Goals and Aspirations in Review – March 2017

March has come and gone – even if Winter damn well refuses to do so – so it’s time for another update. Let’s just get right into it, shall we? Here’s how my goals and aspirations went for March 2017:

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Goal #1. WRITE WRITE WRITE WRITE WRITE.
You’re not going to believe this, but I have decent news to report this month around! March was far from my best month ever when it comes to writing, but it was MUCH better than both January and February were this year so far. I did equal parts blog posts (mostly advance writing for April’s A-to-Z Blogging Challenge) and fiction writing toward “The Other World: Book Two”, and managed to put together 9435 words in March. That’s nearly twice January and February combined! Go me! Mind you I don’t want to get cocky. I want to do better in April, for sure. But I also feel a little proud to have finally had my first good month in a long time, as far as writing is concerned.

Mini-Goal #1.a. Publish more erotic fairy tales.
As far as this mini-goal is concerned, things have ground to a halt. I do still intend to move forward with this one, but most of February and March was very focused on getting “The Other World: Book One” out and available, and once that happened I became more focused on writing “The Other World: Book Two”, so the erotic fairy tales just got pushed onto the back burner. That said, I do hope to go back and finish the one that’s been sitting in waiting sometime soon.

Mini-Goal #1.b. Start writing blog posts again.
I’m working toward this one, I swear! Ha ha ha… Actually, April will be the month, since I am, in fact, doing the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge again. In addition to that, though, I’m also pretty much caught up on posting videos, so soon I should actually have an empty slot here and there with which to try doing some actual blogging again. Wish me luck!

Mini-Goal #1.c. Find ways to promote the book(s).
Still waiting on some advice for this one, especially now that I have two books to promote. I’ve had a suggestion here and there, but nothing that’s really going to be doable. I’ve been staring at Goodreads for months, waiting for them to make their ebook giveaway option available outside the US, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen any time soon, and I’m not in a spot financially right now where I can afford to ship out free paperbacks in return for reviews and the like. So, yeah, again, if anyone has any suggestions, please hit me up.

#2. Get healthier.
Remember that 30-day program that I mentioned I was going to do last month? *cough cough* I made it about six days in, I think. But that just gives me another chance to try it this month! That’s called staying positive people, STAYING POSITIVE!

Mini-Goal #2.a. Walk/run 10k 8k steps per day.
In all seriousness though, I am continually impressed/disgusted by my inability to get my steps in. It’s sick. I managed 6 days this month during which I hit my 8k-steps goal, and the average overall was 6485 steps per day. That’s so pathetic.

Let’s say it together, shall we? I. Must. Stop. Being. Such. A. Sedentary. BLOB!

Mini-Goal #2.b. Take daily “me time”.
I can’t say anything particularly good or bad about this one, but I think I’ve been doing okay. I had some hot baths, some snuggling-up and watching movies with the kid, a bit of lounging with a mobile game every so often. I’m not taking huge swathes of time to relax by any means, but I’m getting my moments in here and there.

#3. Work on my online presence – specifically, YouTube.
I’m never sure how to quantify this one, but I think it’s going okay. We grew a little over the past month because of an awesome giveaway we did with The Collectors Case, and I’ve been trying to be more active on things like Twitter and Instagram, which I’m pretty sure is working out well, so all in all, I’d say it was a pretty decent month. I’m also hoping that I might build my presence a little in the coming month with the Blogging Challenge, so fingers crossed for that. 

Mini-Goal #3.a. Learn to respond immediately.
This one may have taken a little nosedive this past month. I know for a fact that I’ve gotten better overall, but for whatever reason this past month felt really rushed and busy, and so there were definitely a number of times that I skipped responding to something and forgot about it for a couple of days. In fact, as I write this there’s an email that I’ve been meaning to get back to for at least 48 hours and I feel really bad about it. So yeah, I’m going to try to get back to it on this one in the coming month (and I’m going to respond to that email the second I finish this post)!

Mini-Goal #3.b. Focus more on daily social media.
I think this one is going to be one of those things that I struggle with right through to the end of the year, but I’m definitely getting better. Like I said earlier, I’ve been trying to focus a lot more on Twitter and Instagram, and it’s been going fairly well. Facebook is a little bit more of a drag, just because I find it harder to think of things that are interesting to post, whereas Tweets and random pics on Instagram are easier to come up with. Snapchat is right out there…ha ha ha…I enjoy it, but I often just flat-out forget about it for days at a time. I’m totally still trying though!

