I’m here! I’m slipping in under the wire, but it still counts, right?
In honor of the success of the new Alice in Wonderland movie, I’m going to post my favorite poem, which happens to be written by Lewis Carroll. And we’ll forego the Daily Plah for today since I have exciting nothing to report. Took the dog for a long hike, and he was well behaved for 70% of it. Picked up another worm bare-handed.
Enjoy!
A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky
A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July —
Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear —
Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream —
Lingering in the golden gleam —
Life, what is it but a dream?
.
.
.
.
This poem just slays me.
March 8th, 2010
Katie Alender
Tags: poetry
I picked up a worm this morning–bare-handed! This is huge, because even though I adore my worms and devote many hours to finding them and feeding them and maintaining their expensive worm habitat, I am still afraid of the buggers and have to wear gloves to actually touch them.
But this morning, as I was walking Winston, I saw a red wiggler right in the street, which is a Very Bad Place for a worm to be. The sun was about to pop out, which is a Very Bad Situation for a worm. So what did I do? I scooped him up! Well, I tried to scoop him up. I sort of prodded him, and then he was like, “Nooo, don’t touch me,” and I tried to pick him up and he did that worm thing where they flip around and they’re all, “DON’T TOUCH ME! DON’T EAT ME! LEAVE ME ALONE!”
I am the worm whisperer, in case you were wondering.
So anyway, as he was flipping, he became three-dimensional enough for me to pluck off the asphalt. Then I cupped my hand around him and carried him out to the worm bin, where he seemed extremely happy and relieved to be set in the soft, moist soil full of yummy kitchen scraps.
I don’t know if I will continue to touch them with my bare hands, but it’s a step in the right direction, anyway.
After I dropped him off, I went back out to look for more worms in distress. The street is littered with all sorts of debris from the recent rain, some of which can look slightly wormish. So I used my bird-watching technique.
I’m warning you, this is going to come across as me being very deep. Instead of looking for movement, I look at the silence. Instead of letting your eyes dart about for birds, just observe the tree in its lack of motion. Then the small movements will pop out at you.
I tried this with the worms, but I don’t think there were any more in plain sight.
So anyway, that look at the silence thing has been part of my bird-sighting process for years, and whenever I do it, I’m struck by how zen it sounds, but how there is actually no greater application for it or any way to translate it to life.
I mean, I don’t know, maybe there is, but I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve thought, “Aha! I can solve this problem! I will just look at the silence.”
But it sounds cool. And like I said, it’s great when you’re trying to find a bird in a tree. Just don’t go trying to use it to solve any life problems, because I think you’ll be disappointed.
The Daily Plah: Day 7
Currently reading: Superfreakonomics
Other notable facts: I sewed a very cute (in my humble opinion) little clutch-type bag today. Then I tried to take it shopping, and I realized that clutch-type bags are really more for going out and looking cute than shopping in a functional manner. Maybe I’ll post a picture tomorrow or something.
March 7th, 2010
Katie Alender
Tags: nature, philosophy
We got a new sofa.
When we moved into this house four years ago, we for some reason went on a manic furniture-buying binge. Well, I guess the reason is that we wanted furniture. Our old sofa was little and our new living room was big. So we went and found a big old leather sectional, very lodgy looking and dark. (Big ol’, really, not big and old.)
My house has a view of the San Fernando Valley, home to about 1.75 million people. But the thing I love is that we’re low enough to hug the tree line, so it just looks like a big valley full of trees. In fact, until some neighbors started an aggressive tree-trimming campaign, you couldn’t even see any of the other houses in the neighborhood. Now we catch a glimpse of a porch here, a roof there.
So on one hand, having a nice, dark lodgy sofa and a tree view made it feel very much like somebody’s hunting cabin out in the wilderness. On the other hand, the sofa was ginormous, and it dominated the room, which is actually not a lodge-style room.
So we gave the old guy away and got a new, smaller sofa, as well as a chair with a footstool. (The husb has an obsession with chairs. He got the idea after watching an HGTV show about a guy who was obsessed with chairs. His goal someday is to have a special room with many cool chairs in it, where people come and… sit, I guess. So the new chair is his baby.)
