Tag: 2018

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2018 Goal #5: Curate My Life

Please, please tell me I’m not the only one like this.

I crave order and minimalism and pretty spaces–but my life doesn’t reflect that AT ALL.

In fact, I think it’s a safe bet that the gap between what I want my my home to be and how it actually looks is the widest of any in my life. (Except maybe my desire to run an Ironman and my current lack of athleticism.)

My home reflects a lot of what’s going on inside it. It’s chaotic. My husband and I are squarely part of the sandwich generation. We live with our 13-year-old daughter, our 24-year-old son who has autism, AND Kevin’s parents who both have dementia.

Plus I work from home.

We have too much stuff. Clutter is drowning us. The idea of moving is daunting because . . . yeah, we’re talking a LOT of stuff. A whole lot.

My daughter, Adrienne, is an art history major at Boise State University and, as a result, I’ve been fascinated for a while by the idea of curation.

I have things that I love. Really, truly love.

Vintage things. Clothes that make my heart sing. Art. A whole collection of thrifted Le Creuset pots and pans. Things that I really, truly love.

And they’re totally overshadowed by things that need to GO.

My biggest project for this entire year is going to be that curation. Not just my house. My whole life. Hacking away at the junk to get to just the sweetest, best parts. The stuff I really wanted and need and crave and love.

It starts with a deep, deep decluttering.  I don’t want anything that I don’t adore. (And even utilitarian things can be things I adore, I’m convinced.)

I actually have a plan for this. I’ll be writing more about it soon.

Meantime, I have a mini pre-goal of getting my own personal spaces (my work area, my closet, my bathroom) gutted and cleaned and pretty. And decluttered.

Curated.

Stay tuned!

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2018 Goal #4: Treat Myself Like the Athlete I Want to be.

This goal is the hardest for me to write about. It started out as an old stand-by New Year’s Resolution. One that I’ve had, at some level, every year since I was 13 years old.

Lose weight.

True story, I’ve been stalled here for most of a week. Because weight is a touchy issue for me. And I have a hard, hard time making a goal that involves weight loss.

So, let’s start with a little history:

Two years ago I weighed 368 pounds and I was pretty miserable. I had undiagnosed arthritis in my hips that was causing so much pain, I’d started to honestly worry about my mobility. I needed a C-PAP machine to breathe in my sleep.

Then my mother-in-law was hospitalized and in nursing homes for most of a year due to an illness that was caused by her life-long habit of heavy smoking. As I was sitting with her one day, I thought to myself that if she’d only quit smoking when she was my age (in her 40s), she’d be healthy in her 70s.

And I had a serious light-bulb moment. If I wanted to be healthy and mobile and alive in my 70s, I needed to do something big. Now.

So, I had weight  loss surgery in July 2015.

That was a hard decision. Because I believed (and still believe) in body acceptance and health at every size. But I made it and in about six months I lost 120 pounds. I stopped losing weight and I’ve maintained that loss for 18 months.

So, that’s where I am now. The pain from my arthritis has dramatically decreased. I don’t have sleep apnea anymore. I feel better. And I’m not losing anymore weight as a direct result of my surgery.

And I have  this Big Fat Goal of finishing an Iron Man when I’m 48 (that’s two to three years.)

It’s so tempting to make ‘lose weight’ a goal for this year.  I mean, it feels comfortable. Like I said, I’ve had it as a New Year’s Resolution since I was in junior high school.

Even when I was deep into the body acceptance movement and would never have SAID out loud or even written down that my goal was to lose weight, the desire was there.

Even when I never would have pronounced that goal out loud or written it on any list.

It was always there.

But the truth is that my REAL goal is to treat my body in a way that supports my athletic goal. Athletes exercise regularly. They train their bodies. Athletes eat clean and healthy.

My goal for 2018 is to give my body the support it needs. To treat myself like the athlete I want to be.

Instead of having some big number in mind, I’m just  going to focus on reminding myself that being an athlete starts now. Eat clean. Exercise. Hydrate. And, as always, just see what happens.

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2018 Goal #2: Sell Another Book

I’ve tweaked this a little from the original post.

In July 2017 I sold a book to MacMillan. (That MacMillan — the big old amazing publisher (!!!) You’ll be hearing more about this, I’m sure.) Not only did they buy the book I tried to sell them, they bought ANOTHER book, too, which I haven’t written yet.

So my original 2018 goal was to write that second book. Because A) I’ve already been paid for it and B) it’s contractually due in January 2019.

But as I started to write THIS post, I realized–meh.

I’m going to hit that goal, no matter what. I don’t need a boost. I’ve got a lot of outside support for finishing that book. Like I said, I’ve been paid for it. My career depends on it. I have an editor and an agent expecting it from me.

But I have this really big, over-arching life goal: I want to have a writing career, not just one or two books.

So my goal for 2018 is to sell another book. One I’m not already contracted for.

This isn’t my favorite type of goal, actually. Because I don’t have control over whether or not a publisher buys any of my work. My real goal should be to write a book I’m not contracted for.

And if I do that, I’ll consider my goal met.

But I also want to let the universe know that I’d really like to sell that book.

(Please and thank you.)

I’m not 100 percent sure what that book will be. I have a couple of projects at various levels of doneness that I might finish up and run past my agents. Or maybe I’ll be struck with a shiny new idea.

Here are my action steps for this goal for 2018:

  1. Write for 10 minutes everyday. This has been my daily goal for, oh, most of my adult life. It works really well for me. But, with a contracted book and enough income from writing THAT book that I don’t need a day job right now, I’m obviously writing way more than 10 minutes a day. So I’m going to add this as 10 minutes a day of writing toward this goal.
  2. Figure out what I’ve already got done. I have a few projects that are at different states of doneness, like I said. I need to get organized with those and evaluate them.
  3. Look at my new ideas. I have a whole notebook full of ideas for books I haven’t done any work on. I need to take a look at those and see if one of them is right for this goal.
  4. Start A Novel Idea on this new project. A Novel Idea is my method of writing. It works spectacularly well for me. I used it to write the book that I sold last summer. I know how to write a book. The key is to not try to skip steps.