It's Time

My blog title is a double-entendre.  I chose the title "finally" first, seeing as how I've been missing for so long.  Then I thought of what's been on my mind most over the last several days, and that is definitely "time."

Now in my seventh week of rehab, I've finally got up the energy to do something.  After all, this surgery carries a six-week sentence of no work for those gainfully employed.  No driving, no long trips if someone else is driving, all kinds of fun stuff.  Of course, I never felt like doing any of that anyway.  I can't really remember what all I've done over the last six weeks.  Nothing of any real value for sure.

So "It's Time" means today I feel like venturing back out into the land of the living, at least for a little while.  My doctor recommends it.

The other side of the title is that I'm organizing my time.  After so many days of not caring about the hours and minutes wasted, never to be recaptured, my time has become a rare jewel, something for spending wisely.

I'm working on simple things starting back -- gardening, a little creative cooking, a bit of shopping all on my own without a designated driver, and this meager attempt to get back to writing.

To my surprise, last week at therapy three other patients admitted to me that loss of creativity was the hardest part of the whole ordeal.  I thought I was the only one who felt this.  One said she'd sit at her sewing  machine in her beautiful craft room, look around, and get up and walk away.  She couldn't bring herself to do what had given her so much joy, crafting beautiful projects.

Another gave up her needlework, intricate intarsia knitting as gifts for her family and friends.

The third admitted it was even hard for her to read, her favorite pastime.  I told her I had this same problem but was finding solace in listening to audio books.  There were days I did nothing but listen through my ear pods to one book after another on my living room couch or bed.  What a blessing this has been to me.  Listening to a melodic female voice tell a good story helped me more than anything over these past weeks.  I became very picky about book narrators.  I'd throw a book back simply because the reader was bad.

I'm still listening to my books.  Sometimes when cycling on the machine in therapy, or walking the laps prescribed for me on the rubberized track.  When I think of it, I'm probably in the best physical shape I've been in for years, just with some pain still.

My rehab friends and I chalk up the loss of creativity mainly to the pain meds, which are sorely needed for longer than we anticipated.  This is not a wimpy surgery and recovery.  The robust men complain as much as us females.  It changes you.

I'm planning to shoot some photos of my gardens, my knitting projects, other things I'm working on, and reconnecting with the world.  It feels good...and long awaited.

Evernote for Organizationally Challenged

Today I'm cleaning out my email boxes.  Purging.  Acting on.  Archiving.  Scheduling.

I'm a ZeroInbox-er.  Google "Inbox Zero."

I read Daniel Gold's book: Evernote: The unofficial guide to capturing everything and getting things done. 2nd Edition.

And David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.  Popularly known on as the popular GTD philosophy gone viral.

Gold's book shows how GTD works hand-in-hand with Evernote for optimum performance.  Truly Getting Things Done.

My email program is as good as I can get it, but some major flaws of my own keep it from really working for me.  I keep my inbox clean by daily sending messages to the respective folders I've assigned them.  Some messages are automatically filtered to their folders, but the bulk of my mail I prefer to process as it arrives.

I use folders to sort the daily inbox messages.

1. DO / READ
2. REFERENCE
3. PENDING
4. ARCHIVE

This works...that is, if I follow through and go to those folders regularly and take action.  That's where the system falters.  My own fault.  Eventually I purge the messages that are expired, too late to act on.  

This is no way to keep up with life's happenings and opportunities.  

I'm now forwarding all of my important email messages to my Evernote.  Yes, you can email to your Evernote Inbox.

Why is this different? Well, because Evernote operates on "notes."  I use Evernote to schedule projects  and work on projects.  I can work in Evernote all day, even send items to Facebook and Twitter.  Work back and forth with Feedly and my news feeds, sending important news I want to keep or act on in Evernote.  I also blog on Evernote and send to Blogger.  It's my office desktop.

I don't do New Year's Resolutions, per se, but I do set goals. Organization is my top 2012 goal.

My Family History Memoir is almost finished with the help of Evernote, where I store all of my downloaded documents and research.  This is handy when I'm away from home with Evernote on my smart phone.  I'll be visiting the Cincinnati Library soon, and instead of carrying boxes and physical notebooks, I'll just use my phone...well, and my laptop.  Gotta love technology.