Mini-Goal #3.c. Come up with new video ideas.
And the response for this one is pretty much the same as last month’s: it more or less hasn’t happened. There’s been so much else going on! I will say, though, that Jason did come up with a few interesting ideas, and we might be using them as collaborations with a few other channels, so that could be interesting. Fingers crossed!

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That was my March! How was yours? Did you get anything accomplished? Do anything awesome? Feel free to drop a comment!

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 19

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?

You know I’m right.

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 14

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?

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 11

I’m gonna admit something here…I have no idea where the past week went. It just kinda…disappeared on me. I spent the rest of last Wednesday tidying up and washing bedsheets, so that I could spend all day Thursday cooking, so that I could entertain the visitors I had Thursday night. Then I spent most of Friday hanging out with the baby because she always gets super upset when visitors leave, after which I spent most of Saturday and Sunday being lazy as balls and playing my Vita because dammit, I deserved it. Monday…I honesty have no idea what happened to Monday…it’s as though it never actually existed in my timeline. And finally, yesterday, I spent most of the day on my laptop, catching up on blog posts because I’m getting used to this whole scheduling-ahead thing and I didn’t want to muck it up.

As you see, there wasn’t a lot of working on goals up in that nonsense. Time to break out the flogging hoses again.

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

I did get a little bit of exercise this week, I swear (although most of it was in the form of running up and down stairs while doing laundry), and I have been managing to mostly stick to water as my go-to beverage (mostly in the form of coffee and tea…without sugar, I swear). That’s pretty good, right?

If I’m honest though, this goal has been the absolute last thing on my mind recently. Not good, I know, but I’m sure you’ll give me a break when you hear why. See, I have a procedure coming up this coming Monday. Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious, but it does require me to fast for the full day before the procedure. And since the procedure is later in the day,and I have to start the fasting very early in the morning (thus, the fast will really start when I fall asleep the night before) the full extent of my fasting will actually be closer to two full days. In other words, I’ve resolved to enjoy my food for the days leading up to Saturday night. For almost two full days I’m only going to be able to drink water, tea or coffee with nothing in them, clear fruit juices and Poweraid, and Jello (and friends, you just know that if Jello is the only thing I can “eat”, I’m going to end up devouring a dozen boxes of it). Basically, cut me a break on my eating habits for the past few days and the next few, because I’m not going to be able to eat at all for about 40 hours in a row in the near future. ARG.

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

I haven’t been paying a whole lot of attention to the social aspect of my platform this week. It’s not that I haven’t been social, I just haven’t really been thinking about it. I’ve spent a bit of time on Twitter lately, but the big thing this past week has been Facebook. As mentioned last week, I have an Author Page now (you can see the link to it off to the right of this page…please Like!) and I’ve been interacting with that a lot, posting my blog posts there and talking to the people who wander by. My Klout score has been steadily rising in the past few weeks, so I guess that’s a good sign? I’ve never really understood the Klout system, but I’m confident that rising numbers is a good thing. 😛

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

This is the one that I’m genuinely ashamed of. I haven’t done a thing this week again. In my defense, my laptop was shanghaied for the majority of the week, so I had nothing to work on. I suppose I could have copied my files over to my husband’s laptop, but considering that his laptop overheats so bad that you can’t let it touch your bare skin, and several of the keys stick constantly, it wasn’t exactly a preferable solution. So instead I did nothing. I’m incredibly disappointed in myself, if that’s worth anything.

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

This was actually a really weird week. Because of the aforementioned shanghaiing of my laptop, I didn’t get much of anything written in the first half of the week. I was pretty confident that by the time I came to write this accountability post I was going to have a shameful word count of somewhere in the 500-word range. However, things really started looking up yesterday (after I got my laptop back) when I took to WordPress to get some posts written. I still don’t know how it happened, but somehow I ended the day with a very acceptable 6751 words. I am now very close to three quarters of a hundred thousand words, which isn’t too shabby for the end of March. I’m still about 30,000 words behind where I should be at this point, but based on last year I’m not surprised that I should be behind at this point.

