Accountability Wednesdays: Week 37

Well, I’m a week into my shift, and believe me when I say that I’m ready to go home. No offense, Alberta, but your bone dry air and ridiculous temperature swings are getting on my nerves, just a little bit. I’m longing for the salty East-coast air and the not-quite-as-unreliable weather patterns. Also, I’m dying for a garlic fingers. Man, am I dying for a garlic fingers.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. Let’s get on with it.

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

As per usual I can’t really comment on anything this week because I don’t have a scale. I can tell you that I’ve been pretty good this week for a lot of things. I’m still drinking lots of water (although I caved twice, but I don’t think two cans of pop in a full week is really so bad, do you) and I’ve been eating fairly healthy considering that I have to deal with camp food all day every day. I haven’t been able to get any exercise, because, you know…ridiculously unfit work hours…but I’ve been trying to move and stretch a lot throughout my shift instead of sitting on my backside all day every day. So there’s that, right?

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

It hasn’t been too bad of a week for this one either. I posted an extra video on YouTube to review the contents of my first Ipsy Glam Bag, and I’ve been trying to make sure that I tweet at least once a day. Facebook has been a little slow, but I’m okay with that because I’ve been noticing a slow-but-steady increase in followers and interactions via the other platforms. Long story short, thumbs up for this week.

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

Guys…guys…guys…I’m getting super excited. My beta-reader recently got back to me and she had only a short list of minor issues that she thought could use addressing. I’m now in the process of compiling those issues and doing a last run-through of the manuscript to make sure there are no hidden typos. By this time next week I will be fixing those last issues/typos in the main manuscript file, resubmitting to CreateSpace, and from there it will be only 24 hours before I am able to order my proof copies. Those will take five business days to come, and assuming that they look okay, I will then be able to flip the switch, so to speak, and make the book available for purchase. You have no idea how pumped I am. In two weeks my first book could be for sale. I may never sell more than a handful of copies, but you have no idea how fulfilled I will be just to have my book actually be a book. AHHHH!!!!

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

Unfortunately as I am writing this I realize that I forgot to go through and keep track of what I wrote this week, so I’ll have to do that later, but I can tell you that it’s probably somewhere in the range of 2000. I’ve been taking it a little easy this week partly because I think I deserve it and partly because I know that once Nowhere to Hide is set up for sale I’ll be putting my nose to the grindstone and working hard on my next venture. So with that said, look forward to the future! There are great things on the horizon!

Blogging 101, Day Eighteen: Plug into Social Networks

There’s no doubt about it…particular sites may come and go, but social networking is here to stay, and it can be a very useful tool for accessing new readers. Appropriately, today’s assignment is if you’re active on a social network, set up Publicize to link the account to your blog or widget highlighting your profile. If you’re not, explore your social options to see whether one might be helpful.

Let’s face it: websites that allow us to interact with each other socially have become a huge part of life on the Internet. Chances are that almost everyone you know has a Facebook or Twitter account, if not both, Even work mates and employers have created an enormous network out of LinkedIn. In the world in which we live today, everyone wants to be connected to everyone else all the time.

So how does that help a blogger? Well, let’s look at it simply. Do you have a Facebook account? Yes? Okay, how many “friends” do you have on your account? Let’s modestly say 100? BAM! 100 potential readers. Every person attached to your social account is a potential reader if you allow your blog to be showcased on that account. All you have to do is share your blog posts the same way you would share anything else on your social feeds, and bada bing bada boom, you’ve made your blog accessible to tons of people who may otherwise never have come across it.

It’s as simple as that. If you connect your blog to previously established social accounts, you’ve opened yourself up to a whole other world of viewers who may see your post and decide to check it out. And WordPress makes this even easier with their Publicize options, which allows you to link all of your different social accounts to your WordPress one, thus allowing WordPress to automatically post status updates/tweets/etc for you whenever you publish a post. Awesome, right? So what are you waiting for? Get out there and publicize!

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 28

It’s another week and I’m back out West, working my 15-1/2 hour days and trying to figure out how I’m going to get anything else accomplished over the next two weeks. Fun times! Thank goodness I’m making good money, because otherwise my head may have already exploded.

