Above is a photo of almost everything I need to ensure a happy in-flight experience: iPad, fluff magazine, 1 litre of water, and a thumb.
Not pictured: headphones, granola bar, and the absence of screaming children.
Just write.
This is a post I started writing on February 6th, 2012. I’m glad I started it because it’s fun to see what’s changed in just a few months’ time.
Back then I still wasn’t sure what I should write a book about. Now I’m sure.
•••••••••••••••••
So out of fear of dwelling forever in the intellectual waste land of Should I Write Fiction or Should I Write Nonfiction and never actually writing anything at all and dying forgettable, I finally pulled my head out of my head and got with the program. Put simply, I started to write.
Just write.
This I did partly in thanks to all the comments and words of encouragement I’ve received from friends and family and flat-out strangers over the past few months, and with special thanks to commenter Jessica who linked to this post by a real live gets-paid-to-do-that writer. It helped a lot. A lot a lot. (Look at me giving a thank-you speech for all the awards I haven’t even won yet…)
I sat down on the bathroom floor, back against the door, iPad in lap, and just started to write. I wrote the first thing that came to mind. And then I kept writing.
The next day I did it some more. And the next day a little more.
I’ve not missed a day since February 1st, and I won’t miss a day until I have a book to give you.
So far I don’t have a real picture of where it’s going. It might not even be anything like what I have now by the time I’m finished with it. But it doesn’t matter. I’m doing it.
I’M DOING IT.
Other things I’m doing this month: Working out (or at any rate moving my body) for 30 minutes a day at least four days a week. Listening to Rilo Kiley’s “A Better Son/Daughter” 12 times each day. Trying to stop thinking about french fries so much. Making more awesome (if I say so myself, which of course I do) videos for work.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again a lot probably: 2012. It’s happening.
Posted in awesome., self-actualisation, what I'm about, Writing a Book
Tagged writing a novel
2 Comments
Creature of Habit
I hippie lawnmowered again.
Maybe the next time our front lawn gets unbearably tall I will drag the hippie lawnmower out there and ask Poor Kyle to make a video of me using it. I think you’d all appreciate the joy that comes from watching the very tall grass get cut (literally CUT!) down by a rotating reel of semi-sharpened blades. It’s probably the most satisfying visual experience you’ll ever have, short of popping a juicy white pimple.
But juicy pimples are a dime a dozen (Oh, what? You say you DON’T have pimples exploding out of your skin each morning by the dozens, new ones baked fresh daily for your ritualistic popping pleasure? I’m so sad for you.), so where’s the fun in that.
By the way, is it just me or is the internet kind of a depressing place lately?
Geez louise, cheer up, PEOPLE.
Posted in Green Living, It's All Good
2 Comments
I am a happy wanderer.
Ever since I was a wee lass I have thought that having a job requiring travel sounded spectacular. I love flying, love airports (believe it or not, I do), love the feeling of satisfaction I get when I navigate my way through terminals and checkpoints and gates more efficiently than the person who was ahead of me in line at the check-in kiosk. I am a very good traveler. I like adventures and I like the way I never really know how a trip is going to go. Some people melt into nervous puddles of anxious goo when their travel plans are unexpectedly modified in even a tiny way, but me, I take it in stride.
This month I will be achieving one of my lifelong goals: getting paid to travel.
Not long-term—that is, my position hasn’t suddenly changed to one that requires weekly travel (that would be sweet though). Instead, it’s a four-day trip to Vegas for a social media conference, and it’s going to rock.
I’m looking forward to this trip for three reasons: 1) Because it’s accomplishing a lifelong goal to get paid to travel; 2) Because it will be a welcome break from my regular routine; and 3) Because it’s Vegas, which is only 6 hours away from my hometown, and where I spent many a fun-filled summer vacation growing up so I’m practically going home.
Isn’t it interesting how Home can manifest itself in so many things? In a summer destination, in a certain shade of green, in the smell of rained-on baseball fields.
Home can even be in a carne asada burrito if you try hard enough.
So now in a convoluted way I have geared myself up for Vegas both because it’s a change from my routine and because it’s a return to same.
It’s no wonder I don’t know what I want in life.
Posted in the great state of AZ, Travel
3 Comments
My week in FTWs!
Mondays (not FTW)!
Twitter FTW!
Sales training FTW!
Busy middle-of-the-week days (not FTW)!
Fridays FTW!
Weekends FTW!
Yard work FTW!
Weight loss FTW!
Weight gain (dang, not FTW).
Judgy Judys (go to hell, you don’t get a FTW).
