal #8: Learn a new yarn craft. Because same reason as Goal #7, and also because I'm a little bored with knitting these days. Of course, maybe that's just because I haven't had any room in the budget lately for new yarn and have been relegated to knitting from my stash; but I'd still like to pick up a new skill. I might give crochet another try, since I already own some crochet needles; but if funds allow for it, then I might try my hand at spinning my own yarn.

Goal #9: Get my house in order. I lost my job not long after we moved in here, so we've never really had room in the budget for decorating or updating our furniture. Even worse, the lack of decor has made us fairly apathetic about how things look, so it's devolved into a cluttered, chaotic mess, and it was like that even BEFORE we added my late mom-in-law's things to the fray. So this year we're going to restore some order around here and finally start adding all of the little touches that will really make this house feel like home.

Goal #10: Speaking of getting things in order, we're going to make out our wills and take out life insurance. Although this is the last goal on the list, it's a pretty high priority for us, especially after having to deal with Matt's mom passing away without a will or insurance. We don't want to inflict that kind of torture on anybody.

If nothing else, all of that should keep me busy enough all year to keep me from dwelling too much on the sad things. You can provide further distraction from the sadness by sharing your own goals for 2011 (!), or linking me to them, in the comments.

Altering My Natural Sleep Cycle (Without Losing Sleep Over It)

In my fantasy, I'm a morning person. I want to be the sort of person who gets up early and has super-productive mornings, freeing up the afternoons to work on whatever personal or home-related project I feel like working on and the evenings to just relax and chill with Matt, my day broken up into nice, orderly sections.

In reality, I sleep in late because I stay up late. It usually takes at least two cups of coffee and an hour poking around the internet before my brain can handle anything more strenuous than skimming Twitter and clicking links, and my work gets spread all throughout the day and evening, with occasional breaks to take care of other things that need my attention, or just recharge my batteries before diving back in, until I'm too worn out to keep going. There's nothing orderly about it.

This week, I've been making myself get up at nine AM. That sounds luxuriously late if you usually have to be at the office by eight, I know. But if you make your own schedule and have no particular reason to wake up by any certain time, trust me, it's early. Nine seems like a good compromise between my night-owlishness and my desire to give myself enough time to get things done earlier in the day and leave myself some chillaxin' time at the end of it.

Timely and relevant to this, yesterday Lifehacker ran an article on How to Reboot Your Sleep Cycle and Get the Rest You Deserve. It was full of good advice, albeit nothing really new to a sometimes-chronic insomniac who's already read all the advice there is about getting yourself to sleep.

Part of the advice was to experiment with earlier and earlier bed times until you start waking up before your alarm. Well, that's the problem, isn't it? I've always had problems with set bed times. As much as I love and need sleep, I hate going to bed early as much now as I did when I was a little kid. It's partly because going to bed before I'm truly sleepy tends to trigger my insomnia.

But a while back I read somewhere -- I'm pretty sure it was on Rules for Anchorites, but I can't find the post -- a discussion similar to this where someone suggested that night owls simply have a hard time relinquishing the day, and... yes. This. It's so hard to let go, to admit that I'm done with a day, that I've done all I can with it. It feels like defeat.

Even so, last night I thought I'd try Lifehacker's advice and make myself go to bed earlier. I've been averaging about seven hours of sleep all week, so I felt tired enough that I knew I could use the extra hour. But then I started reading a new book, and by the time I forced myself to put it down and go to bed it was already after one AM and I was facing another less-than-eight-hour night.

Then, this morning, I woke up before my alarm anyway. I lay there for a minute, not sure if I was truly awake and trying to will myself to get up, thinking how victorious it would feel to get up before my alarm went off. But I was still just on the cusp of wakefulness, and in the midst of my self-pep-talk I closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew my phone was vibrating (I use my phone's alarm on the silent setting, tucked into my pillow, so as not to wake Matt) and I was waking back up from a dream about a particularly odd episode of Castle involving an escaped killer baboon and a tornado (it was too much tornado and not enough Nathan Fillion for my liking; there was, however, just enough baboon to keep it weird).

So much for that.

But I refuse to give up just yet. Maybe if I keep forcing myself awake at nine, eventually the not-quite-enough sleep I've been getting will catch up with me, and my body will want to go to bed earlier. That's the theory, anyway. Of course, I can't recall any other time in my 37 years that it's ever worked out that way, but that's probably because after a week I'd usually give up and stop setting the alarm; or, when that wasn't an option, I'd always use the weekends to catch up on sleep and then have to start all over again on Mondays. This time, I'm going to do my best to stick with it. After all, I figure it's getting to be now or never, and I'm not ready to let go of that productive-morning-person fantasy just yet.

Goal Post & Update

Wow, y'all. Work has been busy. I didn't blog last week because there just wasn't time. This is excellent news for our ability to pay our bills, although this pace is already threatening to burn me out. I haven't been able to touch my novel, either, and any time off I've managed to grab has been spent trying to cram in all of the stuff that has to be done that I don't get paid to do. I am, in a word, tired.

