Oh man…peeps, I am so disorganized this week that I almost forgot to write this post, and then I had to look up which week I’m on. So this is going to be a quick recap of the past week. Starting….now!
Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.
I have no idea where I am on this one this week. I haven’t weighed myself, I’ve been eating neither better nor worse, and my stomach has been fairly stoic in general. I don’t even really know what to report other than that I’m still alive and kicking, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.
Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my author platform.
The social media world fell apart on me this week as I attempted to squeeze a bunch of important stuff into a short period of time. If you follow me on Twitter you may have seen a few tweets about editing and the like, but that was probably it. I’ve got two new YouTube videos that I’ve yet to format and post, and I’ve been all but invisible on other platforms. Here’s to fixing that in the following week!
Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.
Finally, some good news to report! After struggling to get through my manuscript as quickly (and yet as thoroughly) as possible during the weekend, I finally managed to totally, 100%, for realsies this time, complete the absolute last copy of the novel file. Thank goodness I did that run-through too, because there were TONS of invisible typos. But that’s neither here nor there. What’s really important is that the file was uploaded to CreateSpace, everything checked out, and I am currently waiting on the edge of my seat for my physical proof copy to show up! As soon as I get that and confirm that everything prints fine, the book will finally be for sale! AHHHHHH!!!!!
Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.
One of these days I’m going to catch up on this one, I swear, but it won’t be today. I can tell you for sure that I wrote about 1000 words last week, but I can’t recall if there was anything aside from those 1000. I’ll catch up on it later…what’s really important right now is the whole completed novel thing. XD
I’m home! I’m home! Oh man, it is so nice to be home!
Don’t get me wrong; I actually don’t mind my work at all. But man, is it ever nice to have little-missy-snuggles, and a shower with decent water pressure, and a bed that smells right, and reasonably-fast internet, and the company of someone who makes me coffee and makes me laugh all day long.
(I had a long shift…give me this moment to glow.)
ANYway…
Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.
So I finally did a weigh-in this morning, and I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I’ve lost five pounds from what was the highest weight I’ve ever reached, so that’s pretty great. On the other hand, that five pounds brings me back down to where I started at the beginning of the year, so for the purposes of this goal I technically haven’t lost anything. But, I’m in a good mood, so I choose to take this as a win. That five pounds is almost entirely attributed to cutting soft drinks out of my diet, too. I haven’t been able to find the time to exercise (especially when I’m out at work doing my 15-hour days), but I have been able to restrict soft drinks to only certain foods (come on…you can’t drink water with pizza), and it’s made a huge difference.
On the “becoming healthier” side of things, my guts have been bothering me again, so that’s no good. But, the medic out on my work site offered me something called a “stomach protector” to test out while I’m on my days off, so we’ll see how that goes. I think the biggest thing is figuring out what my triggers are, but unfortunately that’s been more difficult than it sounds, especially since a food that I have no trouble eating one day will make me sick as a dog the next. My stomach likes to screw with me.
Also, mini-rant: when I went to see a gastroenterologist about these issues, he found nothing of any real concern, and concluded that my only problem was anxiety, which I’m tell you now actually really frustrated me, because here’s the thing… I agree that anxiety is an issue – it’s definitely the one trigger that I’m certain of – but anxiety did not cause my stomach problems. Stomach problems caused my anxiety. I bring this up now because I met a new coworker this past shift who has the exact same kinds of stomach problems and got the exact same explanation from his doctor. So I’d just like to say to the gut-doctor’s of the world: having major stomach problems is a very anxious situation, so please keep that in mind before telling people that their earth-shaking cramps and intestinal distress are effectively all in their minds.
Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my author platform.
I’m going to make a confession: I’m obsessed with stats. I check my blog stats about a dozen times a day, and probably once a day I check all of my social networks to see if I’ve gained or lost any followers. Doing so actually makes it difficult to really see how well you’re doing, because tend to focus on the little things, like the Twitter user that stopped following you today, or the fact that what you thought was a well-written blog post got no likes or comments. But when you force yourself to look at the big picture things become a little more clear. Since January I’ve gained about a hundred followers on this blog, which is about a 50% increase. In the past several months I’ve doubled my Twitter followers. I’ve dramatically increased my LinkedIn network over the past year and have actually been getting blog hits as a result. I’ve only had my Facebook Fan Page for a few months, but it has over 100 followers. All in all, I have to tell myself that I must be doing okay, because I’m in a much nicer spot today than I was on January 1st.
Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.
Yes, I’m still in super-excitement mode on this goal! Last week I got some final notes back from my beta-reader, and I’ve made a couple of small changes based on those thoughts. I also reformatted the manuscript to a nicer-looking font, justified everything, and took some online advice for what kinds of margins to utilize. I now have a properly formatted, nice-looking file, and all I have to do is go through it one more time to scour for hidden typos. As soon as I’m finished with that, I’ll submit the file, wait the 24 hours it takes CreateSpace to approve the file (thanks for being so quick, CS!) and officially order my proof copies! And then I’ll twiddle my thumbs for approximately 5 business days, getting ever-more-anxious to see the end result. Wish me luck!
Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.
I haven’t been doing a very good job of reporting on this goal lately, and I’m going to continue that trend today. Rest assured that I have been keeping track, but my word-counts are scribbled on bits of paper that are tucked in a notebook that’s still packed in my carry-on suitcase, and I just don’t feel like going through all that right now. I will tell you that I wrote somewhere in the ballpark of about 3000 words toward blog posts this past week, which should bring me up around 200,000 words total. That’s not even halfway, and we’re almost in October, but as I mentioned before I have every intention of absolutely murdering NaNoWriMo this year, so hopefully that will help.
Now, with all that said, if you don’t mind I’m going to thoroughly enjoy the wondrous world that is my own house. Weeeeee!
**Edit**
I wanted to add this quick message to thank everyone for the outpouring of support over my post this morning. Ryan and I were not close, but he was always a total sweetheart to me and I genuinely believe that the world is a little better for having had him in it. Thanks to everyone who read my post, and extra-special thanks to everyone who clicked on the video I shared at the bottom of it. Please continue to spread Ryan’s video so that others can hear his story even though he’s no longer around to tell it. I think that’s what’s important. LOVE LIFE!
**/Edit**
A little something I want to talk about before we get down to it this week. In case you hadn’t noticed, a little thing called the “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge” has taken the Internet by storm. The challenge involves dumping a bucket of ice water over your head to raise awareness for ALS, in addition to making a donation to the cause. The whole thing caught on in an insane way, with even the biggest of celebrities (and even some big businessmen like Bill Gates) rising to the challenge. In the past couple of days the challenge began to sweep through my own family, so two nights ago I recorded the following video:
My aunt nominated me for the challenge while I’m on shift out West, so I had to get a little creative by swiping a bin from the camp cleaners and doing the challenge in the shower to avoid a huge mess, but I managed it! (Also, still totally made a huge mess…lol) My aunt also nominated my husband, whose water was colder than mine judging by his reaction, and then my daughter decided that she wanted to do it as well…too cute!
For more information on the challenge and ALS, check out this link.
Okay, with that out of the way, here’s my weekly update:
Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.
As usual, while on shift, I can’t report anything concerning my weight, but I can tell you that I’ve accomplished some good things this week. For one thing, I’ve gone the entire week without drinking anything other than water and tea (with nothing in it). Literally, that’s all I’ve been drinking. The amount of pop alone that I’ve cut out should definitely be worth something. In addition to that, I’ve been so much better with the sweets and junk food, you have no idea. I’ve been letting myself have one sweet a day (a pair of cookies, or a pastry, or whatever) and that’s it. I only broke that one day, when I had two sweets.
Another thing I’ve recently begun doing is not eating supper when we get back to camp at the end of the day. My work days are 12.5-hours long, with an hour-long bus ride either way, so we’re only actually physically in the camp for 9.5 hours a day. That means that if I eat the supper there, I’m having this big heavy mean almost immediately before bed. And I was sleeping terribly. When I finally put two and two together I started to pack up my supper and take it to work the next day, allowing me to stop eating approximately 4 hours before going to bed, and I’ve been sleeping much better. It’s making a big difference.
Lastly, I’ve been very diligent about taking my gut medicine (I only screwed up one part of one day) and it’s definitely been helping. My stomach has been so much better than usual, it’s almost creepy.
