Ten Things Thursday: Ten Things I want to Accomplish in 2013

It is the first Ten Things Thursday of the new year! Today I am going to share with you ten things I want to accomplish in 2013. I don't do resolutions, as I have learned that my life will do everything it can to make sure I do not keep them. Usually I do not make any type of goal list, but I feel the need to do so this year. So,  here we go!

1. Write every day.

It might not be in the blog, but after finding this quote:

"WRITE EVERY DAY, the Muse insists. Don't skip a day no matter how you're feeling, no matter how many wars your country is fighting, no matter how many tornado's are heading your way. Crawl into your storm cellar and pick up a pen. If you can't think of anything to say, write the word God again and again. If you don't believe in God, write the word dog. Everyone believes in dogs. ("Sy Safransky's Notebook," The Sun, July 2011)

I, along with a few others who liked the idea, are going to make the effort to write SOMEWHERE daily. I got burnt out in October, not because I do not enjoy writing, but because I was going through an emotional shit storm while jumping into three intensive projects at once. It was not a smart idea, but time marches on and I feel more mentally and emotionally put together than I have in over a year. So I will be writing somewhere every day, even if it is for my eyes only.

2. Write in the blog more often.

I seem to go through these phases where I write a lot, and then I just stop for a while. It is not something I am fond of and I would like to be more consistent. Maybe I will not feel so disjointed about it. I have been reading writing tips, and a lot of professional writers say that you have to treat it as a job, even if you are a freelance writer. Set aside a time to write every day, and do it. It will train your mind into doing what needs to be done, and hopefully keep things flowing, instead of barfing words up all over the place and then having nothing left, as the "stomach" is empty.

3. Reduce the clutter in my house by at least 50%

I have a very tiny home, and Jack and I both have a love for big furniture. We do not even have a kitchen table, as there is no room for it. My large computer desk is there. We also have a daughter who INSISTS we keep every scrap of paper, every art project, every math paper, or anything else she does, forever. I can't count how many times I have stuffed old school work and scribbles on paper to the bottom of the trash while she is at school or asleep, or even taken the trash totally out to the big can outside so she would not see me do it. She is a great artist but as she loves to draw, it adds up in a hurry. I keep the most special ones, and I have scanned a ton of others to my computer, but I still have paper stuffed in to various drawers and cabinets until they are filled to the bursting point. I have explained to her that we do not have room, and that we could keep the favorites, but it is one thing she flips out about...so I have to be covert about it.

4. Become more organized by at least 50%

This ties in to number three, but as I mentioned, our place is tiny and we have big stuff. We have very little usable floor space to put bookshelves or dressers or things like that, but what we do have is a lot of empty wall space. So Jack has agreed to build shelves and mount them on various walls, and I will obtain boxes and baskets and things in which to organize stuff. Our clutter is not visible, but it is stuffed behind cabinet doors and in places you can not see. I still know it is there, and every time I open certain drawers or cabinets, I have to beware of the avalanche. So I would like to get a handle on all of that.

5. Continue with weight loss

I am hesitant to even put this here, because I am not actively trying to lose weight, and I am fully aware that the stress of the last year is the biggest reason I have lost 43 pounds in the last 17 months. It is also because I am more active these days, as I never seem to be able to sit still. I can tell in the way my clothes fit, the pant sizes I have dropped, and the way I feel, but to me at least, it is not much of a visible change. So maybe I should change that to I would like to get more toned. I would like to physically see the change.

6. Read more.

I am and have always been a very voracious reader, but the last few months I have read considerably less than I usually do. I would like to get back to it.

7. Strengthen my relationships with friends and family.

Being caught in the nasty claws of depression for the better part of a year means I have been withdrawn and solitary. I have found it hard to talk to people, and they have found it hard to talk to me because of it. I want to reach out more and cultivate those relationships that I am fortunate enough to have.

8. Be more artistic.

I have a wealth of crafting and artistic materials here, and I have said in the past I am not a "crafty mom" and it is true, I am not. But I enjoy painting, walls as well as art, and I want to do more of both. We already have the paint for the walls, and I already have the paint for the art. I just have to do it.

9. Learn a new skill.

I have things to learn to knit and to crochet, but my shaky hands have kept me from doing it. Since the meds I am on have helped me, I am thinking of taking it up again. If not that, then maybe something practical like soap making or candle making. If the world goes south, those would be things that are handy to know.

10. Expand my knowledge base.

Last but not least, and the easiest of them all, is to just keep learning. The last 24 hours alone have led me to learn about something I knew pretty much nothing about. My mind is the best thing about me, and I want to stuff just as much knowledge in to it as I can. Never, ever stop learning!

So there you have it. My basic list of things I want to accomplish this year. None of them are super hard, but they can be time consuming, and time is the one thing I have an excess of. Plus, all of them will be beneficial and make things better for us.

