Can't Focus - But Still Setting Goals

Doesn't that look yummy? Among the many things going on in my life right now I'm trying to cook more. Tonight's successful experiment was a Boboli crust, Jack Daniel's BBQ sauce, chicken (fried up using a little pan spray, garlic, and oregano), minced garlic, diced green onions, and diced red onions. I love it! Mo even gave his approval, although he said he'd prefer a garlic alfredo sauce to a bbq.

Anywho... As you may have noticed from my sporadic posts lately, I'm having an awfully hard time focusing lately. There's some life stuff that has just made it hard to stay focused, and unfortunately there's nothing I can do about the "stuff" except give it time. What I can do is work on how it's affecting me.

For now, I'm working on spending a few minutes each day meditating, finding my center, that seems to help me focus and get done what I need to do. At least it did today :P We'll see how much it helps moving forward! I finally sat down today and made my ROW80 goals (a week late) so hopefully having those set will help with staying on track as well. I'm sure I'll mess up, but I'll keep trying, and that's what's important right?

You can see the goals I've set for myself on my goals page but I'll also post them into today's post. They are all pretty self explanatory, but feel free to tell me in a comment below if you have any questions :) I'll be talking more about each of the goals when I do my check in posts. 

Writing Goals:

1. Five Hours Editing a Week (Ideally an hr a day M-F)

2. Blog on a regular basis:
Saturday: Creative Nudge for the week
Sunday: Row80/Goals Post
Monday or Tuesday: My piece for that week's Creative Nudge
Wednesday: Row80/Goals Post
Friday: Book review
Any other posts are bonus!

3. Continue to write and post reviews both here and on www.goodreads.com

Life Goals:

1. Put more variety in our diets,
try new recipes and cook more often.

2. Clean/Organize the house.
First get things organized,
then get on top of doing weekly chores.

3. Exercise!

4. Take more pictures. (like the two in this post!)

I originally just was going to share my writing goals, but that's not who I am. I mean, yes, I am a writer, but every writer is so much more than just a writer, and each of those goals I posted are important to me, and the pursuit of each affects the amount of time and energy I have to spend on the others. So, as the weeks go by, I hope to keep sharing my love for writing and my progress on my book, but I'll also share some of my life, because after all, whether you write fiction or fantasy, every writer's life affects their work.

~ Ruthie ~ 

Spring Cleaning and Various Sundries

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I'm not a big fan of cleaning. I'm just not. I mean, I know it's important, and I don't really enjoy being in a dirty environment, I just always have something better to do. You know, something to make, someone to talk to, and of course, writing. Then there's always the problem of the "Ooo...shiny!" rule. The "Ooo...shiny!" rule states that any time I clear my plate and try to get serious cleaning done I will find something to distract me. It's inevitable. Like death, or taxes, or garlic being in whatever I cook. (ok, that last one's not entirely true, I do leave garlic out of things like... deserts.)

There's also, for a long time, been the problem of having constant migraines. Those things are major energy suckers, and it's hard to find the motivation to clean when pain is making you dizzy. I also have several other health issues that add in their own challenges to the prospect of picking up that sponge or tackling a pile of miscellania. 

Combine the fact I don't enjoy cleaning with the health issues - and my house has never been super clean. I do try, but we live in a constant state of disorder. 

I'm determined to change that to at least some degree, and I have reason to think I can. Want to know why? Meet R2-02:

What? An Oxygen tank? That's right folks. Apparently I'm one of the few migraine sufferers that receives significant relief from huffing on oxygen. I'm ECSTATIC about this. Seriously. I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am! Oxygen is cheaper than many of the meds I've tried... and it's natural. I'm discovering that there are still a few migraines that I need to combine oxygen therapy with pain meds for, but I don't care. This is significantly reducing the amount of medication I'm taking, and I'm functioning! I've had the tanks since Friday and I haven't had a single day where I'm down with a migraine, and trust me, several of those days should have been lost to migraines based on symptoms prior to treatment.

This means I'm having a much easier time getting things done, so I've declared this week spring cleaning! I'm still having some problems with the "Ooo...shiny!" rule, but I'm doing my best to take notes on whatever's distracting me and get back to work. Spring cleaning means I'm not really writing this week (although I have at least one book review I have to do so I can return the book) but I plan to be hard at work on editing again next week.

Speaking of writing... time to report on last month's progress and talk about ROW80!

I love this piece!

It's called "misfit" (check out the where I found it!)

And the title ties in perfectly with the story I'm working on... so...

March was a roller coaster month with some really good days and some really bad days. I ended up with 15,795 words for the month - which considering everything is something I'm really proud of. Obviously I'd love to have written more, but getting that took some real effort, so I'm happy. Plus, I'm up from last month's 10,233 :P 

I read a TON last month. 27 books. That's crazy. In my defense I was really, really sick for part of the month so literally all I did was read. I still think that's crazy. I seriously doubt I'll come anywhere close to that this month, especially since I've been working on the same book for three days because I'm not spending much time reading so far. 

As for ROW80 - I know I'm supposed to have specific goals, but I really don't right now. I might come up with something more specific next week when I'm done with spring cleaning and more focused on writing again, but for now I'm just going to say editing. Editing, editing, and more editing. Oh, I should try to blog fairly regularly as well. We'll see how far I get!

Now I need to go clean something...

~ Ruthie ~ 

I'm Baaaack!

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I've missed blogging! Actually I've missed a lot of things. I've been sick for weeks... and before that life was insane because someone I was close to was in crisis and...yeah. It's just been crazy but I'm getting better slowly but surely and I'm happy to blogging again! 