Goal #2. Be more active on social media and work hard on my author platform.
Things were a little slow this week because I was busy working on other things, but there was a bit of activity the last couple of days with the ice bucket challenge stuff. Spread the word! Actually, now that I think about it, one reason that I didn’t accomplish much on this goal this week is because I was super-distracted by checking out all the celebrity ice bucket videos. Tom Hiddleston’s was truly stupendous, and Chris Pratt is definitely the funniest one yet. Go see!
Goal #3. COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.
You guys, I did so well this week. I expected to get a chapter done a day, which would mean that I’d be done by the time this shift is over. Well, I’ve still got six days of this shift left, and guess what? I’ve only got one chapter left! In fact, by the time some of you read this post I’ll probably be done! And then it’s off to the beta-reader and hopefully I’ll be getting to work on the whole publishing bit by next shift. I am PUMPED!
Goal #4. Write 500,000 words.
Remember how I said that this goal would probably dwindle because I was going to be focusing on the editing stuff? Well I couldn’t work on any of the editing during work hours, but I could scribble stuff in a notebook during breaks and lunch, which is how I somehow (I’m still not quite sure myself) managed to write 7136 words. I’m totally stoked. I actually managed to have a successful week on all four goals, and that’s while working 12.5 hour days. How awesome am I? Totally awesome.
As mentioned on Friday, I’ve been having a rough go of it these past couple of weeks. My time to write/blog/do anything I want to do/etc is extremely limited while I’m out West, and it definitely doesn’t improve matters when the WordPress app on my phone just decides to completely eat my accountability post, leaving absolutely no trace that I ever wrote it. So this post, written while on the bus heading toward the airport on my way home for my turnaround, will be for the 25th and 26th weeks of the year. Fair warning: don’t expect much.
Goal #1. Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.
I can’t really give a good report on this until next week because I haven’t been able to weigh myself for quite a while. What I can tell you is that I have been eating less lately, and I’ve been doing a fair bit of walking. I’m not sure how much that counts for since the food at the work camp tends to be sugary, salty, and fatty, but I guess we’ll see. Further reports to follow.
On a related topic, I’m not certain that the medication I was given for my stomach problems is actually helping, but then I’ve also been having a very hard time remembering to take it. It’s the kind of thing you have to take multiple times of day and my brain just doesn’t seem to accept that. I might have to start setting alarms on my phone.
Goal #2. Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.
Considering my current time constraints I think that this one is going about as well as it could. I’ve been keeping up with posts (except when WordPress whisks them away into Never-Neverland), and been spending time on both Facebook and Twitter. My Achilles heel lately has been replying to comments on the blog. I swear I’m not ignoring you, everyone; it’s just difficult to write good replies on my phone within the two second periods I get to myself throughout the day. As soon as I get home I swear it’s one of the first things on my list to go back through the backlog.
Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.
I’ve mentioned before that this is something that I can’t work on while I’m out West. What I explained in the post that got eaten (and thus not seen) is that I have set myself a mini-goal to put aside all writing (aside from blogging) from now until this goal is complete. I want this book published before Halloween this year, and I think the best thing to do is to focus all my energy on that goal and then focus on writing when that is complete. Wish me luck!
Goal #4. Write 500,000 words.
I can’t really report much today because I’m not certain of the numbers. My numbers from last week are written in a notebook that is stashed somewhere in my luggage at the moment, and this week’s numbers are scarcely worth mentioning. I can tell you that the two-week total is somewhere in the range of 6000 words. I expect that to go down in future weeks because of the aforementioned mini-goal, but no worries. Once Nowhere to Hide is out of my hands I’ll be going into full-on super-writer mode when I start working on my YA series, The Other World.
So there you have it. By the time you’re reading this I should be safely home, wondering how I could have ever thought that 15-hour days were more tiring than living with a toddler, and hopefully I’ll have more to report next week. Ciao!
I’m just gonna put this out there, on the off-chance that someone actually responds. If there is anyone out there who has the secrets on either, a. turning off your stomach so that it stops feeling hungry all the time for no reason, b. learning how to happily exist on less sleep, or c. getting stuff (work/exercise) done in your sleep, I would greatly, greatly appreciate a heads up.
