All posts tagged: my process

Resolutions

Published by

Resolution #1 Stop hitting the snooze button  The alarm goes off and I immediately hit snooze. I usually set it for 5:25 AM to give me time to slowly rise before 6:15 AM yoga, but I inevitably snooze until 6:05 and miss my class altogether. I did remedy this the other night: showered and ready for bed, I slipped into leggings, a yoga tank, and bra instead of my light flannel PJs. At 6:05 AM Tuesday morning after “snoozing” for 40 minutes I turned off my heating pad (yes, I sleep with one) rolled out of bed, brushed, rinsed, and ran out the door. I made it to the studio in a respectable 13 minutes only slightly late and ready to roll, but started wilting at the 40 minute mark in class, leading to my next resolution … Resolution #2  Keep swimming  My yoga instructor is tight in body, instruction, mindset, and in discipline. Girlfriend also uses a heck of a lot of metaphors and motivational lines during each class. “If you let go of the toe, …

5 5 5  Introduction 

Published by

Wk 1 Post 1 Write five lines, five times a week, for five weeks.  That’s all. That is all I need to do.  If I write five lines I am all set, whether they follow a theme or not. At The Hello Sessions over the weekend, Lisa Congdon spoke on one of my favorite topics, the buzz worthy “passion project”, and how it informs a person’s ability to push beyond his or her usual thinking and creates ways for one to work differently through this side focus. I thought of about four things I’ve wanted to work on for a specific period of time: Participating in Snail Mail My Email in November. Being able to do a proper headstand and handstand. Something else I can’t remember that I guess was not important. 5 5 5 For the purposes of informing my public writing practice, I am going with 5, 5, 5.  The objective of this exercise is to write five liner posts five times a week for five weeks about anything I want to (which I have always done …

Filling The Well

Published by

I have been keeping my eyes opened for well filling opportunities. Working on the blog goes beyond writing a post and putting it out.  It is about exploring ideas, editing, and  ‘filling the well’.  Deliberate threads weave through well fillers, those common threads being anything that will help inform and influence the way I manage my energy, time, and define my intention. A stack of required reading migrates to my bag, the coffee table, the dining table, the sofa, lobbies and to restaurants.  I do not often read one book straight through. Typically, I alternate between two at a time, and though one may not recommend reading that way, it works A-Okay for me. Imagine just having one extended class for an entire week, with no other subjects at hand –  it’s hard to stay engaged. Or one can also imagine having unconfirmed ADD, and that would explain this too (and so many other things about me….) That is how I feel about my relationship with books. Being immersed in one subject only would drive me to tears. Since these books are …

Sometimes I Really Exhaust Myself

Published by

The thing is … I get so excited about things and then I do it intensely without taking a break much less eat breakfast or lunch, and before I know it I CRASH.  Usually around this time, 4 o’clock or so.  I already know this is not a sustainable way to work.  I already am convinced that working on my projects this way shoots my adrenals way up high. But I cannot stop myself sometimes, and I just need to keep on going. I love for example, a print, and everywhere I go I look for it. I saw a vintage print of vegetables in a home boutique and everywhere afterwards  I saw stacks of vegetables in frames, paintings of vegetables and books about vegetables.  I stumbled upon covers of magazines and lead stories online featuring the season’s vegetables. There were cards with vegetables at the hardware store, ceramic replicas of vegetables and aprons with vegetables, farmer’s markets that I am compelled to walk through just to touch the vegetables.   I want to see the farmers with their gritty …

Stepping Away

Published by

When we push ourselves beyond comfort, we grow, correct?  When we want to do something better, we practice, persevere, and change our routines in order to develop better habits and mastery, don’t we?  So in trying to improve my blog by reviewing old posts while writing new ones that I edit more closely, am I becoming a sharper writer by focusing so much longer on one post at a time while chained to my chair, or am I becoming stupider because I cannot process nor execute anything substantial within an eight hour work period? The Smarty Pants part of my mind thinks that the list of new ideas sprouting left and right are ingenious,  but the Annie Adderall part sees that these ideas take no root and then I am quickly bored by them.  Is my cognitive processing tearing down old muscle to build newer stronger mental muscle or am I just diminishing any function I have left? Do you ever think, “Hmm… maybe I’m NOT getting better at this?  Maybe I can’t REALLY do everything I have my mind set to?” That’s …