We spent approximately 45 hours yesterday afternoon rearranging furniture. Small sofas are heavier than they look, by the way. We couldn’t find a configuration that satisfied both of us at once, until we decided to do something fairly random that conventional wisdom, and I, would tell you was not a good idea (hint: diagonal furniture).
It opened up the room and created negative space and all of those other home-blog-term types of things.
The problem is that, for example, I am sitting nicely upright on the new sofa typing this blog entry. Sitting UPRIGHT. On the old sofa, you would need to rig a pulley system to achieve anything like normal posture. Also, I am drinking my coffee nervously, because this sofa is not leather and therefore cannot just be hosed down.
The old sofa was like an RV–you could eat on it, sleep on it, have three close friends hang out with you (four was possible, but tight), bring your dogs, etc. etc. etc.
The new one is not the kind of thing you curl up on when you’re sick. It’s not the kind of sofa you sit and eat orange-cheese-powder snacks on. If you drop chocolate on this sofa, so help you God you’d better get it off before it melts under somebody’s body heat.
So there’s going to be an adjustment period. We need better side tables now. We need a new rug. And we need to relearn how to eat dinner at the dinner table. How to sleep in our own beds when we aren’t feeling well. How to watch TV from a few further feet away. How to keep the dog on his blanket or a lap–never the sacred upholstery.
Despite, or maybe even because of all this, I’m glad New Sofa has joined us. Change is a good thing, right?
The Daily Plah: Day 6
Currently reading: The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong, and Unclutter Your Life in One Week by Erin Rooney Doland (which totally got me to go through my yoga clothes and coat closet yesterday and clear out the ones I don’t use)
Song of the day: I don’t have one yet. I’m sitting in awed silence on the new sofa, you see.
Other notable facts: I was just going to say it looks like rain, but then I turned around and saw the sun shining on everything. So never mind!
March 6th, 2010
Katie Alender
Tags: domesticness, life
We’ve made it to Day 5 of 31 Days of Blogging at Least on the Weekdays or Else! Hurray, hurray! Thanks to everyone who’s dropping by to read and/or comment. Blogging is just another one of those things that feels impossible when you aren’t doing it–like exercise or sticking to your writing quotas.
Today, I’m going to borrow a meme from half the blogosphere and do seven quick takes.
— 1 —
So, you know how I’ve been whining all week about my stomach? Well, it turns out I’m not as plain-old-whiny as we all thought. I found out last night that my new salad dressing, which I’ve been using every day, is part of the FDA salmonella recall. My relief that I’m not just whiny is tempered by the sad fact that I’ve been flirting with food poisoning all week. Ironically, Little Sis actually dropped the jar yesterday, almost destroying it. (She’s such a hero.) But I foiled her efforts to save me by making her put it all in a plastic container.
— 2 —
Did you watch The Office last night? It was pretty funny. Not the best episode. Maybe because so much of it took place outside of the office itself, the pacing seemed a little off. But we were LOL’ing at the lactation consultant and the part with the other baby. And that’s all I’ll say, in case you haven’t seen it!
— 3 —
In my efforts to finish a quilt that I’m making for a baby who was born in November (time management issues? Me? Never!), I’m attempting to make my own bias tape using the continuous method. Alas, this only makes you the wide strip that you then have to iron into bias tape–almost twenty feet of it, for this project–but you get to use your own fabric, unlike buying premade stuff from the store. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Update: FAIL. Back to the drawing board (or the fabric store).
— 4 —
Last night, my cell phone rang with a blocked number. When I said hello, a guy said, all soft and romantic, “Hey, you.” And I was like, “Hello?” and he was like, “Hey, you.” And I was like, “I think you have the wrong number.” And he was like (in a normal voice), “Oh, sorry.” So then at 3 a.m., my phone rings again and I pick it up and say, “Hello?” and I hear, “Hey.” And I’m like, “No, it’s just me again.” And he’s like, “Oh, sorry.”
First of all, woe betide the young lady this guy is actually trying to reach. At 3 a.m.! There is only one reason to call someone all Hey-you-style at 3 a.m.–but I do applaud his consistency. Although I hope he doesn’t call me anymore.
