Baby Steps

One thing that the process of counting (as outlined in A Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron) has done for me is that I'm cooking way more and eating out less. I knew this on some level, but having to write down exactly how much I was doing it (frequency) and how much it was costing me, helped me make a change. It's weird. There are some days when I spend nothing.  No spending days; I like that.

I have also resolved to do more work with Mint.com. I signed up and worked with it a bit, and then just really didn't want to look at it. That's exactly what I shouldn't be doing. If you don't want to look at it, that means you're afraid of it and in some unconscious way you're also saying that money isn't important. While it's not everything, it is something that deserves attention. So I will be trying to change my resistance to taking a hard look at my finances and hey, maybe I can get a better handle on them  The funny thing is that I've worked as a bookkeeper for a lot of years, way more than I'd like to admit.  It's true, that whatever you do for a living kind of gets neglected on the personal level in your personal life. Have to balance and reconcile bank accounts all day at work?? When you get home, I guarantee that the LAST thing you will want to do is make entries and balance your own accounts.  Pretty pathetic.  So that's my resolve. Today.  Progress report to be filed at a later date. Oh Prosperous Heart, you are a task master!

First Chapter, Done

I finished reading the first chapter of A Prosperous Heart and did all the exercises except the twenty minute walk. I'm good at taking a time out in the morning, but for some reason I keep forgetting in the afternoon.  I finally set up a reminder on my phone. Hope that takes care of it. I have my counting notebook restarted. It's the original one from when Stacey and I started the Prosperous Heart back in the beginning of this year. I can't believe I found that little notebook. Awesome.

Money worries are always a part of life, even if you have a job. Because you could lose that job for no reason any day.  At least in Idaho, because we are what they call an employer's state. Employers can terminate you at any time for no reason.  They will have to pay unemployment if the reasons are not for misconduct.  I am going through being unemployed right now. I am old enough to apply for Social Security which I did. But the first payment doesn't  arrive until October 17th.  I have also applied for unemployment because my former boss just said that she was going to have to replace me and then paid my salary from July 9th until the end of the month and I was no longer working. She did owe me a week's paid vacation, but July 9th through the end of the month is way more than a week, so the fact that she gave me some severance pay makes me think I was not terminated for misconduct. I worked there for over two years also.  So I'm trying not to be worried about money and am blogging to fill in the time. But isn't it always the case that when you are not too worried and aren't desperate to get a job, you get more nibbles on the resumes you send out?  What is that???? Hey you, Universe, I'm asking, what is that?

A few years ago I was in a job I hated and was sending out resumes every month and I never once got a nibble or even a call back. That's approximately 2 - 3 resumes a month for nearly three years and nothing. Nada, Zilch. And it was the same resume (of course minus the job experience that came after that time).  And now when I have an okay social security check coming and a decent prospect of unemployment insurance - which hasn't kicked in yet - I've gotten three nibbles and a job interview in little over one month.  Freaky.  It could just mean that the economy is way better than it was in 2008 - 2010.  About what, ten times better based on my response to my resume sending out activities? So that's good too. Take heart. If you've been thinking of making a change, but gave up a couple of years ago, because nothing was happening, I'm here to tell you the job search climate has changed. Don't worry. Take action!

The Prosperous Heart

There's been a little backsliding on the Hour of Power, but not much and mostly because it is now pretty chilly in the morning and I don't want to get out of bed. I still do the Hour of Power, but I have been backsliding about starting it first thing in the morning. I was sleeping outside under the stars when it was hot (I don't have air-conditioning) but now, I'm sleeping inside and need a sign to motivate me like the one I posted on the garden wall when I was sleeping under the stars in the lovely coolness.

I also like having a program of sorts to be following, and I've chosen The Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron http://www.amazon.com/The-Prosperous-Heart-Creating-Enough/dp/1585428973/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0 . It seems like a good plan since I'm out of work and waiting for Social Security to kick in. I actually started working on this book last winter with my friend Stacey. We were excited, we got up and met at Moon's Kitchen each morning for the first week to journal before we started our work days. And we counted, and we read the first chapter and then, we were stopped dead in our tracks.  By what you ask.  I don't know the usual bullshit excuses. It's hard to keep up that kind of enthusiasm that early in the morning. Neither of us are morning people and so the call of our bad late night habits intruded on our efforts at self improvement and we failed. But I have just ordered some blue light blocking glasses which are supposed to help you go to sleep earlier. The science behind these is that blue light from artificial light sources interferes with the production of melatonin which is the hormone that helps you fall asleep and regulate your circadian rhythms. Check out my other blog that covers this subject at http://backtoatkins.blogspot.com/

For now I'm off to reread the first chapter of The Prosperous Heart and this time I plan on actually doing the exercises at the end of the chapter. Now where's my counting notebook?  Time to dust that puppy off and get back into the practice of counting what goes out and what comes in.