And so, week 11 is down, and week 12 is going to be an odd because of that whole fasting thing. Maybe I’ll write something really weird and interesting while I’m knee-deep in Jello.

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 10

I almost forgot to write this post today, and I blame that on the fact that I have very little good to report. I lost an entire day this week as a result of having to drive quite a ways for a doctor’s appointment (which served almost no purpose besides scheduling day surgery, which really could have just been done over the damn phone), and I spent most of the other days trying to get organized, do some work around the house, and search for a new job, all while dealing with the little barnacle that I call my daughter. You have been forewarned: this will not be a great accountability post.

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

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha…oh my. I don’t even know what to say here. I can tell you that on one day near the beginning of this week I spent about forty minutes playing a dance game on the PS3 and that I haven’t touched it since because it made me feel absolutely horrible about myself. I can also tell you that I’ve been continuing on with my attempts to drink mostly water, so that’s a good thing, I guess. But also, my eating habits have been horrible this week. I don’t know how much chocolate I ate this week. I think I only ate breakfast once in the last seven days. There was one day when I ate a lot of fruit, but I subsequently was sick of it after that and changed over to junky stuff. There’s been a veggie tray sitting in my fridge for almost an entire week now, with healthy dip even, but I haven’t even broken the seal on the sticker.

I am in such a mood this week, you have no idea. It’s no excuse, I know, but just trust me when I say that I don’t even feel bad.

(Except for the part when I stepped on the scale and totally ended up feeling bad. Very bad.)

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

On the one hand, I’ve been spending a lot of time on Facebook this week, specifically on my new Author Page, which I have linked to on the right sidebar of this page, under my photo. Please visit and “Like”! 😀

On the other hand, I’ve been totally absent on Twitter, for the most part, and I’ve only managed to scrape together a minute here and there to interact with other bloggers. I don’t know what it is the past few days, but I swear my days are just flitting away from beneath me while I somehow manage to not get anything done. What’s up with that?

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

At the very least I wish I could say that the reason I haven’t been accomplishing anything else is because I’ve been busy working on the final draft of my novel. I wish I could say that. Alas, it would be an enormous lie. I haven’t even opened the file, or glanced at my beta-reader’s notes. I’ve done absolutely nothing and I feel positively horrible about it because it’s terribly unprofessional. Please feel free to yell at me.

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

On this one front I will say that the week wasn’t too bad, but it still wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. Remember last week when I said that I was going to at least double my word count from that week? Yeeeaaaahhh….that didn’t happen. With the bits of time I managed to actually sit at my computer and think I wrote a few blog posts that totaled up to 4923words. Not too shabby, but nowhere near doubling last week. This is not me whining, I’m just pointing out that I’m consistently failing. Ha!

So now that all that painfulness is out of the way, let’s just go ahead and pretend that week 10 never happened. On to week 11!

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 9

By the time you are reading this I will have been home from my shift out West for approximately one full day, which also means that I’ll have been unemployed for one full day. Yes, my job has ended once again. I was aware that it might not last very long because of the nature of the work we were doing, but I was a bit surprised to have been laid off so soon. I expected to get at least one more month out of it, as evidenced by the flight I had already booked and now wont get reimbursed for. But I’m not bitter. No, really, no bitterness here at all.

Hopefully I’ll get back to work sooner rather than later (if anyone knows of any commissioning jobs starting up soon, for the love of god let me know), but in the meantime I’m going to look on the positive side, which is that I’ll have time to focus on my goals for a little while.

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

I have mixed feelings about the success of this week, but I’m going to go ahead and say that it was a good one overall. For one thing, I successfully avoided calorie-bomb beverages for five out of seven days, and on those other two days it was just half a can of pop with supper. For every other beverage throughout the week I drank either water or herbal tea (with no milk or sugar). And for the record, that’s a huge sacrifice for me because I love pop and loathe plain water.

On the exercise front I can’t say that I did anything significant, but that’s because I’m much more out of shape than I thought I was. Every time I try to do anything I wind up feeling that my heart is going to burst from my chest, and the next morning my body feels like I got hit by a truck. So my plan for the next few weeks (and hubby, if you’re reading this, make me do it) is to hop on the treadmill for half an hour a day until I start to feel like I can handle something a little more intense.

Also, as a side note, I discovered that my FitBit can sync with the “My Fitness Pal” app, which is my favorite app for keeping track of calorie intake and exercise, so yay for that!

