Tag: resolutions

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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.

 

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2018 Goal #1: Finish My MFA

 

Let me tell you about my education.

I didn’t go to kindergarten. I started first grade when I was almost six years old. I’ve been in school almost without stop for the forty years since.

I have roughly eleven million undergraduate credits. (Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But not by much!)

See, I used to live in this teeny tiny rural Nevada town. The teeny tiny rural community college there partnered with the University of Nevada to offer  two undergraduate degrees. One in education and one in social work.

I got about 3/4 of  the way through both of them.

Here’s what happens at the 3/4 mark: you have to do an internship.

Here’s what happened to me, twice: I panicked.

I didn’t want to be a classroom teacher OR a social worker.

I wanted to be a writer. So I found a low residency Bachelor of Fine Arts in Writing at Goddard College and did two semesters of that.

Then we moved to Reno and I suddenly had access to a big fat state university. So I switched and started working toward a BA in English. Only some of my credits didn’t transfer over, so I had to take MORE courses.

So, I have a LOT of credits. Lots and lots and lots.

And no degree. For reasons.

A big reason is purely psychological. For my whole life being a school teacher has been my Plan B. If I can’t hack it as a writer, I’ll teach.

And if I have a degree? Well, I start to run out of reasons not to engage Plan B if Plan A isn’t feeding my kidlets.  So, I just keep writing, and I don’t put myself in  a situation where teaching in a classroom is a real option.

So I got within 9 credits of graduating and kind of stalled.

And then, about 18 months ago, I was offered something kind of special.

I was accepted into a Master of Fine Arts program. The school was starting a new concentration (Writing for Children and Young Adults) and I was a good fit–even without my undergraduate papers.

So, in January I’ll go to school for 8 days and start my fourth and final semester. As long as I get the work done, I’ll finish up and graduate with an MFA in August.

You know, as long as I don’t find a way to stall out at the finish line again.

I’ll write more about this some time soon, but I sold a book at the start of the last semester. So I don’t actually need my Plan B. That takes some of the self-impossed pressure off.

So, goal #1 for 2018 is to stay out of my own way and actually graduate.

So here are some action steps for meeting this goal:

  1. Show up to my residencies. (One in January to start my last semester, and the last one in August, where I’ll graduate.)
  2. Stay on top of my work. That means not waiting until the end of each month to get my packet work done. I’ll use my planner to help organize my time.
  3. Reach out to school friends when I’m feeling overwhelmed. (My instant response to school overwhelm is always: why am I doing this? I should drop out.)
  4. I have packets of work due once a month for the five months of the semester. I’ll work this week on coming up with some ideas for rewarding myself when I’ve turned them in.

P.S. Maybe when I’m done, I’ll see about those 9 credits and get my BA, too.  Who knows.