November 2010: It ain't for sissies!

When you set a crazybig lofty goal, you make sure you schedule the time to effectively meet that goal. When I set a crazybig lofty goal, I'm usually on some kind of adrenalaine rush... or trying to distract myself from an excruciating disappointment. And so I set up approximately 47 others, right along with it. To, y'know, keep that goal company, or something.

In November - right on schedule - I have set up the following goals for myself:

1. Finish work on several different websites for some lovely clients who will be very excited to see their hard work live on the world wide web.
2. Finish editing and publish my Life List.
3. Write a 50,000 word novel, as a participant in NaNoWriMo, Click here to read why that turned out to be a very bad idea for me this year.
4. And meet weekly with a group of others doing the same thing.
5. Write 30 blog posts - one a day - at the brand new Wayfarin' Vagabond, my other blog, as a participant in NaBloPoMo, (which I'd already committed to before I decided on that other silly writing goal.)
6. Continue working through my new personal exercise goal. More on that in an upcoming post.
7. Finish culling, and then publish some photo galleries from my recent 6 week trip. Because even if I shot more than 10,000 photos, you sure don't want to see that many.
8. Maybe buy a pair of funny pants?
9. And cancel my Netflix account. Because duh...

There are other activites that are supposed to be worked into the calendar too:

• it's my Daddy's birthday,
• maybe I'll go camping with my friend and her little girls,
• the possibility of horseback riding has been floated,
• I'm told it would make my mom really happy if I'd go back and get the last of my stuff out of her  house in West Virginia that I sort of forgot about when I returned to Greensboro last summer,
• and there's a rumor that one day a bunch of people in my family might get together to cook a honkin turkey after which we'll eat ourselves silly.

And this morning, it seems my body knew I had to shake things up this month. And therefore it woke me up at about 4:35 this morning. At which time I lay there a while, and finally said, "All righty then!" and here we are. 5:17 and curled in a chair with my laptop, ready to get started on the opening lines of my NaNo novel before it's time to get to work on the day job. Stranger things have happened! Plus, as you noticed in that graphic up there, (which will make more sense if you read to the bottom,) if anybody's talking about naps, I thought I'd better be sure I gave myself a reason to actually deserved one if the time ever came...

Happy November!

A little bonus quote from the NaNoWriMo website that helped me with my resolve to actually do this instead of bailing on my friend who conned me into signing up:

Art for art's sake does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and "must-dos" of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/402759

Comments

[Dena]

Up before 5 and working... welcome to the land of the early risers!

[Melody]

You know it was a fluke. I ended up staying up past 1:30 on that same night. Needless to say, there's no need to anticipate any subsequent 5am risings. I just do better work later on, no matter how hard I try to do the morning thing. :)