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

Week 9 was definitely not as good as week 8, but still not bad. I slacked off a little on Twitter, but I’ve been working hard on the “reciprocation” side of social media. That is, I’ve been actually hitting the “Like” button (or the “Favorite” button, or whatever) when I like something that someone else has posted or shared. I’ve also been sharing things that I really like to help promote them, and commenting on things instead of just moving on after I’ve enjoyed them. It only seems fair. If I want people to interact with me, I should interact with them, right? Right.

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

I feel like I’m forever repeating the same things over and over again, but as previously mentioned I haven’t been able to work on this for a while because I’ve been out West. That said, now that I’m home and unemployed for an indeterminate amount of time, I plan to put a real drive on for the final draft. If I can whip through the changes that I want to make based on my beta-reader’s comments, I should have a final draft in no time. Then I can focus on things like formatting and a cover, and get this sucker published!

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

The week when I fly home from out West always takes a hit on word count because of all the time I end up spending on packing, sitting on (extremely bumpy) buses, and just dealing with the hassles of traveling in general. That said, I’m actually not too disappointed in how I did this week. Handwriting blog entries in my notebook, I managed to put 3524 words to paper this week. I hope to at least double that number this coming week, so wish me luck!

Excuses Excuses

One of the more ridiculous aspects of human nature is the ability to make excuses. It’s a strange thing, but no matter how much we want to do something, no matter how fiercely we desire to achieve our goals, we will find every reason under the sun to not actually do anything about it. It’s why so many people resolve to lose weight but never do. It’s why people stay in dead-end jobs despite having big dreams about what they want to do with their lives. It’s why most of us can never get our houses clean, and how we end up with late payment charges on our bills. Whenever something needs doing, we just come up with an excuse for why we can’t do it right now. Whenever we find ourselves being held accountable for something we didn’t do, we just come up with an excuse for why we couldn’t get it done. Some of us are better at coming up with excuses than we are at pretty much anything else.

The most common excuse in the world is “I don’t have the time”, despite the fact that most people have hours a day of disposable time that they waste by checking their Facebook account three hundred times or obsessing over the 300th level of Candy Crush. That is far from the only excuse that people come up with on a regular basis, however. For your perusal, here are a few of the most common excuses I hear on a daily basis (many of them from the inside of my own head), and why they’re an enormous pile of BS.

Common Excuse #1: “I just don’t have the time!”

Even though I already mentioned it I’ve gotta go with this one first, since it’s the one people spew on a daily basis. It’s all about time, or rather, the lack thereof. No one has the time to do anything, if this excuse is to be believed. We don’t exercise because we don’t have the time to go to the gym. We don’t feed ourselves properly because we don’t have the time for cooking. We don’t work towards our goals (writing a book, running a marathon, renovating a part of the house, etc) because dammit, we just don’t have the time!

It’s the first excuse that almost everyone will come up with, and as much as we feel like it’s true, it’s complete nonsense most of the time. For one thing, the overwhelming majority of us have time, but we spend it doing stupid things like playing pointless smartphone games or investigating every nook and cranny of Facebook like we’re trying to build a court case against our friends and family. For another thing, a lot of us have no sense of how to multitask. For example, say there’s a TV show that you watch every night. It’s a half hour of time that you can’t use for anything else because dammit, you worked hard all day and you deserve to sit down for 30 minutes and watch your show! That’s fine! No one is saying you can’t watch your show! But why not do some sit-ups, or push-ups, or walk on the treadmill, or practice some yoga poses while you’re watching your show? BAM! You’ve had your guilty pleasure and worked in a half-hour of exercise at the same time!

In our rush rush rush world filled with day jobs and chores and kids and all the stuff that you have to keep up on if you want to be a part of the world, it can feel like you have no time. But in reality, you just have to find those little pockets and opportunities to multitask. If you’re spending an hour a day playing Candy Crush you cannot turn around and complain that you have no time to cook yourself a decent meal. If you spend your evenings watching TV you have no right to say that you can’t find the time to exercise.

Common Excuse #2: “I’m just too tired.”

This one is closely related to “I just don’t have the time” because, again, our world today is very much about the rushing around, so we do tend to feel exhausted a lot of the time, at least emotionally. And I will allow that some people genuinely have medical issues that have them feeling tired day after day (GO SEE A DOCTOR!). Regardless, for most people this is an excuse of the highest order because it’s not fatigue…it’s laziness.