Moving on.
Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.
As you may have already discerned from my little passive-aggressive rant up there, this goal is still not going so hot. I had really, truly hoped to have a good doctor’s appointment on Friday…a revealing one. Unfortunately, it was more along the lines of, “Well, we know there’s something wrong because you’re telling us that something is wrong, and also your blood work is telling us that something is wrong, but…we don’t know what is wrong.” Basically, none of the tests show anything. I have a ton of symptoms, but they can find no signs of any kind of condition. My family physician is convinced that my problem is the same as one that my mother has, but again, no proof. I left my doctor’s office on Friday with a vague sense of doom and a prescription for a trial run of some meds that may help, but may also make my problems worse. Oh, and it may take up for a month for me to even notice if they’re making a difference, and they cost $80 for a month’s supply. So yeah. I’m not in the best of moods concerning that particular aspect of my life.
Several times in the past week I’ve tried to convince myself to get up and go for a run in the morning, but it hasn’t happened yet. A combination of straight-up laziness and fear that my stomach will fall clean out of me the second I try to move has kept me from taking the leap. To make matters even more fun, I’ve crossed back over into the “ravenous hunger” part of the strange hungry/not-hungry cycle I go through for no discernible reason (see request a.).
All in all, just feeling horrible about myself. There’s always next week, I guess.
Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.
I suppose I can give myself some kudos on this one. My Facebook time has slowed down a bit, but I notice I’ve been doing a lot more consistent interaction with other bloggers, plus I’ve actually been dropping in on Twitter every now and then. I’m also proud to say that I’m THIS CLOSE (*imagine me holding my fingers a really short distance from each other*) to hitting the 200 followers mark on this blog. Since I entered April of this year with somewhere around 150 followers I’m pretty excited about that. Go me!
Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.
As mentioned last week, I took a break on this one in order to beta-read a manuscript for a friend because I didn’t want to be trying to divide my attention between the two different stories. Well I’m happy to be able to announce that I managed to get the beta-read out of the way this past week. It was the first one I’ve ever done, and I believe I did a pretty good job, so yeah…pride. The story was also a good one, so that helps of course. XD
Point: I didn’t get anything done on this goal this week, but now I have no excuses. Nose to the grindstone time, baby.
Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.
Finally something I can feel really proud about. Mostly all the words that I wrote this week were for the purpose of scheduling blog posts ahead of time, but it was a lot of words written for the purpose of scheduling blog posts ahead of time. All together I would up with 9785 words for the week, which is almost as much as the last three weeks combined, and also the most I’ve written in one week since March. Now if only I could keep that up for a few weeks, am I right?
Before I get started today, I have a quick question for my fellow WordPress bloggers. Are any of you having problems with lost comments/notifications? Since April was such a busy month with the A to Z Challenge and all, I think I may have missed this problem until just recently. Basically what is happening is that I’m getting notifications through my iPhone app (for instance, “So-and-So has left a comment on your post, Such-and-Such”) and I’ll glance at them just to see what they are and then forget about them for the time being because I find it too cumbersome to do a lot of comment replies and the like on my phone. So later, when I’m on my computer, I’ll go to WordPress to reply to the comments, but it won’t be in my notifications. It’ll be on the post, if I go to my blog manually, and it’ll be in the “Comments” tab of my account dashboard, but it won’t be in the list of most recent notifications. Since that notification list is what I normally use to interact with comments and the like, I now find myself in the frustrating position of having no idea how many comments I may have completely neglected to reply to. And since I’m the kind of blogger who likes to respond to everyone who interacts with my blog, this is really really bugging me, but the only way I can know now is to go to that “Comments” tab and scroll through every single one to see what I’ve missed, which I totally do not have time for.
So, in conclusion, I’m asking if anyone else has experienced anything like this, and also issuing an apology to anyone who may have visited me during the A to Z Challenge and not gotten a reply. I swear I made every effort to interact with everyone, so if I didn’t reply to you, this is why. Sorry!!
Moving on…
Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.
