Goals for 2010

Here are the goals I set last week, all compiled and SMART.

I complete one entire writing project each month.

I participate in a writing workshop either online or in person.

I enter at least one writing contest every month

I have one artist date per month.

I write every day.

I write 10 query letters per month

By 1/15/2010 I Print 12 photographs and display in house

By 1/31/2010 The Pilates Lifestyle book proposal is complete

By 2/1/2010 The Pilates Lifestyle blog begins with one post per weekday

By 2/28/2010 I have completed a “Best of” series of photographs

By 3/1/2010 My Etsy store is up and running with 10 pieces

By 4/1/2010 The Pilates Lifestyle book is complete.

By 5/15/2010 The Staircase Story is finished and published

By 6/1/2010 I have 1 paying writing gig per month

By 6/1/2010 The Book of Ruth is complete.

By 7/1/2010 I have samples of my clothing line made that I can work out in.

By 10/1/2010 I have a exhibited my photos.

By 12/31/2010 I have exhibited at a craft show/arts fair/farmer's market

By 12/31/2010 I have had three meetings with potential investors/sales for clothing line.

By 3/1/2011 My clothing line is for sale.

Needs Vs. Wants

I'm (once again) learning the difference between needs and wants. Like I want to go take Pilates classes every night, and drink a latte from Maxximo Joe's every morning, and quit my job so I can lay around and read and write and take naps all day, but that's just not realistic on our budget right now. So, while I want to go get my manicure refreshed by the amazing technician that I saw last week, I will spend this evening with my cotton balls, nail polish remover and nail polish, doing it myself. And that's okay, because my husband is gracious and lets me get my shopping bug filled with our needs- mainly diapers and formula these days, but shopping is shopping. And, I know that in a few years, I will be able to get my wants more often because we will have saved the money we need to make our family feel secure.

But...I will admit that I still want to go to the mall and buy a pair of knee high brown boots. I never claimed to be perfect.

Book Review: The Sweet By and By by Sara Evans and Rachel Hauck

5 Stars -- Refreshing Read!

The Sweet By and By
is the story of a woman being forced to deal with her past before moving on to her future. Jade Freedom Fitzgerald is finally getting ready for the life she dreamed of- a marriage to a man who made her feel safe and loved, feelings she didn’t experience from her high achieving judge father or galavanting hippie mother. She and fiance Max made an agreement “The past is the past.” Unfortunately, the past doesn’t always remain in the past.

The Sweet By and By
is incredibly well written with engaging characters that you find yourself rooting for and identifying with, with a story that weaves past and present together seamlessly. It’s one of those books that makes you feel good when you read it. There are no huge surprises in the story, at the same time it isn’t utterly predicable. The spiritual theme is naturally incorporated into the story line without feeling forced or contrived.

Between Sleep and Awake

I dream. A lot. Very detailed. And often, I remember most of the details. Sometimes my dreams are good, sometimes I have nightmares. Two nights ago I dreamed that fake police officers who were doing a drug deal in Kroger were trying to kill my daughter and I so we couldn't implicate them. They were stopped by campus security at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, where they had tailed us to from Nashville.

This morning, in the 9 minutes between my snoozes, I had a dream about the people in my dreams. I dreamed I was on a subway, or some sort of silver train, and there were all of these people that I knew or that I had interacted with recently and they were all just sitting, staring at me, waiting for me to "cast" them in my dream. There were real people, and people who were a blend of people. Some faces I could see, some I just sensed who they were.

My husband doesn't remember his dreams. Do you remember yours?

Breakfast with my book

On Sundays, I like to cook breakfast for my family. Usually it's pancakes, but this morning I was feeling the waffles. So, with just over an hour before we needed to leave for church, I whipped some up. The problem with whipping up breakfast with so little time is that everyone needs to eat as the waffles come off the griddle, leaving the cook to eat alone. Never fear though, I had a great book to read! (And yes, that is peanut butter on my waffles. I like peanut butter on waffles, pancakes and french toast. You can thank my dad for introducing me.)

Look what was in my yard!

