A Time For Everything

Mark your calendars for a week from tomorrow--September 6th--and pick out a shiny new book. Or maybe you'd rather settle in with an old favorite.

Either way, spend the day, if you can, reading. If you can't take the whole day off--they should make this a mandatory event across the nation, don't you think??--they spend some time (thirty minutes, an hour) with your nose in a book.

Now, I read all the time. You all should know this by now. :0) In the morning, in the evening, sometimes during the day when I get my steps in (which is a thing I have gotten back to).

This year, after a long hiatus, I signed up for the Goodreads Challenge, which is nothing more than a pledge to read a certain number of books during the calendar year. I ended up at 72. I'd originally challenged myself to read 106 books, and if you're not a math wizard, that equates to two per week. But once things happened with Mom, I wasn't sure I'd make that particular goal, so I adjusted slightly lower.

As it stands, I'm seven books ahead of schedule. Here are a few of the books I've read so far:

Ms. Easton and Ms. North are my absolute faves and I've read several of their books this year, but I did branch out into a few other genres as you can see, although I still primarily read romance.

I did have to fudge the truth on Goodreads a little-- I still read A LOT of fan fiction. Individual stories, of course, aren't going to be listed as books. So I spent some time looking up the approximate word counts of a few classics. Moby Dick, To Kill a Mockingbird, Anna Karenina, etc, so that I could use them as proxies for the fan fic I read. I want credit for those words, dang it!

Now, unlike the woman in the image at the top of this post, I don't actually read physical books anymore. Once in a great while for reasons, but mostly I like that I can amass vast amount of books but not have them piled all over my house. My e-reader of choice is my phone, using the Kindle app for commercial fiction, and the plain old browser to access my favorite fan fiction repository.

What about you--are you a reader? Physical books or e-books? Fiction or non-fiction?

Hope you have a great week!!

It's time once again to revisit the goals and see how I'm faring...

Mom's been here for three months now, and as you can imagine, her presence has definitely had an impact on my ability to get things accomplished.

But let's dive in, shall we:

1) send postcard to my Grandma in Denmark monthly--doing well so far, if only to let Grandma know how Mom is doing so she doesn't worry. On the other hand (SADLY), my grandma might not be around much longer, if her last letter is anything to go by. She'll be 96 or 97 in August, so she's definitely earned her eternal rest when it comes. Until then, I'll keep sending her missives.

2) exercise regularly / up my game--tilt... Mostly anyway. I'm mot exercising like doing yoga or using the elliptical. But I am having to circle the yard three and four times a day to get the little dogs moving in order to get their bowels moving. I do need to re-implement some sort of regular regimen, but that's not happening until after the annual lake retreat at the end of July, so...

3) continue to cook / eat healthy / adhere to a food plan--tilt! That's been thrown into the wind. Life, right now, is not conducive to this, so we are eating atrociously. But that too must change. So going with the same note as the exercise--after I return from the lake.

4) stay on track / up my game with the housekeeping--also TILT! I struggled with this before Mom arrived, so all the extra tasks I'm juggling have thrown this task completely into upheaval. Although in the last couple of weeks, I was able to find some semblance of a routine for fitting in some basic tasks. We'll see how long it lasts.

5) keep up with writers group duties on a monthly basis--um, no, sorry...

6) publish one book & do my best to finish and publish a second--one book has been published, but only because it was completed and ready to go late last year, early this year. Taking the WIN though! I'm working on the second book every day, but it's slow going because I've lost a lot of my morning writing time. And because of various factors, it's hard to really submerge into the characters' points of view to get their emotions on the page. But I'll get there.

7) hone /learn my craft--sadly, no -- it's the time factor again, but life is calming down and smoothing out, so I'm hoping I can find an hour or so a week to devote to this

8) double my Etsy inventory--honestly, I've been working on this, but I'm nowhere on track and I'm not going to catch up; not that it's a major deal in the grand scheme and I'll have more than I did at the beginning of the year. And also, I decided to leave Etsy...that's a process in and of itself and will take me at least to the end of the year. So I can already say this one will be a fail if we go strictly by the original intent.

9) read, read, read a lot of fiction--I'm not going to read the 104 books I originally challenged myself to via Goodreads, but I'm doing all right on this front. I have to read daily. It helps keep me sane. I think I adjusted down to around seventy books, give or take and I'm on track.

10) keep up with / solidify my Goodreads habit--not so much. This is a publishing related thing and one of the tasks that fell by the wayside with the usurping of my time by other tasks. And that's fine. Something has to give and this is one of those many things.

All things considered, it's not going as bad as it could. And I do have extenuating circumstances, so making progress on anything is a win in my book.

Have a great week.