Back to organizing.  One last word.  I do not work for Evernote.  I'm just one of thousands, maybe millions, on the web talking about how they use it.  Check 'em out!

Feedly Friday

With fresh snow outside my window, I'm spending today reading my organized "magazine" of the past week's news feeds for all of my blogs and sites of interest.  I use Feedly as my assistant.  Through the week, while I'm writing and reading books, both enjoyable fiction and research oriented, I try not to get waylaid by the constant incoming streams of updates.

You know the deal.  Click on just one attractive link and end up somewhere in cyberspace you don't know how you got to, while your work got left sitting in Word three hours ago and is now locked and frozen because that's what Word does when you leave for too long.  

I like using Feedly to take care of all my stuff until I'm ready to devote time to reading it.  This solution also works better for concentrating on the incoming new feeds.  I can save any posts to read later while I'm scanning through the week's bundle, especially if they're long or involved, while I take a few minutes to read shorter ones and delete as I go.  

Feedly also displays my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and youtube streams in a sidebar, providing a sole interface for gathering information from all my venues.  I like efficiency.  Comes from my years of ladder-climbing in the institutions and corporations of working-world America.  

Feedly has made a big difference in my weekly workflow and production.  It's a keeper.  You can find it at feedly.com   

Watch for my upcoming post on Evernote which is my other sidekick for keeping me sane.

Eat, Pray, Sleep

Adding to my quest for the good life, a good night's sleep.

No, this isn't about the "fall-back" time change yesterday.  It's about my journey over the last three years to find that elusive good night's sleep.  In light of all the recent news on America's sleep deprivation problems, looks like I haven't been alone.  Profits on prescription sleeping meds soared to $3 billion this year (http://maricopacountyhomeshows.com/category/lifestyle/mattress-firm.html), and up until this past July I was contributing to those revenues to the big drug manufacturers.

2011 has been my banner year for going drug-free.  Not entirely by choice, but because my body chemistry doesn't mesh well with medicines.  The worst part is coming off these heavily addictive chemicals. Be prepared to suffer is all I can say to anyone who chooses to go prescription drug-free.

The longer you take the meds, the worse the coming-off symptoms.  The first drug I weaned off of, an antidepressant, actually listed "death" as one of the side effects of discontinuing it.  That's good news for the drug industry; what a way to stop innocent people from quitting your drugs. It's like being held at gunpoint.   I managed to do it, though, by sheer determination and my belief that the human mind is capable of incredible accomplishments.

After months of getting myself off that first drug, the sleeping med I'd been prescribed began fighting against me.  I had to do the same thing, but this time I visited a local osteopath I'd seen in the past, and coming off this last drug wasn't as bad, using the protocol he gave me.  I was prepared for months of sleepless nights, up to 48-hour stretches of lying in bed staring at the ceiling, because on the sleeping pills, if your prescription ran out or you left home without them, that's what happened.  That's how addicted your body and mind become.

Off the pills, in just a few nights, my body began returning to its previous, before-drug state.  I'd fall asleep for a few hours and then wake up.  After a few weeks, I began falling back to sleep when I woke up.  Every night is different at this point, depending on my mental state.  If I can control my thoughts and get my brain to relax sufficiently, I have a pretty restful night.

And that's the point.  It takes your input.  It's different than just popping a pill and drifting into unconsciousness.  You have to "learn" about your body, your mind.  What a concept.

The good part is that sleep without drugs is so good.  Natural sleep feels great.  I'd forgotten what it was like.

I'm not advising anyone here to stop taking your drugs.  That's a personal decision I made for myself with the help of a medical practitioner, lots of research, and natural alternatives.

As thinking, alive human beings, we need to be in control of our bodies and minds.  We should be vigilant about taking care of ourselves first, before we turn our lives over to someone else.  We should know ourselves better than anyone and work at listening to what our bodies and minds try to tell us.  Those subtle messages we're usually too busy to pay attention to.  I think we jump too fast and too impatiently into the grinder.  I know I did.

Just sayin'...