When we got home from Kentucky yesterday, there was a deer in our front yard. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of it because the camera on my iPhone took too long to open, but here is a picture of the deer that was in our back yard earlier in the fall. The one that was in our front yard yesterday was a fawn- looked like he had just lost his spots and was very frightened. I felt sorry for him, but he seemed to make it back to the woods just fine.

Another Goal

Enter at least one writing contest every month of 2010.

Recapping 2009 and looking toward 2010

2009 was a reactive year for me. The word I chose for the year was searching, but I think either is actually apprpriate. I spent the year searching for what I wanted and reacting to what was in front of me. I want to focus on not being reactive, but proactive in 2010. I want to live my life instead of it living me.

A lot of the chaos in 2009 was because of my unhealthy pregnancy and the problems I had at work. I spent a lot of time working on how to releive my stress enough that I would no longer have blood pressure problems and was not successful. I spent a lot of time resting, which is fine- I need to draw from that resting time now.

I have some goals I've been carrying over from year to year and I no longer want to do that. In 2010 I will:

1) Make some progress on the clothing line. I will have samples made that I can work out in. I will have three meetings with potential investors/sales. The clothes will be for sale in 2011.

2) I will exhibit my photos. Even if that exhibit is just hanging them all around our house and having friends over. I will exhibit them.

3) I will complete The Book of Ruth by June 1, 2010.

4) I will complete The Pilates Lifestyle by April 1, 2010.

5) I will write every day.

I will now combine my goals (I have them in 3 places) and make a pretty piece showing all of them so that I can set monthly goals to work towards.

Podcasting

Kicking around the idea of trying a Podcast, but worried that I post so sporadically here and my other blog that adding something else isn't a good idea. But Austin is starting to go to bed earlier at night, maybe I can set a schedule to make my creative things start to happen???

Thoughts for 2010

I will add to this list in the next week, but some goals I have for 2010:

1) Sell photos and jewelry at at least one craft show/arts fair/farmer's market

2) Set up etsy store for photos and jewelry

3) Create more photo galleries in my house like the one in my room

4) One artist date per month

5) Do morning pages every day
*******Yes, I know this is a lofty goal- doing anything every day short of brushing my teeth is a lofty goal, but it is who I want to be--an artist, an author. This I will do for myself.***********

6) Sell one article a month FOR MONEY beginning in June. Which means I have to start the submissions process now.

7) Take (as in, read) the free online writing courses I've found

8) Do one COMPLETE writing project a month. What I mean by COMPLETE: begin and end a piece of writing ala NANO. The editing can come later.

Merry Christmas

I hope your day has been filled with love and laughter!

Amanda Moon

I don't cry anymore

I don't cry anymore
I want to, my heart aches with the same intesity
But my eyes stay dry
My jaw set so hard that it hurts

I don't cry anymore
I want to scream, kick, stamp and throw
But I sit quiety and pretend to be happy
Looking at others- do you think they know?

I don't cry anymore
Betrayl feels old hat
Instead I curl up on my bed
When I sleep I can shut it all out

I don't cry anymore
And I don't feel anymore hope
I'm not surprised enough to be hurt
It is what it is, this is where I'm at

Quest for a bag

I am on a quest. I am searching for the Holy Grail of handbags- one that is cute and still big enough to carry my computer, a notebook, a book or two (until Santa brings me a Kindle) my phone, wallet and all the various cords I have. And keep it all organized. I have a Timbuk2 tote now that carries it all but doesn't organize. I'm looking at the letter bag at moop.com. Any other suggestions?

Amanda Moon

Perfect Evening

A fire, a comfy chair, a glass of hot chocolate. Good music, my daughter snoring and silence from my son's room. I got to write. In my own house. With my family home. Uninterrupted for almost 2 hours. It was a perfect night.

I did close my eyes to try to get a clearer view to describe one of my charecters and fell asleep though. Off to bed now.

Amanda

Do you ever feel like life is happening to you rather than something you're living? I think the endless hours lost to TV contribute to that feeling, but I also know that completly giving up TV is pretty unrealistic for me. Regardless, I vow right now to start living. More attention and intention, less reaction.

