Accountability Wednesdays: Week 12

First off, in case anyone is curious, the day surgery that I mentioned previously that took place on Monday went fine. I was so hungry that I had a permanent throbbing in my head, and the whole day surgery area of the hospital was backed up so I didn’t end up actually getting in until about an hour late, but all in all it went pretty well. I managed to grit my teeth through the IV insertion (I don’t mind needles so much, but when they’re poked in the underside of my elbow I get squeamish) and about twenty minutes later it was all over. I didn’t even fall asleep, which was really surprising because usually the littlest amount of drugs make me woozy. I hung out in recovery for half an hour just so they could determine that I was fully awake (how could I not be when I never fell asleep?) and on my way out the doctor mentioned to me that everything had looked pretty much perfectly fine. That’s good, in one sense, but also kind of bad because it means that they haven’t found the problem yet, and we already know that there is a problem. So I guess I’m going to be scheduled for a cat scan next. Fun times! I’m getting to experience the whole gambit of exploratory medicine! 😛

And so, moving on to the real point of this post:

Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.

As previously mentioned, I gave myself a bit of a pass this week because of the aforementioned day surgery. I had to fast for almost two days, which was excruciating, and also I never want to see a spoonful of Jello again. The days leading up to that I pigged out on whatever I damn well pleased, because yeah. Right after the procedure I ate a delicious roast meal courtesy of my grandmother-in-law, and then went home and ordered a garlic fingers. So yeah, it hasn’t been a great week for food. Neither has it been a great week for exercise, which I all but decided not to do. At all. I’m horrible, I know.

And here’s the thing. Out of curiosity, I weighed myself right before I started my fast, and lo and behold…I’ve gained five pounds since the start of this goal. I can’t say that I’m surprised, but I am definitely extremely disappointed in myself. The food thing is a sore spot for me because I crave food like a ravenous wolf even when I shouldn’t be hungry, but there’s no reason that I can’t at least be counteracting some of that over-eating with decent exercise habits. I mean, cripes, I have a treadmill in my basement. And dumbbells. And a yoga mat. And tension bands.

Someone, please, give me a good kick in the arse, will you?

Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.

Not bad, but definitely not my best week. I all but forgot about Twitter this week, although I have been pretty diligent on updating my Facebook Author Page with new posts and the occasional related “share”. The big thing has been networking amongst my fellow bloggers, particularly the ones who are going to be participating in the A to Z Challenge coming up soon. On “Theme Reveal” day I saw quite a nice little boost to my own stats while bouncing from blog to blog, checking out what everyone is going to be writing about. It was quite fun, and quite good for the blog as well (I’ve amassed a few new followers…hi everyone!), and I can’t wait for the actual challenge to see how the month goes. 🙂

Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.

Again, I feel like a complete tool for not even touching this this week. Surely this should be my top priority since I’m so close now, right? Well, I have a few explanations to admit to. Not excuses mind you, just explanations. See, for one thing, I’m so sick of editing that it’s making me grind my teeth just thinking about it. I want to finish with this manuscript, but when I sent it off to my beta-reader I was honestly expecting a few weeks grace…instead she finished the entire thing in one night! It was awesome, don’t get me wrong, but it also meant that editing was thrown back in my court right away, instead of the nice long break that I was expecting.

Other thing is just plain stress and fear. I’m excited to have the manuscript done, but I’m terrified of what’s to come after that. I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to self-publish this one, and it hurts my head thinking about everything that needs to be done before I can hit that final goal. For one thing, I’m going to need a cover, and I’m a crap designer. I don’t know if I should use a photograph or ask someone to draw something for me, or just have some kind of creepy design with the title overlaid on top of it. I have no idea what I’m going to write for the back cover, or how I’m supposed to format the inside. I know that there are tons of guides out there to help with this kind of thing, but then all that reading just becomes on more thing that I have to do and that stresses me out even more.

I desperately want to work on this this week, I really do. So let’s see if I can overcome that mountain of fear-stress over the next couple of days, okay?

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

This week was not nearly as good as I was expecting it to be. You see, I’ve been working on the A to Z Challenge, planning posts out in advance. I figured, this past week, that I would just fly through those 26 posts, and that the result would be a healthy word count. Instead I only managed a handful of posts, and that was absolutely it. In my defense, I had a couple of rotten days. The fasting and the resulting headaches made it pretty much impossible to do anything at all, and day surgery day was a write-off because I was busy dealing with that from 9 am to about 4 pm. Then, yesterday, the hubby and I decided to take a day shopping trip in the nearest “real” city (an hour and a half drive away) so that he could pick up a present for my upcoming birthday, so that was a write-off as well. Long story short, I wound up with 4515 words, which isn’t really half bad, but isn’t anywhere near where I was hoping to get. Better luck this week?