Your Personal Fairy Tales

Sunday night I watched the premiere of  ABC's new TV show, Once Upon a Time.  The programs I don't like on the tube heavily outweigh those I do like, so I was surprised that I got caught up in this reenactment of Snow White with some interesting--and humorous--side trips.

The real-life story played alongside the fantasy captured my attention, and I'm looking forward to the continuing  Sunday-night saga.  I already care what happens to the characters.  I want to see justice triumph, watch both the real and fairy-tale wicked witches go down. As they always do in fantasy.

I applaud ABC for the creative talent at work here.

Then yesterday morning, I opened my email, and as I ran down the list spotted my Story Circle Network's weekly newsletter, "Women's Wise Words & A Week's Worth of Writing Prompts."  Surprise!  This week's subject.  Fairy Tales.  

Fairy tales are like a pair of glasses—not the rose-colored kind that make everything look wonderful, but the kind that bring reality into focus. Like good bifocals, they help us discern the way the world really is up close, without losing the biggger picture of the way the world was intended to be... The world of fairy tales sharply reveals that what we see around us is not all there is... Fairy tales offer hope. And hope, like nothing else in the world, inspires us and motivates us to keep going ~ Nicole Johnson

Then the writing prompts for the week, including the one I pick.

Do you have a fairy tale within you?  If so, this would be a good week to start putting it down on paper...crafting it so that it brings reality into focus but holds fast to the concept of how life could be. ~ by Lee Ambrose 

As a lifewriter, a family historian and memoir writer, maybe I'm the feminine role in Hansel and Gretel, leaving crumbs of where I came from, so I can find my way back.

Sufficiently engaged with this concept now, I look to Amazon to see what has been written on this subject.  I find Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman's Life.  Perusing the Contents page, which is the first thing I do when examining a promising read, chapter titles like Beauties and Beasts:  Looking Love in the Face promise interesting ideas to prompt more writing in a new territory for me.


Okay now.  A new writing focus emerges.  What fairy tales embody your life?  What direction will these mythical stories take your writing?  Leave a comment, please.

Bullet Lists for Writing Scrapbook Stories

I'm a scrapbooker who loves to write.  I'm a storyteller.

But not everyone likes to write.

As a scrapbook consultant for eleven years, getting people to write on their pages was the biggest obstacle of all.  Well, getting organized was right up there too.  But that's another post.

When I'm writing anything--a family story for my memoir, a blog post, an essay or story for publication--I use bullet lists as outlines before I actually write the content.

I learned when I was a kid the fine art of outlining.  You know, those Roman-numeral, indented, long lists English teachers loved so much.  Over the years, though, I came up with my own style of outlining which is short and sweet.

Using a simple bullet list can actually tell the story.  So for those who freeze up when they stare at the blank scrapbook page, try bullet listing the individual parts of the story behind the photo.

Systems, Schedules, and Nesting

Okay, Dear Reader, you can tell from my last post on Motherhood that I'm into my trying-to-be-organized mode.  Let's call it the Seasonal Nesting Syndrome.  I catch it every Fall.  Along with all of the allergies that reside in Tennessee.

Freezing and stocking the pantry are high on the list during Nesting.  

Below are a few of the collard greens awaiting attention.  

Husband Gary and his farmer friends down the road grow a field of mixed greens for anyone who wants to eat them.  I like the collards more than the others.  Now to get some in the freezer for winter.

Organizing my office.  Too much stuff for so little room.  Shelves help.  So does purging stuff one really never uses but is afraid to let go of.  

But in the meantime, while the office is getting a re-do...

  

... our bed is a nice place to write.  The only problem is that I have to clean it off every night, LOL!  

The guestroom becomes winter storage for freshly washed blankets. And baskets of yarn stash!!  

The evenings are cool...great sleeping weather and cuddle-up opportunities with a good book or some knitting.

The best thing about this bedspread-in-progress (besides being my favorite color) is that as it grows longer on the needles it will cover my lap and legs on those frosty cold days of impending winter.  

These are the projects I have goin' on here in between the writing and blogging, and networking... 

Anybody else out there feathering their nest for winter?  

It's a good thing.

Where Do We Turn in Our Mom Badge?

Yesterday I read on someone else's blog a review of a book I knew I wanted.  Just from the title.  Writing Motherhood, by author Lisa Garrigues.