So now that I've got the productivity goal conquered, my goal for this and the upcoming weeks is to work on finding balance and pacing myself. I need to manage that extra eight hours better and give myself a little more time to do things I WANT to do and not just what has to get done. That way, hopefully, lies sanity, and avoidance of that mental energy wall I keep running into by Thursday afternoon.

To that end: it's after 9 PM on Monday night, and instead of working till 11 like I have been, I'm going to go put my feet up and find something to watch on Netflix, and then I shall read until I get sleepy, and it shall be bliss.

What are YOU doing to stop the insanity, my fellow goalies?

ETA: I can't believe I almost forgot! One of the projects that's been keeping my nose so hard-pressed against the grindstone is finished (mostly -- I still have to redo the blog template and revise the video on the home page) and officially launched last night. Check out my handiwork for FutureWave Consulting.

Now if I can just find time to update my portfolio (without burning out my brain)...

Goal Post: Week 5

Well, despite being crazy-busy all week, I didn't finish anything, but that's mostly because of waiting for other people to get back to me before I can continue. I did come within only $40 of my weekly quota, which I don't believe will be too hard to make up. The main thing is that I'm getting more billable work done in the allotted time, and if I can get through a week without any major schedule interruptions, I should get all of my work in just fine.

Last week's class on state taxes was really helpful. After that class I took the rest of the afternoon to do everything I needed to do to make my business official, so say hello to the sole proprietor of J. M. Bauhaus Enterprises. I was scheduled to attend an IRS business workshop on Thursday, but as we were under a Weather Advisory of Doom, I didn't go. Still, the time I would have lost to the class was lost instead to preparing to become a shut-in for days. The big panic was that this storm would rival the ice-pocalypse of 2007 that blacked out half the state, and we'd end up without power for days, if not weeks. But thankfully, it didn't. We didn't lose power, and the roads don't even appear to be that bad, if the sound of traffic whizzing by outside my office window is any indication.

Enough about last week. On to this week's goals: Now that my biggest projects are winding down and I've gotten into a rhythm with my working hours, I'm ready to get back to the novel. So back to trying to revise or write a scene a day until it's done. I wrote a whole new chapter this morning, to replace one I threw out, so that's a good feeling to carry with me through the day.

My personal goal is pretty standard -- exercise more consistently. I always start out pretty good at the beginning of the week, but then by Wednesday I just can't be bothered and then it's Monday before I work out again. No wonder I'm usually stiff and grumpy by the time the weekend rolls around. So I'm going to do my best to get on the stationery bike every day -- and barring that, at least do some stretching exercises every evening to keep this torturous desk chair from crippling me.

Work goals are the same--wrap up these web design projects. I also have a couple of new clients waiting in the wings, so I need to hurry up and clear some space for them on my schedule. And if I can't get that Wordpress blog working properly this week, then I don't know what I'll do. Find somebody with more WP experience than me to subcontract it out to, I guess. But I've got a couple of ideas and suggested fixes to try first, so hopefully it won't come to that.

How about you guys? What dragons do you intend to slay this week?

Goal Post: Week 4

I didn't even have time for a goal update this week, and by the weekend I was too brain-fried to bother. The good news is that for the first time ever last week I earned too much to qualify for an unemployment check -- which is really excellent timing, since my unemployment year expires at the end of this month. I didn't make my "Need to make $X to make ends meet" quota, but I would have if I hadn't spent most of Monday on unpaid hours trying to fix that broken Wordpress blog.

Speaking of which, the bad news is, broken blog is still broken. I found some Wordpress smarties to help me find the problem (thanks to my awesome cousin-in-law -- thanks, Stevie!), but I haven't heard back from them yet. I don't know whether it's because they haven't had time to delve into it yet or because they're as stumped as I am.

Meanwhile, I've got enough on my plate to ensure another profitable week, with end-of-month deadlines keeping me in head-down, git 'er done mode, so you probably won't hear much else from me this week, either. I'm also attending two free Small Business Administration classes, one Tuesday morning and one on Thursday, on business taxes and accounting. Those are each three hours long, so I'm definitely going to have to scramble to make up for the time lost to those, but hopefully they'll teach me what I need to know. If they help me stop stressing out about my taxes, it'll be worth it.

So that's pretty much my only goal for this week - meet my deadlines and get these projects wrapped up by the end of the month, including the broken blog.

Are you also racing the clock this week? Or are your goals a little more leisurely? Tell us all about them in the comments.

Goal Post: Week 3

I'm running behind this week, thanks to an entire day lost to trying to figure out a problem in Wordpress and making no progress. I've actually been trying to figure out for several days now why the blog page I set up only shows the content of a single post, with no title, date, permalinks or comment links. I spent all day on it yesterday, which ended in tears of frustration, and I finally posted the problem on the Wordpress help forums, so hopefully some kind WP guru will come to my rescue. I really need to get this project done so I can wipe this site and get started on another client's Wordpress site that's currently waiting in the wings. And naturally, I didn't earn any money for my troubles, because I refuse to charge the client for time wasted by my own ineptitude. A total waste, that was my Monday. I hope yours was more productive.