Is there anything special you want to accomplish this year?

I DID IT!!!

I did it! I walked 3.1 miles yesterday in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk! All the way, never stopping, never resting, and I was hot footing it towards the finish line yesterday because my bad knee on my "good" leg was screaming lol. I DID IT!!

I was nervous all day, hoping I could handle it. If you count the three hours we walked around before the official walk I walked about 8 miles total yesterday. On my busted ankle. No pain in the ankle, then or now, but my knee on the other leg and the bottom of both feet hurt this morning. Nothing unusual though, I felt the exact same way when I started walking last Winter down the long dirt road next to my house. I got in the truck when we were done and once we got out of the town center where we walked I burst into tears. I was so proud of myself.


The walk yesterday almost did not happen since the company Jack works for totally dropped the ball and bailed on the whole thing. No one else from the company showed up. We went anyway because it was so important to me on so many levels. For one, I am a cervical cancer survivor myself, and so many of my family have died due to cancer, including breast cancer. It is a cause most dear to me. I also felt the need to go and represent, to show my husbands company ( we are friends with the boss so it was a personal let down that no one else showed ) what you were SUPPOSED to do. I was so upset that the company bailed, I felt like I had to go just to show them up and show them what it should have been like.

However, even though the cause was special to me in those ways, the most special reason was to prove to MYSELF that I could do it. When I got hurt, I got thrown into the worst situation I have ever been in. Considering my life thus far, that is saying something. The physical agony and not being able to do anything was bad enough, but the resulting mental anguish and deep emotional depression I was caught in almost did me in. I do not mean to sound lame or dramatic, but the honest truth is I considered many times how to kill myself just to make it stop. The pain, the helplessness, the frustration, the depression, the loneliness, the anger....it almost made me literally lose my mind. I was convinced I would never be able to walk again. After I began to heal, I still did not feel like myself ( and to be honest I STILL do not, but it's close ) and I was still miserable. Even after I came home and got rid of those infernal crutches and started walking with the boot ( and now without the boot inside the house, the air helped heal my incisions, you know, the ones that the internal sutures decided to crawl out of? *Shudders* ) I still felt like crap because I could still not resume life as I knew it before I got hurt. I could not stand at the stove or sink to cook or wash dishes for any length of time, and I STILL can't stand at the sink for more than 10 minutes. but I can cook with ease again ) I could not do laundry, or make my bed. I could feed us and I could walk Alex to the bus stop every day but that was about it.

I mean it is just a life changing injury, one that I never expected it to be. I have learned a lot on this journey about help and love and  being able to adapt, and how to do my best to hold the fragile pieces of my shattered mind together through all this. Bones are not the only thing that became fractured and splintered during this process. So for me, yesterday was my moment. My battle between who I was before I got hurt and who I became after I got hurt. The real me won. I beat myself. My shadow of despair now has a walking boot print on her forehead. I sat in Jack's truck, tears rolling down my face, saying " I did it" over and over again. Mr. Stoic Man himself grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard, with tears in his own eyes and said " You did it baby, you won. I am so proud of you!"

I mean yeah,sure, it is only a 3.1 mile walk...but for me...it has been a journey of a thousand miles...

I did it.

Now I leave you with some pics from yesterday. They were taken with Perth's camera phone so we all look shorter and wider than we really are lol...

Here is a shot of Jack, Alex and I...

Here is one of Perth and I....

 


Alex's pretty painted face...

Pic of Jack helping me down a hill during the walk. Uneven terrain is still hard for me, as are hills, so of course part of the route has both AT THE SAME TIME lol...

Perth and Jack....

Perth and Alex walking....

I took a few more of the band and some belly dancers and stuff but the camera would not zoom enough so you really can not see much. These were the good ones. So yeah. Pictorial PROOF that I did it lol. We had a blast and look forward to next year!

What I hope to accomplish in 2011

 I have always shied away from making resolutions. I feel they set one up for failure and disappointment if you do not do them or stick with them, so, like so many others, I am making a list of goals. I might not get to all of them, and I might surpass them, you never know.

1. I want to maintain the relationships I have with my family and friends, and improve them if there is opportunity.

2. I want to continue to embrace my role in my house, and learn to love it even more, and take more pride than I already do.

3. If I have to get a job outside the home, then I hope I will find something I enjoy, and that has the right schedule to fit my families needs.

4. I want to continue to grow, and learn new things, including new things about myself.

5. I want to learn more patience as a mother. I made good progress in 2010, but there is so much more I can do to be more patient and to be a better mother.

6. I want to continue to make Jack happy, and let him know just how much I love him.

7. I want to continue to purge things that no longer have a use in my life. Be it people, possessions, ways of thinking or bad habits.