Hour of Power

Not sure where I got the graphic above, but it's a good one. Right now I'm out of work. So I have all this time. But my biggest frustration is how much time I waste. It all starts with my iPhone. It's evil . I look at it to see what time it is first thing in the morning and the next thing I know, it's 10:30 am and I've been up since 7:00am.  It's evil, but it's My Precious. I called it that about a month after I first got it. Before I got an iPhone, I'd never had a smart phone. I'd often put my phone on the charger and forget about it for days. Once for almost five days. People would get really frustrated with me, but I couldn't figure out why they didn't just email me. I always checked my email first thing when I got to work in the morning and just before  I went home at night and hey, several times during the work day.  But of course for a long time, I didn't have internet access at home, so that meant that on weekends, if I'd left my phone on the charger and turned off, because, of course, it  charges faster if it's turned off, that meant that for the weekend, I was incommunicado.  I'd wanted a smart phone for a long time and lusted after the Blackberry. Mostly because I liked the idea of  24/7 internet access with a small device. In 2007, I got a laptop and internet service at home.  But I didn't get wifi for the laptop, because while I had the idea that I could take it out and write anywhere, I never took it out of the house for over a year. Even now, I average taking it out of the house about once a month. So why pay for a service you so rarely use?  But then I had a couple of private bookkeeping clients who would email late at night, and want answers.  I did not keep my laptop powered up even at home, so I often wouldn't get these emails until I was at my day job the next day and where I couldn't get to any answers until I was off work and back at home. So I justified the expense of the iPhone because I would always be connected to the internet and might be able to answer clients' questions a bit sooner. Also I'd always wanted an iPod and didn't have one, so that helped justify the expense.  AND THEN I LOST IT!!! When I found it, I called it My Precious and I realized owning the iPhone had changed my life, just as my friend Will had told me it would.  The My Precious nickname was totally apt too. My phone was a small glowing thing that I knew I shouldn't look at, but I wanted to look at all the time. So fast forward to being laid off and wasting at least three and a half hours a day on your iPhone. It's evil, I tell you and I think I must take it back to Cupertino and destroy it in the fires of Apple. But one does not just walk into Cupertino and Apple headquarters. That means I must break the bad habits that I have forged so relentlessly.  To be honest, I'd be on my iPhone in the morning before work, but that was limited because I had to freaking get to work.  So that habit of early morning iPhone addiction has been forged in the fires of my addictive personality for over two years. Now, however, there is nothing to stop me from fucking around on the iPhone except my own guilt which doesn't kick in apparently until somewhere around the three hour mark.  So I needed a new early morning routine.  

Enter the Tony Robbins Hour of Power http://mcgmedia.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/part-2-review-of-tony-robbins-ultimate-edge/ Basically you start your morning, by moving, breathing, giving thanks, and visualizing and more moving while repeating an affirmation. I even wrote it on the wall so I would see it first thing when I woke up. And it worked!  I woke up and was thinking about other stuff I wanted to do today and I saw Hour of Power written on the wall and I freaking did it!!!! Plus I bought an iPhone app called Streaks that lets you have multiple calendars to keep track of daily stuff you want to do, and if you skip a day the streak is broken, but you can see your streaks and keep track of your progress when you start anew. But I have not logged into Streaks today yet. I got up, did the hour of power and then I worked on the job search and then I freaking blogged. Pretty awesome. Now to keep the streak going. 

It's been a while. Way too long. I will go back to writing the history of the group and how it evolved and devolved, but I will also intersperse that with updates about what I'm doing creatively. It took me a while to figure out how to get back in here, so this is all for today. But hey, I'm BACK, BABY!!!

The 2nd Artist's Way Group

At this point we started over again with Janice and Carey.  It was around 1999. We decided to meet once every two weeks as everyone felt that trying to do a chapter a week was just too much. Friday nights after work every other week became the plan. We'd cook dinner and have a few drinks and then we'd have the meeting. There were four of us and we got done at about 9:30 or 10PM.  There was some tension when Janice and Abby were late, because they had gone out to a bar after work with some of their co-workers from the Statesman and left me and Carey waiting for them. Then Abby started leaving her door unlocked and Carey and I would just go in and get started. It was really nice of Abby to let us have almost all the meetings at her house. In the meantime somewhere along the way Kay came to a couple of the meetings, but she bowed out because she thought it was a little bit too much for her with writing group. Not for me though. Our biggest conflict was the fact that Janice and Abby would be tipsy from drinking and Carey and I would be sober. Even if I joined Abby and Janice in a drink or two, they were way ahead of me.  We had a hard time getting them to get a bit centered and serious and Janice, of course, thought I was a stickler for the Aritist Way rules. I don't mind if people bend the rules, just as long as they know that if they do and the program doesn't work for them the way they hoped it would, it is probably because they aren't doing it properly.   I don't understand why people will sign on to something and then have the nerve to say " I don't think we really should have to do that. I'm not doing it."  Why would you join in the first place, and if you can't do it the way you're supposed to, at least have the aspiration to get to the point where you can.  Don't just dismiss it out of hand. We made it through the book and called it quits. We were all burned out.  Carey and I decided to keep going, however.  I also had given the book to my brother, who looked at it and said, "I pretty much do all this already."  My sister-in-law, Jana, took his book and was interested in starting The Artist's Way, so I suggested she join Carey and me.

National Novel Writing Month Begins Today

I never would have done NaNoWriMo NaNoWriMo website
if it weren't for The Artist's Way. Now if I win NaNo this time after writing 50,000 words this month which would be winning for the 4th time - wow!, I need to edit one of those novels into something I can shop around. Dream Big!  That would be very big!  But not impossible. So for all you who are writing with us at NaNoWriMo, I salute you and I hope you write something great. The great American Novel.  Keep your fingers on the keys!