Okay, so two weeks ago I said that I had a plan and that it was going to be put into motion within the following two weeks. I’m going to go right ahead and say that that did not happen. However, hear me out. Last week I got a C.T. scan done on my abdomen. This Friday I have a doctor’s appointment to talk about that scan. I’m really, really, really hoping to get an answer, or at least a better guess, about what might be wrong with my guts. And since, for the past year or so, exercise has tended to make my stomach problems worse, I figured that it couldn’t hurt to wait until I get to that appointment first. I’m not sure what I’m going to find out (if anything), but it would be nice to get an idea about what’s going on before I put my guts through that extra strain. Hopefully we’ll finally have some real idea about why I get the way I do, and I’ll leave the appointment with meds or a diet plan or something that will help avoid the issues, thus making exercise less of an anxious ordeal.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.
Things have slowed down a lot this week now that the A to Z Challenge is over. I’ve been keeping up with Facebook, but that’s about it. Trying to keep in touch with all the awesome bloggers I met in the last month, but I also kinda wanted a week of silence after all the business during the challenge. I’ll do better next week, promise. ^_~
Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.
This seems completely illogical, considering that I just got myself moving on this goal, but I’ve put it on hold for a short amount of time. The reason is that a friend of mine has given me her manuscript to beta-read and I want to give it my full attention. To be reading someone’s manuscript while also editing my own, I just don’t think that would be kosher. She’s relying on me to give her honest notes about the state of her manuscript, and I want to make sure that I’m able to focus on that without my mind wandering over into the problems that I have with my own. I’m hoping to get the reading done and the notes off to her as quickly as possible, so check back with me next week for this goal.
Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.
Beyond everything else, I was really hoping to get a good, high word count this week, but it didn’t really happen that way. There were a few distractions, such as a birthday party that took a giant chunk of my day away (hour and a half drive down, two hour party, hour and a half drive back), a few crappy days (miserable, rainy grossness makes it impossible for me to concentrate), and a variety of other things I had to do (take the daughter to playgroup, house stuff, major grocery runs, etc), and when you add in the fact that I’m just sometimes lazy as all hell, I only ended up with a grand total of 4297 words this week. The good news is that when I happened to glance up at my grand total for 2014 thus far, I found that I’ve surpassed a hundred thousand! My official number at the moment is 103,552 words since January 1st. It definitely would be nice if it were higher, but still..that’s over 25,000 words per month so far, so go me. ^_^
A few things before I move on to the accountability portion of this post:
A big congratulations to all of my fellow “A to Z Challenge” participants who managed to make it through the entire month! Some of those letters were damn difficult, but we made it! I had a blast with this challenge, met a ton of new blogging friends, and gained a respectable number of new followers, so I guess it served it’s purpose. 🙂 Since I did a theme, and a lot of people enjoyed it, I’m going to post a link list of all my challenge posts tomorrow, as well as a couple of links to some of my favorite new bloggers. Don’t forget to check it out!
The other thing I want to mention is that by the time you are all reading this, I will be just finishing up my first (and last, hopefully) CT scan. The previous procedure that I had last month evidently didn’t show anything outstanding, so I’ve been scheduled to have my innards x-rayed. A new experience, and hopefully a helpful one. Wish me luck, everyone!
Now, on to the main event…
Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.
I won’t say it was an overwhelmingly good week, by any standards. As previously mentioned I put my exercise plan on hold in favor of getting through some other stuff first (see: aforementioned CT scan, amongst other things). So no, I didn’t exactly overwhelm myself with physical activity this week. I have been doing a bit better when it comes to things like portion size, but that’s mostly because I’ve been strangely lacking in appetite this week. On three separate days this week the only meal I ate was supper, plus a snack at nighttime. It was odd. Maybe my mind is too busy to bother with hunger signals.
Anyway, all in all it was neither a good week nor a bad one, and we’ll worry about this particular goal more next week, okay?
Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.
If I’m going to be perfectly honest, I slowed down a lot this week, but it was still a pretty good one. Coming on the end of the A to Z Challenge got me a little worn out, but I still managed to keep up a presence most days. What amused me the most this week is that I found myself being mentioned in several tweets linking to “daily report”-type websites who mentioned me. The sites don’t seem to be the type that are going to send me waves of new followers or anything, but it’s still pretty damn cool to be mentioned. 🙂
Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.