Weight re-loss FTW!
$1 any-size soft drinks at McDonald’s FTW FTW FTW!
New month, new fun money FTW!
Posted in quickies, thisandthat
4 Comments
But I’m Always Careful
Hey y’all. Guess what I finished today?
You’ll never guess so I’ll show you:
Did you think I couldn’t do it? So did I.
Here is the list of goals I set for myself for April 2012:
1. Write 750 words every day for the entire month.
2. Eat no sweets.
3. Drink no pop.
4. Exercise at least 5 days a week for 30 minutes a day.
5. Lose 2 pounds a week.
Here is the list of goals I actually accomplished for April 2012:
1. Eat no sweets.
2. Exercise 5 days a week for at least 30 minutes a day.
3. Write 750 words a day.
Some might call that a two-fifths failure. I call it a three-fifths success (four-fifths if you consider that I’m finally blogging about something again).
Every month I am getting a little further ahead in life, and even if I don’t accomplish EVERYthing I set out to accomplish in a month, I’m at least building on my goals and I feel like nothing is impossible as long as I can set small, achievable milestones for myself.
I kind of love everything about it.
That was going to be all I posted today but because my cousin Calli told me on Saturday that she wished I would post every day I got a very big head indeed and thought that maybe you’d like reading this deep thought I had the other day while mowing the lawn after work…
Enjoy. (Or don’t. [Screw you, haters, I hate you more.])
••••••••••••••••
Do you ever look back on your life and try to pinpoint the exact moment that changed everything? The single decision you made, or the single decision that was made for you, which got you to this point today?
I do. Sometimes I do that.
How did I end up here, in Canada, mowing a boulevard of grass with an old-school motorless reel lawnmower in the rain like a hippie, with a husband and a house and a paid-for car, with a job and piano students and actual friends (I’m pretty sure they’re actual friends) in a country not my own, with cookbooks and a stove and the physical, mental, and economic resources to make my own dinners, with a bachelor’s degree in English, with tomato plants sprouting on a table by my back deck? How did I get to where I have a back deck?
Maybe I never would’ve ended up in Canada maneuvering an old-school motorless push-reel lawnmower around three overgrown-and-growing poplar tree trunks on a grassy boulevard in the rain like a hippie if I hadn’t decided to move here for one semester of community college when I was 19 (for an adventure). Or maybe if I hadn’t visited this region seven years ago on a summer road trip with my mom.
Maybe I never would’ve taken that trip with my mom if I hadn’t been dating Leroy Pants during the summer of 2005 and she hadn’t thought he was going to try to marry me and she hadn’t tried everything in her power to get me away from him.
And how was it that I came to be dating LP anyway? Maybe I never would’ve done that if I hadn’t seen him at a church social one night. Maybe if I had stayed home and watched You’ve Got Mail for the three-hundredth time instead of going to that church social, then I never would’ve met him and agreed to go on one-or-fifty dates with him and scared my mom so bad she’d feel the need to see me out of the country just to keep me safe.
What if I hadn’t conditioned myself to love Canada ever since I watched Anne of Green Gables with my sister and my Grandma every summer, thus giving me a long-borne desire to visit Canada?
And why did we watch Anne of Green Gables? Maybe we never would’ve watched it if my Grandma hadn’t picked up the VHS at a yard sale for a quarter when I was 10.
Am I here mowing my lawn like a hippie because my grandma had a weakness for a bargain?
Maybe she never would’ve liked bargains if her father hadn’t been a farmer during the Depression. And maybe he wouldn’t have been a farmer during the Depression if he had read different books as a kid, looked up to different heroes, dreamed different dreams.
And maybe he would have read different books as a kid if the terrible neighbor children hadn’t checked all of the good ones out of the library and fed them to their chickens.
It goes on and on, and I get lost in the mind-numbing cosmic haze of it all if I’m not careful.
A picture of progression in green boxes and Xs
Last month I set a goal to write at least 750 words a day (on the website 750words.com).
Here’s how that turned out:
I invite you all to laugh with me.
Then in April I set a goal to write 750 words every day on the same website.
Here is how it is going:
I am impressed with myself and I hope you are too.
(I mainly want my life to be impressive to people.)
(Actually that’s not true; I mainly want my life to be wealthy.)
Regardless. I figure at this rate of progression my goal for May should be something truly lofty, like double the amount of writing every day and force each writing session to involve primarily ideas for my book. (“My book,” I say. So funny.)
I also set a goal to stop having pimples but that’s not going nearly as well.