The worst offenders are people who decide to skip their workouts because they just feel too tired. I can speak for this one personally because I’ve done it a number of times. The truth is that most of the time you’re just convincing yourself that you’re tired because you don’t feel like doing anything. The great majority of the time if you just get up off your butt and force yourself to go exercise you’ll find that you actually feel great afterward.

The human mind is an incredible thing, but it lies. It will convince you that you’re too exhausted to do something that you don’t feel like doing, and yet somehow, magically, you’ll be awake half the night watching shows on Netflix or playing video games in the dark. Don’t believe your mind. Unless your body is literally collapsing beneath itself and your eyes are burning with the intensity of a thousand suns, chances are that you’re just being lazy and your brain is eager to give you a good reason to be so.

Common Excuse #3: “It’s just so boring!“

This excuse is most commonly used for people trying to avoid exercise: as in, “but exercising is so boring!” It can also be used in other situations, however. For instance, someone who would rather eat fast food every night than cook something healthy for themselves might complain that cooking is too boring, or someone who requires practice to achieve a goal (learning to play an instrument, perhaps) might complain of the same.

This is just another form of being lazy because for the most part the “boring” factor can be overcome with a little bit of effort. Exercise, for instance, does not have to be boring if you’re willing to do a bit of research to find a method of exercise that you find enjoyable. Cooking doesn’t have to be boring if you’re willing to get a little creative, maybe involve a loved one or make a game out of it. If you really want to achieve something, you’ll find a way to make it a worthwhile event that keeps you interested.

Common Excuse #4: “I can’t afford it.”

Sometimes this is a valid excuse, but only in specific situations, like if want you’re trying to eat better but have been recently unemployed (healthy food is damn expensive and that’s a rant for another day). In most cases, however, this is another situation in which the excuse-maker simply refuses to put in a bit of thought. Someone who is trying to lose weight and get in shape, for instance, may whine that gym memberships are too expensive and there’s no way they can afford it. But who said they had to go to the gym? There are tons of excellent exercises that you can do right from home with little or no equipment. This is more a case of people assuming that the only way to accomplish something is to spend a ton of money. Paying for things makes us feel accountable and as though we’ve already accomplished something just because money has changed hands, but it’s a hollow victory. Save your money and look instead for ways that you can accomplish your goals without spending anything.

Common Excuse #5: “I just have no motivation at all.”

Of all the excuses out there, this one may be the worst because it is effectively saying, “I have these goals, and I really want to achieve them, but I just plain don’t want to do anything and don’t want to have to take any responsibility for not doing anything.” No matter what kind of goal we’re talking about, stating out loud that you have no motivation is the same as stating that you don’t actually care about your goal at all, because if you did that would be motivation enough. I’ve heard this excuse a hundred times, even coming out of my own mouth, and even hearing myself say it is frustrating to say the least. Don’t say that you “have no motivation.” Skip right to the honest truth: “I feel like I should probably [lose some weight/get my book published/do some work around the house/etc] because that’s what other people expect of me, but I don’t actually care enough to actually do it, so I’m just going to sit around and whine like there’s a secret ‘motivation switch’ in the back of my brain that someone flicked off while I wasn’t looking.”

What it all comes down to in the end is that excuses are only just that…excuses. If you really cared about your goals, about getting things done or making changes in your life, you would do it instead of just telling the world around you about all the reasons why you can’t manage. Because, trust me, no one really cares about your excuses. They’re too busy complaining about their own.

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 8

As I type this I am just over one week in to my shift, and you can’t even fathom how much I long for this particular one to be over. I don’t know if it’s the cold (Alberta, seriously, get some normal weather) or the air (my nose has been bleeding every single morning), or if I’m just straight up exhausted, but whatever the reason I am definitely ready to head back to Nova Scotia.

And with that cranky-arse attitude out of the way, let’s deal with this whole accountability deal.

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

I’m going to go ahead and really invoke the spirit of accountability here, and just admit that it has been a truly horrible week for this particular goal. I started off my shift pretty good, snacking on vegetables, avoiding any beverages aside from water and my David’s Teas, but then something snapped inside of me and I just started gnashing on sweets and cream soda like a ravenous, sweet-toothed wolf. I would like to blame a certain monthly phenomenom for this lack of willpower, but for the most part, yeah…it was just a complete and utter lack of willpower.

