Mid-Year Goals

These aren't exactly mid-year goals. They are goals from the beginning of the year, and though I had them written down, I hadn't blogged them. So here they are, with updates --

Creative Goals:

Writing -

• Revise and self-publish my completed middle grade novel
• Submit the second novel (completed and currently under revision)
• Write the first draft of the sequel to the second novel (up to about 5,000 words)
• Start a writing/reading related blog (have name and URL; tinkering with the look and content)

Sewing -

• Finish the Bichon quilt for Kat’s mother (blocks completed and sewed into strips; working with applique)
• Make a quilt for the guest room bed 
• Make a quilt for my niece
• Make an art quilt

Other -

• Make a fruitcake

Organizing Goals:

• Tweak my work space, especially better organize my “active” files
• Clear out filing cabinets, scanning and trashing files where appropriate (Started, barely)
• Clean out and organize 1) my make-up drawer, 2) the kitchen cabinets, 3) the pantry

Financial Goals:

• Review and adjust life insurance policies (Done)
• Increase automatic contribution to Kat’s deferred compensation plan
• Increase emergency savings account by 25%. (Making progress)
• Fully fund cushion savings (Done)
• Save and figure out financing if necessary for kitchen re-do (Have saved about $1900)
• Start saving for vacation to Diagon Alley (Universal Studios) in 2014 or 2015
• Lower cable and wireless phone bills 

Not bad, but I've a lot to do to meet goals before the end of the year. Some of these I can eliminate on a "get it done" day, such as cleaning out my make-up drawer and lowering the bills. Others will take weeks or months or more to accomplish. Of course I'm identifying and achieving (for the most part) new goals all the time, like the office closet clean-out and the sewing room renovation. 

For some reason, I tend to procrastinate on goals I've written down, which is the opposite effect writing goals is supposed to have. I suppose I let the impulse of the moment direct my days more than I'm happy with on reflection. Goal-writing and checking in are ways for past self (in this case, January self) to control her future and attempt to accomplish big things through thoughtful planning and follow through. Obviously present self isn't always cooperative, and I've let my project pages go unreviewed for a couple of months, when for a while they were a daily guide. I am updating and scribbling on them now. We'll see how it goes if future self bothers to check in.

Breaking Rules and Re-visiting Goals

Just back from a whirlwind visit home (near Houston) to visit my folks. The trip is exactly three hours and twenty minutes from my door to theirs. Most of the time I have to make a pit stop along the way. When I take Dobby, I stop off at a rest area so I can take him with me into the restroom.

I pulled into a rest area as usual and for the first time noticed a sign that clearly stated “No Pets Allowed in Restroom.” What?? But I can’t leave him in the car! What if he were stolen? And during summer months the car interior heats up far too quickly. Impossible to leave an animal in a car, even with the windows cracked. I might have to disguise him as a human baby and carry him in a pouch. Think it will work?

Time to check in with April goals:

Create a routine, writing at least three hours every (work) day. Still no routine, but I did manage the floating three hour period on days I wasn't on the road, plus more on occasion.

Close e-mail during writing sessions. Yup. 

Close internet during writing sessions, or use internet blocking or my alphasmart. Nope. The internet is like chocolate to me - irresistible. I cannot bring myself to use an internet blocking program; I don’t know why I even wrote that down. I haven’t yet unearthed my alphasmart. I really like typing on my laptop. A lot. And I use Scrivener. Though I know I can transfer my alphasmart stuff to Scrivener, I like working in Scrivener. So, I’ll have to figure this one out. I suppose if I’m hitting my writing goals (I’m now into daily word counts for my fiction), I can ease up on this one.

Practice mindfulness. I googled for some resources and came up with a bewildering number of books and blogs about mindfulness. Finally I downloaded Mindfulness for Dummies to my Kindle, figuring it would give me the basics. So far I like what I’m reading, but I’ve only just begun putting it into practice (as in yesterday). I plan to review this more fully in a future post.

I will now turn these goals into May goals. They’ve been helpful, and I want more time with them. 

Distraction Busters

I am sitting at my desk, fingers flying across the keyboard, while I watch out the front window at workmen in our neighbor’s yard. Two of the men are digging a hole. Why are they digging a hole? They are digging in the side yard near the street. Something to do with the water?

Dobby - A Cute Distraction

My dog is napping on my lap, making it somewhat difficult to type. I glance at the time. I want to beat the crowds to the grocery store. With guests arriving Monday, I have a largish shopping trip planned. Fortunately, San Antonians don’t seem to grocery shop much before 11:00 on a Saturday morning. Everyone has a sleep-in.