I've been away for a while now

Sorry. I'm sure you've grown tired of checking to see if I have posted anything new and have just stopped looking. My life has not been the shiniest, happiest place for the last few months and I've been in hiding. My first thought was to try to post something every day that made me happy, but that seemed trite and I got too busy. Then, when I really wanted to pour my heart out and say what was going on, I got scared that some of you readers may know me and see me in real life and *gasp* try to actually help me. So I kept my mouth shut (or fingers still, if you will) and just stopped blogging.

But I'm back. I want to be able to share the beauty and encouragement I receive, and I want to share this journey of healing. Because we have to heal, everything has to get better eventually, it can't stay like this forever.

Series Ideas

I'm trying to keep my blogs updated, but somedays I have a hard time thinking of content. Here are a few of my current, day of the week themed ideas:

Friday Fitness- tip or idea
Sunday Son-day (this play on words is almost too lame, but it would be a theme verse for the upcoming week)

My daily goals

Or to-dos...or whatever. This is the stuff that if I get it done I will feel like I've accomplished something today:

1) Make a working list of the Pilates Principles
2) Go for a walk (guess I should have worn different shoes...I can go with the kids when I get home).
3) Look at 2 more master's programs.
4) Fix my prodcut links on the Pilates and Pregnancy Product Reviews. (If you read them and have other suggestions, let me know!)
5) Set up google analytics

Thank Yous

I'm over thanking people for doing their jobs. Now, I know this is going to come off as snarky and synical, but hear me out:

I guess I should clarify- I am all about please and thank you. I say them both way too much to the point that my boss has taken to coaching me not to say please so much because it makes people think they have an option when really they don't. I kind of disagree with that premise, I think adding a please can go a long way in softening an "order" but whatever, it's not worth arguing over. What I'm over is giving special recognition to people for doing the basic tenants of the job you have hired and paid them for. I think that recognition should be reserved for special circumstanses- when they have gone above and beyond the call of duty. Some feel that giving special recogognition for the small things will acutally motivate people to do more, but in my experience it has the opposite effect. It seems that many people, when they receive special recognition, think they have already done something special and that they should continue to work at that level. They seem to forget that what they did is their job, so they wait for special instructions to do the same thing again.

This is all very abstract, so let me give you an example: if you are a content writer for a website, it is your job to write the content. It is the website's job to make sure their relationsship with major search engines is such that people can search for and find your writing. You don't get a pat on the back each day that you post an article, the website techs shouldn't get a pat on the back when they correct a problem that was causing your articles to be in impossible to search. But because they got one, the next time there is a problem, rather than buckling down and quickly fixing it, they remember that the last time there was a problem they got special recognitio for finding a solution, so therefore working on it must be outside the scope of their day-to-day work and it is placed on the back burner.

Another example is if part of your job is to scan documents into a database. Your supervisor has discussed this with you, but you don't like this particular aspect of your job, so you put it off and put it off, until the person who needs to retrieve the documents from the database asks your supervisor about it. So, you spend some time that day scanning the documents that have been waiting for weeks to be scanned. You shouldn't receive special recognition for the getting them all done in one day or hour or whatever it was, you should be reprimanded for not doing your job in a timely manner and having to be asked mutliple times like a child.

Nobody ever thanks me for cleaning out my inbox every day, or administering my programs to the best of my ability, and I don't expect them to. It's my job. I get recognized for doing that job on the 15th and 30th of each month when I get my paycheck.

I'm just saying...our efforts to be polite and encouraging are biting us in the ass.

The Noticer Review

The Noticer is okay. It's not bad, it's not amazingly good. At times it feels like a series of short stories around the the theme of "Jones" rather than a cohesive book about a certain period in Andy's life. The end of the first chapter launches into a resume of Andy's accomplishments in such a way that the book feels like it's becoming a self-help guide. Later, a large portion of that first chapter is repeated, and not even in theme, but word for word, which gets to be a bit much.

The book seems like it was made to be used as a discussion guide for a Bible study which makes the story feel forced, like there were certain themes that the author knew he wanted to include. If you're using it as a discussion guide, you will be pleased. If you're trying to just read it on your own, you may not feel compelled to finish it.