It was a dreamy, wonderful, perfect in so many ways trip. I planned for a wonderful time and it exceeded all my plans.
Here are images from our first few days of that adventure.
And in a few weeks, we are off on the 2018 adventure - this time to England, this time for five MONTHS, not five weeks...more on that soon.
Last month I reviewed my 2018 goals and what I had accomplished so far. Now it's the end of February and I'm here to do it again.
My February goals were:
-Lose 8 pounds
-Meditate 5-10 minutes every day
-8 Push ups a day
-Work on my script 2x a week
-Add strength work to my routine
-Flossing 5 days a week
So how did I do?
I lost 3 pounds. Not as much as I planned, but I lost 3 pounds, that's in the right direction. That makes 11 total for 2018. And with all the new habits I'm building, I'm feeling good moving into March and beyond. I'm still only drinking one day per week. (A trip to Las Vegas not withstanding in February...there was a bit more drinking there!) And not snacking after dinner. This one is huge for me. And I've done REALLY WELL on that new habit. Snacking and drinking wine after dinner are about comfort and imagined "I've earned this" baloney. I've had two months to build these habits and they will be put to the test in March and beyond as I started a new job this week. Stress for me leads to comfort eating and now I'll find new ways to relieve stress. Like....
Meditation. I started with 6 minutes a day (more than 5, less than 10!) and have upped it to 7 minutes a week or so ago. I missed 2 days this month, so I'm proud of myself for that commitment. I enjoy it and feel like it might already be helping me to just be calmer in my mind when things are busy and nutty and stressful. There is definitely a pause in certain situations where I do a "huh, that's a thought" and observe it, then decide what to say or do next. All that instead of just reacting quickly. I'm not saying it happens every time, but it seems to be making an impression. I'm doing Mindfulness mediation and it's challenging to my little rabbit brain. And again, with this new job and new stress, I need to commit even more to being still for 7 minutes a day. I have a plan to do 1 minute of meditation instead of snacking at work. We'll see how that goes!
I exchanged push ups for planks. I do 1:15 worth of planks 6 days a week. I find if I rest a day, I'm better at it the next day. The push ups were not getting better as I wasn't doing much of other exercises to increase my upper body strength and I was frustrated with my lame push ups. Perhaps I'll return to them in April.
Have not worked on my script. Fear.
Have not added a regular strength set to my daily/weekly routine. I need to put it in my daily journal as a thing to check off. (Checking things off on a page is R E A L L Y satisfying for me!)
Flossing has been continuing apace. Well done me.
Goals for March:
-Lose 8 pounds
-Meditate 5-10 minutes per day
-Plank 1:15 or more per day (Along with the regular walking/stair steps)
-Work on creative writing 2x per week
-Schedule the stretchy bands work outs into my weekly routine
-Keep flossing 5x per week!
I'll be back with updates around Easter....!
I know I know, it's almost February, but the year still feels somewhat new, though the sheen is wearing off.
I'm writing this on January 30 to publish on the 31st, right when the BlueBloodRedSuperMoon is happening. I'll be standing outside looking up going "cool!" (Unless it's cloudy, then I'll be saying "poop!")
A couple of posts ago I talked about resolutions and how I didn't want to go on about them at such an obvious time - the beginning of January. But I can talk about them now as I've already made progress!
First of all, I decided that since I have so many goals, it was best to break them down into pieces and not be overwhelmed by giant insurmountable seeming plans. Also, I didn't start them all in January, that felt like toooo much to even consider. So my plans sort of look like this:
2018:
--Improve overall health with weight loss and increased fitness
--meditate daily
--finish the script I started last year
--Blog more often
January:
--lose 8 pounds (DONE!)
--do 5 push ups a day (DONE! Except I missed 4 days due to illness and one brain fart and since there are 2 more days in the month, I promise I'll do them.)
--added many more days of walking for exercise, including the occasional burst of jogging or stair steps into the walks and better stretches at the end.
--floss Monday through Friday (DONE!), get the weekends off of flossing (this has worked for me in the past and I got off track lately so am back on it.)
February:
--all of the above but will increase to 8 push ups a day
--meditate 5-10 minutes a day (started yesterday)
--work on my script 2x a week for an hour
--strength work. I got stretchy fitness bands for Christmas and will add those in to my work out schedule
March:
--All of the above with variations to the workouts as my schedule allows.
April, May, June
--All of the above
The overall weight loss goal is 40 pounds. I'm already down eight. I signed up with Noom (saw it on Instagram!) and it's been helpful to get me focused. My biggest changes, aside from mindset about eating in general and looking ahead to what I want, is to only drink one night a week and to stop snacking after dinner. So far so good. And taking it two pounds a week at a time and only looking at eight pounds to lose each month makes it feel much more doable. Now, I had started at such a big number that, while I'm proud of getting these eight off, there is a ways to go before I can even really feel a difference. I don't look different in the mirror and my clothes feel mostly the same EXCEPT - I have a down vest that was tight if I zipped it all the way up, but I zipped it up the other day and...not so tight! Slow and steady...