This is how my morning writing session is going, unconnected wonderings and worries interspersed with moments of actual work.

Distractions nip at me constantly. An inevitable part of the writing life I suppose. I don’t think I handle them very well. I’ve written that a life goal of mine is to attain a feeling of wholeness. I dislike feeling scattered, and this constant succumbing to distractions contributes to that feeling. 

 I want to blame external factors for this inability to sit still, to focus, to feel integrated. Aside from musing-type distractions (staring out the window), there are distractions that willpower won’t make go away. Family members like to visit for a couple of days at a time, and I like to have them, but the bed and breakfast times can disrupt an entire week — cleaning, meal planning, shopping, and the visit itself.  I have too many volunteer commitments, with lunch and evening meetings. Even one meeting in the day can make the whole day feel disrupted. Home care, cooking, the dogs, the bills. Really it’s no more than others have to contend with, and less than most. But they’re MY distractions, and I’ve got to learn to integrate them into a good, creative life, because they’re not going away.

The root of the problem is internal. A resistance to the work that I know from experience will melt away as soon as I sit down and let myself fall into it. So today I am going to list distraction-busting practices for the month of April, and re-visit them on May 1 to see how I’ve done.

• Create a routine:  This is a biggie. I have tried for years, without much success, to have a set, daily routine. Largely because of Kat’s second-shift schedule, my best writing time is between about 8:00 and 9:00 am, and then early afternoon, like between 1:00 and 3:00, and then again for a couple of hours in the evening. With meetings popping up here and there, mostly in the evening, and family visits, and Kat’s weird days off, I stick to this routine maybe two days of any given week. So, I will practice getting in three hours of writing every day, regardless of the ‘when,’ though I will try for that morning and early afternoon rhythm.  That’s my practice goal for April. A separate, long-term goal will be to set my writing times/days, and not accept volunteer commitments that conflict with those times. (This has to be long-term as some of my commitments run to the end of 2014). 

•  Keep my e-mail closed while writing.

• Keep my internet browsers closed while writing. We’ll see how this one goes. If it costs too much in willpower, I can either check out one of those internet blocking programs or write on my Alphasmart. 

• Practice mindfulness meditation.

I can think of others, but this is enough to start with.

It’s coming up on 3:00 now, and time to take Dobby — my little white ball of energy — on his walk. I feel good because I can count this as a successful writing day, and I have no meeting tonight, so I plan to get some fiction writing done. (That’s right. I have nowhere to be on a Saturday night! It’s ok because our Saturday is Monday. The life of shift work).

Postscript:  The men across the street are installing a sprinkler system. It looks like an archeological dig over there. Watching other people do manual labor makes for an almost irresistible distraction! Lucky for me they should finish today.

Money Goals and How We Save

I am writing down specific budget goals for the year. April’s not too late, right? Kat’s buy-in is critical of course, but I’ll discuss with her after I’m satisfied with them. I’ve been sort of working toward these goals already; just haven’t taken the time to record them.

Most have to do with savings — increasing what I call our “cushion” savings as well as our larger "emergency" savings. The former is a savings account where our checking is. I dip into it easily via on-line banking and use it to chunk surplus income into (Kat gets overtime, so some months are better than others), then to take money out for large unexpected expenses.

The “emergency” savings is intended to support us for a few months in case of a major event that might lead to losing a steady paycheck. It is in a separate bank which I cannot access quite as easily. I have an automatic payment plan set up with my primary bank that sends money over with each paycheck.

Automating our savings is something I wish I had done much, much sooner. Since I started doing it two years ago, the account has grown to nearly $7,000 (which equals only about three months of pared down spending). If it weren’t automated, we would be lucky to have $2,000 there. The other $5,000 would have been frittered away.

I also want to increase our targeted savings for the kitchen update. The problem with this targeted savings is the current set-up. I separate it in Quicken from our cushion savings, but in reality it’s in the same account. I will be tempted to dip into that for “cushion” type expenses if my cushion account doesn’t bear up under the weight of those pesky financial hits that seem to keep coming.

The latest is a kitty issue. Our sweet, thirteen-year-old cat Beano (Kat named her; long story) has an abscessed molar. The cost of finding this out and fixing it will probably be close to $700. We’ll find out the extent of the damage after her blood work comes back, the results of which will determine the vet’s approach to the surgery. Fortunately  we just received a bit of a bonus. I paid the last of my real estate taxes, and I had over-saved, giving me an unplanned for $400.