Anyhoo, how's about we discuss some goals for this week? Really, my main goal is to fix this broken blog and get this project off of my plate so I can focus on new ones. If I can do that I will consider this week a win.

Otherwise, I need to work on organizing my time better and putting in six to eight hours a day on PAID activity. I don't really understand how this keeps failing to happen, but it does. By my math, eight hours of sleep leaves eight hours each for work and other stuff. It feels like I spend way more than eight hours a day on work, and way less on other stuff, and yet when I check my billable hours at the end of the day I usually haven't put in that many.

Clearly, I'm doing something wrong. I need to spend this week and next figuring out what that wrong thing is and correcting it, because come the end of the month my unemployment year will end I won't have that as a cushion anymore to make up for my slack-arsed ways. I'm going to need a bare minimum of six solid billable hours every weekday in order to make ends meet. I have the work. I just need the time management skills. So that's obviously the priority for the rest of the month, to the detriment of my writing and personal goals.

Except for exercise. I need to make myself make time to get up and move, because my brain needs it as much as my body does. And I haven't been doing so well in that area lately. Which shouldn't be a problem, if I can find those eight hours that should be left over after I'm done with my work.

What's your Goliath this week, my fellow goalies?

State of the Goals - Week 2

It only took two and a half days for the combination of the cats and my uncomfortable office chair to drive me back out to the living room couch. I'm not giving up on the office yet. I think sharing my office with the cats (it's where we keep the litter boxes, so shutting the girls out for more than an hour at a time isn't really an option; and no, we can't figure out a better place to keep them) would probably be more tolerable if I had a chair that didn't give me a backache after only an hour of sitting in it. So "new office chair" is moving to the top of the list of things to buy when we have some cash to burn.

Meanwhile, working in the living room isn't nearly so distracting since Husband's classes started back up and he's spending most of his time in HIS office doing homework instead of out here flipping channels on daytime TV and trying to carry on conversations about current events while I'm trying to work. So there's that. Even so, I'm harboring fantasies of erecting a Tiny House in the backyard to be my office and Quiet Place. That's a more far-off solution than a new chair, but a girl can dream.

About the only goal I've managed to meet consistently all week has been getting up earlier. Even then, my clients have kept me so busy this week that I've still had to work late a few nights, and my share of the housework just isn't happening before the weekend. I wrote a few Demand Studios articles early in the week, but with so many client projects on my slate, I haven't had the time or the need to do any more. And I've had to limit the amount of time spent on my novel in the mornings, so I'm two chapters behind where I wanted to be by now. Still, excepting yesterday when a memorial for my uncle left me with no time for unpaid projects, I've been working on it every day, so that's something to feel good about.

So my scheduling this week might not have worked out exactly as I'd hoped, but all in all it's been a productive and profitable week. What more can a freelancer ask for?

What say you, my fellow Goalies?

Goal Post: Week 2

Today I'm drinking coffee for the first time in about six weeks, and savoring every drop. I'm also working in my office for the first time in about as long, on the theory that I'll be more focused and productive in here than I tend to be when sitting on the couch. We shall see. Either way, the cats keep jumping up and getting in my face, apparently wanting to make out--either that or trying to tell me to get out of their chair. In here, if I don't comply either way, they start knocking crap off of my window sill, trying to kill either me or my computer; whereas on the sofa they would just give up and go away. So the jury's still out whether the office will be more distraction-free.

I also got up this morning at the crack of 8 AM. I'm attempting a new schedule, one where I hunker down and get all of my work done during daylight hours, freeing up the evenings for R&R and guilt-free TV viewing. I tend to be slightly more of a morning person in the winter, in that I tend to want to go to bed earlier when it's cold and has already been dark outside for several hours, which lends itself more to getting up in the morning than does the night-owlishness and insomnia I tend toward during the summer months. I predict that I'll be able to keep up this new schedule until the time change, at which point I'll probably need to spring it forward an hour to adjust to that lost hour of sleep. Again, we shall see.

On to the goals. I guess I just told you my personal goal for this week: get up earlier and get my work--including writing, client assignments, and housework, done before nightfall. I've pretty well got the "getting dressed" down; I'm sure there will still be days when I'm tempted to forgo that part, but I accomplished it enough times last week, and today, to strike it off of my goal list and move on.

The writing/editing goal continues apace. I took the weekend off, but I was back to tackle Chapter 6 edits this morning, and plan to have it done through Chapter 10 by Friday. I'll need to write two or three brand new scenes this week, so that might be more of a challenge than it was last week, to get it done in the time allotted, but I think it can be done.

Last week's business goal, to make some progress on my new business web site, was a total bust. With two client redesigns on my slate, I don't see myself getting around to mine any time soon, so I'm going to back-burner that one and set a new goal: start writing regularly for Demand Studios.

