A Monday Miscellany

I thought that I’d take the opportunity of a Monday morning to mention a few random things that bear mentioning. Monday mornings are excellent for that sort of thing, I think.

First and foremost are the changes I’ve made to my blog. If you’re reading this post via my blog itself, rather than a WordPress reader of some kind, then you’ll see that I’ve changed the appearance. I think this theme looks a little neater, a little cleaner, and mostly just a little different. I found that my old theme was starting to stagnate at the back of my brain. In addition to the theme change I’ve changed the header image. The old image was a stock photo I found and wrote my blog’s name over top of. The new image is actually a photo of a couple of my notebooks laying on top of each other. I think it gives a more personal feel to the blog, knowing that those are my actual words in my actual handwriting. Plus, since the rest of the blog theme is pretty much just black and white, the little splash of different pen colors brightens the whole thing up a bit, am I right?

I also changed the little profile image on my blog from the little cartoon character I had to an actual photo of myself. This change comes from a bit of advice in Kristen Lamb’s Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World. Basically what it boils down to is that a good picture is an important part of an author platform, and it makes something like a blog a lot more “real” because of the ability to see the face of the person “talking”. All in all, I think that it looks professional, even if it’s not the best picture in the world. One of these days I’ll take the time to get a good “author picture” taken, but for now this is what you get. 🙂

Finally, as far as the blog goes, I’ve added a “Linkables” page (yes, I know, linkables is not a word, but sue me for trying to be a bit whimsical) where I’ve listed a few of my favorite sites and blogs. Have a look! You might find something interesting.

In other news, I’ve been making a valiant effort to make contact with Square Enix recently, with the intent of discussing my novelization of one of their most beloved games, Final Fantasy III (VI in Japan). I’m neither confident nor foolish enough to hope that they might want to publish what will eventually be two rather involved books (though that would be truly amazing). My hope is that I can obtain legal permission from the gaming company to publish my work as two free e-books, that way I wouldn’t be infringing on their copyright, but I would be able to gain some publicity and share my books with lots of video game lovers who aren’t necessary fan fiction readers. At least, that’s the plan. Unfortunately I’ve had no luck contacting the company so far. They don’t seem to closely monitor their several Twitter accounts, and though their website has a very detailed page that explains the process for submitting unsolicited material, I’ve now been waiting a week just to hear back about the release form I’m supposed to be sent before being allowed to submit my request. I understand that these things can take time when dealing with huge companies, but I really did believe that the form would be fairly quick to come, even if the request itself took months to be replied to. Have I mentioned before that I’m not one for all this waiting nonsense?

Lastly, just because I can, I want to congratulate all the amazing Canadian athletes who have bagged medals at the Sochi Olympics so far, and I wish the best of luck to all those who have yet to compete. You’re an amazing group of people and I wish I had one hundredth of your ability and determination. Kudos!

Actually, this explains a LOT…

As you know, last week it was my birthday. I got a couple of nice presents, but one of them isn’t in my possession yet because it has not yet been purchased. You see, my husband suggested that he would buy me a new bathing suit for the (hopefully) coming summer. I’m not usually the kind to spend much money on such a thing, so he thought I could pick out a really nice one for a change. I loved the idea, but here’s the thing…if I’m going to get a really nice bathing suit, I want to look good in it. So on Saturday night I gritted my teeth and decided that this is it: I’m restarting Jillian Michaels’ Body Revolution and this time I’m sticking to it.

Sunday morning started a bit askew, since little missy was up in the middle of the night, which resulted in all of us sleeping in until almost 10 am. But I gritted my teeth, and after a healthy breakfast of whole wheat toast and boiled egg whites, I headed downstairs and did workout number 1. I then attempted to go about my day without resorting to any of the mindless snacking I’m famous for, while waiting for my meatloaf to finish cooking and anticipating the fact that I was going to have to measure my portions to keep from eating twice as much of it as is smart.

So you see, my day was full of willpower. Painful, frustrating willpower. And that got me thinking about something I once read in a Cracked.com article. At the time of reading the article I raised my eyebrows a bit and doubted the reality of the claim, but on Sunday I did a bit of Google research and lo and behold, it looks like it’s true.

Willpower is a finite resource.

I know, I know, it sounds like an excuse, right? But apparently there have been a lot of studies done on this idea, and so far it’s holding water. It looks like the more willpower you use in one area of your life, the less you have left for other areas. In other words, you might struggle all day to keep yourself from snacking, and actually manage it, but then when it comes time to do your exercises you just can’t seem to work up the willpower. It’s not entirely your fault…you haven’t got any left. This explains why you can feel so good about yourself early in the day and happily resist temptations, but later in the day you crash and start (for example) devouring everything in sight.

So does this mean we’re all doomed to failure because we can’t keep up the willpower thing forever? Of course not, although it’s definitely going to make things more difficult. Willpower (apparently) is like a muscle. It needs to be exercised. So the more willpower you are able to exert today, the easier it will be tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. It’s likely to be a slow process, but in the meantime you have to figure out how to dole out your willpower as necessary. If resisting snacks and treats all day depletes your stores so that you can’t bring yourself to exercise later, figure out how to let yourself have a little something, thereby saving that bit of willpower for when you need it. It’s a delicate balance, which in itself probably uses up willpower.

In fact, you know what? It’s not a delicate balance; it’s a vicious, circular cycle that makes me want to punch walls.

*cough cough*

Anyway, I guess the point of this post is that I need to work on my willpower muscle. I’ve worked up great levels of determination before and used up all my willpower after a week or so, and I don’t want that to happen this time. I want to succeed this time because dammit, I want to look good in a really nice bathing suit! Is that so wrong? 😛