Well done me in January, I have earned my reward of new work out clothes and will purchase them tomorrow.
Then FOCUS on February to achieve February's goals.
I have to stop writing about it now as it's making me TWITCHY. Less talking, more action. Maybe at the end of February when I check in I'll talk about why I chose these particular goals. And there are plenty of other goals I'm working on too. It's going to be a BUSY AWESOME YEAR.
There is a pot of gold at the top of the mountain and I'm climbing.
Seems like it was just November. December went by in a flash. Finished a job, then Thanksgiving, then Harper birthday then family visits then a trip to Seattle, home for Christmas and New Year and WHEW.
2017 was a good good year. I'll be honest and say the first half was much better than the 2nd! Because of course it was ITALY 2017 in the spring. My long planned birthday gift to myself. It turned out better and more wonderful than I even imagined it would. Here is an image from one of our last days in Lucca. Was was so sad to be saying goodbye to such a lovely town and an amazing experience.
We got home to LA and LA had not changed at all and stood out as dull and full of concrete in contrast. I know I know, not fair to compare Tuscany to LA. But it really made me sit down and consider what the next 5, 10, 20, ?? years might look like. What do I want them to look like? I made a 5 year plan that will be a huge help for the long term goals. But for our distant plans, we are still working on them. Questions like: are we going to live in LA until we die? Are we going to live in this house until we die? All very valid and very REAL questions. Intense questions. Questions we can't answer just at the moment and that's fine. Just as long as they are out there and we are considering.
As for 2018 - there are goals. Weekly goals, monthly goals, yearly goals. But all of that is predictable and unsurprising so I won't go into that until February as I want to walk my talk and then I'll report back. One goal I will share is to do 5 push ups a day for the month of January. I know, I know, sounds lame and easy. But for me, 5 push ups are hard. And PS I have to do them on my knees because my upper body strength is not great. Also - it's nice to make a goal that is reasonable and totally doable. No extra expense, time or equipment needed. I'll keep you posted.
I hope your 2018 is full of peace and hope and prosperity and joy and good health.
I have been a faithful Facebook user. However, I am not pleased with that any more. It's been like a drug after the election, seeing a lot of posts flying about what's going on. However, I let myself spend way too much time browsing mindlessly. It takes away from productive time in my day and it is a bad habit I am going to break. Also, I miss blogging and am woefully behind on this very blog.
There is a 5 year plan of my own making that I have committed to. It started in May of this year and will conclude in May of 2022. (Or sooner or later depending on how successful I am at achieving the various goals I'm setting for myself.) If you want to know what that plan is, you are more than welcome to ask me next time we are together. Suffice to say it runs the gamut from the career side to the creative side to the long term "retirement" sides of life.
I'll be spending more time on this blog and on my other endeavors. Please come by and visit often!
Lesson #1 - Moonlight Rollerway (Since 1950!)
June 25, 2016.
Holy crap what am I doing here? I'm so nervous. There is a 17 year old girl out in the rink doing amazing things on 8 wheels and I wore the wrong socks. The teacher better get here soon or I'm going to bolt in a panic.
Up on skates, Jeff, the skating instructor, is very gracious, his voice and manner calm and soothing. He holds my hands and/or my arms. He's like a dance instructor, leading without making you feel incompetent. And what I am is incompetent.
I tell Jeff to treat me like any of his five year old students. I have no ego about being an almost 50 year old woman getting back on skates. (Or so I think-more on that in another lesson.) I get my feet under me after a few shaky circuits, I can propel myself in the most basic of skating ways, after a bit I can scooter push and do scissors. This is good.
When was the last time I skated? Early 80's?* I'd coast mom's car backward out of the garage to make room, then sweep the pebbles out, lace the skates, turn music on, then go around and around and around in a tight little two-carport-garage-circle. My skates were blue sneaker style with white trim and laces. When we lived on Oahu, I had white boot style skates with metal wheels which must have been hand-me-downs from one of my sisters. My quick google search led me to these pictured at right - no toe stoppers? Amazing. I do have memories of skating into grassy lawns to slow down/stop or grabbing trees. But maybe I had skills enough to stop without any of that?
God, being a kid is great for physical stuff. No fear, low center of gravity and, most importantly, the joy of ignorant self confidence because at seven you haven't collected decades of self-doubt and -loathing to get in the way of trying new things. Or a good skate.
I remember Dor coming to visit once from the Big Island. I was nine or ten. Not sure how long she'd been staying but on her last night she was making lasagna (her specialty) and while she cooked, I skated. The window over the sink looked into the garage and we would talk. Details of the actual conversation are gone, but I recall Dor laughing and saying something about "Nini is ready for me to go home!" How could she read my mind? We'd had a fun visit, but I wanted to have my regular routine back. I tried to deny it to not make Dor feel bad. Looking back, I love that Dor (at 17 or so) had the insight to read me so well. I know now that I worked so hard to hide those kinds of feelings. I wonder if I was simply unable keep hiding them at the end of her visit or if the physical act of skating pushed those feelings out of my body and made it obvious.