Yesterday was the first time in a month and a half that I had sat down to work on Misfits, my NaNoNovel. That's just sad. I have done writing here and there in the mean time, book reviews, a few writing exercises, but not touched the book. I know that the stress I've been under is a big part of it, but I also think that part of it comes down to scheduling.

I hate schedules, which makes it very hard for me to put myself on any kind of one. Part of it is that I can be very ADHD, so schedules tend to annoy me because I have a hard time focusing on what I'm supposed to be focusing on when I'm supposed to be focusing on it. So for a long time I've given myself a schedule of "you must do this and this at some point in the day" and just tackled it in whatever order felt "right" to me that day.

The problem with that is that the things I want to do, or have motivation to do for whatever reason, get done. The things that I don't want to do? Not as much. 

So I'm trying out a new schedule. It still has a lot of flexibility to it, but I'm assigning chunks of my day to certain tasks (like writing!) and then leaving some vagueness to how I approach the use of that time. I've also put into my new plan time for me to get sick or have migraines (which I do a lot) or for other things to disrupt my schedule. I'll let you guys know how it goes! 

~ Ruthie ~ 

Sunset Scarf

I really should be posting something writer-ly today, but I'm still catching up on life after the back injury (and not out of the woods yet) so I'm just going to talk about what I want to :) It's my blog after all, so no one's going to flog me, right? Right?

I'm working on a scarf for myself right now. It's 48 inches as of this morning, and I'm going to knit up that entire ball unless it gets to the point where it's twice as long as my height LOL. Ok, realistically I'll probably stop when it hits my knees when drapped around my neck. Probably. I decided I want one realllly long scarf in my collection, can you tell?

Over the last two years I've learned to love lots and lots of color, but I also love black, so this yarn is the perfect mix. My Mom saw it earlier and said it looks like a sunrise or sunset, so I'm going to call it my sunset scarf. I've seen a lot more of those in my day than sunrises, I am NOT an early morning person.

In other news, I'm slowly catching up on house cleaning and there are a number of craft projects I'm behind on. The scarf is an easy one to work on when I'm really tired, so it's been getting the most time, but I have some rings, earrings, anklets, and a necklace or two that I owe various people. Plus I need to get started soon on a baby blanket for my cousin who's having a baby.

Oh and I am getting a lesson on tatting on Thursday and I am going to start a project that's supposed to be inbetween projects (using yarn scraps) but I can't resist starting it. And write. Did I mention write? Writing would be good.

As you can see, I'm a little ADHD at times. Ok. Maybe very ADHD and it totally applies to my projects! No matter how I try to finish them I always seem to have more going then I can keep up with.

Writing is a priority, house cleaning and keeping the hubby happy is a priority, knitting happens a lot because I can do it when relaxing, and the other projects happen based on which friends have been waiting the longest and when I find time/inspiration.

I'm starting a folder on my facebook page (you can look me up under Ruthie Stickney, mention your a blog follower please so I don't ignore you) for all my crafty projects. If your a crafty-nut like myself feel free to keep an eye on it! Not that there's anything other than my scarf there now. I am JUST starting it.

What are you working on today?

~ Ruthie ~

Ps. I hear some people are having problems posting on my blog. I'll try to get it sorted out soon but things are a little busy the next two days.

Poem - The Distracted Writer's Mantra

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It's Monday again - so it's time for me to share another piece of my writing! I wrote this piece last week. NaNoWriMo was over, and I wanted to keep up my pattern of writing every day, but I didn't want to work on any big projects for a few day, to let me brain unwind a little. I hadn't written a poem in awhile, and I decided that would be perfect! That's about as far from writing a novel as you can get right? 

Well, maybe. As you will see this poem is all about the writing process, and all the things that writers do to avoid sitting down and writing. I've done each and every one of these in this last month.

The Distracted Writer’s Mantra
By Ruthie Stickney
Copy-write 2011

Must Write! Should update Facebook first.
Must Write! Can’t forget about Twitter!
Must Write! There’s an email from Mom.
Must Write! Haven’t written Nana in awhile…
Must Write! Should respond to that comment.

Must Write! Forgot to check my phone!
Must Write! Should respond to that text.
Must Write! Call from my best friend.
Must Write! Need to text my cousin.
Must Write! Oh look, another email!

Must Write! Forgot to shower today.
Must Write! Should start the laundry.
Must Write! Did I water the plants?
Must Write! There are dishes in the sink.
Must Write! Did I eat breakfast?

Must Write! Need more coffee first.
Must Write! The coffee pot is empty.
Must Write! I’ll make some more.
Must Write! The coffee’s done!
Must Write! I’m out of creamer.

Must Write! I should run to the store.
Must Write! I need to return that book.
Must Write! The car needs more gas.
Must Write! Think I’ll stop at McDonald’s.
Must Write! A quick trip to the Goodwill.

Must Write! I deserve a break now.
Must Write! They updated my game!
Must Write! Earn more coins for items.
Must Write! So close to the next level…
Must Write! Change my characters outfit.

Must Write! Never folded the laundry.
Must Write! What should I make for dinner?
Must Write! I’ll thaw some chicken.
Must Write! Should clean the bathroom.
Must Write! Is the mail here yet?

Must Write! Don’t have a playlist for it.
Must Write! Should download that song.
Must Write! This isn’t enough songs.
Must Write! Look on Youtube for more.
Must Write! Should synch this to my phone.

Must Write! Time to make dinner!
Must Write! I’ll eat and answer emails.
Must Write! Ice-cream for desert.
Must Write! I haven’t written anything.
Must Write! Oh well, maybe tomorrow.


It's a wonder I made it both through my 50k and to the end of the book huh?

~ Ruthie ~

Ps. What do you do when you should be writing instead?