I’ve mentioned before that we’re in a better situation with savings and debt than we’ve ever been before, and yet my worry over this latest set-back feels about the same as it would have a few years ago. As I left the vet’s office, I worried about Miss Bean of course, but then I started worrying about the fact that we have five senior pets, and are we well enough prepared for the inevitable increase in vet expenses? (Not really). What happens if they all get sick or need surgery at the same time?

So I indulged in a little hyperventilation.

Going back to what I wrote about Murphy vs Providence, I am determined to cultivate gratitude. I will be grateful for the bonus we received just in time to defray the cost of Beano’s surgery; grateful that it wasn’t worse than it is; grateful that we are in a decent financial position and have the resources to handle home and auto and pet and health issues, even if doing so means we can’t have some of the things we want. How many people don’t have these resources? How many have to deal with problems I can’t even imagine dealing with? I say “Thank you” through gritted teeth and hope that the practice  becomes an orientation toward life -- without the gritted teeth.

So there’s my number one financial goal — to continue to practice gratitude and to trust in life’s abundance. Trust that what we need will somehow be there, and to be grateful when it is. I do have more specific goals to work toward and will post them after chatting with Kat.

Blowing Deadlines and Re-Scripting Failure

Spread before me right now are all my tools for working toward goals and organizing time. These tools go from the general to the specific -- personal mission statement, 2013 resolutions, and project pages. Project pages are what I live from. I check them every morning to orient myself. In them I list the areas of my life that require attention -- writing, volunteer commitments, household, finances, quilting, relationships, health -- and for each area I have columns for goals, tasks (a catch-all to-do list), and next step(s). Having just one or two tasks per area in the next step column makes juggling everything so much more manageable.

But here's the thing.

My project pages are full of missed deadlines. Dates crossed out, sometimes multiple times, for a project or next step. I used to be down on myself for this seeming inability to keep self-made deadlines -- especially as I am obsessive about meeting any deadline set for me by someone else. I can see the likes of Stephen Covey and Tony Robbins shaking their heads and thinking that success is not likely here; one must be accountable to oneself, or at least find a buddy to aid accountability. And while there's truth in that, I've come to realize something important.

For years I've badgered myself about blown deadlines, and my inner nag had just about convinced me that I could not perform work that is self-directed, that I needed a boss to set external goals and deadlines. Yet if I look back over the last several years, I managed to write three novels -- revising each mulitple times -- start a blog, complete five quilts, maintain a clutter-free home full of heatlhy pets, contribute a lot to volunteer efforts, keep up with friends and family, and make a mildly successful stab at a different career before deciding it wasn't for me. Not bad for suffering from nagging doubts that I can't be successful because I fail at keeping self-imposed deadlines.

Somehow my methods work (for the most part), and it occurred to me that my goal-setting and project planning are my way of plotting my life. In the writing world, we speak of plotters vs pantsers, or those who create character charts and plot outlines before writing the narrative (Elizabeth George), verses those who enter the world of a character and write the narrative by the seat of their pants (Stephen King). Many of us fall on the spectrum between those two positions. I am a plotter, but often I diverge from my carefully outlined plot and go off by the seat of my pants until I get so tangled I need to stop and readjust the outline. I do this over and over.

So I plot my life with goals and tasks and target deadlines. This works for a while until interests and circumstances intrude, and off I go. Then I get bogged down and disoriented, and back I go to my mission statement and project pages, crossing out and readjusting and moving forward with a plan for a while. Messy, messy, but it works and I'm done trying to change myself or measure myself against the plot outline, declaring myself a failure for not having stuck with it. If I am not managing to accomplish some of my objectives, then I'll figure out why and re-write the goal and/or tasks related to the goal. No failure there, and so simple. My inner nag will have to find something else to yammer about.

Personal Mission Statement

The New Year is a grand time for me because I love to make resolutions. Keeping them is of course another matter, though I usually do ok except for anything exercise related.

A few weeks ago I was browsing through Amazon's Lending Library and happened across Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People . It's been around for quite a while now (originally published in 1989), but I'd never read it, so I snagged it. It turned out to be great timing with the New Year, and I decided to take the author's advice and write a personal mission statement out of which I could make resolutions and goals for the year.

