Stuck

I've kept a personal blog since I was 15 or 16 and I always updated it regularly. It started out as fun stories and silly things and morphed into a way to track the life changes I went through and the person I'm becoming.

And here I am.

I haven't posted in a month.

I was glad to watch 2013 end. For all the wonderful things that happened last year, I got my fair share of terrible. I grew, I changed, I learned, I moved on. At least, I tried to.

The problem with moving on is that it's not always easy to walk away. I hung on to a personally devastating job situation for way too long because I wanted it to work and I wanted to be that person. There was carnage. I'm still burned out. My old horse will never be the same again. I've had to spend some serious time working on my relationships with people around me who I care about.

Part of me is so ready for this year. I want to see what comes. I want to live and learn and grow and change.

The other part of me isn't ready to move on. I'm tired and I'm worried and I don't like change.

There is no clean, neat ending.

It's just life. And it's not easy.

I'm Doing This

I feel like I should get a medal for surviving the past two months. October was hell, always is. I was out of town every weekend and I don't think I made it to the grocery store all month. I barely had time to think, much less exercise or read a book.

And then I got this crazy whim on November 2 and decided to do NaNoWriMo. Now I've won it two years in a row. That also means I spent all of November cramming 2000 words of original work into my available spare time every single day. I finished a few days early, and I'm happy with what I got for a first draft.

But now that's over. It's December. FREEDOM!!!

Which is to say, I want to go forward and focus on living intentionally. I know I can't do absolutely everything I want to, but I can map out my lifestyle in a way that moves me closer to achieving goals. Here are the things I want to focus on:

Exercise/athletic:
Goal: I want to be strong and flexible. I want to feel good about making progress in this area.
1) I want to get back into the regular habit of running, 3-4 days a week. My dogs need the exercise and I need the fitness.
2) I want to improve my core strength through targeted exercises. Again, I can take a few minutes 3-4 days a week and do Pilates exercises.

Intellectual/creative:
Goal: I want to nurture a mind that is quick and inventive. I want to engage the people around me and challenge them to think.
1) I want to read a book a month. I love reading and have a beautiful library, so it's just a matter of making time.
2) I want to actually publish my writing. I have a fourth draft almost ready to go and I'm working hard on making a second draft out of my latest effort. I can't do everything all the time, so I want to spend an hour on this, 3-4 days a week.

Home/Cooking:
Goal: I want to maintain a clean home in which Brent and I are comfortable living and entertaining on our budget.
1) Take one day a week completely away from the barn to clean, do laundry, and make the house a home.
2) Explore new recipes in the kitchen. Brent thrives on variety and I do like cooking, so try to make one new  or expanded meal a week, whether that's a whole new recipe or means putting in the extra effort for side dishes and salads.

That's a start, at least. I'm trying to keep my goals manageable and see how things go for a couple of months. I'm excited for this phase of life and looking forward to seeing what I can accomplish.

Writing On

In something of a spur-of-the-moment decision, I ended up doing NaNoWriMo again this year. Last year, I started writing on November first and wrote 100k words in four months. I have a somewhat-polished 4th draft out with an editor now from that experience.

I quit writing over the spring and summer. My life was out of control. Work was beyond stressful, haunting me awake and asleep. My beloved horse had health problems that forced him into retirement and I quit my job. I thought about writing again, but I don't always write well from a place of turmoil and angst.

I'd been kicking around a plot idea and playing with some characters, but I was missing some critical elements and I didn't want to start something without those in place.

And then I had a dream. It tied all the pieces together. I started writing on November 2nd this year and I'm on track to finish the 50k a solid week early. I write 2-3 thousand words a day, sometimes more on the weekends. Last year was hard--by the time I hit my daily word count, I felt like I had no words left.

Not so this round. My pacing is much more solid, my plot more developed. I'm writing a thousand words an hour on average and I'm just hitting my stride. I find that the more I write, the more I want to write. I'm not just writing a story. Now I'm writing blogs, emails, and anything else I can think of. The words are flowing and the well hasn't run dry. Not yet.

I'll finish NaNo, but that's not the goal this year. I want to have another 70-80k second draft done by 12/31/13. Just watch me.

Doing Hard Things

I'm bad at emotions. To anyone who knows me, that's not really a surprise. I am a doer and fixer and worker, but when it comes to processing all that touchy-feely-weird crap, I really have no idea what to do. Most of the time, that's ok. I tend to only invest emotions into situations I care deeply about, and those are few and far between.

The past year and a half has been an exercise in processing emotions for me.

After a horrific trip to California last year, I realized I need to start all over in order to be the person I want to be. I had to address basic character deficiencies and learn to be strong enough to take the life I wanted. It was a humbling and wrenching experience, but I am thankful for it. I've come out stronger than I was before and happier with who I am as a person.

I'm finding myself in another difficult situation.

I've made the best decisions I can with the information I have at hand. I am confident that the decisions are in the best interests of everyone involved. I know that people I greatly respect and admire look down on me for those decisions.

And so again, I am dealing with those pesky emotions. I don't have a long road trip through Nevada to just sit and think things through, so I am forcing myself to use the time I have to directly address the issue. In order to move forward as a healthy, functioning adult, I have to determine why I feel this way and what I can do to change it or otherwise live with it.

I refuse to be emotionally crippled through the actions of people I cannot control. Instead, I am working backwards through the different threads of emotion and sorting out the tangle into something manageable. It doesn't come naturally to me and it isn't a pleasant process. I have to say things that I know are completely irrational, but accept them because they express an emotion that I'd rather not feel. I have to say "I blame X for this," even when I rationally know that it isn't X's fault.

I can't lie and say it's fun. Character building is the pits, no two ways about it. I will say that I know that once I'm through to the other side, I will again be a happier and stronger person, that much closer to the person that I want to be.

Thinking Ahead

My dad is an entrepreneur whom I respect greatly. I've spent most of my life working for small businesses run by intelligent, motivated people. My stint in a larger corporation was interesting, but not exactly inspiring.

I've always said that as much as I respect the entrepreneur ethic and lifestyle, I didn't want to join them. It's too much work, too much commitment, too much responsibility. I said I'd rather just toe the corporate line and take my check home than be so consumed by my work.

Problem: I am my father's daughter. I am strong, independent, and highly motivated. I am energized by things that challenge me. I am frustrated by the limitations of the system that is already in place. I want to try and do better. Maybe I'll succeed. Maybe I'll fail. I won't know until I find out.

It's scary to stand at the edge and look into the void beyond the material safety of paid labor. It's also exciting. It's time to get the pieces in place to strike out on my own.

Come what may.

Bittersweet

As time goes by, I feel like I'm beginning to understand phrases that used to just be words strung together.

"My cup is full" sums up how I feel about life right now.

It's not that life is all roses--it's that I can see progress on things that I have worked on. My writing is coming along well. I'm growing and changing as a person.

My cup is equal parts full of heartbreak and joy. Instead of rail against the heartbreak, I'm learning to embrace both with gratitude. The heartbreak teaches me just how dear the joy really is.

Grind It Out

I'm working on polishing up the latest draft of my attempt at writing a full-blown book. I don't think of myself as an anxious person, but this thing is driving me batty. I've gotten some decent feedback on it the few times I've sent it out to be read, but I do long stretches of editing in between.

Just me and the text.

I'm constantly looking for errors, tweaking for improvements, criticizing my every weakness.

The only thing that makes me feel more incompetent than critiquing myself is the horrifying process of waiting for feedback from someone else.

It's like overachiever hell.