On A Mission

Published by

The eclectic collection at SchatziSF. Photo by BP. I was on a mission.  On the heels of revealing this revamped blog format Sunday, March 8, aptly our day to spring forward, I felt a new found energy, understanding, and excitement for my website.  Though I committed myself to “sticking to it”, I knew I couldn’t be in the corner of my dining area one day longer adding dots, moving things around, editing on the computer, and making more notes with the help of blue tape headers and colored sticky paper squares.  “No no no,” I said to myself,  “you must head out and explore.  It is time to refill the well.” Do you do that often enough?  Refill your well?  Chatting with Oddsauce recently, we referred to it as Inspiration Addiction:  workshops, books, articles, and podcasts. I am particularly hooked on Grace Bonney’s and Jess Lively’s podcasts, and anticipate my weekly Marie Forleo You Tube fix.  Discussions on process, method, and motivation are things I seek out constantly.  I have also been listening to a favorite soundtrack since I was a girl, Hannah and Her …

Spring Forward

Published by

Hanging on to time. Image source here Welcome to the new layout of my blog, Even If Nobody Reads This.  There is still work to be done, but waiting for perfection won’t bring me any closer to it, but I am very happy with it already, especially having done it primarily myself and with the help of course, of Husband.  It’s been time for a redesign.   And it’s time to share it with you. For the past week I have been combing through all of my posts since starting this online journal in 2010,  and have been organizing them into updated categories in order to clarify the tone and unity among some posts.  I finally added an ABOUT ME section holding my picture and name.  I am including my PO Box and email address clearly on the footer of the Home page & within the About page.  This is basic for the elementary blogger, but huge for me. I’ve written semi anonymously for a very long time, so for those who know me and have followed Even If Nobody Reads This, it’s not surprising that this is a …

Posts on Post Its

Published by

It has been a long time coming, but friends, I am redesigning my blog.  The end goal is to have a format that showcases a wider variety of existing content found in Even If Nobody Reads This. I thought about changing the name and about getting an entire suite of new graphics for the blog, but that didn’t feel necessary to me.  It’s like when you reorganize your closet for the season.  It’s not that you are renovating it, you are just moving useful pieces onto more suitable shelves, purging and mending some items that don’t get enough use, and rotating forgotten things onto hangers in front, while picking up little sweaters that have fallen between stored boots and placing them in drawers with the rest of your knitwear. I reread my content.  I made four main categories to start with.  I wrote each post title onto a color coded Post It.  I have space on each paper to write notes like tags,  follow ups, and connections with other categories.  With every little task I …

Couples Counseling

Published by

My editorial calendar and I need therapy.  It is not a love/ hate relationship.  Having a blog means posting content regularly.  It means you are wanting and willing to share your vision and your thoughts within your genre of food, fashion, fine art, entertaining, lifestyle, or in my case, personal narrative, and hoping that you have nuggets of good information hiding in there of value to someone other than yourself. Having been actively blogging for about two years now (as I do not count my four yearly posts earlier on)  I have resisted the editorial calendar thinking that her function was for busy bloggers, serious bloggers, and prolific bloggers, not lil ol’ me.  When I started posting with some regularity in 2013, I heard from here, there, and everywhere that the secret to success is the editorial calendar.  Heck no, I resisted.  And yet, someone gave her my address and in she popped into my life with all of her enthusiastic and organized glory. My editorial calendar (or let’s just call her E.C. for short) …

Table For One

Published by

What’s funny as of late is this whole mission I am on to find a place to write that isn’t my home.  I am not distracted by laundry nor by the television nor by the phone.  My MoJo is just a ‘no go’ at home.  It has started to piss me off. My writing.  Or lack thereof.  So there.  I said it again.  I said what you have been thinking about if you follow me here.  Just friggin write, and let it go.  Changing my dining table out will not make me more productive.  Adding new shelving will not untie the knots in my head.  A nicer light fixture will not expand my thinking.  My habits need a shake up and that includes not overthinking what I am going to write as well as where I will write it.  I have been packing up my things and heading out each day to find the elusive spot to catch my muse, because as DessertComes1st said to me, “The muse comes when you are creating, not while you …