I got hired and wrote a few articles for them last year, but at the time the pay wasn't consistently good enough and the article format they wanted tended to take me too long to make it worth my while. But I checked back recently, and they've upped their pay to $15/article for EVERY article, and re-organized the format so that I can now easily bang out an article in an hour. And $15 an hour is nothing to shake a stick at. I'm not sure why you'd shake a stick at anything, really, except maybe a rabid animal if you didn't have anything else to scare it off with; but you certainly wouldn't shake one at $15/hour. I have a feeling that this will drastically change our situation for the better--much more than getting my web site redo online would.

Okay, I showed you mine, now show me yours. What's on your "must accomplish" plate this week?

Goal Update: How Are Those Goals Coming Along?

So far, so okay. My writing goal is going great. I'm managing a chapter a day, all of which so far have required extensive, if not complete, rewrites, so that ain't too shabby. If I can keep up this pace I'll be done revising it by February, at which point I'll let a few more people read it and give me feedback before I start querying agents.

My personal goal is slightly less great. I got dressed AND put on makeup AND styled my hair every day until today, and that's because today I woke up with a sore throat and body aches and intended (and still intend) to take lots of naps, so I figured I might as well stay in my PJs. But tomorrow I'll need to run to the grocery store, so I can guarantee that I'll get dressed then, and four out of five days for the first week isn't too bad.

The business goal, so far, isn't coming along at all. I've been too busy all week to touch my new web site. Today is the first day that I haven't had something due, so if I feel like it later I might work on it, but writing this post is taking up most of the mental energy that was left over after today's writing & revising session, so no guarantees. But I still have tomorrow and Saturday to make some progress on it, so it's too early to declare it FAIL.

And I have accomplished other things this week, things that made money, so that's a definite WIN.

What about the rest of you goalies? Are you kicking my butt at goal-achievement? Or are you just days away from total goal-failure? Or are you like me, and somewhere in between?

Goal-ie

I let the weekly goal setting fall by the wayside when the time came to start gearing up for NaNoWriMo--since that was pretty much the only goal I'd intended to focus on through the end of November, and it seemed pointless to reiterate that every week. Then, of course, life happened, and the holidays, and apart from just getting through those with my sanity intact I was pretty aimless there for a while. And although I know I said I don't feel like setting any big goals for the year, I still have plenty of Stuff I Need To Get Done, and breaking it down into weekly goals has proven a pretty good way to get myself on track.

In case you're new and don't feel like following that link up there for the full run-down, here's how it works. Each Monday (more or less) I post one goal for each of three areas of my life: personal, business, and writing. Each goal will remain on the list until it's accomplished, at which point I'll move on to a new goal. This helps me stay focused on one thing at a time and keeps me from poking too many irons into the fire all at once.

This week, I need to revisit the first personal goal I posted back in August: getting dressed every day. I was making good progress there for a while, but I've backslidden to a place where I don't bother changing out of my jammies unless I need to go somewhere. This time I'm going to go one better and not only get dressed, but also take the extra five minutes to put on a little makeup. Knowing I look presentable makes me feel better about myself, and like I'm ready for anything. I predict that this will have a positive impact on my productivity. We shall see.

My business goal for this week is to make good progress coding my new web design for The Task Wrangler. It will do a better job of showing off what I'm capable of as a web designer, so the sooner I get it up, the better. I've got to juggle that with two or three client web projects, though, so getting it done will be a challenge. Not sure yet how I'm going to get it done, but it's got to get done, so I'll figure something out.

But hopefully not at the expense of my writing. I haven't written a lick of fiction since the second week of November, and I think it's high time I remembered that I'm a writer and start, y'know, writing. To that end, tomorrow (it's Sunday night as I type this) is the day I shall start making revisions and writing new scenes for Hero Factor. I'd like to have the second draft done by the end of the month. With no fewer than twelve new scenes to write to replace the ones I threw out, I'm not sure that will happen, but I think if I get started I can still be on track to start submitting it to agents by my birthday. I'm going to try to carve out two hours a day for it, first thing in the morning before anything else has a chance to distract me.

So those are my goals for the first work week of 2010. What about you, dear reader? Has the new year got you fired up to tackle some goals? If so, share them in the comments. Hey, maybe we can start a club or something!

Non-Goals and 'WriMo Chatter

You know, I had goals for this week, but when I neglect to blog them on Monday, I forget all about them by Wednesday. But they really haven't changed much: stay healthy, keep gearing up for NaNo, keep my clients happy...those pretty much sum it up.

The healthy part could be going better. I admit that I'm highly suggestible and paranoid when it comes to illness, especially since we lost our health coverage; but it seems like every time I go to the store, the next day I feel run down and have a scratchy throat. So far, eating Vitamin C, Zink and Echinacea tablets like candy and drinking lots of licorice tea (it has anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties) has been keeping that scratchy-throat, icky feeling temporary, and I've been making it a point to get plenty of sleep to keep my immune system strong -- when I'm able to sleep and not wide awake with insomnia, that is. I haven't been doing so well in the exercise department -- it's so hard in the moment, when I'm feeling run down, to convince myself that exercise will make me feel better, even when I know perfectly well that it will.

