WordFlix

New Year's Resolutions: work, health, writing

 By HD Silversmith

Tens of thousands of words are written every year about New Year's resolutions that are made and quickly broken. Usually it's because people tend to take on tasks that are unrealistic, or state their resolutions too broadly, or don't come up with concrete, phased steps to achieve their goals.

I've made all of those mistakes many, many times in my life -- to the point that I gave up making New Year's resolutions because all they did was confirm my sense of failure.

In recent years, however, I've taken up the habit again. In 2009 in particular, I took steps to remedy the tactical errors I've made in the past in setting goals for myself.  And I made real progress.

So, without further ado, here's my resolution for 2010 (which evolved from a post last week), broken down into what I hope are manageable chunks and/or behaviors: 

Achieve a greater sense of balance among work, health, and writing.

Given my junior status in the university system, the kind of university for which I work, and the ongoing financial crisis, work will continue to take up a disproportionate amount of my time and energy. Nevertheless, there are steps I can take to manage my load.

Work

• Practice saying no (to myself, to colleagues, and to students)  instead of yes as my default response: "Let me think about your request and get back to you/I can't commit to that right now."
• Limit time spent on work email: check it no more than three times a day and aim for twice day. Reply to email only twice a day.
• Pick one class each semester to further my own research.

Health

• Stay current with lab work and medical wellness appointments: 1) schedule mammogram; 2) schedule GYN appointments: 3) schedule any DS follow-up work as the result of December 2009 labs.
• Establish relationship with dentist: begin dental work (I've got major dental phobia, but hey, the work still needs to be done).
• Improve DS-specific nutrition: 1) maximize protein, limit refined carbs; 2) adhere to prescribed regime for any supplements. 
• Incorporate regular exercise into my week (my ideal: 30 minutes a day of moderate activity five times a week by the end of 2010).  I've found a Quick Start Guide for beginning different kinds of exercise that seems useful.

Writing

• Revise/resubmit apocalypse article by January 8 (this reference makes no sense to anyone but me but that's okay!).
• Place Random Harvest article by September 1, 2010 (ditto -- it's circulating).
• Write draft of Heavenly Creatures chapter by June 1 (this may actually need to be accelerated, depending on when the contracted volume goes to press).
• Read The Screenwriter's Bible and Save the Cat by March 31(as background).
• Consider participating in April's Script Frenzy (not sure about actually participating; it depends on the results of my reading, above, and how spring 2010 evolves).
• Maintain and develop WordFlix (still working this out -- to be announced).

So there you have it --  my goals for 2010. Some of the dates for the writing goals may need adjustment, depending on editors and so forth, but I'll update them as they evolve.

These are achievable goals and behaviors, singly and together, though I don't pretend that they're all easy for me.  I tend to be a workaholic, a people-pleaser, lazy when it comes to exercise, and still a bit frightened of medical and dental personnel. Uh-oh.

I'm going to have to the feel the fear and do it anyway, as the saying goes.  It's okay to be afraid.  It's not okay not to try for what you want.

What do you want from 2010? What steps are you taking to get what you want?

From our home to yours

 

Achieving balance

 By HD Silversmith

Because it's Christmas Eve (my favorite day of the year), I'm giving myself a holiday from this fall's Tuesday-Thursday-Friday blogging schedule around Eric Maisel's book A Writer's Space. I'm going to take tomorrow off from the topic as well and  then wrap up that project next week.

Today I simply want to slow down a little and savor the sanity that's slowly returning to my life after a pretty hideous fall semester.  As my exhaustion fades and my thoughts clear, I'm realizing more than anything else that what I want in my life right now is balance.

Not so easy to come by for someone with a childhood and adolescent history of OCD that still lingers into the present!  And let's face it, balance is a pretty elusive thing for a lot of us these days.

What follows are thoughts-in-progress, mind you, but as I consider the issue, I'm realizing that achieving balance currently breaks down into three different general areas for me:

Work

It's very clear to me that my life is totally out of whack in this department. God knows I'm grateful to have work in this economy -- and in my chosen field as well. I know how lucky I am. Because of state budget cuts and freakishly high enrollments in my classes this past semester, however, and because of the timing of certain departmental work that had to be done, I had a Work Load from Hell this fall. I can categorically state that it will not be as bad next semester (though the larger university system will be even worse off next semester than it was this past term). My work load next term won't be light, but it will be better.