8. I want to become more organized. Again, I made good progress last year and I want to expound upon that.

9. I want to open up more, give more of myself, to the people who deserve it, and learn how to say no to people who do not.

10. I want to get healthy. This is not a goal to just lose weight, because that always fails. I have been having heart issues and I know I have to further change my lifestyle if I want to meet my grandkids.

11. Finally, I want to live more of my life. I want to get out of the house, go places, experience new things with my family, or even on my own once I get a working vehicle. To much of my life is spent behind closed doors, and while there is a time for everything, I feel this withdrawn, batten down the hatches mentality no longer serves me and I want it to change.

So there you have it. Eleven goals for 2011. Notice that most of them already have good foundations, and only need to be improved upon. I think that is easier than having to start all over in things. I have been that route and it never worked out. If you take the good things and make them better, it is more rewarding that having to struggle and fail in something. So many years of my life were wasted trying to do that, and I feel this year will be vastly different, and I am really looking forward to it!

Goal Obtained!

It has been a long, odd, week. My new walking partner, Vicky, took a temp job for a couple of weeks, which I knew was coming. What I did  not know was that her girlfriend Stephanie would be on vacation, and decide she wanted to go with me. Now there is nothing wrong with that, I like her too, but I like Vicky more, she has a similar personality. Staph is kind of dry so to speak.  Not to mention she is not all that in to exercise lol.

We walked together Monday and Tuesday, and I ended up not going Wednesday, because my left leg ( my bad knee leg, the one I have had a few surgeries on..) was killing me, and I knew I needed to rest, even though I was eat up with guilt all that day. Staph went back to work today, and I was supposed to watch her two younger kids for a couple of hours this morning until they got on the bus, because Vicky was to be at work at 5 AM and Steph at 4:30 AM. They were supposed to come over yesterday afternoon to confirm and to tell me what time they were going to be here. They never showed. I still expected them to come over this morning. They never showed. When I took Alex to the bus stop at 7:30, I saw one of the kids in the window of their house, so I assumed they had just gotten someone else to come over and watch them. I went on my walk, alone, and when I got to my normal stopping point, I still felt good, and I wanted to make up for not going yesterday, so I walked all the way to the pavement ( the road is really long, and half of it is paved, half of it is dirt ) and back, which is just under 5 and a half miles round trip.

I made my goal! I expected to start easing my way towards the pavement this week, but Steph was more than ready to go home when we reached the bridge, so I just put it off. Today I went on and it was wonderful. It actually got easier to walk as I crossed the bridge, the dirt was more hard packed, and less soft sand, and it is more open, since as you go that way it opens up into neighborhoods. I was happy I was alone, I got to go at my own pace, fast when I wanted, and slower through the sand. I felt great when I got home, I did not hurt like I usually do when I walked with one of them. I do not mean the " Oh we are using muscles more so it is natural to be sore" type hurt, I mean the " Omg I pulled something, I can not walk without being in agony something is wrong" type of hurt.

I am not sure what the deal with Vicky is, since I found out later it was she who was home. I do not know why they did not come over, even if it was to tell me they found someone else or that Vicky would be home. It might have to do with the fact that Steph came in Tuesday to use my phone, and of course I have a good sized pentacle painting and my pentacle altar cloth on my entertainment center. She had Vicky's 12 year old daughter with her, who kept asking me questions about them. Steph made a beeline for the door when she got off the phone, so for all I know I am now the evil devil worshiper to them or something. Or it may be something else entirely, I have no clue. To be honest, I do not care to find out why, either. I like them both, but I am not going to go out of my way and keep getting in their face if I am not wanted for whatever reason. I had a much better experience going alone, and I think I will keep it that way. In fact, getting to the pavement was so easy, I am setting a new goal of walking the entire length of Tiger Hammock road, dirt and paved.

I am torn however, because if it was for no big reason that they did not come over, I do not want to seem like I just dumped Vicky and do not want to walk with her anymore. On the other hand, I want to walk alone I think. It is better for me to do this alone for the most part. I know I need to just suck it up and go over there and find out if something is up, but at the same time if I do, I will feel obligated to keep walking with her when I do not want to. Nothing against her, I just need to do this alone. See why I like online relationships? Lol..

Jack has to work for the next two Saturdays, his boss is going out of town, so that kind of sucks. Hunting season also starts this weekend so I will see less of him in general on the weekends. This Saturday, after he gets home, we are going to my Mom's and we are going to a Fall Festival with the kids, so that should be fun.

I was also given an award today, the Lovely Blog award that is now on my sidebar by Bex over at Bex's Hexes. That was a wonderful surprise and I thank her! She is also on a mission to get healthy again, so pop over and check her out, show some support.

I think that sums it up for now. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!