It really is the little things.

I know what I said Monday about hitting the gym every weekday, but today is wet and cold and yucky and nothing short of a dire family emergency is going to get me out in that weather before it's time to go home. It's all good, though. I've got my trusty pedometer strapped to my waistband, and I'm making up my fitness goal for the day by jogging up and down stairs, taking quick walking breaks around the inside of the building, and taking the long way whenever I have to go somewhere that's not my desk. Also, I just found myself all alone in the bathroom and seized the opportunity to get in a round of jumping jacks. Sparkpeople.com says I need to burn 217 calories today, and I'm already more than halfway there.

Just as it is with finances, little changes and small contributions here and there can add up to big results. Getting fit doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition. I knew this, but I forgot for a while and let myself get bogged down focusing on the big changes I couldn't bring myself to make instead of looking at the small changes that could make a world of difference.

Now if I can just remember how to apply this philosophy to home organization, I'll really be on top of my life.

Finding strength.

I'm considering buying Taming Your Gremlin by Rick Carson, which is supposed to help you quiet your negative inner voice and stop letting it hold you back.

I definitely have a gremlin that needs taming. I think it's primarily responsible for a lot of my plans not coming to fruition. It's fueled by low self-esteem, shyness and fear. It gets me to say things like, "Why did I think I could do this?" and "Why would anybody want to buy that from ME?" and "I'm just not capable of managing my time well enough to do that."

I keep trying to find time to set up a page for my web site detailing knitting lessons that I want to offer. I know that I'm qualified to teach the fundamentals, and even some advanced stuff. I even know from experience that I can be a good teacher. But every time I start to write the copy for the page I sieze up with fear, and my gremlin starts whispering in my head things like, "You do realize that this will require you to talk face to face with strangers? Do you really think you knit so well that anybody would want to learn from YOU? Did I mention the talking to strangers part? It won't just be the lessons, you'll have to make small talk. You suck at small talk. What if you make an appointment that you're too tired to keep? How are you going to fit this into your weekends when you already barely find time to relax? Strangers! Talking! YOU CAN'T DO THIS."

It was a similar train of thought that kept me from applying to grad school. And from submitting my first novel more than once. And from giving my gift basket business more than a month to take off, and from making phone calls to potential clients. It's what makes me keep taking weeks-long breaks from writing my current novel. It's what kept me out of the dating pool until God decided to drop Matt right in my lap.

Yes indeed, my gremlin needs taming. But I still hesitate to buy this book. My gremlin's telling me it will be a waste of time and money, that nothing's going to shut it up because it's only being straight with me.

But the main reason I'm considering NOT buying it is because I tend to think any "self-help" I need is all wrapped up in a single book of which I already own many copies, in many different translations. I'm not sure that I need to spend time and money on a book that will essentially tell me that which can be wrapped up in a single verse: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

I wrote that on a sticky note today, and stuck it at the top of my monitor. Reading it has a tendency to shut my gremlin right up. After all, it's pretty brazen, but it's not so bold as to call God a liar.

I think I'm going to hold off on the book a while longer. Meanwhile, I've got some web page copy to write.

At Least It's Not Fescue

I was in a weird mood yesterday. I didn't sleep well the night before, and as it tends to do, sleep deprivation made me introspective. Sometimes, introspection makes me all nostalgic. Such was the case yesterday. It was the kind of mood that gets me to sign onto Classmates.com under the pseudonymous account I've set up there (99% of the time I don't give a squirrel's nut about 99% of the people I went to high school with, and I don't want any of them to know about the 1% of the time that curiosity gets the better of me) and see if I can glean any news about the 1% of schoolmates with whom I was actually on friendly terms. It was that mood that also got me to Google the rock band of This Girl I Once Knew.

I knew This Girl in college -- my first attempt at the U of OK when I was actually college-age, not my more recent and successful return. She didn't actually go to school there, but she was the good friend of a good friend who did, and she and I were friendly by association, hanging out with the same people, going to the same parties, sometimes even hanging out with each other. She was one of those Fabulously Cool types, all cultured and well-travelled and ueber-talented and always gorgeously put together, who made me feel like a completely inadequate dork poseur. I never felt I could truly be friends with her because I felt like I could never be cool enough for her. Not that she ever said or did anything to make me feel that way, mind; she was also a genuinely sweet person with a fun and self-depracating sense of humor. But she gave such an impression of being so much more than adequate at everything she did that all I could see when I was in her presence were my own faults and how I failed to measure up.