However, there's a more insidious issue than work load which I discussed in my last post. I'm a people-pleaser (that's not a Good Thing) and I find it hard to say no if I think I'll piss people off.

So I say yes, I load myself up with work I don't necessarily need to take on, and because I don't really want it in the first place, I become resentful.

Would I rather a) be resentful or b) run the risk of pissing people off?

I've explored Option A at great length.  It's time to explore Option B.  And that means staying as mindful as possible in the moment, pausing before I decide whether I'll agree to take on a piece of work, and saying, "Let me think about it. I'll get back to you."

I don't pretend it will be easy.  But that's one macro-level tool I intend to use in striving to achieve greater balance between work and the rest of my life.  Thoughts about other tools are percolating as well, including ways to manage my online/work email time and so on.  More on that in subsequent posts, perhaps.

Health

Again, I want to achieve a greater balance here.

Four years ago, as a chronically morbidly obese middle-aged woman, I chose to have the duodenal switch form of weight-loss surgery in order to address my medicated but still out-of-control Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. The DS is still a somewhat uncommon form of WLS and also still the most effective form of it for 1) reversing Type II diabetes (98.9% rate of success) and 2) losing excess body weight and maintaining that loss over the long term (defined in most existing studies as 10 years).

The risks for short- and long-term complications are real. The nutritional impact can be severe. You have to be willing to change how and what you eat.  And you must do major work on your head in order to deal with the emotional consequences of this choice -- for yourself and for others in your life. All of this is on top of having to be prepared to fight like hell -- beforehand, in order to get the surgery and afterward, in order to manage your health care among medical professionals who usually haven't even heard of the DS.

 But at the four-year mark, my chronic health problems have been reversed. And that's a real miracle. I'm profoundly relieved and grateful for the chance at a healthier life.

But I can do better. The loss of 120+ pounds put me where I'd never been in my life: at a normal weight. For those who don't have my history, my awe is hard to convey.  However, that's only part of the equation because my choice for weight-loss surgery was about health, not looks.

• I need to stay current with my scheduled lab work.
• I'd like to limit my refined carb intake further and bring it more in line with my first two years of life after the DS.
• I need to exercise regularly.

Again, I'll probably have more to say on these topics later, but suffice to say that my food notebook has come out again (I wrote down everything that went into my mouth for the first two years after surgery), and I've researched and begun an exercise routine on my home elliptical machine.  Oh, and next week I'll be going in for my yearly lab work.

Food, exercise, and medical follow-up: that's the balance I intend to achieve here.  Because, frankly, I think achieving balance in these areas of health will also help me manage work and life stress.

Writing

I think I probably have to give myself credit here. 

• Beginning in May 2009 I created a routine for my professional writing that has paid off in increased productivity and in publications under my real name.

Woohoo!

• I maintained a regular writing schedule for myself here on WordFlix throughout the fall for a different kind of writing -- this despite the aforementioned Work Load from Hell.

Woohoo x 2!!

• I participated for the first time in NaNoWriMo in November -- and actually crossed the finish line, again despite the WLfH.

Woohoo x 3!!!

I'm still considering my writing goals for 2010:

• I know I'll continue to maintain and grow WordFlix. 
• I may participate in ScriptFrenzy in April.  
•  I'll have a summer of professional writing ahead of me.  

More than that, I can't say at the moment. Still turning things over in my head.

So that's where my head is at today:  I'm taking advantage of the holiday down-time to assess, connect, enjoy, and make plans for moving forward in the new year.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it!

Less than

By HD Silversmith

It's probably a combination of fatigue from a really arduous semester, the plan to remain at home for Christmas, and a self-defeating tendency on my part to compare myself to others, but that's how I'm feeling right now -- less than.

The semester

Okay, so the fall term is a done deal and I'm recovering from it.  Moreover, as I consider how next semester -- and the semesters after that -- will be different, I'm resolved to insist that they be different. Many things are beyond my control in university life, but I can choose saner methods than others by which to navigate my way through it. 

One of the most effective methods is also one of the simplest (and yet most difficult) things for me to do, and that is say no.

No, I will not do x, y, or z simply because:

• I am junior in position
• I want to please
• I don't want to piss anyone off

The costs exceed the reward.  If I have to write JUST SAY NO and post it as a sign in my office, I will do so. Whatever it takes.