I'm keeping myself in a NaNo state of mind this week by trying out new noveling software as a possible replacement for yWriter. I've been plugging all of my character profiles and my loose outline in to StoryBook, but I'm afraid it's causing me to over-plan and plot out too much detail before I ever write a single word. I really wanted to go at it with just a loose plan, not a detailed itinerary for each and every scene and character moment. So I'm backing off from that, and I'll stick with the low-tech legal pad and note cards I scribbled all over last week. I am rather impressed with another one I tried, though: q10 is a no-frills, full-screen word processor designed to reduce distraction, and I think it's perfect for the purposes of NaNoWriMo. The thing I like best is that you can turn on (or off, if it doesn't strike your fancy) typewriter sounds while you type. I love having them on - it makes me feel like I'm writing and not just tapping words on my keyboard (which is something I do all day long that often has nothing at all to do with writing). I think I'm going to use it to draft all of my stories and paid copy from now on.

Hey, remember when I said I wished I could organize a Halloween-night NaNo kick-off party and midnight write-in? Well, the fabulous municipal liaison this year went and did just that. It's not a costume or pajama party like in my fantasy, but it still sounds awesome, and it seems like we've got a fun group of people shaping up this year. So I guess I'll be going to the write-ins after all. Now I just need to convince Husband to let me take the laptop so I won't be stuck fighting with my N- and B- and space-bar-less AlphaSmart again this year. And so I can have something to play music on while I write.


On the work front, I'm going to try very hard to get at least a couple of my home lighting blog articles for November written this week, if not all of them. I've got some more web site copy that I'd also like to get out of the way, so I can focus most of my writing energy on the novel. But I've also got some more major web design changes that one client requested, and my very first professional video edit, and those are both pretty time consuming, so we'll see how that goes.

But for now, I'm going to have a snack and watch new-to-me Chuck on Hulu until I get sleepy enough to go to bed.

Tell me what you're doing to get ready for NaNoWriMo, or any other projects minor or major, in the comments. Oh! And if you'd like a NaNo buddy over there, feel free to add me.

I made gloves. And now I make goals.

I've been enjoying a lazy morning snuggled up on the sofa with my pets and the snuggliest afghan in creation (thanks again, Susan!), but it's about time to wake the aytch up and get to work, so let this post serve as a warm up for my brain.

It's chilly here, and wet and gray, and it's been that way for a few days now. If we don't see the sunshine soon I'm going to start fighting off another case of the SAD blues, but for now I'm enjoying the cozy vibe that all of this covering up and being glommed onto by cold kitties (and Pete) desperately seeking body heat is giving me. The house is chilly enough to be uncomfortable without hiding beneath layers, but not cold enough to justify turning on the heat and running up the gas bill; so when the chill starts to get to me, I try to think about early August, when our AC needed repairs and I pined for just this kind of weather. And then I make tea.

I also made myself a pair of "Fetching" wrist warmers over the weekend. See? I kind of thought fingerless gloves were pointless when it came to actual warmth, since it's my fingers getting frozen that hinders my typing and such; but then I realized I kept pulling my sleeves down to cover my hands and figured there might be something to this hand-warmer thing. And you know? There is. Even my fingers feel a bit warmer when I have these things on (and when they get too cold I can just tuck them inside the gloves until they warm up). Since we tend to keep the temp in the low 60s throughout the winter (except for when we have company, natch), these will be a big help in keeping my hands functional instead of frosty.

On to this week's goals. Oh, but first, on the accomplishment front, I finally cleaned my office, including my desk, so I have an official work space again. It's still not as private as I'd like it to be, since we keep the cat box in there and I have to leave the door open so they don't just up and decide that the clothes hamper or the dog's bed or, Heaven forfend, our bed makes a perfectly good toilet. Earphones do a pretty good job of tuning out distraction and signaling Husband that I'm in concentration mode, though. And for jobs for which even music is too distracting, there's White Noise mp3s.com, which usually does the trick.

This week I'm trying to turn my schedule around and go to bed/get up a couple of hours earlier than I did during the summer. This is mainly because I thought it would be nice if I could get most of my work done before Prime Time hours, so I can relax and enjoy my shows in the evenings, and then finish up my work before bedtime without it taking until 2AM. So far, the getting up earlier is happening, but the going to bed -- or at least, the going to sleep -- earlier is not. I'm telling myself that if I keep getting up early, eventually my body will get a clue and start getting sleepy at the right bed time, but these experiments have been tried before, and have failed. So we'll see how this one goes.

I'm aiming to finish marking up my Hero Factor edits this week, and then I'll start gearing up for NaNoWriMo next week. I only have four or five more scenes to get through, so that's totally doable. As for This Old Haunt, if any of you are waiting for me to post the conclusion, I'm going to try very hard to get it posted tonight.