I didn't fall in my first lesson with Jeff, a huge achievement. The muscles in my feet were tired as were my thighs, but otherwise I felt great. I would get the hang of this again in no time!
I'd had a wacky idea: Roller Skating lessons! And I didn't back out of it. Feel the fear, do it anyway.
But I didn't really know what there was to fear yet.
*The couple of times I roller bladed in the mid-90's didn't stick.
For one reason or another, I've gotten behind on my early morning writing. So this my transition week to get my momentum going again. Waking up pre-dawn* has been a little tough, but not bad. I've had years of training and I'm not talking about Harper.
In college I rowed on the crew team and learned to get up in the dark and get moving quickly. If you hesitate, you are done, asleep again until it's light out. Back then you did have the safety of roommates who would roust you if you fell back to sleep. But now I have the motivation of middle age. "Do you want to accomplish something more? Then GET UP AND WRITE!" is the voice in my head.
I am also very lucky to have the ability to wake myself up without an alarm. When I go to bed I'll tell myself "Wake up at 5:30" and I always do. Though usually I wake up around 5:15. This is the danger time - I can't just "close my eyes for five minutes" because I might be asleep again for another hour. I tend to just get up at that point.
The cats get excited when I get up, but are then disappointed that I don't open the door for them. (I don't open the back door because it's right by Harper's room and shares the wall with her bed and I need her to sleep as long as possible while I'm writing.) Except Dynamo sometimes pushes his luck. I'll sit for a few minutes, getting the blog set up, waiting for the coffee to brew. Then I'll get up for a cup, turn and see this:
Dammit Dynamo!
Dynamo is not a small cat and not easily nudged from a spot. But nudge him I do so I can get on with the business at hand.
*Fun fact: Dawn is not sunrise. I learned this from working on a movie. The opening scene took place at dawn and we learned that dawn is "the first appearance of light in the sky before sunrise." So the opening scene looked like this:
Watch the whole opening sequence here. It's really good and I want you know that except for the interior helicopter shots with Jamie Foxx, the whole scene/city/everything is fake, CG, visual effects. Full credit to Luxx Studios in Germany for that job. Also, the movie is pretty fun. But I digress.
So learning about dawn was three years ago. But it took me until just recently, and listening to that damn Elsa Letting It Go that I realized what the term "break of dawn" means.
Pre-dawn=dark
Dawn=first light
Sunrise=sun above the horizon.
So the sun coming up is what breaks dawn. Need a graphic? Here you go:
I love words and wordplay!
Today is the final day of the Your Turn Challenge. Here is my post to answer the question: What are you taking with you from this Challenge?
I'm taking momentum with me.
I had already started back on my pre-dawn/before the daughter wakes up writing schedule, but finding the Your Turn Challenge helped to solidify the routine.
My lesson coming out of the challenge is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Slow and steady wins the race. “Small moves, Ellie, small moves."
I know I will keep this writing time going, though it won’t be a daily blog post, necessarily. I already have a plan to write a short scene starting tomorrow. This will be a rewrite of a scene I wrote as part of a larger…uh…thing I wrote last year. (I call it a thing because I don’t know what it was other than an important thing for me to write last year — could turn into a novel, could be a script, could be a long fictional journal entry, who knows.) But this scene is very specific and I have a notion of actually shooting it as a short film. And it is totally doable. Of course it is.
I’m grateful for this week of cementing in a pattern that I started last year and will continue into this new year and beyond.
Ship it! Walk Your Talk! Surprise yourself!
I'm working the Your Turn Challenge and today is Day 2. Here is my post to answer the question: Tell us something that is important to you.
In 1992 I was working on a major motion picture at a visual effects company. I had been on the job since the previous January. My goal, about 1/3 of the way into the job, was to save money and go backpacking in Europe again. (I’d been with three friends right after college graduation three years before.) I had told my new work bestie that I was going to do this trip. Actually, I think I told everyone, non stop.
Then came the day I bought my plane ticket. These were the days when you actually had to go and buy a paper ticket. Over lunch hour one fine day, months before the project was over, months before departure day, I went to the nearest United Airlines office and got my ticket to London. As soon as I got back I raced to my work bestie’s office and showed her. She looked me up and down and said, “Oh. You are actually going to go.” I looked at her like “Uh, duh?” She then explained her slight surprise:
“You are someone who actually does what they say they are going to do.”
It was the second biggest compliment I’d gotten in my young life. (The first is another story for another time).
And it really made an impression on me. From then on I worked hard to walk my talk. I (mostly) didn’t make grand pronouncements about things I was going to do unless I was actually going to follow through.
The downside was (is?) that I might dream of something I want to do but not say it because I’m afraid of it or I don’t think I can actually do it.
When I meet new people, learning if they walk their talk is incredibly important to me. If I find they don’t, then I don’t tend to keep them in my life. I’m here to manifest and want to surround myself with like-minded people.
Now it’s time to focus on letting go of the fear. There. I said it.