Winning is Sometimes Everything

I've always loved goals.

Not the seemingly unobtainable goals (weigh less than 125 lbs., be famous, rule a kingdom). Not the goals that do not depend on me (be professionally published, be discovered as an actor).

I love the finite, fixed goals, the ones that come in all shapes and sizes, short-term and long-term. Goals like:

Finish the laundry today
Paint a picture for Christmas Cards

or, say

Write 50,000 words on a novel in November!!!

I write during National Novel Writing Month because it gives me a very specific, finite goal to accomplish, and it puts just enough pressure on me so that I make writing, for one month out of the year, a priority.

And I won! I did it! I set out, worked hard, and accomplished my goal! Yay!

But it's not over. Now I have new goals, for the month of December:

1. Write at least once per week on each blog.
2. Write a new verse each day for the advent calendar (did that last year and the year before).
3. FINISH the mermaid novel rough draft.
4. Revise my play from a 45-minute one-act to a 2-hour full-length play.

Notice how each one of these is a WRITING goal. That means, for the month of December, I will STILL keep writing a priority. And I will make sure I have writing goals set up for January, too, so that writing stays a priority all year round.

If I don't set goals, I will let the rest of my life take over, and I won't write. I can't let that happen.

What are your short-term and long-term goals? What have you won at lately?

Itchy

I woke with an edge inside me this morning, a call to do something more today. It's a lovely call, really, a voice in my brain bent on creating.

Will I listen? I haven't listened to the call much of late. I've filled my world with dishes, trips to the store, paper sorting, and other inane activities. It's as if I wish the voice to just go away, to leave me alone in mundane world and go off to call to somebody else. 

That is what separates an artist from one who is not. I write this, not to chastise you, but to goad myself into action. I'm not a writer if I don't write. I'm not a painter if I don't paint. I'm not a pianist if I don't play. Artists create. If they don't, they aren't artists.

I recently met an painter who, even at a young age, was compelled to paint. Any chance he got, with any medium at hand, on any surface, if given any free time. He listened to that urgent voice early on. And he painted, and painted, and painted. And he's still listening, still heeding, still painting. 

I've been going at this all wrong all my life. I've been locking this voice in a closet, letting it out only when I have a bunch of free time, when all my chores are done (which is not often). I've said I will write/paint/dance/sing/go to the ball only if I get all my work done. I've been my own evil stepmother.

That ends today. Permanently. I'm kicking my evil stepmother to the curb. I'm getting what I have to do done, but the rest of the time is mine. To paint. To create. To play. To turn my ideas into tangible, beautiful reality. I will not die regretting all things I never got around to creating. I am a Maker (as Orson Scott Card would term it), and it's about damned time I made something.

I have 14 hours until bedtime. Plenty of time to make something. 

Blogging for Fun

I am drowning in essays on Greek myth (why did I choose to be an English teacher?!?), and I have less than forty minutes before I have to pick up my kids, but I just had to blog.

Thanks so much, those of you who read my blog whenever it pops up. Thanks for checking it out even when the title is lame and the subject matter isn't to your taste. And thanks to the BIG THREE responders, who pretty much chime in every single time I write (do I have to list you three out specifically? You know who you are!). Sometimes, in a given day, this blog is the only writing I can count. Sometimes it's the only fun I have. Sometimes it's the one break I get from all the stressful "have-tos"...

And you read it. Bad, good, boring, interesting, off topic, weird--no matter what presents itself here, you check it out. Thanks so much for that.

I wish I had more today. Perhaps I'll have time tomorrow to post about my trip out to Cape Flattery this past weekend. I took some digital video of it--spectacular!

Thanks again.

*hug*

Killed by Time

Dreams far off

Goals I feel my being's fiber

Gravitating to

Yearning for

Get lost.

Grading pulls me down

Into a stack of papers 

With my little purple pen

Writing answers

Offering encouragements

Recording score

Circling the smily faces as I go.