— 5 —
A couple of months ago, I got this grand notion that I wanted to start seeing lots more movies. I totally planned to be educated on the Oscar nominees. But I’m not. I’ve only seen about two of them. So I’m not even sure I’m going to watch the show this year, although eating cheeseburgers and watching the Oscars is one of my most cherished (though admittedly least meaningful) traditions.
— 6 —
Happy birthday to my wonderful father! I’m sure he doesn’t read my blog, but I wanted to put it out there anyway.
— 7 —
And we’ll finish with…
The Daily Plah: Day 5
Currently reading: The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong, and Unclutter Your Life in One Week by Erin Rooney Doland, who is part of the mahvelous Unclutterer blog
Song of the day: All the Pretty Horses, sung by Laura Gibson… kind of haunting. Fits my writing mood.
Book 2 progress: Coming along. No impressive page numbers for you yet, but it’s progressing, I promise!
Other notable facts: No notable facts. Move along!
March 5th, 2010
Katie Alender
Tags: 7quicktakes, list
I watch a lot of reality TV. I tend to stay away from shows that are just sitcom-style reality (sit-real?)–you know, The Hills,Keeping Up With the Kardashians,Jersey Shore, any kind of real housewives anywhere. I like shows where somebody learns something or is inspired–either me (Project Runway, Top Chef) or the participants.
Which brings me to my ultimate guilty pleasure: Wife Swap.
The format is basically this: two women from drastically different households switch places for two weeks. For the first week, they live the life of the other woman. For the second week, each wife makes up a set of rules that force the other family to live by her rules. The drama comes when you have a control-freak personal trainer switching with a laid-back competitive eater. Or a shallow, pampered shopaholic trading place with a farmer. Or a devoutly religious woman switching place with a family of more, ahem, relaxed morals.
At the end of the two weeks, the pairs of husbands and wives meet up across a table and talk about the experience. About half the time, someone gets up and leaves in a huff, but they always come back to finish up. (You can just picture the producers saying, “Now, come on, you’ve made it this far. And the contract clearly states that if you want your $25,000, you have to do every singe thing we tell you to do.”)
Wife Swap is on about forty times a day, so there’s never a shortage of episodes to watch. But my style of watching the show has evolved. Instead of watching beginning, middle, and end, for a total of 42 minutes of program time, about eight of ten times, I watch the first ten minutes and then skip ahead to the last ten, for about fifteen minutes of program time. Why? Because those are the bits of the show when something changes.
In a vast majority of the episodes, the middle chunk is all drama–kids whining, dads whining, moms crying, everybody yelling… it’s all filler. The interesting part is finding out whether the experience changed them, and how they think about it later.
Notice I said that I skip ahead in about 80% of the episodes. The other 20% bring something extra to the table: characters who draw you in. Unexpected connections between the women and their surrogate families. Revelations, growth, moments of self-reflection. Sometimes a woman, faced with having the other family live by her rules, realizes that she doesn’t particularly like her rules. Sometimes a fundamentalist housewife realizes that the biker family she thought were heathens are actually (gasp!) Christians, just like she is!
I think this is an extremely valuable lesson for a writer. A novel chronicles events in a character’s life. It cannot be an interesting beginning, a bunch of filler, and an interesting ending. The middle needs to be about more than just whining, crying, and yelling. You need to have a story. Once you get the formula down, as a consumer of books or TV or movies, you find yourself looking for the next plot point. The next moment when something’s going to change, or somebody’s going to grow. It’s the job of an author to make sure that a book is so full of those characters and moments that the reader doesn’t want to skip the middle.
And on that note, I’d better get to work!
The Daily Plah: Day 4
Currently reading: The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong
Song of the day: Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, the Nina Simone version
Book 2 progress: Wrote a new opening chapter. Ready to get a move on!
Other notable facts: I’m so excited for the return of The Office tonight!
March 4th, 2010
Katie Alender
Tags: confessions, tv, writing
The Daily Plah: Day 3
Currently reading: Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr (I should note that I read in fits and starts throughout the day, so it is through no fault or deficiency on a book’s part if it takes me 3-4 days to get through it)
Book 2 progress: I am restructuring the top of the book, so alas, I am not yet past page 34 *mopes*
Other notable facts: I cooked last night! I am a terrible cook, so this is a real triumph. I don’t know if there’s a name for what I made. It’s basically a stack of things: eggplant, roma tomatoes, ricotta cheese, chicken, mozzarella cheese, and chopped mushrooms. It was very delicious. For Little Sis, I made a veggie version: eggplant, roma tomatoes, ricotta cheese, big mushroom slices, sliced artichoke, and mozzarella cheese. Most of the cooking I do attempt ends up being Italian. I am not comfortable pan-frying, so everything is baked.