I have been taking my multi-vitamins every day. Does that give me any points?

The exercise side of things was just as sad. Last Wednesday my work partner and I got a job that required us to climb a crap ton of ladders and stairs. All total I estimated that we climbed approximately 300 vertical feet. And it nearly killed me. I had to grab my inhaler halfway through, and there were at least three or four instances when I had to stop because I was certain that I was as close to a heart attack as I had ever been before. That day I realized how truly out of shape I really am, and resolved to start really working to change that. The following night I did a workout video in my camp room and promptly spent the next three days hobbling around like a ninty-year-old woman.

I think I’m going to have to take some baby steps. Anyone know a good exercise program for toddlers? 😛

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

I wouldn’t say that I’ve ascended to the title of social media master just yet, but this was actually quite an excellent week for me. I spent some time chatting up fellow writers on Twitter, participated similarly in the blogging community, and even spent a bit of extra time on Facebook, promoting blog posts. Between the post promotion and mentioning my video game novelizations on Twitter, my blog saw a nice little influx of views and comments over the past few days. My numbers are still nothing to really write home about, but they’re definitely growing, and any kind of growth is good in my books.

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

As mentioned last week, there’s not a lot I’ve been able to do at the moment while I’m on shift, but rest assured that I’ve got plans made. I’ve got the key points made by my beta-reader scrutinized thoroughly, and I have a list of ideas to fix up the manuscript based on her input. I really do think that these changes are going to make my novel a heck of a lot better in the long run. 🙂

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

I can’t say that it was a great week, but I’m pleasantly amused with what I did manage to get done, considering that pretty much all of my writing while out on shift is done freehand in a notebook. By working on planning out some blog posts (including one that will be a guest post for another blog, which is quite exciting), I managed to put 4485 words to paper this week, which is nothing to sneeze at. I’m hoping to do a little better this following week because I’ve got a bit of a side project that I’m working on. Recently I discovered the website for something called the A to Z Blog Challenge and immediately signed up. Expect to hear more about it in the future, but for now it’s time to get back to work! Ciao!

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 7

Another Wednesday, another bout of accountability. It’s actually been a bit of an interesting week, so let’s just get right to it, shall we?

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

This was always going to be the most difficult goal for me, simply because I love food and hate exercise. But while I can’t report a weight loss (I forgot to weigh myself before I came out West for this shift) I can report a couple of small victories.

One is that in the day and a half I’ve been out here for this shift I’ve already been more active and been eating better than I managed last shift. One big thing is that I’m avoiding the cans of pop like the plague, which is really difficult for me because I love pop and it’s free, dammit. But I digress… I’ve been drinking a lot of water and herbal tea. Also, I forced myself to have breakfast this morning. Also, also, I got up early to exercise. Unfortunately the exercise was cut off early because my trademark evil gut started playing with me, but tomorrow morning is another day.

The other small victory that I thought worth mentioning is that I’ve actually gotten several comments lately asking me if I’m losing weight. I don’t believe that I’ve actually lost any as far as the number on the scale, but it is possible that I’ve replaced some fat with muscle, so it’s nice to get the comments. Hopefully those who have brought it up are actually right and not just delusional.

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

It hasn’t been a particularly good week for this goal, mostly because I’ve been busy with other things and haven’t focused on it. Somedays I find it strangely difficult to think of a single thing to tweet, and I don’t like to overextend myself on Facebook because I already have my blog auto-post to there and I don’t want to annoy people. That said, I have been fairly active amongst the blogger community, and I resolve to do better in other areas this coming week.

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

Honestly, I didn’t expect to have anything to report for this one for quite a while. As I explained last week, I’d finally finished the first round of edits and was ready to ship my manuscript off to my beta reader, so I fully expected to have this goal out of my head for at least a few weeks. Amazingly, however, my beta reader turned out to be a super-woman who ate my manuscript up like a pint of double-fudge ice cream…all in one night! Yesterday morning I recieved the emails with her comments, complaints, and suggestions, and I was absolutely flabbergasted. Not only did she manage to read the entire novel in one night, but she also brought up some very excellent points that I never would have noticed myself. So now, much sooner than anticipated, I find myself preparing for the second round of edits. These ones (I freakin’ hope) will go much faster than the last ones because they’re mostly cosmetic changes and slight revisions. I won’t be able to start this round until I get home again, but in the meantime I’m going to definitely spend some time working out a game plan. Exciting!