I promised that I was going to do something toward this goal this week, and I kept that promise, dammit! 🙂 It wasn’t an enormous amount of work, but I took some important steps by crossing off every item in the “invisible typos” list from my beta-reader, and skimming through for “weakening” words, which I have a very bad tendency of using on a regular basis. On top of that, I took the time to transfer my manuscript to a separate “final draft” Scrivener file to make for easier editing and the ability to look back at previous drafts. It sounds like I just copied and pasted, but trust me when I say that it was somewhat more complicated than that. Point being, everything is all neat and organized now, so I really have no excuse not to go through and start making my final changes.
Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.
The other promise that I made last week was to write something every single day. I did not keep that promise. Boo. I almost did though! I don’t even know what happened, honestly, but somehow I just completely forgot to write anything yesterday. But that was my only screw-up, I swear! I didn’t write too much useful, to be honest, but with a couple of blog posts and a few pages of notebook nonsense, I managed to come up with 4769 words this week, which is significantly more than the last two weeks combined. Here’s hoping I’ll be able to keep it up this coming week.
Before I get started today, I want to send out a belated “Happy Easter!” to all those who celebrate the holiday, and I hope you had a good one! This Easter was the first one that I really got to celebrate with my daughter since she was too young to understand what it was about the first two years, and last year I was working on the other side of the country during the holiday. Since I had the opportunity I staged a little egg hunt with goodies (cream eggs, M&M’s, mini-eggs, and little plastic bracelets) in plastic eggs. It was too fun watching her run around looking for the eggs, sometimes staring right at them and walking past. She also got a Build-a-Bear Fluttershy (My Little Pony) from us, which was the first thing she ran right for, which of course made my heart melt. Throw in some books and candy and a couple of games for her LeapPad from the grandparents, and the little missy had quite a lovely day, and therefore so did I. Little joys, my friends. Little joys.
Also, decorating eggs is a necessity! 😀
And now that I’ve thoroughly cleansed your pallet, it’s time to muck it up with a week’s worth of failure. o.o
Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.
On the upside of things, I weighed myself this morning and I am almost three pounds lighter than I was when I had my meltdown last week. I’m not exactly sure how that happened, or whether either of those two weigh-in’s was accurate, because it doesn’t seem likely that I lost three pounds in one week without doing anything at all. But for now, I’ll take it.
The bad side of things is that I had an awful week for poor eating, due in part to the Easter holiday. I mean, come on, chocolate was everywhere. I also had a lot more pop than I should have, so I’m reasserting myself to avoid it this week. Water, water, water…maybe if I repeat it enough times I’ll start to enjoy drinking it. lol
The other bad side of things is that I did almost zero activity last week. I hopped on the treadmill once, and that was it. My FitBit should seriously have some kind of shock function that fills me full of voltage if I get fewer than so many steps in a day. >.>
But there is another upside! Kinda. See, I’ve got a plan. My plan partially hinges on the weather not being an ass, but it’s a plan none-the-less. I broke out an old book I’ve got called “Buff Brides” that I used when I was trying to lose weight for my wedding. It’s actually a pretty nice program, laid out in a simple-to-understand “do this on this day” system, and it helped me last time so I figure it can help me this time. The program involves weight training three days a week, starting with simple exercises that neither take too much time nor beat you out so that you end up quitting right away. It also encourages three days a week worth of cardio, so I’m going to hike up my britches, pay that my stomach holds itself together until the doctor’s can give me a more definitive answer about my gastronomic issues, and start my Zombies! Run! app again. I hope to start my new plan this Sunday – starting with a Zombies! run – but I’m not committing to it for certain because I’ve got some other things to deal with between now and then. If not this Sunday, it’ll be the following Sunday. Hold me accountable, people! Ask me how I’m doing and yell at me if I say anything other than “Great!”
Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.
This week was much like the previous week. I’ve been doing pretty well with Facebook and the blogging community, interacting and getting conversations going and the like. Twitter is my weak point and I’m not really sure what to do about it. For some reason it feels like a lot of extra effort to add that one site to my daily routine, and I think it’s because I can never think of anything to say that I can compress into less than 140 characters. I’m just too wordy, I guess. 😛
Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.