After much journaling and meditation, here's a first pass at my mission statement:

"They are happy, whose strength is in you,
in whose hearts are the roads to Zion.
As they go through the Bitter Valley
they make it a place of springs . . ."
Psalm 84

I will

Trust in God's Providence to provide all that I need to accomplish my mission on earth
Nurture all creatures in my care or within my circle of influence
Create generously and with good energy, resisting the urge to doubt myself and my creative abilities
Treat writing -- books, blogs, and articles -- as my new business, working at it with as much time and energy as I gave Real Estate
Be a good steward of all that has been given -- talents and time, possessions, money, house, and pets
Strengthen relationships
Practice hospitality, making our home a welcoming and relaxing place for Kat and me and for others
Understand the "other side" of an issue and avoid demonizing others
Defend the absent*
Live more simply
Carefully consider requests to commit my time, accepting or declining as best fits my values and goals
Follow through on commitments made to myself and others
Create habits for prayer and fitness to strengthen the spirit and body
Persevere in following principles and creating and keeping good habits

These are not goals exactly, but a way of being to live into. I have developed goals from this, and already I feel stronger in accomplishing them because I have this statement as a touchstone, something to remind me why I've developed goals in the first place and to strengthen my resolve. So thanks Stephen Covey! This exercise makes a good beginning to the new year.

* I lifted this phrase straight from Covey's book. It's simple yet quite challenging.

Changing Direction

Until today, the About Me blurb on this page read:

"Middle-aged and muddled, I am writing toward a life decision. Shall I stick with my business, or quit and do something else? There's more involved, and I've a lot of exploring to do. I won't be hasty."

The decision was made and I've moved on. As of January 1, my decision to quit real estate has become a reality. While my state license remains active, I am no longer active with the Board of Realtors and so do not have access to the MLS (Multiple Listings Service).

I've changed my introduction to reflect the new direction of this blog (not so terribly different from the old direction, just not as specific in intent). Also, I don't like to call myself muddled. Maybe I am muddled, but I don't want to be. Living with greater clarity and simplicity is a goal of mine, and seeing that I am "middle-aged and muddled" every time I pop into this page is not so great.

So this year the key word is integration and the goal is living whole. To 2013!

How Many Hours Do You Need Part II

Phew, so glad October is in the rearview. What a busy month! Kat's dad came in for a week and helped with house projects. We did make time for a little fun, including taking in the mummy exhibit at the Witte Museum and partying in the driveway with our neighbors Halloween night. Although fun, Halloween seemed subdued on our street this year. Still plenty of trick-or-treaters, but not as many as in years past. Seems that fewer of our neighbors are turning on their porch lights. Too early to tell if this is a blip or the start of a trend.

I did manage to work on the tracking hours exercise. For a week I tracked how I spent my hours, then plugged those hours into categories to see how my time is spend. A few insights:

• I had compared this exercise to tracking where your pennies go with the idea of planning a reasonable budget; however, it was really more like tracking calories with a goal of losing weight. It's a disciplinary technique. I found that I maintained focus and kept on track better with writing and project goals because I knew I would be jotting down how the time was spent. Keeping track of time will not be a daily task, but on shapeless days that require lots of self-motivation and organization, it's not a bad tool for staying focused.

• The hours of my week (a "normal" week) are fairly well balanced among the major areas of work, family, church, and community. While that seems good, my frustration is that I do not spend enough time on my job, which is writing. Some balance is good, but that's not what I need to improve. I need more intensity with my work.

• I don't have very many "normal" weeks. Some weeks or stretches of days are given over to guests or big events that come up. Yes I need more intensity with work, but sometimes I can simply accept what life is offering and not get frustrated.

• One area that is very much not in balance is Personal Growth. While I do read books that would fall in this category, things like exercise, taking classes, and working on Spanish are earning big goose eggs.

One last thing. I've been a little obsessed with time lately. I'm closer to fifty than to forty, and there's so much I want to do. My perception of time and attempts to manage it are related to this particular season of my life, a season that is busy -- fevered almost -- full of meetings and family and hopeful projects. I am determined to enjoy it for what it is while I have it. If I live long enough, the day could come when time moves slowly again and I have acres of it.

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven." (Ecclesiastes)

How Many Hours Do You Need?

Mid-October already? For some reason, September/October are such horribly busy months. Maybe it's the pleasant weather. Kat and I spend a lot of time outside catching up with yard work and other home maintenance projects.

It's also birthday time in her family, and we travel to Austin for a couple of different birthday celebrations. Then there are budgets to put together for organizations I'm involved with, specifically church and homeowners association.