Work is still keeping me busy, which is excellent. I need to get a lot of admin-type stuff done for the business, and I want to totally redo the web site and start keeping a professional blog over there, but I keep getting too busy with client stuff to do any of that. So I'm going to try scheduling my own business as a client and see if that helps me get on top of things. I still need to formalize the biz, register it with the state and get my taxes sorted and all that. I haven't made enough yet to make income taxes for this year a concern, but I'm not sure about business taxes and how that all works, so at some point I'm going to have to sit down with someone at our tax agency and have it explained to me. But those things probably won't happen until the new year. For right now, I'm just focusing on figuring out how to fit in running the business with doing the work and keeping my clients happy.

In other news, my cats keep wheezing. Niblet's been doing it intermittently for a few weeks now, and I was getting pretty worried, because she's getting older and I've read that that's a symptom of heart disease in cats. But now Boudica's doing it, so now I'm wondering if they're just passing around a kitty cold of some kind. If Sasha starts to do it, too, then we'll have a trifecta and I can stop being so scared that Niblet's going to have a heart attack before we can get her checked out. I'm still keeping my eye on her, though. Which is not hard to do, since she's practically been attached to me and my afghan since the weather turned chilly.

And now my brain is as warmed up as the rest of me, so I'm going to go put it to work. What about you, dear reader? Tell me how your goals are coming along in the comments.

Last week, this week, and a month from now (yay NaNoWriMo!)

I know I said I'd start posting my goals again last Monday, but then I got slammed with work. So far this freelance biz is feast or famine, and my regular clients all seem to be on the same cycle as to when they have work for me. I'm not complaining. The busy times are great, as they mean we get to eat and pay the mortgage, and the stress of multiple deadlines isn't nearly as burdensome as the stress of wondering how to pay the bills.

My brain was pretty fried by Friday night, though, and I spent the weekend trying not to think about work and just recover so I could dig in again this week, which promises to be another busy one. I actually had planned to get a lot done on Saturday, including blogging and posting the next ep of This Old Haunt, but I got hit with a pretty bad headache, and all I managed to get done were some errands and a few scenes of Hero Factor marked up for revisions. Then I spent Sunday puttering around the house getting the cleaning and laundry done. Well, mostly done. I'm still waiting on the last load to dry so I can put it away before I get to work on client projects.

I also put out the Halloween decorations yesterday, which made me ridiculously happy. I love October and Halloween so hard. I wish I wish I wish that I had a group of local NaNoWriMo buddies who I could invite over for a Halloween pajama-costume party and then kick off 'WriMo at midnight with an overnight write-in. But I don't, so I guess I'll just have to settle for a virtual version. I really hoped that by going to the meetups and write-ins during last year's 'WriMo that I would make some local writing buddies, but I didn't really click with anybody. Frankly, nobody seemed that interested in clicking. I got the impression from most of the participants that they were there to put their heads down and write, not to be social. Which was fine, as that's my inclination too, but, y'know, you can do that on your own. That kind of defeats the whole purpose of group write-ins, doesn't it? Or maybe I'm just projecting my shy, introverted nature onto everybody else and it was really just me and my inability to make friends in general. I don't think it is just me, though. I'm far from the only person to make the observation that Tulsa is a hard town to meet and get to know people in. Folks here are generally friendly on the surface, but also generally keep to themselves when it comes to making any real connections. At any rate, I'm feeling a bit less inclined to bother with any of the meetups this year.

And how that paragraph went from "Yay, Halloween!" to NaNoWriMo and a lament about the somewhat aloof nature of native Tulsans is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.

Anyway, speaking of 'WriMo and Hero Factor, it's pretty clear that I'm not going to finish editing the latter in time for the former. But I should at least get all of the revisions marked up, so I can start typing the changes once my brain recovers from the November writing frenzy. Whenever my time frees up a little, I'll go ahead and start plotting out my 'WriMo project. I've got to be careful not to overplan - after all, the only time I've actually won NaNoWriMo was when I threw my hat in at the last minute with only a vague idea for a plot and pantsed the whole thing. That ended up becoming This Old Haunt, the next episode of which I'll edit and post once I'm done here, so watch the Twitter stream for an announcement that it's up if that interests you.

I know I said I'd start posting my goals again, but my goals this week are pretty simple and don't really merit a whole post: meet my clients' deadlines while remembering to still take care of my physical and spiritual health. And try not to let the house devolve into a chaotic mess that I'll have to spend hours cleaning up next weekend. I'd like to try to connect in person with a friend or two this week, but I don't know if my deadlines will allow for that. We'll see how it goes.

I will sign off now with a link to the Where the Wild Things Are movie soundtrack, composed and performed by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which is cool and mellow and happy-making all at once, and is also streaming free for the time being. Enjoy. And while you do, tell me how you've been, and what you hope to accomplish this week, in the comments.

In Which Lame Blogger Is Lame

First, the "Lame Blogger Apologizes For Being Lame By Not Updating" portion of today's post - sorry, y'all. I wish I could say I've been too busy to blog, but the truth is that I just haven't felt up to it lately. I haven't felt up to much at all, really. I haven't been sick with the flu or anything, but it's been one thing on top of or after another keeping me down. The SAD and allergies I wrote about last time, hormonal wackiness, insomnia and other disordered sleepy-time fun, and inadvertently ingesting things that didn't want to leave my stomach without a fight have all added up to me spending most of my waking hours on the sofa, wrapped in an afghan and alternately staring unproductively out the window or at my laptop screen. "Bleah" pretty well sums up how I've been feeling lately.