This is the crux of my failure right here. I keep telling myself that I’m going to work on it, and I keep daydreaming about what it will be like when I’m 100% done and sending the file to Create Space, and yet it never happens. Partially my problem is a mixture of laziness and lethargy – I’ve been very badly obsessed with sitting on my ass and playing video games the past while – but at least part of the problem is good-old-fashioned fear. I long to have my book finished and published, but I also fear it. It’s that stupid human way of fearing both failure and success simultaneously. What is wrong with the human mind? A great many things, it would seem.
That said, I stand before you now (or rather, sit behind my side of the computer screen) and swear to you all that I am going to get something done toward this goal this week. Even if it’s just to go through and fix the invisible typos that my beta-reader pointed out, I will do something this week, I promise.
Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.
You know what? I’ve changed my mind. This is the crux of my failure. If there’s one thing that I know for sure that a writer has to do, it’s write. We have to write, write, and write some more, and then have a couple of cups of coffee and keep writing. I have completely failed this aspect of writer-dom during the month of April. I figured – I really did – that if I wrote and scheduled all my A to Z Challenge posts in advance, then I would have tons of time to write other things throughout April without having to worry about the blog. Technically that did happen. I’ve had time to write. I just haven’t been using it. I completely wasted three weeks of not having to worry about writing blog posts by completely failing to write anything else. This past week the only thing I wrote – literally, the only thing that wasn’t a Facebook status or a comment reply – was last week’s accountability post…for a grand total of 875 words. The really sad thing? That was actually a better total than last week.
So my second promise for this week is to write something every day, even if it’s just a couple hundred words of nonsense. This complete and utter laziness toward writing has got to stop. How can I ever consider myself a professional writer if I don’t write?
I’m not going to sugar-coat it…it’s been a bad week for goals. Honestly, I don’t even know where the week went. It feels like it should be Saturday or Sunday, not Wednesdays. I don’t know what it is exactly, but it feels like my days are about ten hours long, max, and even if I sleep a full 8 hours a night that still leaves six hours unaccounted for. How is that possible? I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the hubby bought me Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD for my birthday and I’ve been more than a little obsessed with it this past week. Maybe I’m just losing my mind.
Anyway, we may as well get this over with.
Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.
It’s big confession time. When I began this goal at the beginning of the year, I weighed myself to see where my starting point was, and made a personal note of that number. This morning I weighed myself again, mostly out of curiosity, and found that not only have I GAINED five pounds on top of that starting point, but I am now officially one pound heavier than my husband. He’s not a huge guy, so it’s not like it’s an enormous deal, but he does have about 8 inches in height over me, so it is a little bit of a big deal and I’m not happy with it.
This morning before I started writing this post I was actually considering putting this goal on hold for a month or so so that I could focus on the more important Goal #3, but now I feel like that would be a bad idea. I knew that I wasn’t doing well on this goal – I’ve been lazy and I never stick to a healthy diet for more than a day or two in a row – but I really wasn’t expecting to find out that I GAINED weight, and now I feel horrible. I am officially at the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life, which is approximately 50 lbs heavier than I should be. NOT HAPPY. NOT HAPPY AT ALL.
In related news, I’ve been in to my doctor to talk about my blood work. While it wasn’t terribly revealing, it did tell us that there is definitely inflammation somewhere in my body, and I now have an appointment for a CT scan on the 30th to see if they can find the location of said inflammation. I doubt that this particular issue (and it’s eventual treatment) will have any affect what-so-ever on the weight-loss end of this goal, but hopefully it’ll help out a bit with the “become healthier” part.
Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.
The week started out half decent with some blog community interaction and some tweeting and bumming around on Facebook. But the past three or four days have been truly abysmal. I have a major backlog of A to Z blog posts to check out from my fellow participants, and I don’t think I’ve replied to a comment on my own posts since Saturday or so. Not good, not good. Again, I’m truly disappointed in myself.
Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.