Contest winner: The winner of the purple veggie bag is CHLOE! Congrats to Chloe. Stay tuned for more contests, coming soon!
For the past few days, my stomach has been sort of jumpy, so I haven’t made myself exercise. But today I think that excuse is tired. So I’m sitting here at the computer in my workout clothes, waiting for a sufficient post-breakfast interval to pass so I can hop onto the machines. I’ve created a little circuit for myself, since I am easily bored. Recumbent bike, trampoline, treadmill, trampoline, recumbent bike. Equal time on each. I’ve been aiming for ten minutes, but today I might do eight.
Exercise is like writing–I dread it, I whine about it, I do everything I can to avoid it–I even get all suited up for it and then find something else to do. But once I start doing it, I’m happy. I even enjoy myself. And when I can get into a schedule, it’s even easier.
I remember back in my teens and early twenties, if I wanted to lose ten pounds, I’d exercise for a month and then stop, at which point I would lose weight. It doesn’t quite work that way once you hit your mid-twenties. You exercise for a month and stop, and you gain five pounds because your body started demanding more food to compensate for the calories you burned. By the time you stop exercising, you’re in the habit of eating more, so you can’t stop.
When it comes to eating, I’m like a goldfish: I’ll eat until I pop. I read an article yesterday saying that kids are up to three snacks a day (plus meals), which is basically a constant stream of food. I think what happens is we adopt these habits (like snacking) when we’re determined to be healthier–so we snack on almonds, or an apple… and gradually that morphs to string cheese and two slices of ham, or a bowl of cereal. And the idea of not eating between meals feels like the greatest deprivation.
How much easier it would be to break out of these patterns if we’d never started them to begin with!
But, as I try to remind myself on at least a daily basis, there are people in the world with REAL problems, so there’s no use letting any of it get to you.
Happy Wednesday! Can you believe I made it three whole days? The quest for 31 continues!
Thanks for dropping by!
March 3rd, 2010
Katie Alender
Tags: fitness, food, whining
Welcome to Day 2 of 31 Days of Blogging at Least on the Weekdays or Else!
So, I am writing this post late Monday for Tuesday morning. This is helpful because I can update progress at the end of the day, whereas at the beginning of the day, there is obviously nothing done yet.
The Daily Plah: Day 2
Currently reading: still Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
Song running through my head all day: I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas*
Book 2 progress: I am examining story, character, and motivations today and therefore have not increased my page count. No, for real! I did work. Just not pagecountable work.
Other notable facts: Much laundry has been done, much food procured, many dishes washed. The house regains its sense of balance. Also, I learned that if a salad says, “Use by 3-1-10,” use it BY that date and not ON that date, because (if you are me) you will get mild food poisoning and spend the whole afternoon on the couch whining to your dog and rubbing your food baby. (You know what a food baby is, don’t you? If you don’t, this should educate you: food baby at Urbandictionary.com.)
Anyway, I’m much better now. But I had a headache all day. Iffy food almost always gives me a headache. Little Sis tried to help me get rid of it by massaging my head and pressuring my pressure points. While this happened, I discovered that I can still make her burst into uncontrollable peals of laughter, just like when she was a baby and I would fake-sneeze at her. My new method isn’t much more sophisticated: while lying on the couch with her looking down at my face (upside down from her POV), I open my eyes.
Yep, I open my eyes. And she laughs until she cries.
Aren’t little sisters the best?
And then, as an added bonus, Winston came to sit on my stomach, and we played a fun game of “Winston tries to stick his tongue in my mouth”. Despite all of the many co-dependent ways in which I overindulge and baby my dog, letting him lick my teeth isn’t on the list, so it got to be a bit like a game of Whack-a-mole. Kind of.
