Mini Mini Retreat

Friday was the day I planned for my mini retreat. I did not get 4 hours in, only 2 and they were far less productive than I'd hoped. I thought, in 4 hours, I will have everything figured out! Then, I only gave it two hours. The interesting thing was, it was a LOT more complicated than I had anticipated. At first, I was thinking that I was going to figure out what I was going to do with my many blogs. Then, after a conversation with B, it seemed worthwhile to think about my career. When I sat down, I was overwhelmed to say the least. What I realized was that both answers to these questions were related to my personal goals. What kind of life do I want to live? Where do I want to spend my time?

Many years ago I dated someone whose extended family created yearly goals. At that time (can I blame it on my youth?) I found the idea laughable. A few years later, I found myself creating my own goals. In the past few years, I stopped creating goals as I was just trying to survive. The exercise on Friday brought it all back. I can't just look at one area of my life separately because they are all connected. For example, spending time on blogging may positively affect my need for writing and creativity but may negatively affect my time with family and friends. (I am not saying it does I am just trying to show how it is all connected).

On Friday, I found myself going back to the basics of recreating personal goals. In the past I have chosen to create a goal or goals in areas such as career, creativity, health, finance and relationships. What did I accomplish on Friday? I worked only on the finance goal as this topic is something that I have been thinking about quite a bit. Creating the rest of the goals will take some serious time and I think that spending 2-3 hours each session seems both doable. My plan is to set aside 2 -3 hours every other week until I have created all the goals. (Also, this means once I am done creating the goals I will have a continuing appointment with myself to work on the goals).

One thing I have to do with the finance goals is prioritize them and set actionable next steps. What is the point of having a goal if you are not going to work toward it? Right? I will keep you posted.

Days 29 & 30: Nanowrimo

Nanowrimo

Words written so far: 51,617

Impressions: Well, I am happy to say that I am done! Hooray! I passed the magical 50K number. The silly thing is...the book isn't over. I am not going to write anymore today and I may not even write anything tomorrow but I would like to spend a little more time writing before I put it away and let it ferment.

I like this story. I like the characters (and hate others, which is the way it should be). It doesn't make a whole lot of sense taken as a whole. It is disjointed in places but I still love it.

I have absolutely no idea what to do next. Well that is not exactly true. Here is my list of what I am going to do in the immediate future:

• Clean out mail closet
• Set up a new home page
• Figure out a new theme for this blog (if needed)
• Finish any Christmas shopping
• Mail gifts.

But as for the book, other than finishing it and letting it ferment, I don't know what to do after that. What do I do next with 50,000 plus words? I suspect I will be (along with every other Nanowrimo winner) going to the library to search for books on editing. I believe I have a long road ahead of me but the journey looks interesting. Thanks for hanging in here with me.

Likelihood of Finishing Nanowrimo: 100%. I am done! Yay!

Clutter Battles - Part 9 - The coat closet

The bad news is, we didn't take "before" photos. It would have made a much better story! But alas, you will just have to take my word for it that our coat closet was a terrible mess. It was filled with things that shouldn't have been in there (like a window fan, an entire bag of outgrown outerwear, ski bib, etc). Today was my lucky day. Today was the day when Beth Meridith of Living Spaces Design came to my house to help me organize the coat closet. Thanks again to Brooke and Bob for getting me this time with her for my birthday!

Below are after photos. They are different shots of our teeny, tiny coat closet. One of the most important differences from how it looked before is that we took the door off. That alone gives us more room which we desperately needed.

Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 1 = Looking into the teeny, tiny closet.

Figure 2 = Bottom of our coats plus our shoes. You can see a shoe sorter on ther right hand side which is where we keep hats, gloves, scarves.

Figure 3 = Top of our coats plus a little storage up above. We have some rain boots, summer hats and some tarps for the park.

Figure 4 = Left hand side of closet on bottom - just hooks for kids jackets. Basket on bottom holds twin's hats, gloves and rain pants.

Figure 5 = Left hand side of closet on top - hooks for cloth bags, diaper bag and W's backpack.

I really like the end result. But the real test is will be be able to keep it neat? I should take another set of photos in a week to compare. Fun stuff. After one day it is still looking good. Yay!

Day 4: Nanowrimo (and NaBloPoMo)

Nanowrimo


Daily goal / alternate "finish early" goal: 1,667 / 1,786 words


Today's goal / alternate "finish early" goal: 6,666 / 7,143 words total


My total words written: 7,753 words total (What do you think of the color coding?)


Impressions: I like this story. It isn't particularly a new story...but what story is? I think I have figured out a plot although I am not sure how the prologue I wrote fits in to the current storyline. Either I am going to have to come up with a link or I am going to have to write it off (pun intended) as a warm up exercise.

