I'm going to have to change one of my goals...weather is getting too cold for walks

This week has been an interesting one. I had to emergency babysit for a friend and ended up not taking an actual walk, though I did borrow her staircase (since I was alone there for 2 hours before the kids showed up) to do 20 minutes of stair stepping. My allergies decided to remind me it's fall so my head is stuffed and my eyes are bugging me. And my writing has taken some leaps and bounds. But all in all it hasn't been a bad week.

Just found a quote that made me think and I thought I'd share.

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." ~Stephen Hawking

On to the full update:

WRITING: This has been a very productive week for writing. I've finished Aran and Taereah's stories. I took a break from writing for a couple days because of the intense writing binge but I plan on starting Jaelon's story next week. I also have the outline for Raghnall's story (my NaNo novel AND the first book in my series) finished, which is new for me because traditionally I'm a pantser.

JOB: Haven't done much on the job front this week. I've got the appointment with voc rehab on the 15th and I'm holding off on searching for a job until I meet with my counselor there. I'm polishing my resume and making things shine for job hunting. I'm also going to talk to my regular counsel more this coming week on CBT plans to get me ready for going back to work in 3 weeks.

PERSONAL: I'm changing one of my personal goals. Instead of walking for 15 minutes it's going to be exercise for 15 minutes. It's getting too bloody cold for me to be walking, since the cold affects my hip very badly. So I'm going to do some kind of exercise every other day for 15 minutes. I've been able to keep up with this amended goal very well this week with stair climbing on Thursday and some stretches on Saturday. My eyes hurt really bad yesterday because of my allergies so I wasn't on the computer very much. I did get some reading done but again, with my eyes hurting, it was very hard. Mostly I spent yesterday dozing on and off until it was time for us to go over to a friend's house. They made us pizza and cupcakes to celebrate our 10th anniversary (it's on Halloween, but they wanted to feed us earlier in the month) and we played Munchkin. We came home, I couldn't manage the computer, so I went to bed really early last night after taking allergy meds. In regards to my regular meds, I'm spot on this past week. Not a single missed dose. My counselor was on vacation so I won't be seeing her until this upcoming Friday. From there, we'll see how that goes.

That's my exciting week in a nutshell. A lot of reading and writing, some exercise, and allergies. Hope this next week continues to go well for me and for everyone else doing ROW 80.

ROW 80 Check in post

This is my first check in post for this round of ROW 80. It's also my first check in post at all for ROW 80 since I'm coming to it late in the year and just giving it a try to see if I can do it or not.

WRITING:

I've had to tweak the story I finished last month a couple times as I update my world building but I'm already 1/4 of the way through Aran's story. I expect to have it finished in the next two weeks. I've also made plans to write the first of the novels in the series, well get it started at least, for NaNoWriMo in November. As such, I'm making little character notes as I go to make sure I've got my details in place.

JOB:

I've got a phone interview today from 9:30-10:30a with Merry Maids for a customer service job. It's something different from Collections, which I have to get out of. I've put out a few more resumes over the last couple days. I'm still working on my CBT and practicing my coping techniques so when I do go back to work on November 1st I'll be able to handle it better for a little while, at least.

PERSONAL:

So far, so good on the meds. I haven't missed a dose yet. I don't have another appointment with my counselor until next week since she's on vacation this week but I am going to call to see if she did the work up so I can see the doctor for my meds since I need to tweak them a little I think. I went for a walk yesterday to start my walking every other day goal. I actually walked for 20 minutes since I took it easy and walked around our neighborhood. I've started reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes again. I figured I'd start with something I love to begin with, and then branch out into all of the new e-books I have on my Kindle. I also spent most of yesterday handwriting out notes and reading instead of being on the computer.

Sunday 'fess up....a.k.a. Anni's in trouble

Hoo boy.  I posted about my goals and asked you guys to keep me honest.  Well, I'm being honest.  This first week of me trying to take care of these goals...is a failure.

I haven't been able to get anything done with the seasonal pieces.  ONLY A NAME is sitting there looking forlornly at me, although I did manage to get a page of edits done.  I didn't even open CRACKED WORLD.  And I haven't been very good about tweeting positive things.

I can say that one good thing happened this week - I got a 5 day weekend.  I don't go back to work on Tuesday, and I'm getting paid for 2 of them.  (Two days vacation, regular weekend, and a "volunteer" day where I volunteered to take it off unpaid because they got overstaffed.)

Another good thing that happened is I got my Sims 3 game to work, and redownloaded all my purchases from the store.  I discovered I've been playing since June of '09 with that game.  At least, that's when I made my first store purchases.  I've got World Adventures to also load in but with all the trouble it caused me I'm holding off on that until I get my own computer again.

So while this week was mostly a failure, I have high hopes for the next week.  I'm going to get something done on either the shorts or ONLY A NAME, and I WILL tweet something positive every day.

Keeping this short so I can get back to writing.  Going to put some hours into ONLY A NAME, and if the inspiration strikes for the shorts I might work on them instead.

December Goals

My husband and I got into a long discussion the other day while both of us were battling our depression.  One of the comments I made is I no longer wished/hoped/dreamed for good things to happen because let's be honest: my life hasn't exactly reflected very many positive things lately.  Everything good that's happened has been unlooked for so daydreaming about the good stuff that can happen has gotten me absolutely nowhere, except even more depressed.

My husband looked at me and said, "So?  Stop daydreaming and start DOING.  Make some goals for yourself."  That's how he's managed to lose weight over the last few months.  He set his goals, set the steps for those goals, and he's actually succeeded.  This has inspired him to set other goals and work towards them.

I am not a goal-driven person.  I'm a "go with the flow" type of person.  However, that hasn't been working out so well for me.  Going with the flow means I'm circling the drain.  And I don't want to completely get flushed by my depression and by how badly life drags me down some (most) days.  So...I've decided to set a few goals.  Mostly to do with my writing, since that's where I've lost the most focus lately.

Now I'm sure you're wondering why I'm mentioning them to you, my dear followers.  (And even if you're not, let me have my delusions. *grin*)  The simple truth is: I'm lazy.  Without someone to keep me in line and demand a report of my activities I'll set my goals and then ignore them and fall down again.  I'm closer to achieving my first goals at work which will lead to me getting OFF the phones the majority of the time and into something more like management (which is what I want).  My manager is forever checking up with me on this, making sure I'm doing what I need to do.

So I'm going to use my blog as a way to account for my actions - along with the usual rants, whines, ecstatic exclamations, social commentary, etc.  I've got some goals I'm setting for December and I will be updating once a week (probably on Saturday or Sunday) with how I'm doing on accomplishing these goals.

So...my list of goals for December are:

1. Finishing the first round of edits on ONLY A NAME.
2. Start & finish the holiday themed short stories I've been meaning to write.
3. Make some progress on CRACKED WORLD, which has also stalled because of my inability to focus on my writing.
4. Find something POSITIVE to tweet/blog about every day instead of focusing on how bad everything is going.  (I probably won't blog about the positive things EVERY day, but I might make a list when I do my Sunday goal check posts.)

So, next Sunday expect to have an update of how I'm doing on these goals.  Also, if you follow me on Twitter, I'll be posting a bit about my goals there too.  So hopefully someone here will keep me honest and be after me to keep up the work on my goals.  After three months of this, I probably won't even need the watchdogging because for humans it takes 3 months for something to become habit.  So if everything goes well, by March I'll have this down as a habit.

Wish me luck!