But the writing waits

Like a siren 

In the other room,

An untouched file on my laptop

Beautiful, calling for me to

Get lost.

Yet dishes drown me

And clutter drags me across the floor

Bathrooms sniff at me

Children's homework strangles me

Appointments eat at my time

Like moths.

And still the novels cry out

Unfinished

Broken

Filled with holes

Unwritten.

I keep answering:

I'm almost there!

I'm coming!

But I'm not coming.

My time is running out

And I'm not getting anywhere I want to be.

Doing Homework

My children are on summer break. They still have nearly two months of it, too (even though my classes start nearly a month before their school begins). Yet right now, as I compose this entry, what are they doing? Homework.

You probably figured that out from the title. 

And what am I doing? Homework. I wrote on my list of things to do today "Write Blog," so here I am, writing it. Next I put away the clothes I washed and folded yesterday, and after that it's dishes. And then dinner. 

Sounds like drudgery. And it sort of is, but it does come with rewards. Tonight, after I finish dinner and tidy up the house, I pick up a babysitter and traipse off to the movies with the hubby. 

Guess what I'm going to see (again). Yes, I saw it last week, but I can't get enough Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (or any of the previous ones, either). And now that the hubby's reminded himself of everything from movie #5, he wants to go to #6 (and I obliged, because I'm just that magnificently wonderful a wife). 

And when I come back, the dishes will be done, the kids in bed, the house clean, the clothes put away, my blog written... nothing more to do but bask in the memories from a darkened movie theatre. 

Bliss. Heaven. Perhaps even a bit of the spiritual. My kind of evening.

Well worth the homework... and a load of dishes. What will you reward yourself with, once your homework is done?

Taking a Break

I have to apologize for the last posting... I was feeling pretty ill, and yesterday my temperature rose above 100 degrees (which means a lot, since it tends to run about 2 degrees cooler than everyone else). It seems I have more than a cold (my husband, of course, suggested it might be swine flu, the dork). 

Anyway, yesterday I didn't do anything. I finished a book (and thoroughly enjoyed it--Gail Carson Levine's Fairest--and I may post on it tomorrow), watched a very little television (why isn't anything ever on?), and generally lay around all day. No exercise at the Y, no obligations except for a bit of work on the online training. 

I'm feeling slightly better today, after spending the night in a coma, but I intend to do nothing again today. The dishes will go unwashed, the laundry will still be in stacks, not put away, toys will remain on the floor, where my kids abandoned them. I'll likely take another nap, and I'll do everything I can to rest. 

What will the break do? Hopefully, I'll get well, and do so faster than I would have if I'd killed myself cleaning up after everyone and running a ton of errands. Perhaps, too, I'll recharge, so that when it comes time to get something done, I'll be able to do it with energy and panache. Too bad it took illness to make me do this (although so far I've lost five pounds this week, so I'm not going to whine about it too much).

Do you need to recharge? How can you do it now, before the obligations that weigh on you make you sick and whiny, too?

Sorry if I Disappear a Little

I begin what may turn into a 9-week training session tomorrow, so please bear with me if my blogs become few and far between for about a month while I'm getting my feet wet. 

I am also tackling the beginning of my ghost book research, and if the response is anything like it was for my Kansas book, I'm going to be swamped with ghost stories all summer.  Just know, if you don't hear from me for a while at a time, I'm not dead.

Then again, if I go a week without checking in, would somebody e-mail me? My husband knows how to check my e-mail, so he can let everyone know if I am actually dead.

Sounds grim, doesn't it? I sure hope it doesn't end up that way...

Just write something chilling, imaginative, romantic, or old-fashioned (or all of the above, if the urge strikes you), for me, since I'll be too busy to accomplish anything but the chilling kind. And don't forget to notice when I do pop up, so I remember to come back more often, if only for a break from all of my other obligations... 

I'll miss you... (but hopefully not for long)...