On the upside of things, I did manage to record my two Nerd Block unboxing videos and get them uploaded to YouTube before returning to work. I’m not the most comfortable person in front of a camera, but I don’t think I did too badly. My only concern now is that now that my husband knows that I’m recording I’m going to have to find a way to lock him out of the room so he doesn’t torture me mid-taping. 😛

(Shut up, Jason, you know you’re going to do it.)

If you’re interested in Nerd Block, or if you just want to see how awkward I am on camera, please check out my unboxing video for the original Nerd Block for June:

…and my unboxing video for Nerd Block Jr (for Girls) for June:

And now on to the usual stuff.

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

I’m just gonna go right ahead and say it: I’m failing miserably at this goal for a number of reasons (some of them good reasons, some of them bad). The upside is that my bad habits haven’t actually caused me to gain any more weight, but of course the downside is that I have effectively accomplished nothing toward this goal in over six months.

It’s a combination of things, but the major contributing factor is that this just isn’t as much of a priority to me as it should be. Blogging is very important to me. Writing (and, to a lesser extent, editing) is very important to me. Spending time with my family and taking small opportunities to relax are super important to me. Losing weight and getting healthier should be important to me, but they’re significantly less important than the other things I listed, so this goal continuously gets thrown on the back burner to slowly burn away into charcoal. I eat crappy food because cooking healthy takes time and energy that I use on other things that are important to me, and I avoid exercise for the same reason. It’s terrible, but it’s the truth.

So with that in mind, if anyone knows how I can somehow either double the hours in the day, or make it possible to function without sleep…feel free to let me know any time.

On the positive side ofthings, I’ve been using an iPhone app to remind me to take my stomach pills and thus far it seems to be helping. I actually think these meds might really help if I can continue to remember to take them properly. Further updates to come.

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

I’m calling this one a win for the week. I wasn’t overly active on Facebook or Twitter, but I did become a member of the International Bloggers Association, and I also set up my new YouTube channel for subscription box fun. I think that counts as pretty productive as far as social media is concerned.

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

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to find the time during my days off to work on this. Just as unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to print off anything to work on while out West. So this is going to be a bust for a couple more weeks. On the upside, my next days home shouldn’t be nearly as busy as the last ones were. My revised mini-goal for the next fourteen days is to get as much blogging scheduled as possible between now and then so that when I get home I can focus entirely on Goal #3. Since that means trying to blog around my 15-1/2 hour work days, please send me good luck (and lots of caffiene).

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

Unfortunately (which is becoming my most-used word), I can’t give you a real report this week because I forgot to make a copy of my spreadsheet before coming out West, so I have no idea what my numbers are. I can tell you that I believe it to be somewhere between 3000 and 4000 words. I hope to put that number to shame this following week, but again…15-1/2 hour days…so don’t hold me to it, okay? Ha ha…

As a final note before I sign off today, I’m just going to mention that to avoid diluting my weekly schedule any further, future subscription box reviews are going to be posted on the weekends as they pop up. Look forward to them! ❤

Blogging 101, Day Ten: Dress Up Your Sidebar

We’ve done a fair bit of personalizing on our blogs so far, and today we’re going to talk about a little bit more, specifically with regard to our “sidebar”. Depending on the theme you chose for your blog, your “sidebar” could be in a number of places, but a rather large number of themes involve said “bar” being either the far right or the far left of your blog. It is a spot where your posts do not reach, an empty slate that you can fill as you so choose. So today’s assignment is to add and/or customize two widgets, one text-based and one image-based.

Now, as with many of these assignments, this is something that I’ve already done since I’ve already been around the block a few times. Therefore, instead of adding or changing anything, I’m going to explain why I chose the widgets that I chose.

The very first widget on my sidebar is a simple photo. I chose that widget because, as a writer, I want people to be able to instantly recognize me. Eventually (based on my own cursed willpower) I will have published books, and those books will have a photo of me inside their covers. If the people who read my books choose to seek out my blog I want them to be able to immediately know that they’ve got the right place. Additionally, a photo is a nice thing to have on a professional blog (not that I think my blog is professional…haha) because it gives visitors that instant feeling of having made your acquaintance, which might help them decide to stick around.