So anyway, as soon as she pressed on my pressure point (Little Sis, not the dog), I would open my mouth to screech in pain, and Winston would leap forth to try to stick his tongue in my mouth. This would make my eyes pop open, which would send Little Sis into a hysterical burst of laughter.
I don’t know why I’m sharing all of this on the internet except that it’s a little slice of life that shows how much fun it is to have Little Sis here living with us. It turns out that even though I once threw her across the room (ah, no big deal, she doesn’t even remember), and she totally upstaged me in my only good photo from senior prom, there is still a bond between us.
I can relate this back to writing because I write books about sisters, you see.
Happy Tuesday!
Contest time!
Since you made it this far, leave a comment on this post to win a handmade tote/resuable grocery bag by yours truly. You don’t get to choose the bag, because it’s already made, but it is a cute bag. I would keep it and use it myself if I didn’t already have fifteen (and one in the works).
As you can see, it is dark blue with purple vegetables on it (don’t adjust your monitors).
* It is a huge pet peeve of mine to use contractions incorrectly as in this song title: “I Gotta Feeling.” “Gotta” is short for “got to.” It is LONG for “got a.” You see this a lot with “wanna.” Short for “want to.” Long for “want a.” There can be no other explanation than this: the Black Eyed Peas just GOT to feeling, y’all! BTW, I once saw them at the airport and they are all little tiny people.
March 2nd, 2010
Katie Alender
Tags: contest, family, siblings
Okay, I’m resolving RIGHT NOW that I am going to blog every day–at least every weekday–for the month of March.
(Cut to: March 18th post apologizing for not blogging. No, no! Mustn’t think that way!)
To be honest, I don’t expect the blogosphere to be hanging on my every word (although if you were, I would use a lot of delicious words like “mellifluous” to reward you), but I myself could use a little bit of public accountability as I tackle my revisions for book 2. So, here goes Day 1 of my official… 31 Days of Blogging at Least on the Weekdays or Else effort.
If you stick around, you will find that I am going to give away prizes, etc., and tell a lot of amusing stories about my dog. Which is TOTALLY worth it, right?
…Right?
Well, let’s see if we can have a good time, anyway.
Today’s post will be about one thing I am doing right this year: reading more. And I mean a LOT more. To paraphrase Stephen King, part of your job as a writer is to read a lot. Since in 2009, I read only a miserly 24 books, I decided that 2010 would be a 40-book year. Now it seems like it is shaping up to be a 60-70 book year, and I am pleased as punch. Not only because I love setting random goals and meeting them, but because I am reading some fabulous stuff and it has me very excited.
I urge you to befriend me on GoodReads and then you will be able to see what kind of reading I’m up to. My basic rule is not to read the same type of book twice in a row–no two YA books, no two memoirs, no two pop pscyhology books or women’s fiction or what-have-you. It keeps things varied and keeps me moving through the bookshelves.
So without further ado, here is the list of books I finished in 2010, as of yesterday:
1. Jane-Emily, by Patricia Clapp
2. The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx
3. The Lucky Guide to Mastering Any Style: Creating Iconic Looks and Making Them Your Own by Kim France
4. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar: And Six More, by Roald Dahl
5. Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, by Michael Pollan
6. Child of My Heart, by Alice McDermott
7. Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey among Hasidic Girls, by Stephanie Wellen Levine
8. Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous (actually by editor Beatrice Sparks)
9. Lucia, Lucia, by Adriana Trigiani
10. Wasteland, by Francesca Lia Block
11. Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned, by Alan Alda
12. Silver Phoenix: Beyond The Kingdom of Xia, by Cindy Pon
13. Twenty Boy Summer, by Sarah Ockler
14. The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin
15. Unhooked, by Laura Sessions Stepp
16. Beautiful Creatures, by Kami Garcia and Margie Stohl
Look! Look at all them books! I am very proud of myself, not to mention enjoying my reading project immensely.
Now here is some information I’ll include every day. For lack of a better word springing to mind, I will call it “The Daily Plah”, as in, “You know, that word, plah, what word am I thinking of?”
The Daily Plah: Day 1
Currently reading: Wicked Lovely, by Melissa Marr
Book 2 starting point (as I cannot report progress as I have not yet started working today): page 34
Other notable facts: Household has reached critically low levels of clean clothing, clean dishes, and food. Will probably have to do something about this, especially as the husb has resorted to eating MY yogurt since he’s all out.