I can tell you right now.  I love this book.  I got inspired just by reading the contents page.  And that's a good thing.

Because I was about ready to turn in my Mom Badge.

You know, the one they pin on you the moment you realize you've conceived.

A big family means there's always an emergency.  And I am "Mom" to a big family.

The trick is handling the crises with grace and class.  Not always so easy.

And still have time and energy for whatever "work" you've chosen.  And we all must have work of some type.  Outside of the duties of Motherhood.  "Work" in this sense means what you do as a person, not as solely a mom or a wife.

My work includes not only writing, because it's what I feel I'm called to do, but also volunteering, because I can and I want to.  This is my work now.

Work used to be leaving my home and going somewhere to perform various duties for a salary.  That was when the children were younger.  It was hard to squeeze everything in then, but I was young too.  Youth trumps it all.

Before I retired to write, I was a freelance court reporter with an office in my home, and my work situation now is similar.  People just don't get that because you are at "home" you don't work.  Everyone, including spouses and children some days, see you as a free agent who is available at all times simply because you do not go out the door to a job everyday.

Let me just say here, whoever invented voicemail was a genius.

So finding a book like Writing Motherhood is a win for me.  Here's a Writer Mom who's found some gold in them thar hills of self-employed at home.  We want more than just squeezing a few precious hours into our family schedules.  We want to be good at the Mom part as well as keeping the home fires burning.

We want to plan sensible schedules, provide a peaceful, beautifully decorated, organized atmosphere for our family as well as healthy home-cooked meals.

Not only that, but I want to also "grow" the food for my well-stocked pantry and freezer.   I want to create gifts and treasures with my mixed media of yarns, ribbon, fabric, scrapbooks, beads and baubles.

Worker Moms wear many aprons.

No matter what choice of work we choose.

As a Blogger-Writer Mom, Writing Motherhood is a double delight of tips for keeping it all together and inspiration for what we write.  That's how this blog post was conceived.

And having another book on my Kindle stack, for a reading junkie like me, is icing on the cake.

What's Your Passion?

What gets you going and keeps your focus?  What are  you passionate about?

I read that about 75 percent of people can't answer this question:  What is Your Passion?

My husband's passion (not including me!) is his farm.  This plot of land that's been in his family since the 1800s.  It's the reason he'd never move to any other location.  He is all about this farm, everything to do with it.  It's what he thinks about every day when he wakes up.  It's his main focus in life.  The farm is his biggest joy, his biggest reward.  He works incredible hours on his farm and doesn't even realize it because he loves doing it.  He is so pumped when he gets on his tractor and rambles around his fields, surveying everything.  It feeds his soul.

For me, writing.

Note here we are not talking about family members, the people you take care of and love.  In that case I'd have to say being a wife and mother, and my husband would say being a husband and father.  Those go without saying.

Not your job...unless of course you're fortunate to be living your dream where you work and are paid.  .

Something you DO for the sake of just doing it.

A hint would be that you probably thought about it when you were a child.  Remember those fantasies?

What would you do even if you weren't paid for it?

If money weren't an object, what would you spend your life doing?

What would make you jump out of the bed in the morning anxious to start doing?


What is your dream, your passion?

Telephoto vs. Wide-Angle

Guest blog post on Women's Memoirs examines the difference in two popular SLR camera lenses as it refers to looking behind the printed or digital photo for story writing.

"Change Your Lens For Writing Memoir and Scrapbook Stories" will explain how to get to the story behind the photo.

I remember that first telephoto lens on my old Canon film SLR, the first gift from my new husband.  We had a blast with that zoom!  Since we met in photography class, this was our thing.  Traveling about and capturing the stories on my Canon and his Nikon.  We always sent the film off in the mail for developing and got free rolls of film back.  We shot so many rolls, we had to find the cheapest - yet good - developing route.

Those were the days before "instant" gratification.  How in the world did we handle that?

Waited patiently by the mailbox.

If you write memoir,  or scrapbook stories, especially write family history, any form of LifeWriting, please check out my post on Women's Memoirs and let me know what you think.

Writers don't live on bread alone...they live on comments.  The stuff dreams are made of.