The second widget on my sidebar is an invitation to “Like” my Facebook Author Page. This is a newer addition, as it took me a while to finally decide to actually make a Facebook Author Page. In the end I decided that it was an important step, and the widget reflects that. Facebook is a big deal these days, and while not everyone who stumbles onto my blog may be the kind of person who follows blogs, there are plenty of people out there who might click the “Like” button and thereafter return to my blog as Facebook lets them know what I’ve posted recently.

Thirdly, we have a Twitter widget. I’m not a huge Twitter user myself, but it’s another one of those “important” sites that can be very useful for networking. I chose to add the type of widget that shows the last few things I’ve “tweeted” along with the ability for visitors to tweet directly to me without having to open a whole different browser page to go directly to Twitter.com. Though it is not used as often as I thought it might, I think that it’s nice to give people the ability to speak to me without having to comment on a particular blog post.

The fourth and fifth widgets are organizational in purpose. They simply give visitors the option to browse my blog posts via the full archives, or the categories that I place my posts under.

The sixth widget is a simple “Follow Via Email” button, important for visitors who are neither members of WordPress, nor choose to use the Facebook link.

And the final widget is your basic search which, while not necessarily very useful to visitors, is important for helping me to go back and find things that I wrote about in the past.

Do you see a pattern? Most of my widgets are based around the idea of gathering a following and networking various aspects of my “author platform” together. The widgets I chose are the kinds of widgets that a writer should have in order to effectively use social media to her advantage. However, each individual blogger has to decide for themselves what will work well for their blog. If you’re a private person who wants to talk anonymously you’re probably not going to want to use things like Facebook and Twitter, but if networking is a major part of your platform you might want to add even more social site widgets to your sidebar. If you’re a member of any clubs, challenges, blogging circles, etc, you might want to post your badges on your sidebar. If you’re into any kind of marketing, there are “blog stats” widgets that would help let potential buyers know how popular your blog is. If you hold events via your blog, there are widgets to help you organize and display them. Take a look through all the available widgets and determine what would work best for you. 🙂

Blogging 101, Day Seven: Start Personalizing

A previous Blogging 101 post focused on choosing a theme for your blog, making sure to try out a bunch of different ones in order to find something that really suits you and your purpose. Day seven’s assignment is to go a little further: create and upload a simple header, background, or both. And if you’ve already done that, try a custom widget.

Personally, I like a blog to look fresh and clean and organized, which is why I’m not a big fan of backgrounds. It’s all about your personal preference, of course, but I find that background images on a page that is then going to be covered in walls of text almost always winds up looking very messy and difficult to look at. The most important thing on your blog is the words, so you don’t want anything distracting away from them.

Headers, on the other hand, can be a very simple and excellent way of distinguishing your blog. The proper image can give a clear, instant impression of what your blog is all about. When I first started this blog I found a stock photo of a blank piece of lined paper with a pen and a pencil laying on top of it. I used Photoshop to overlay the name of the blog and my name, and that was my first header. I liked it because my intent was that anyone who came across my blog would immediately recognize me as a writer, and I thought that the pen and pencil on paper achieved that nicely. A little while ago I came to think that it was actually a bit silly to have a blank piece of paper as the token image for a blog called “No Page Left Blank”, so after a bit of thought I decided on something significantly more personal. I grabbed a few of my notebooks – the ones that I scribble just about everything in when a computer is not available – turned them each to a random page, piled them on top of each other, and snapped a photo. BAM. Instant impression, and one that matches the title of the blog a lot better.

As for the second part of today’s assignment, if you look to the right side of my page you’ll see that I’ve already played with my fair share of custom widgets. WordPress has quite a variety of options that you can play with to customize your blog, and I’ve chosen the ones that I think are the most helpful to my purpose. The first one is simply a photo widget so that everyone can get a glimpse of who I am…remember, people care about you more if they feel like they know you. The second widget down is a link to my Facebook Author Page, something that is becoming quite popular and important to an author platform. The third is an embedded Twitter widget that allows you to follow or tweet directly to me, and also shows a couple of my most recent tweets. Finally, there are a few organizational widgets that allow you to search my blog via archive (by month), category, or search field, and an option to follow my blog via email. All important stuff, in my opinion, but also neat and easy on the eyes. It’s easy to get carried away with widgets and wind up with a messy-looking site, so keep that in mind when choosing which of the many options you want to use.