Taking all of this into account, I should have taken her a little more seriously when she said she was going to start a rock band, and not been so surprised when it actually turned out to be somewhat successful. But you know how it is when your friend says s/he's going to start a rock band--90% of the time you both know that it's just wishful thinking, and if they do go so far as to actually assemble a group of musicians, they probably won't make it out of their parents' garage. But This Girl is someone who actually does the things she sets her mind to. Before long, she and her critically-acclaimed local band were packing up and moving to LA to be bona fide rock stars--headlining at famous LA clubs, national tours, rabid groupies, the whole works. We kept in sporadic touch via e-mail, and I tried to keep up with the band's doings, but somewhere in there we lost touch, as I had already lost touch with most of the rest of our friends from those days.

I haven't checked up on her or her band in years, or given either that much thought, until yesterday. For some reason, she was on my mind. So I plugged TGIOK's band name into Google. What I learned is that the band is now defunct. She's living in north Cali and is starting a solo career, and also has a few other creative and business ventures going. She appears to be doing well, and also appears to be even more fabulous than ever.

Somehow, this news bummed me out. Not that I'm not thrilled for her and her successes; but just as I did back in the day, I suddenly find myself using her extraordinary life as a measuring stick for my own ordinary self, and coming up wanting. She's a few years my junior, which just adds to my sense of failure and mediocrity. She's thirty now, and spent her twenties living a dream and building a great life for herself. I spent my twenties floundering and struggling to figure out how this whole adulthood thing works. She has numerous successes already behind her. I have numerous false starts behind me, with hardly any finishes. She's right where she wanted to be by 30, and I'm nowhere near where I thought I would be by the time I got to my thirties.

The grass on her side of the fence is a lush, tropical garden.

But, y'know, the grass on my side ain't so bad, either. It's Bermuda--ordinary and not that pretty, but hardy in bad weather and still very green and fun to walk around barefoot in. I may be a mediocre wannabe with vague entrepreneurial aspirations who is still struggling to jumpstart a writing career and bring some semblance of fabulousness into my life. But you know what? I still believe I'll get there. It might happen ten years later than that girl back at OU who couldn't decide whether to girlcrush on or resent the hell out of This Girl She Knew ever dreamed it would happen, but it will happen.

In the mean time, I have a pretty fantastic life. I have a husband whom I adore, and a good job that I actually like, and... okay, I'm not so thrilled with my current living situation, but that's only a few months away from improving. I have a bright future. I'm still on the way up, and all of my successes are ahead of me.

I think, what with my ADD-ish tendencies to get really excited about a new idea, tackle the implementation with all I've got and then peter out and not see it through, that I naturally get depressed when confronted with someone who actually has the drive and ability to make something out of their talents, and This Girl is, to me, the embodiment of drive and ability combined with talent and energy. But I know that I shouldn't measure my life by anybody else's. I live according to my own time-table, and I've always been a late bloomer. If it takes till my forties to finally write a book that's fit to publish, by the time I'm fifty nobody will care that it happened ten or fifteen years later than I expected. So I just need to keep writing, and stop comparing myself to other people, and remember that I love my life. It's mine and it's good and it's going places.

Two Things That I've Done

I've started jogging. Shut up, I have too! Inspired by Manoah, I was going to dig my bicycle out of the garage and start riding it on the weekends, now that the temperature has (or had, at any rate) dipped to a comfortable level. But then on Saturday morning I learned that a bicycle that's been sitting neglected for over a year + no tire pump = not going very far. So, all dressed down to get some exercise and feeling equally inspired by Pamie and her recent marathon run*, I set out to jog.

Well, to walk. At first. But with the goal of eventually jogging at some point totally in mind. Not really ever having been a runner, or a jogger (I've jogged before, but only short distances and only to jack my heart-rate up during my walks), I'm possessed of enough common sense to know that you have to work up to these things. So I started out slow. The street on which I live joins up with the street behind in a big curve, to make a convenient track-like circle, one lap of which is almost exactly one-third of a mile. So I walked slowly for a lap to warm up. Then I picked up some weights and sped up to power-walk the second lap, because power-walking is what I know. On the third lap, I chucked the weights and jogged for a hundred steps. Then I walked the next hundred, then jogged another hundred, and so on for an entire lap. I didn't die. I thought for a minute that I might be about to, but I got past it, and walked a fourth and final cool-down lap, and then got up and did the whole thing over again on Sunday. And it was all right.

