goals

State of the Goals – Week 2

[X-posted]

It only took two and a half days for the combination of the cats and my uncomfortable office chair to drive me back out to the living room couch. I’m not giving up on the office yet. I think sharing my office with the cats (it’s where we keep the litter boxes, so shutting the girls out for more than an hour at a time isn’t really an option; and no, we can’t figure out a better place to keep them) would probably be more tolerable if I had a chair that didn’t give me a backache after only an hour of sitting in it. So “new office chair” is moving to the top of the list of things to buy when we have some cash to burn.

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By Jean Marie Bauhaus, ago

Goal Post: Week 2

[X-posted to Daydream Believer]

Today I’m drinking coffee for the first time in about six weeks, and savoring every drop. I’m also working in my office for the first time in about as long, on the theory that I’ll be more focused and productive in here than I tend to be when sitting on the couch. We shall see. Either way, the cats keep jumping up and getting in my face, apparently wanting to make out–either that or trying to tell me to get out of their chair. In here, if I don’t comply either way, they start knocking crap off of my window sill, trying to kill either me or my computer; whereas on the sofa they would just give up and go away. So the jury’s still out whether the office will be more distraction-free.

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By Jean Marie Bauhaus, ago

Goal-ie

[Cross-posted from Daydream Believer]

I let the weekly goal setting fall by the wayside when the time came to start gearing up for NaNoWriMo–since that was pretty much the only goal I’d intended to focus on through the end of November, and it seemed pointless to reiterate that every week. Then, of course, life happened, and the holidays, and apart from just getting through those with my sanity intact I was pretty aimless there for a while. And although I know I said I don’t feel like setting any big goals for the year, I still have plenty of Stuff I Need To Get Done, and breaking it down into weekly goals has proven a pretty good way to get myself on track.

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By Jean Marie Bauhaus, ago

Last week, this week, and a month from now (yay NaNoWriMo!)

(Cross-posted #)

I know I said I’d start posting my goals again last Monday, but then I got slammed with work. So far this freelance biz is feast or famine, and my regular clients all seem to be on the same cycle as to when they have work for me. I’m not complaining. The busy times are great, as they mean we get to eat and pay the mortgage, and the stress of multiple deadlines isn’t nearly as burdensome as the stress of wondering how to pay the bills.

My brain was pretty fried by Friday night, though, and I spent the weekend trying not to think about work and just recover so I could dig in again this week, which promises to be another busy one. I actually had planned to get a lot done on Saturday, including blogging and posting the next ep of This Old Haunt, but I got hit with a pretty bad headache, and all I managed to get done were some errands and a few scenes of Hero Factor marked up for revisions. Then I spent Sunday puttering around the house getting the cleaning and laundry done. Well, mostly done. I’m still waiting on the last load to dry so I can put it away before I get to work on client projects.

I also put out the Halloween decorations yesterday, which made me ridiculously happy. I love October and Halloween so hard. (more…)

By Jean Marie Bauhaus, ago

In Which Lame Blogger Is Lame

(Cross-posted #)

First, the “Lame Blogger Apologizes For Being Lame By Not Updating” portion of today’s post – sorry, y’all. I wish I could say I’ve been too busy to blog, but the truth is that I just haven’t felt up to it lately. I haven’t felt up to much at all, really. I haven’t been sick with the flu or anything, but it’s been one thing on top of or after another keeping me down. The SAD and allergies I wrote about last time, hormonal wackiness, insomnia and other disordered sleepy-time fun, and inadvertently ingesting things that didn’t want to leave my stomach without a fight have all added up to me spending most of my waking hours on the sofa, wrapped in an afghan and alternately staring unproductively out the window or at my laptop screen. “Bleah” pretty well sums up how I’ve been feeling lately.

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By Jean Marie Bauhaus, ago

Why being too focused is a bad thing.

[Cross-posted #]

If you’ve been reading the Twitter updates that get gathered up and posted here once a day, then you already know I’ve got a perfectly good excuse for not posting anything else last week–I was bogged down with a big web redesign project that the client needed done ASAP. I kept my head down in hyperfocus mode, coming up with mockup after mockup trying to capture what the clients wanted, and feeling frustrated and a bit depressed because everything I came up with was just passably adequate and completely uninspired. I was giving them everything they asked for, but nobody was happy with it. (more…)

By Jean Marie Bauhaus, ago