All in all, the big thing is to make your blog something that you love, while also keeping it useful and uncomplicated. You want people to come across your blog and stay because it looks interesting; you don’t want to scare them off because it took them ten minutes to locate the “leave a comment” link. 😉

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 23

A couple of things to say before we get down to it this week. First of all, I know I’ve been rather slow when it comes to responding to comments and the like lately, and I apologize. I’m having one of those times when it just seems like there’s a million things to do and I can’t concentrate, so I’ve been a little lackluster when it comes to responding to the various forms of internet communication. I tried to catch up yesterday, but if I missed anyone I apologize, and feel free to shout at me. 🙂

Second, as of this coming Monday I will officially be at my new job in the Alberta oil sands. That means that for two weeks at a time I may be fairly absent online. It all depends on what the cell reception is like where I’m going. So if it seems as though I’ve disappeared (except for scheduled posts), I haven’t…I’m just having a difficult time communicating.

Okay, now that I’ve explained that, let’s get down to brass tacks.

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

I must admit that I had a rough time this week. Part of the problem was good old fashioned being too busy. On Wednesday I had overnight visitors, then on Thursday I had to do a 3-hour round trip for a doctor’s appointment and a visit to my sick grandmother, which was punctuated by an almost five-hour trip to the circus with the daughter and the niece, and then hubby and I took the niece to our house for two nights, which just always wears me out even when the kids are really good (which they were). So all in all, I ended up missing all my workouts for those days, plus ate a ton of junk like pizza and pancakes.

I totally planned to make up for those lost workouts early this week, but somehow it just never happened. I managed to fit in the one run that I missed, but I never made up for the strength training sessions that I missed, and as of a strangely exhausting day today I’ve managed to get another run behind. I’m just all kinds of screwed up, and to make matters worse I’ve been reverting to bad habits like drinking pop constantly.

On the positive side of things, I finally got a medical diagnosis on my stomach problems. It was the one I was dreading, because it involves a lot of work to figure out your triggers (of which there could be many), but there’s an upside to it. Given my descriptions of the problem the doc thinks that my biggest (maybe only) trigger is anxiety, so he’s given me a prescription to hopefully help with that. I’ve only been taking it for a couple of days so I can’t really tell if it’s helping yet, but I should know pretty soon since my worst times are when traveling to and from work. Everyone keep your fingers crossed for me, okay?

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

As mentioned above, it’s been a really bad week for this kind of stuff. I haven’t touched Twitter once, and have only been on Facebook in order to link to my blog posts. There’s not much more to say about that, aside from that I’ll try harder next week.

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

You can probably guess based on everything else what I’m going to say here. Like everything else, it was a bad week for this goal, but I am at least able to say that I got one more chapter done. Along those lines, I can tell you that I’m starting to understand that “kill the little darlings” thing that everyone is always talking about. The chapter I was working on was one that my beta-reader said dragged a lot, so when I was going through it I was trying to find ways to shorten it or speed up the action, and it was harder than I would have expected. Every line seemed important and well-written, so it was really difficult to cut anything. In the end I managed, but it really gave me an appreciation for how hard it is to cut stuff that only you feel is worth leaving in.

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

Surprisingly, this is the one goal that I’m not too disappointed in this week. It was definitely a weaker period than the previous few weeks, but it was still pretty good overall. Honestly, I’m not even sure where these words came from, but somehow I wound up with a total of 5198 words. Not too shabby for such a busy and confusing week!

All in all, I would have to say that this week was frustrating in a great number of ways, but at least I can say that I kept writing, right? Right.

