My Progress for Quarter 1

Hey all! Tomorrow is the end of the first quarter of the year, so I thought I should look at the goals I'd set for 2015 and see how I'm doing so far. My comments are in blue.

Writing:

I want to finish as many of the following as possible:

(For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to list my projects by the Acronyms I use for them, since that’s what I use on my year planners as well. Also, I haven’t gotten around to revealing some titles yet, and now seems like the wrong time.)

Publish:

Wo6C1
Currently busy with final proofreading and copy-edits. 

Wo6C2
Currently busy with final proofreading and copy-edits.

BvB1
Currently busy with penultimate round of copy-edits.

ES1
Rewrite complete. Awaiting revisions.

My Untethered Realms Anthology Short Story.
In for edits.

Publishing Edits (possibly for publishing in 2015):

Wo6C3
Rewrite Prepped. Had to draft the whole thing again, which is why it's a bit behind. 

BvB2
Rough draft in progress. 

Revisions and Rough Edits

O1
Rewrite in progress. This is a bit ahead of schedule. 

VD
Still awaiting rewrite. 

Rewrites:

Wo6C4
Postponed drafting this until next year, because editing Wo6C1 and 2 kept necessitating me re-drafting Wo6C3, which wasted time. 

SS1
Awaiting rewrite.

P
Rough draft complete, but I'm not happy with it, so I'm putting some thought into my concept and plot before drafting it again. 

MDtS
Awaiting rewrite.

Rough Drafts (The ones I do by hand):

DD

ES2

CdW

HM

StW

Haven't started with any of these yet. 

Reading

I want to read 75 books next year.
18 so far. 

The minimum amounts of which must consist of:

5 books or plays in a language other than English.
1 so far.

5 plays by Shakespeare
1 so far.

5 classics other than Shakespeare, of which one must be Chaucer.
2 so far. Neither Chaucer. 

5 non-fiction titles.
4 so far.

5 books by some of my blogging friends.
None yet. Siiiiigh. 

Social Media:

I seriously need to sort out my Social Media stuff. I haven’t been near active enough last year. What this entails, though, is something I still need to wrap my head around.

Mostly, I'm working on getting back to blogging regularly, visiting blogs and getting out and about on Wattpad. Taking little steps that add up to some sort of whole. 

Life:

Help my family build our own house. (Yep, brick by brick.)
This is side-lined for now, since we actually found another house to live in. 

Sort out some sort of business that I can do on my own terms. (SO over trusting people to help me when they only help themselves at my cost.)
Working on this. Time will tell what pans out, though. 

Seriously. I need to get back to singing.
Nothing on this front yet. Life's still a bit rough. 

Also, I really really want to paint this year. Other than the above-mentioned house’s walls.
Haven't started one yet, but am busy with some other crafty stuff. 

Then, I want to continue with my more healthy diet, since it makes me feel good and gives me a lot more energy. (Useful when I’ll be lugging lots of bricks around.)
Yeah this is a bit harder than I thought. Still trying, though. 

Last of all, and probably most importantly, I need to get past all the stuff that’s happened this year, so that I can get through 2015 with as little contamination as possible.
Working on this, but it's also pretty dang difficult. 

Overall: I think I'm pretty on track when it comes to writing, editing and reading. Social media's also coming along, but my life-goals need a bit more work. 

How are your goals coming along?

The Things We Say to Ourselves #OneBeautifulThought

Today, I saw an advert by Dove that really hit me. Before I share my thoughts, though, I thought you might want to watch the vid yourself. Even if you're a guy. It's worth thinking about so bear with me.

All done? Good. So obviously, Dove is all about making it's target audience (women) feel beautiful. But really, this message can be drawn much further than that.

It's something that crosses all boundaries of age, gender, personality, race... name it.

We talk ourselves down. I'm just a fake, pretending I can do this. I'm not a strong person. I've got so many issues that I don't know how to even start listing them. 

I'm never ever going to make it. 

The women in the video had to hear these insulting things they said to themselves just so they could realize how much they've been insulting themselves. Unfortunately, I don't have two actresses on hand to make my point, so I want you to try imagining what you'd do if you heard people tossing the insults you give yourselves at each other.

And then, if at all possible, I want you to stop.

Because when it comes to having a fulfilled, rich life, the only person who can truly stop you is:

You. 

And this, insulting yourself by telling yourself that you're weak, stupid, and powerless to do anything about yourself is precisely the way that you use to do it.

So now I'm going to say this:

You are an amazing person.
You can set out to do what you're meant to do.
You can find out what that is.
You are stronger than you imagine.
You are strong enough to overcome your obstacles. 

Now, YOU try telling yourself some nice things. 

I'd love to see them in the comments. 

A to Z Challenge Theme Reveal

As I mentioned in my previous post, last year was a difficult one where I didn't really get a chance to live much.

The thing is, I'm sure I learned a lot, so I'm thinking that the Challenge will be a great way for me to think back on 2014 in a positive, constructive way. So that's going to be my theme:

The Life Lessons Learned in 2014

Please note, though, that there might be some Christian faith based posts in the course of the month, as to me, my faith is a big part of my life. However I will take care to warn people ahead of time. I believe in respecting every person's right to choose who he/she believes him, or to not even believe at all. I do, however expect the same courtesy and will freely delete and block any visitor to this blog who doesn't understand that. 

What about you? Are you joining this year? There's still time to sign up if you haven't yet!

Taking Charge of My Life... Again.

I'm finally back online. Actually, I have been since Friday, but in all the excitement, it wasn't easy to sit down and write this post.

Even now, while everything is relatively quiet. I'm struggling to find the words.

2014 did some serious damage, which led this blog to dwindling to almost nothing. I've written about the reasons for this before, but now I think there's another reason to it too.

See, this blog is about life in general and my life in particular. But for most of 2014, I didn't have a life. 2014 was a rapid succession of various disasters that left me reeling. And before I could recover enough to investigate/think about/write about any of it, the next disaster hit.

In other words, I didn't have a life to write about. It was all survival.

And really, there's nothing wrong with that.

Sometimes things happen in life that are completely beyond our control. Last year was a good example of it. It wasn't like I stopped trying to make things better, but instead that everything I tried made things worse.

Nowadays, it feels like there's a bit of a reprieve. I'm hoping that it's a sign that things are really settling down again. In the meantime, I'm doing all I can to recharge and regain perspective.

I'm not just staying here, though. Now's not the time to sit on my backside and bemoan my fate. I have to fix everything again. Or replace things. It won't be the exact same as before, but that's okay.

It does feel, though, as if now's the time where I have to regain the upper hand over my circumstances once more. I'll be writing about it here.


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