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

This week wasn’t nearly as good as last week, but it was still excellent as far as how many words I should be getting in a week. I ended up with 9212 words, mostly through the virtue of planning a bunch of blog posts in advance. I’m both pleased and concerned with this result, because I can’t see me getting anywhere near that number again this week. It’s always so difficult to get much writing in while I’m out West…but that’s just my fatigue talking. Maybe this week I’ll finally break into that “642 Things to Write About” book that has been sitting in my luggage. Wish me luck!

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 5

Okay, let’s start up the day by apologizing for there being no blog posts the past two days with no explanation. Don’t worry, it wasn’t another family emergency or anything. Apparently I’d just forgotten how difficult it is to find time to bang these things out during the last few days of my shift when I’m trying to get my laundry done and pack and deal with a bunch of different buses to take me to the right places to eventually get on my plane and fly home in the middle of the night. So…yeah. Sorry about that. I’ll try to plan ahead next time. ._.

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

Okay, confession time. Since returning out West and landing myself at a camp that has a huge fridge filled with cans of every flavor of pop out there, things have not been good. I like pop. I like it a lot. I also hate plain water, and mostly avoid the milk out West (because, sorry, it doesn’t taste right, I don’t know why) and the juice out West (because it’s fountain crap that is watered down and tastes awful). So, yeah…I’ve been drinking a lot of pop. Like…a lot of pop. Also, the dinners there are delicious, so I’ve been gorging at night, and alternatively the lunches are kinda pathetic, so I’ve been compensating with cookies and other treats.

Long story short, the eating habits have jackknifed into a bad place. I also didn’t really get any exercise for the two weeks out West because I forgot to take a pair of “indoor shoes” and therefore couldn’t use the gym, and also it turns out that my crew actually has trucks now that we can use to drive to the job instead of walking all over hell’s creation. That last bit is actually a good thing, overall, but it does dramatically cut back on the amount of exercise I get on a daily basis.

All in all, it’s been a poor couple of weeks. Remember last week when I said that I probably actually gained weight? Yeah, I was right. Luckily I had a buffer zone from the few pounds I lost that week I mysteriously couldn’t eat anything, so I’m not in the red or anything…but yeah. Pretty much starting from scratch.

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

This is always so difficult to report, but I think I did pretty good this week, considering the missed blog posts. I spent quite a bit of time on Twitter, and made spent more time than usual reading, liking, and commenting on blog posts. There’s not much to say other than that. But look! I’m participating! 😀

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

Okay, I just got home yesterday, so you can’t hold this one against me yet. Remember I said I was thinking about it? Really thinking about it? Well now I’m home, so I have two weeks to use those thoughts. I hope to start tonight, but I’m not making any promises, because my daughter has a fort in the living room and she keeps wanting me to come in with her and watch Teen Titans Go! through the doorway. I have to have priorities, man, geez.

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

And to top off a week of pretty poor accountability reporting, I have to say that I can’t tell you what my word count was for last week. The reason is not because I’m embarrassed about the skimpy word count (although, now that you mention it…); it’s because I’m having difficulty getting my word count spreadsheet to play nice between my tablet and my computer. I created it on my computer and had to move heaven and Earth to get it to both open and allow me to make changes on my tablet, and now apparently I’ve screwed up the file so that it will no longer open on my computer. So, when I get a chance, I guess I’m going to have to open it on my computer and physically re-input all the numbers into the version on my computer. Why not just use the tablet all the time? Just take my word on this…the program that I’ve had to use in order to get the spreadsheet to work on my tablet is outrageously frustrating to deal with. I may have to just track my words on paper while I’m out West from now on…that’s how terrible the tablet program is.

All that said, though I can’t give you the exact number right now, I can tell you that my word count for last week sucked tremendously. I fully plan on making up for that this week by pre-planning blog posts, finishing up the editing mentioned earlier, and hopefully banging out another chapter or two for Returning Hope, but again, I must bring your attention to the fort in my living room.

Ciao!