 

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 20

Whenever I can think of something quick and interesting, I try to share a little something at the beginning of all my accountability posts, as a little bonus to the people who bother to read them (and as an incentive to the people who really couldn’t care less about my goal progression). This week I just had to share this article, which I stumbled across on Business Insider. It explains, quite simply, that the same researchers who initially provided evidence of gluten-sensitivity have now published follow-up papers that show that they were totally wrong and there is no such thing as gluten-sensitivity. (This is not to be confused with Celiac disease, which is an auto-immune condition that is triggered by gluten and is, in fact, a very real disease.) I have to be honest, this amuses me a great deal because I know a few people who actually have Celiac disease and have to deal with all that that entails, and then I also know quite a few people who have used the term “gluten sensitivity” to give them an excuse for everything from why they’re overweight, to why they need to have a ton of special instructions for every meal, to why they just refuse to stop farting every five seconds (yes, that’s an actual conversation that I’ve had to endure with a coworker).

One less thing to blame all your troubles on, people. Sorry, try again. XP

And now to talk about my troubles, which I’ll readily admit are entirely my own fault.

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

Not a great deal to report here. As usual exercise hasn’t been on the top of my priority list. I will say that I’ve been eating a little better, although that’s objective. I’ve been forcing myself to have breakfast in the morning, usually in the form of a bran-dense cereal of some kind, and at the advice of a couple of readers I’ve been trying to force more liquids down my throat to keep the hunger at bay. I have a really hard time drinking plain water, but I’ve been drinking a lot of caffeine-free tea and juices. There’s also the occasional glass of pop, but I’ve been trying really hard to restrict that to one glass a day. I will admit that it’s helping. I’m still snacky (I’m working on that, I swear), but not nearly as bad as I was a week ago. I’ve been managing to keep the constant random grabbing of easily-shoved-in-my-mouth foods to a minimum.

On a related note, can being a little dehydrated actually make you a little bloated? I’m just wondering because since I’ve been forcing more fluids into me I’ve noticed that my pants don’t feel as tight. I haven’t lost any weight or inches; my pants just feel a little more comfortable. Does that make any sense at all?

Oh, also, I’ve now been on my trail medication for my stomach problems for a week now. I kinda thought they might be helping, but then this morning I had some major gut rot for no reason that I could discern…I didn’t even eat anything out of the ordinary. So, I dunno. I have an appointment to see the gastroenterologist again in two weeks, so maybe he’ll have something else to say, or want to put me on different meds, or maybe he’ll just tell me that I’m psychotic. We’ll see, I suppose.

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

Things are going as well as always on this front. I’m still trying hard to keep up with the blogging community, and I’ve been making an effort to drop a tweet every now and then that isn’t a link to the blog. I’ve noticed a couple of new followers to the blog, as well as a couple of new likes on my Facebook Author page, so that’s awesome. Hi everyone! *waves*

Another silly thing that I’ll mention because it’s technically kinda “social”…last week the hubby and I re-watched Tropic Thunder (a ridiculous comedy about a bunch of actors making a war movie, if you didn’t know). There’s this one scene that involves Robert Downey Jr in an inception-like levels-deep role, and I thought it was so silly that I made this image about it:

I then posted the pic on 9gag.com, because what the hell, right? Well, apparently over 23,000 people thought it was amusing as well, because BAM. Hot page. It’s not exactly the crowning achievement of my internet career, but I have to admit that it pleases me that 23,000 people “liked/upvoted” something that I came up with.

Now if the image would just find it’s way onto Robert Downey Jr’s Facebook page, I could die a happy fangirl. lol

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

I’m gonna go right ahead and put this out there: I’m going to get something done on this during this following week, or I am going to find some way to severely punish myself. The floor is open for suggestions, people. Give me some motivation by telling me how I can torture myself if I don’t get some work done.

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

All other things aside, it was a pretty good week for this goal. It wasn’t quite as good a week as week 19, but still an excellent one at a total of 8240 words. I expect to get at least that number in again this following week because I’ve got a lot of blog-post planning to do. You see, I’ve gotten word that I shall be returning to work in just under a month, and I want to get as much work completed and out of the way as possible before that happens. So look forward to another excellent word count next Wednesday. ^_^

And don’t forget: if you haven’t been officially diagnosed with Celiac disease, all that super-expensive gluten-free stuff is a complete waste of money. XD

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 17

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.

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 16

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?