Happy Monday! See you tomorrow!
March 1st, 2010
Katie Alender
Tags: books, list, reading
Book 2 notes are in from the Delightful Editor! So I’m going to spend a week or so doing a preliminary plan and then start revising. I’m so excited. As usual, her insight is great and she has a fabulous way of pulling me back when I “cheat.” Her suggestions and questions force me to look at the root of the problem and deal with it, rather than patching over it. There’s something about an additional point of view that energizes me!
In preparation for the rewrite, I rearranged my sewing room. The room is a decent size, but the space is kind of awkward, so I’ve always had problems finding a place for my desk and sewing table. I think I came up with a good configuration… my little sister approves, so that’s good!
Speaking of Little Sis, she’s been here for two weeks and is doing wonderfully. She’s still looking for a job, but I love having her around. We have the same goofy sense of humor, and she puts up with me very nicely. She must be a saint. I keep thinking of “Emma,” where Mr. Knightley apologizes to Emma for always telling her what’s what and what to do. I’m like a less apologetic version of Mr. Knightly, ha ha. If she would just learn to close the garage door when she drives away, life would be perfect!
Thank you all for your comments, and I’m sorry I haven’t been good about replies. I don’t like feeling invisible at a blog, and I don’t like the thought of making others feel invisible. So booooo on me. I will make a real effort to get better!
I’ll wrap this post up with a quote I just read that really resonated with me. It’s from the introduction to the book Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers by Stephanie Wellen Levine. The line itself is from Carole Gilligan:
Americans place a high value on individuality and independence, but these values quickly become hollow in the absence of practices that cultivate an inner voice and relationships that encourage its expression.
This really struck a chord with me. Lately, the thought running through my head has been, how many more Jennifer Anistons and Elin Nordegrens and countless other women have to be mistreated in their relationships for our culture to realize that good looks and money don’t equal the promise of a happy life?
February 11th, 2010
Katie Alender
Tags: bgdd2, family, revising
So, some of you are very organized people. You have no problem maintaining a schedule, keeping your food healthy, getting a moderate amount of exercise, and keeping everything in your home in its proper place.
This post is not about people like you. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read on–in fact, keep reading, because you will find lots of opportunities to be happy with yourself and the discipline you have cultivated.
If you’re the other kind of person, like me, keeping all of the plates spinning isn’t quite so easy. Tending to one plate generally means two or three others slow down or come crashing to the ground: if I’m on a deadline, I’m not exercising, AND my house starts to look like the intake at a Goodwill drop-off, AND I eat marshmallow and Diet Coke fondue every twenty-five minutes (that’s not really what I eat… but it’s the nutritional equivalent). Or, if I’m exercising and eating well, I don’t seem to have time for anything else. Or, if the house is clean and dinner is cooked by, you know, dinner time, everything else falls apart. Or, if I’m keeping up with Facebook and Twitter, I’m unable to accomplish anything else.
I think this is because, as writers, we are constantly striving to find new and better ways to procrastinate. So doing something else for a while isn’t enough–we need to find a way to make that thing the ONLY thing we can do. That way, nobody can blame us when we don’t hit our wordcount.
For 2010, my goal is to find balance. Not just to concentrate on one of these things, but to divide my focus among all of them. And–gasp!–to do it well enough to keep my household running (and fed), my health in a normal human range, and my work schedule efficient and effective.
Even though it sounds impossible, I think that might not be the case. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that once you get all of your plates spinning, things actually become simpler.
The reason for this, I suspect, is the concept that we procrastinators try very much to avoid: self-discipline supports itself. It’s kind of an all-or-nothing proposition. If you’re always saying yes, it’s much harder to say no in one area. But if you’re able to temper all of your yes with a healthy sprinkling of no, you get in the practice of it.
At least that’s what I hope, and that’s why I’ve been so scarce lately. I’ve added a little no to my yes, and my house is getting cleaner and my body is getting healthier (that’s the plan, anyway), and my to-do list is getting done.
…Just in time for my editor’s notes to come and blow everything out of the water! But I’m hoping that will just be one more spinning plate.
February 3rd, 2010
Katie Alender
Tags: life, superbusy
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