Unfortunately (or thankfully, all things considered), business has been pretty slow the last couple of weeks, so I had the luxury of being able to give into the bleah-ness. I did manage to work up a few short bursts of productive energy, during which I added some Halloween and pet items to my Etsy shop, cobbled together a couple of custom backgrounds for both of my Twitter profiles, and offered the latter up as a new Task Wrangler service.

I think I'm starting to get back to normal again, finally. I realized the other day that I haven't worked out or eaten particularly healthful meals since I started feeling poorly, and that without either of those things I was going to continue to feel poorly, so as of yesterday I'm working out and eating decently healthy things again, and that's helping. I finally started drafting a formal business plan yesterday, which is helping me feel motivated on that end of things, and I got the approval I've been waiting for to start coding on a new web site I designed for a client, so that should help pull me out of this funk. I'm also feeling funky about having barely touched revisions on my novel in the last two weeks, so I'm gonna spend some time on that after I finish this post and eat some (healthy) lunch.

Aside from those things, my goal for the weekend is to shake off the rest of this funk so I can get back to my regular routine by Monday, when I intend to start posting weekly goals again. And also possibly to bake some cookies. Snickerdoodles or peanut butter, I haven't decided which.

What about you, dear reader? Is it just me, or has this change in season (and mold spore levels) thrown you for a loop as well? And which type of cookie do you prefer? Make me unreasonably happy by weighing in in the comments.

Why being too focused is a bad thing.

If you've been reading the Twitter updates that get gathered up and posted here once a day, then you already know I've got a perfectly good excuse for not posting anything else last week--I was bogged down with a big web redesign project that the client needed done ASAP. I kept my head down in hyperfocus mode, coming up with mockup after mockup trying to capture what the clients wanted, and feeling frustrated and a bit depressed because everything I came up with was just passably adequate and completely uninspired. I was giving them everything they asked for, but nobody was happy with it. After days of this I realized that they had a feeling in mind more than a specific look, and if I could capture that feeling they'd probably love it, even if it looked nothing like what they described. I threw out all of their feedback and finally found some inspiration, and at last came up with a look that made them say "Wow! I love it!" Now I'm just waiting for the go ahead to start coding it. So that was a valuable lesson learned - it's more important to pay attention to what a client wants to evoke or accomplish with their site than any specifics they give about what they want it to look like, because sometimes, they don't really know what they want.

So that was pretty much my whole week. For the sake of that project I neglected all kinds of other things--not only this blog and my writing, but also any healthy habits I'd developed in the way of exercise, eating or sleep, and this week I'm paying for it. Despite taking Saturday off to rest and recover, I'm not feeling so hot lately. Yesterday I was just tired and cranky and a little depressed, and with the weather having been gray and rainy for days, I figured I was getting a preview of the SAD I usually struggle with during the winter. But today, with a mildly upset stomach and some lightheadedness added to the mix, I think I might have a touch of something else. Most significantly, my limbs feel heavy and I feel like I can't get enough sleep. Allergies aren't helping - my eyes constantly sting and my sinuses feel like I'm trying to grow a second head from the inside out.

So this week I'm going to go easy on myself and just focus on keeping my clients happy in between taking naps, munching on Vitamin C & Zinc tablets, and drinking lots and lots of tea. Unpaid projects will still be there when I'm feeling better. Getting the next episode of This Old Haunt up is a high priority, but not over fighting off whatever this crud is before it can turn into something requiring medical intervention.

I think I'm ready to take one of those naps right now. While I'm out, tell me what you've been up to. Are your goals still on track, or are they getting derailed by life and other inconveniences?

Friday Rewind

Oy. As much as I love how my free web site means my business has practically zero overhead (and as much as I love that cow), I'm starting to realize that if I want to be taken seriously as a web designer, I'm going to have to, y'know, design my own site. What a concept, I know. The good news is that I've got some inspiration for it (another cow!). The bad news is, who knows when I'll have time to work on my own site, because I actually AM getting web design work (I just think I'd get more if people could see what I'm capable of at first glance instead of having to dig into my portfolio). But that's also good news, because I'm in no great hurry to give up this whole all-profit thing I've got going.

Did I mention that this has been a trying day? Well, it has. It's gotten better as the evening's worn on, but I am so ready for the weekend. Not that it's going to be very restful - I've got more inventory to add to my Etsy shop, and Husband has stuff he needs to sell (read: needs me to sell for him) on eBay. Plus there's cleaning. Lots of cleaning, because my mother-in-law is coming over to hang out with us on Labor Day, and a friend is coming for dinner and a DVD the day after that. Which means I also need to get ahead on some of my web work and article writing. AND there's editing to try to cram in there. I'm into the home stretch on the novel edits (as far as markups go, at least), and I think it's a good sign that I'm enjoying reading it. Hopefully I'll just have one more week of marking, and then I'll get to the typing and actual re-writing. I think I've got a pretty good pace going for getting it done in time for NaNoWriMo.