But all of that is not much more than we have at other times, and much of it is fun stuff (not the budget stuff!!). So why am I rushing from one thing to the next, with so little time to spend on my transition goals, and feeling that I've ended the day with not a whole lot done?

Recently a group of us in my church discussed the stewardship of time. (The topic of stewardship is percolating in the parish -- 'tis the season). One person asked, "Do you have enough time in your week? If not, how many more hours would you need?"

How many more hours would I need? And for what? While I am still tying up loose ends from my real estate business, most of my time is not spent on real estate. So how exactly am I spending it?

I like the idea, brought up in the group, of tracking hours for a week or so to see where time is being spent. It's the same concept as tracking where your dollars are going, with the idea that it's difficult to make a realistic "budget" without knowing where the hours are currently being spent.

Our rector offered a chart for tracking hours which lists some major areas of daily living:

Work
Family
Church
Community
Personal Growth
Sleep
Other

For each I write the # of hours presently spent, the "ideal" # of hours, and the difference (+) or (-).

My ultimate goal is not to schedule my days to the minute. I wouldn't follow such a schedule any more than I'm able to follow a budget that allots money to the penny for different categories. I do hope to gain insight. If I find I'm spending 50 hours of the 168 hours in a week reading, that will tell me something about why I have "no time" to make better progress toward my goals.

By the way, the photo above is of our back yard tree, a Chinese Pistache. The color is actually from last year, closer to the end of November. At this time in San Antonio, the trees are still green and the weather warm, though cooling off some. But it SEEMS like an October picture :-)

A Blustery Day and Lightness of Being

It was a blustery day in the Hundred Acre Wood, and what a strange day it was. I found myself this early afternoon at a client's house to get a signature, and we visited for a while out on the patio near a burning chimenea. The wind blew the smoke toward me more often than not, and by the time I left I'm afraid I reeked.

Then I stopped by a house I had just sold to an out-of-towner. The seller had left a pile of brush on the sidewalk, and I thought I would do a kindness and stuff it all in a huge trash bag and haul it away. Well, my hair blew around so much I couldn't see, and the pile of brush was bigger than I'd thought. My heart sank when I realized how long this little project was going to take me, but then an angel from heaven offered to help.

Actually the neighbor walked over and offered me his trash can, which is VERY generous. We have automatic pick-up, and each household has only one --albeit very large -- bin. Being able to stuff the brush in the can made the task so much easier. Thank you kind neighbor!!

Today I feel a lightness that comes from breaking through to the other side of several stressful events. I have multiple contracts, all of which survived repair negotiations and other potential deal-breakers, and closings are on for May. On top of that, Kat's paycheck yesterday was nice and fat with overtime from Easter AND we got our tax return. The tax return will go straight to our credit card.

My parents come in tomorrow to stay with us for a few days. (I can hardly wait as I haven't seen them since Christmas). After their visit, my goal is to dig into finances and see exactly where I am with business expenses and income. I have an idea of where I am, but I haven't been tracking it like I should. That's certainly a necessary first step in assessing this business.

Welcome

I am in a place -- mentally, emotionally, and financially -- that I'd rather not be. Some things in my life are lovely -- my partner being the main joy -- and some are miserable -- the primary culprit being my business. I tend to over-think, over-worry, and work myself into confusion, and all the while, what I'm trying to figure out is how to live life well.

I'm in my mid-40's, and I'd like to have things figured out already. But that's a pretty amorphous goal, so a more focused goal, with a deadline of September, is to decide what to do about my business. This blog is part of my discernment process.

My business is real estate. I got my agent's license in Texas nearly a year and a half ago, and I am beginning to think I'm spectacularly unsuited to the business of buying and selling houses. For one, I'm struggling to break even. Expenses are high and closings (with accompanying paychecks) are few. Right now I'm working a contract for a nice house; my fee will put a good dent in credit card debt. And guess what? Today I'm watching it all fall apart, which does happen, but for me it's THE straw. (And so this blog. Cheaper than therapy).

I work hard every day, and some weeks, like the last few, I barely have time to eat, and so I'm feeling more and more disorganized and discouraged. I'm hoping this blog will help push me to organize and keep on top of finances -- I certainly need to do that to make an informed decision about my work -- and will aid me in sorting through the myriad influences that affect what I do now and may do next. Tall order for a blog, but I need to start somewhere.

So welcome to Fumbling at Joy, which really is the heart of it all. Ultimately I just want to live my life well, with as much joy as possible.