I am having serious issues which I am not addressing right now. They are in the areas of consistency of voice and dialogue. I am not a regular writer so to some extent, I don't know how to a) choose a voice and b) do non sucky dialogue. Will writing a lot help? Or do I need to focus on learning how to do these things? Since I have no time to learn (only time to write and blog) I will have to hope it is the former and not the latter. I will leave these problems until NaNoEdMo (or perhaps sooner) unless anyone has any great ideas they want to share.

Is there anything anyone out there would like to know about this experience? Just post a comment and I will reply to your post.

Likelihood of finishing Nanowrimo: 100%.


Likelihood of finishing NaBloPomo: I am still going strong (can you say that if you are just on day 4 of 30 days?).


Super Goal: Help our whole family get healthy!!!

Creating your Personal Board of Directors

If you are planning to make a big decision in your life, you may want to create your own personal board of directors. A personal board of directors is a group of individuals who can help you think through big decisions. They tend to have attributes that are different and compliment your personal attributes. The suggested number of people is anywhere from 4-7 and there are also suggested rolls to fill. Fast Company suggests that you have a clarifier, a challenger, a connector and a wise elder in addition to 1 or 2 free agents. You may find that you have strong talents in one of these suggested areas and then you may want to find an alternate archetype to draw on. Obviously, your personal board of directors are people that you trust.

Proactive Living says that personal boards of directors don't meet like professional boards. Instead you would meet with them one on one at least once a month. These people can help you stay on track toward you life's goals. They can make great suggestions and also often ask the hard questions that sometimes we don't want to face ourselves.

Decision Books lists reasons why you should create a personal board of directors. Here are a few of those reasons excerpted from the above link:
- It gives you access to experience you not normally available to you.
- It lets you to draw on the wisdom of people with diverse perspectives.
- It takes some of the fear out of making difficult decisions, and it allows you to climb the learning curve faster than if you were on your own.
- It delivers "intellectual bench strength," and helps you see the bigger picture more easily than if you were on your own.

If you want to get started, look around at the people you consult today. Are these people who support you in your decisions? Do they offer good advice that helps you to be successful? If the answer is yes, you are already on your way to creating a personal board of directors. If the answer is no to either question, you may want to consider replacing some of your current consultants with better candidates.

Who should create a personal board of directors? According to the links, everyone! This is not just for starting a business but for any big decision in your life. It can, however, be particularly helpful for career guidance.

Click on Goals Guy to see a list of 10 Personal Board of Directors Insights.

Goal Setting

I have been acting sort of funny about this blogging business. I have a blog, but I don't tell anyone about it. I want people to read it, but I don't tell anyone about it. I want people to comment, but they don't know I want them to! What is my problem??? Today I typed "get people to read my blog" into Google and stumbled onto a website which at first glance didn't seem like it would help. The website is called "43 Things" and it linked me to other people who had the same goal. There were few, but good comments including a) make your blog interesting, b) link to other blogs, c) comment on other blogs and provide a link to your blog, d) use your blog address as your signature to really get your blog out there and e) make sure your blog has a purpose / target and stay on it.

After I read this I started poking around the "43 Things" site. Turns out it is a really cool site where you can post your goals, get help with them and report progress. It reminds me a lot of a favorite book of mine called, "Write it Down, Make it Happen", by Henriette Anne Klauser. The book simply states that if you write something down, you are able to move it from your imagination to doing it. Getting things down on paper (I think she actually says to write long hand but I may be imagining that), helps to get your brain in gear and start solving the puzzle of what you want to make happen. "43 Things" goes one step further in that it offers the possibility for others to collaborate on helping you think of things you may not have thought of on your own. If you have reached a goal that someone else is trying to reach, there is a way to share your story about how you did it. I definitely intend to spend some time there.

All of this to say that I need to create my own goals around blogging. So below you can find...my blogging goals. I would very much appreciate any comments you would like to share. It is lonely here in the blog-o-sphere when I feel like I am by myself. Am I?

My Blogging Goals:

1. Get people to read my blog (I need to investigate how I can tell if anyone has read it!)
2. Get at least 5 people to comment on each blog posting (this would be evident)
3. Get linked from other blogs (my goal is to get linked from 10 blogs in next 90 days)
4. Post comments on other people's blogs (my goal is to post 5 comments per week)

I look forward to your comments.

Blogging doesn't suck

But apparently, I suck at blogging! Hello, it has been two months since my last post. It had been so long I couldn't remember how to access the blog! Yikes! And the company I work for is going gaga for da blogs. I need to do my share and join the revolution. Really join the revolution! Ok - here it is folks. I will post at least once per week. I think that is a good start and hopefully, I will do even more than that. If I don't post...call me on it!