I keep wanting to do a post about things I've learned from this round of editing, but that's one of those thoughtful-type posts that I never have time to write. Especially now that I've given myself the goal of doing thoughtful-type industry posts over on my VA blog (more on that in the next goal-setting post).

Speaking of goals, to recap this week: I still need to finish cleaning my office. The storm door is on the back burner until we have a more steady source of income. I have the start of a pretty good idea about how to pay my business taxes, and I have a lot of notes that can be organized into a business and marketing plan, so that's progress. And I already mentioned the editing. I don't think I could have done more than I did this week, which is a pretty satisfying feeling.

How did you guys do? Are you satisfied with how your week went? Or do you need to scroll down and look at the kittehs to cheer yourselves up? Let me know! Meanwhile, I'm going to do my best to fit some actual rest into this crazy weekend.

One of these things is not like the other: macabre surprises, police apathy, and this week's goals

If you were following my Twitter stream last night, then you already know about the disturbing discovery I made yesterday while picking up trash in my front yard. We live on the corner of a busy arterial street, just a few blocks down from some pretty unsavory apartments, the kind that has been on the news for gang-related activities, and where we can hear gunshots fired on a fairly regular basis. The sidewalk running along our yard sees a lot of foot traffic, and I'm constantly having to pick up trash that people toss on our lawn. I've never found anything worse than broken beer bottles and cigarette butts, until yesterday.

There's a fallen tree limb on the edge of our yard, near the sidewalk on the busy street. It's too big to be moved without cutting it into smaller pieces, and since we have neither cutting tools nor the budget to hire someone to come cut it for us, it's been lying there for quite a while (I'm thinking about posting a "Free firewood - cut it yourself!" ad on Craigslist, if I can get over my aversion to having strangers show up at my house toting chainsaws), and a lot of trash tends to gather underneath it. Usually, it's just shopping bags, wrappers and other bits of paper and plastic that drift by and get caught. Yesterday, though, I found a bundle of clothes that had clearly been rolled up and purposely stashed there, underneath the heaviest part of the log. I pulled it out, unrolling it in the process, then dropped it and ran inside to tell Husband what I'd found: wrapped inside the first shirt was another that was completely caked with dried blood.

So we called the police, who sent out a cruiser to take a look. The officer who showed up took a look, shrugged, and told me that no violent crimes had been reported recently in the area, and that without a (known) victim there was no point in taking it in. Then she gave me a mildly condescending schpiel--apropos of nothing I said or asked--about how the real world doesn't work like CSI and they can't just scan the shirt to see whose blood it is. I told her about some gunshots we'd heard coming from those apartments a couple of nights ago, and again she shrugged and said that gunshots come from there all the time. Overall, she didn't seem too concerned, and instructed me to just throw them in the trash, and left.

I was pretty flustered by the whole thing, so I didn't argue and just did what she said, bagging them up and putting them out with our garbage. After I calmed down I realized I should probably hang onto them a few days in case somebody was reported missing, but then I got busy and forgot to retrieve them, and the trash was collected early this morning. I really wish I'd at least thought to take a picture. So before I forget any details--the outer shirt was a yellow and white striped polo with a logo that said Battle Creek. It had a large blood stain on the front. The inner shirt, from what I could tell through all the blood, was a plain white undershirt, and it was completely soaked through before it dried.

With that freaky bit of news out of the way, let's get to the goal-setting for the week.

I think I can finally cross getting dressed and exercising off of my list, since those are happening pretty naturally now. Some days I still have to force myself, but they're both getting done. I still need to clean my office, so that's staying. And in light of yesterday's events, we're feeling pretty motivated to install a security storm door in our front entryway, so I'll be making time to shop for that this week.

As for business goals, I need to do some accounting this week and figure out what I need to be doing about taxes. I kept putting that off since I wasn't really making enough to have to worry about it, but now that business is picking up, I'd better get on that ball. I also need to figure out exactly how much my work needs to make to keep us afloat and set some formal goals to make that happen. I guess what that boils down to is that I need to develop a business plan. This'll probably take more than a week, but I'm aiming to get a good start on it this week.

Writing goals still = novel revisions. I'm at a point where the stack of pages I've gone over is slightly bigger than the stack of pages I still need to edit. Once I get through the rest of that last stack, I'll need to type up the changes and write several brand new scenes. So this is going to take a while. I'm aiming to have it done by mid-October, in time to start the prep-work for NaNoWriMo. Then in December I'll give it one more pass (after having Husband and a couple of other folks read it), and have it ready to shop to agents by January. I was originally just going to post it online, but after all of the years of work I've put into this one, I think I owe it to myself to try to get it published the old-fashioned way before I look into any kind of self-publishing, online or otherwise.

So I'm looking at another busy week, and hopefully it will lack the kind of excitement we had yesterday.

Now its your turn. What's on your plate this week? Did anything exciting or unusual happen with you over the weekend?