At the beginning of this past week I was genuinely confident that it was going to be the week that I finally got some work done on this goal. I thought, at the very least, that I would get through the list of “invisible typos” that my beta-reader made for me. You can probably tell by the “tone” of my wording that this did not, in fact, happen. It did not happen at all. That’s why I was considering putting Goal #1 on hold for a while, so at least I could focus a little better (maybe), but now I don’t know what I’m doing. I think I might need to hire a time management expert. Or maybe I just have to take my laptop and leave the house for a couple of hours every day. I don’t know. Suffice it to say that this past week was abysmal, and I’m still very disappointed in myself.
Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.
And finally, the goal that is usually my saving grace only serves to cement that inner disappointment that I keep prattling on about. This week, despite doing nothing at all toward any of my other goals and, truly, doing nothing productive at all that I can think of, I also managed to write bugger all. Over the course of an entire week I managed to force a grand total of 718 words, an average of barely 100 words per day. Truly, truly, truly disappointed.
On the upside, I’ve already beaten last week’s word count with just this one accountability post, so I’ve got that going for me. 😛
Oh, look at that! Another week has passed! My, how the time flies. Did you know that Easter is only a week and a half away? I need to make some more of my edible birdy nests!
Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.
Are you all getting sick of hearing me talk about this particular goal yet? I’m kinda getting sick of talking about it, because the truth is that it’s been the absolute last thing on my mind. Okay, I shouldn’t say that…it’s been on my mind, but that’s about it.
It’s a combination of things, really, but if I’m truly being honest, I’m waiting to hear back from my doctor. I still haven’t gotten the info on the procedure I’ve been mentioning for a few weeks now, and in addition to that my usual doctor sent me for blood work last week as well. He wanted to check out my thyroid and a few levels (B12, iron, etc), and he’s also looking in several places for signs of arthritic problems, which are apparently common with the issue that we all believe I might have.
It’s sounds really weird, but I’m actually rooting for a couple of these possible issues to be confirmed. No one wants to be sick, and I can’t say that it won’t suck to possibly have to take pills every day for the rest of my life, but at this point I have so many complaints about so many different things that I am just dying for a doctor to say, “Yes, there IS something wrong with you, and if you take this medicine it will be better.” Does that make sense? I hope so.
Long story short, so much of my brainpower has been focused on waiting for my various reports to come back so that my doctor and I can discuss the results, I’ve been completely unwilling to care about anything else. Terrible excuse, I know, and you would think that having health problems would encourage me to eat better and exercise, but I guess you’d be wrong.
Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.
I’ve got to say, I’ve been really up on this one this past week. I’ve spent a ton of time on a ton of blogs, plus engaging in tons of conversations with fellow bloggers, plus having great success with my Facebook Author page. It’s been pretty top-notch. My week point is definitely Twitter, but I’ve even been gaining some followers over there, and having a couple of pleasant interactions, so it’s still all good!
Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.
I should be totally ashamed of the fact that I still haven’t actually opened my Scrivener file and gotten to work on the last round of edits, but I’m not. You know why? Because I spent that time this week instead making this:
And I’m so happy with it, I can’t even tell you. I know it’s not the most super-professional-looking cover you’ve likely seen, but it’s mine. It was created using a photo taken by my father, and I made all the adjustments and additions myself. I even modified it using Create Space’s Cover Creator, so I know that when it comes time to set everything up it will fit perfectly. And to top it all off, I made a rear cover as well, which only needs to have the novel summary added to it.
In other words, while I’ve failed to spend any time on the actual manuscript, I am, at least, this one step closer to publication. Yay!
Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.
I’ve got to say, it’s been a bit of a weird week. Wednesday through Saturday I wrote absolutely nothing. Unless you count blog comments, which I don’t. So nothing then. I was having so much fun bouncing around from blog to blog, taking part in the A to Z Challenge, that I wrote nothing.
When I realized this on Sunday, I thought that I’d better do some kind of writing. I didn’t want to blog (I spent so much time setting up the A to Z posts in advance that I’m enjoying the little break, thank you), and I didn’t want to edit (should have, but didn’t want to). And so I found myself opening up the file for my Final Fantasy novelization, and seriously? It was just what I needed. I’ve been typing away like a maniac for the past three days, and with just that one project I managed to squeak 7681 words out of those three days. It’s not exactly the most important thing I have to work on, but writing a little bit of goofy nonsense that I don’t have to think too hard about has been absolutely great. I think I might just have to do it for a little while longer. What do you think?
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