Staying at home for Christmas

This was entirely my choice and I feel as if I made the right one. I didn't have the time, money, or inclination to travel to family, as I did last Christmas.  My husband and I will have a good holiday here at home.

And yet ...

And yet I miss the Christmas traditions of the family into which I was born.  I can recreate some of those traditions, and I've created new ones with my husband, but -- it's not the same. 

However, rather than deny that or insist that they be the same, I know what I need to do.  I need to accept that no, Christmas is not the same as it was when I was a child (was it ever really the way I remember it?  Actually, no ...) and enjoy it on its own terms.

Which brings me to the third topic.

Comparison

To compare myself to others only ever leads me dissatisfaction at best and a profound sense of my own lack at worst.  It's a dead-end path, and yet when I'm feeling tired or stressed, I'll go down it.

Why?  It's not as if I ever end up feeling like damn, I've got my shit together!  

Quite the reverse.

And it doesn't matter what the area of comparison is.  Profession, job, income, relationships, family, health, looks or harder-to-assess intangibles -- I always end up at the bottom of my own ranking.  

(Do I really rank myself?  Do I rank others? Maybe that's what this shows me about myself, in which case I have all the more fodder with which to feed my self-flagellation.)

But rather than go there right now (where, frankly, I spent a couple of hours yesterday), I think I'd better try to shake it off.  And fortunately, there's a whole world-wide web out there and a wealth of helpful ways to reframe that poisonous self-comparison issue.  My first google hit yielded this to-the-point, useful reminder, first written by Brian Kim in 2007:

If you keep focusing on everyone else’s journey, you’re going to stop paying quality attention to your own. What I mean by quality attention is attention free from jealousy, worry, envy, strife, etc., - just a calm, objective look at your own journey that can provide answers to help move you forward or to even determine what that journey should be in the first place.

If you keep on looking at other people’s journeys, you’re going to crash and that’s what a lot of people do.

Focus on your own journey. Your journey is no better or any worse than anybody else’s.It’s yours alone.

It’s unique, it’s different, and it’s one that has never been taken, nor will ever be. Nobody has lived your exact same life, has had your exact same thoughts, feelings, and experiences that make up who you are today.

Focus on what you want and only what YOU want. That’s it. It’s your journey. Other people will have their own to follow.

And even after all that, if you still feel the urge to compare, compare yourself to yourself in terms of your own journey - how far you’ve gotten, what you’ve learned, how you’ve grown and you’ll find that will prove to be one of the best barometers you will ever use in life.

Thanks, Brian.  It's not as if I don't already know these things, but I really, really needed this reminder right now!

Happy NaNoWriMo Thanksgiving

By HD Silversmith

Good heavens, today (and the rest of the month, for that matter) will be something of a challenge! I need to juggle Thanksgiving -- one of my favorite holidays -- with the demands of upping my word count and moving my novel forward at an appropriate pace to finish NaNoWriMo by 11:59 p.m. on November 30.

Fortunately, my husband and I are staying put this year, along with the kitties.  We're going no where and we're not having guests to dinner (I went into lock-down mode this month:  between NaNoWriMo and craziness at work, I had no energy or time to focus on anything else). So it's a quiet holiday for us this year, and that means I can get several hours of writing in today, tucked in around food preparation -- and consumption, of course.

Because I am going to be preparing basic traditional Thanksgiving meal for us.  It was either that or go out, and frankly I wanted the homey smells of cooking, the sense of invisible community with women (and yes, some men, too) across the country who will be making many of the same dishes. That time for food preparation is also a time in which I generally reflect upon how much I have to be thankful for -- at least, when it's a quiet Thanksgiving like this year's and I'm not running around freaking out about the timing of various foods and company arriving and dynamics among guests and all the restof it.

And I wanted leftovers for late-night turkey sandwiches!  That's the best part.

I'm planning three writing sessions, minimum, today: two hours this morning, two in the afternoon as the food cooks, and two this evening.   Because actually?  I want to finish and upload my NaNoWriMo novel by the time I go to bed on Sunday, November 29. So that will mean some serious word production in the next few days. 

That's my goal.  If I don't meet it, there's still November 30 itself as a cushion, but I think letting things go that far will just freak me out. Plus November 30 turns out not to be a furlough day for me after all (it was going to be, but it's not, and oh well about that).

So ... onward?  Let the first writing session of the day begin!