Mabsoot Monday

mabsoot ~ happy

I trust everyone had a good Christmas and New Year's . . . Mine was pretty good too, considering we had NO SNOW. In fact, the Saturday after Christmas I was up in Hamilton and my great-nephews were outside playing - without their coats, it was that warm.

This past weekend I swear the weather was deliberately teasing me. We got snow on Saturday, with enough accumulation to make it a bona fide snowfall. But then in the evening it began to warm up until the snow turned to rain. Sunday it rained most of the day and washed every trace of the snow away. Then, adding insult to injury, it turned cold again.

Despite the fact that I posted twice last week, I honestly did enjoy my blogging holiday. And I got most of the things done I'd hope to. I didn't get quite as much reading done as I would have liked, but I did get quite a bit of writing in. Cleaning up the craft closet was actually more time consuming that I expected, but it's nice and organized now and I can even fit my new sewing machine in it.

While cleaning up my office I came to an uncomfortable realization. I have a lot of stuff. And as much as it would have been nice to get rid of some of it, I just . . . couldn't. So instead I boxed some of it up and stuck it in the bench in my nook. Not exactly out of sight, out of mind, but at least I'm not tripping over it. :-)

The other thing I realized is that I'm a paper and pen packrat. I found a hidden stash of notebooks (all on the small side, but various sizes) and I kept finding pens! Not only is my troll mug full of pens, I have a box on my desk full too. AND I found a hidden stash of notes on multiple drafts of stories - some of which I've already written!

However. The extraneous 'stuff' littering my office is now tucked neatly in the storage space in my nook, and my desk, while still holding more knick knacks than it should, is cleaned off to the point where I can use it again. And did I mention I got the pillow for my back made so I can sit in my nook? I read a few chapters sitting in there Sunday afternoon and it's quite comfortable. The nook is officially done.

All righty then. As promised in Thursday's post, I said I'd go into more details on my goals for the new year, so without further ado, here they are (in no particular order):

Spend a minimum of 30 minutes a day reading. Considering the amount of time I can waste on mindless computer games, half an hour reading should be a cake walk. I'll continue with my weekly reports on what I'm reading, and once a month I'll do a bona fide book review. I also want to keep up to date on Goodreads this year so I know how many books I've read.

Write 500 words a day. It seems like a small amount, especially considering lately I've been making it to the 1k mark or better, but I also have a lot of editing to do, so we'll see how time-consuming that is.

Five pages a day editing. I think my post on Thursday said ten pages, but I've knocked it down to five because I'm talking about personal editing here, that is to say, editing of my own work. I also edit for other people, so sometimes that's where my focus needs to be. And of course on those times when I'm between other authors' works I can spend more time editing my own stuff. So the five pages a day goal can be as flexible as I need it to be.

Work on and submit one short story/flash story a month. Last year's goal of submitting stories and poems on a regular basis was a little vague. This year I'd like to pick one story a month, polish it up, and send it out. And I'd like to put together a volume of poetry and if I have no luck finding a publisher, I'll self-publish.

My sister is going to love this one - write more letters. Kind of self-explanatory. ;-)

Organize my books. Ideally I'd like to catalogue them as I go along, but that's going to be something I plug away at when I'm bored and have nothing better to do. It's incredibly time consuming. However, last year's consolidating of my science fiction and fantasy into the nook has left a lot of space in various bookcases around the house. So this goal will be filling in those gaps.

Make better use of social media and spend thirty minutes a day on self promotion. These two kind of go hand in hand. I have no idea how I going to accomplish these, mind you, but it's definitely something I need to work on.

Journal on a regular basis. I was so proud of myself last year when I had to buy a new journal in the summer because I'd used up my old one already, and then my journal entries just kind of fizzled out. So if some future generation ever wants to do a biography of me using my journals, they're not going to know much of what happened in the latter half of 2014. ;-)

Give yoga a try. Yes, I'm still going to the gym and I have no intention of stopping, but I need something to get me moving in the middle of the day. I think yoga would do nicely. I like the meditation aspects of it as well as the stretching.

Spend one hour a day on crafts. I can't spend my whole day on the computer. Besides, I have to have something to keep me busy when I'm watching T.V. at night.

I've been paying attention to when seems to be the best time to get specific things done, and I've come up with a bit of a schedule too. I know I've tried schedules in the past, but this one is loose enough that I think I'll be able to stick with it. Mornings are for socializing and social media/promotion, afternoons are for writing and editing, and evenings are for reading and crafts. And I'm only going to work five days a week, like a normal person.

The above goals and schedule are subject to change once the grandbaby arrives at the end of the month. LOL