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.

Compassion is Key

Week 9 of The Artist’s Way is about “recovering a sense of compassion”. I was a bit confused about this one at first, but it turns out that the “compassion” we’re supposed to be recovering is compassion for ourselves. See, as the author explains (and as I have, myself, mentioned many times on this blog), artists tend to be a very self-depreciating bunch, and usually it’s for no good reason. We call ourselves untalented, lazy, undisciplined, and a whole host of other terrible things that we don’t deserve, because usually it’s a giant steaming pile of BS.

Let’s take laziness, for example. Lots of artists label themselves with this one when there’s been a lack of work being done. They tell themselves that they’re terrible artists because they haven’t been able to force themselves to get up early, stay up late, and work all day on their project. In reality, that same artist that is labeling himself as lazy is probably just scared; scared that the project is going poorly, scared that it won’t be received well, scared of failure or success, scared of being held accountable to his work.

I giggle like a fool every time I get to use this picture.

Here’s where the compassion comes in, you see? A compassionate person would recognize the fear under the mask of “laziness” and be sympathetic. Someone who recognizes that their true problem is fear can work past it. Alternatively, masking your fear by calling yourself every cruel name under the sun just drives you further and further from the task at hand.

I’ll admit that I am rather bad for this, myself. If I go through a 24-hour period without writing a blog post or getting some editing done, I get down on myself. I tell myself that I was too lazy to sit down and work, that I’m too easily distracted by stupid mobile games and social websites, that I never sit down and assert myself because I have concentration problems and that I’m always tired. I do everything except admit the truth…that I wasn’t sure exactly how to move forward and was scared of screwing up, so I just avoided doing the work.

The trick, of course, is to get over yourself, to push past the fears and uncertainties and whatever else is holding you back, and propel yourself forward. The problem is that this isn’t always as easy as it seems. Some people are more self-depreciating than others, some people deal with depression or other illness, and some have lots of responsibilities that make everything twice as difficult to deal with. Therefore the key, I suppose, is simply to try. The next time you find yourself thinking negatively, calling yourself horrible names or putting yourself down, consider for a moment that you might just be masking the real problem. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt and show a little compassion for your inner artist. A little compassion can go a long way, even when given to yourself.

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 7

Tuesday, Tuesday, wherefore art thou, Tuesday?

Oh crap, you’re right here? God dammit, I’ve gotta learn how to pay more attention to time passing.

It’s been a bit of a rough week, goal-wise, so let’s go ahead and get this over with, shall we?

Health and Body Image Goal

This week wasn’t as good as I was hoping, but better than past weeks have been. Of course, as I’ve mentioned before I never eat particularly well while at home, so that’s a nick in the ‘bad’ column, but on the ‘good’ side of things I started doing Jillian Michaels’ Body Revolution. It’s a 90-day program something like P90X, but the videos are shorter and involves more cardio than the weight-training-heavy P90X. So far I’ve done two of the “Workout” videos (which are high-intensity interval training programs that intersperse cardio moves with weight moves), and one of the Cardio videos. All are much tougher than I was imagining. I had hoped to use the first week to do Jillian’s “Rev Your Metabolism” program, which is basically doing two videos a day instead of one for the first week, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I managed it the first day, but on the second I only got five minutes into the second video and literally could not lift my legs anymore. I was really trying, I swear, but it just wasn’t happening. So I’ll continue on with the rest of the week as normal and maybe I’ll be able to manage the “Rev” plan on one of the consecutive weeks. Either way, I’m getting some exercise in, which is way more than I’ve been doing previously.

Editing Goal

I’m going to just go ahead and admit that I still haven’t done jack on this one. No excuses, no reasons, just good old fashioned “Nope. Haven’t done it.”

1,000,000 Words Goal

The only words I wrote this past week were for the blog (I’m trying to schedule ahead of time so I don’t have to worry about it for a little while), and those words totaled 3646. Not a great week, but still better than nothing. Hoping to do better this week, but I’ve got quite a few things to take care of at home before I head back out West next Tuesday, so we’ll just have to see, I guess.
And before I put this post to rest, a request:
Does anyone have any advice for potty training a toddler? I could really use some, seeing as we’re not getting anywhere. She comes to the bathroom with us (and even asks to go herself sometimes) and sits on her potty for a few minutes, but as yet she hasn’t done anything so I don’t think she’s really catching on so much as she’s just copying mommy and daddy. One more week until my husband is stuck doing this alone for two weeks straight, so any advice would be just lovely. 🙂

New Job, New Time Management Issues

My husband’s uncle asked me a question today. An innocent question: “How’s the book going?” The answer was not quite as innocent: “Not as good after going out West!”

I haven’t written a thing since the week before my flight to Alberta. At first it was because I (obviously) had more important things on my mind, like figuring out how meals work on the camp, and becoming acquainted with my many new coworkers. As the days went on, writing continued to go by the wayside because I was adjusting to a new job that involves a hell of a lot of walking, climbing stairs and ladders, and hanging out in stifling heat while wearing flame-retardant, long-sleeved coveralls. In other words, I was tired. By the time the last few days of my two-week rotation began to wear down, I continued to fail to write because of good old fashioned laziness. Even after returning home, I got no writing done over the past five days because I’ve been too busy enjoying my daughter and filling other obligations (i.e. my niece’s birthday party…enjoy being 3, cutie!), and no one can possibly blame me for that.

Reincorporating writing into my schedule is one of the things that I’m going to have to work on with this new job, but other than a few minor complaints (I never did get the internet working in my room) the entire ‘Out West’ experience has gone much better than I expected. I don’t mind the camp at all, the work is easy and laid-back, safety is actually number one for a change, my coworkers are all good guys, and there is no way anyone could possibly complain about the money. All in all, I have to say that I am honestly enjoying the job. Yes, of course, being away from the baby for two weeks at a time is less than fun, but look at it this way: how many people get 14 days out of every 28 off? 14 days that I can spend doing whatever I want, which in this case is enjoying my adorable daughter? Not to mention, this job is so stress-free that my days off (so far) are being spent in a great mood, actually enjoying myself, rather than coming home from work every day cranky and tired and inadvertently taking my mood out on my daughter and husband.

Everyone is different of course, and I’ve only had one rotation so far so I can’t definitively judge, but it’s looking good so far. I really think this job might be the start of something good. If nothing else, it will allow us to ditch some debt that we’ll be ridiculously happy to see the backside of…we’re coming for you, student loans!

Now if I could just squeeze the writing in there somewhere as well, I’d be doing great.