I know I'll never run a marathon, or probably even a 5K, because I know I'll never be dedicated enough to get up at the butt crack of dawn to put my running shoes on and go train. So I considered letting that be the end of it. But then last night when I got home from work, Matt was online, and the evening had cooled off, and I figured as long as I had time to kill I might as well go do it again. And as I walked my last lap I figured that if I keep doing this on the weekends, and then squeeze it in one night a week, at least as long as it's not freeze-your-extremities-off cold outside, I'll probably be able to stay in shape through the holidays. Maybe get into better shape, even. So I guess that makes me a jogger now. Or it will, after I work up to jogging more than one-third of one-third of a mile.

I've signed up for NaNoWriMo. I just did it about an hour ago. I had no idea that there were, like, local groups and meet-ups and stuff. A Tulsa meet-up and kick-off party is being planned for the last Saturday of the month, but that weekend is the anniversary of my first date with Matt, and he's still enough of a romantic to want to keep celebrating it, so I suspect that I have a date that night. Unless he decides he'd rather celebrate it on Sunday, which is the actual anniversary anyway. But at any rate, I now have some measure of external accountability to produce writing. Whether it will make a difference remains to be seen, but at least it's there.

* Running isn't the only thing Pamie has inspired me to do lately. Out of curiosity, I picked up her first novel, Why Girls Are Weird, to read on the cruise. Which I did. And it was good. There were parts of the book that made me want to be a writer. It was good timing, seeing as how I had already promised myself that I would start writing again when I got home; but reading this book made me actually look forward to getting to write again. I should probably write to her to tell her so, but I always feel oogy when I try to write fan letters and always end up trashing them before they get sent. I suppose I should just view her as a fellow blogger who wrote a story that deserves some feedback, which she is, but she's also more than that: she's a blogger who made good, and that makes her something of a hero, and that makes her a wee bit intimidating, and so I'll settle for telling you guys that you should totally go read her books, and I'll read her second one just as soon as I can get to the store and pick up a copy. Hopefully the second one will keep the inspiration going.

Heat Miser 1, Great Pumpkin 0

I gotta tell you, I'm feeling gypped. Trudging through swampy, 95 degree heat in Mexico, I kept saying to Matt that it was okay because when we got home it would be fall, with October merely days away, and with October comes great weather, and with great October weather comes boots and sweaters and jackets and cookouts and pumpkins and Halloween and HOORAY FALL!

Yeah. So thanks for nothing, October.

At least the weekend was nice, and not just the weather. It was the first one in recent memory that I got to stay home with no errands to run, no plans to go over, no craft projects to work on... generally not having to be a stressed out bride. Just getting to hang out and do chores and watch TV and DVDs with my husband. Is this why they call it marital bliss? Because it is. Bliss.

So I'm blissed out and energized and I'm not going to let a little thing like global warming sap my strength or my motivation. As you no doubt know, the new year is still three months away; but as I'm starting a new life here, it only feels right to make some resolutions. Or goals, as the case may be, seeing as how I never make resolutions. Or, y'know, "things I put off dealing with until after the wedding." But "New Life Resolutions" sounds so much more romantic and motivate-y.

Resolution the first is to get/stay healthy(-er). Not that I wasn't already working on this, but now that the wedding's behind me I should have more time for things like doctor visits and regular workouts. Finally having good health insurance is also coming in pretty handy. Next up on my "get healthy" checklist: see a doctor about getting back on my thyroid medication. Also: less coffee, more green tea.

Resolution the second: Move. I've already mentioned how the idea to have Matt move in with me into my attic apartment in my mother's house has turned out to be less than brilliant. We'll be remedying that just as soon as we can save up enough to cover first month's rent plus deposit. It shouldn't take us long. I figure once the holidays are done we'll be ready to start looking for a new place. I can't even tell you how much I can't wait (she said before sneaking a peak at Craigslist's local housing listings for the umpty-billionth time).

Resolution the third: remember that I'm a writer, dammit, and write. Dammit.

I'm already all over this last one. Of course, the day that I chose to "crack down and get serious again" about my writing is a day that the office became extremely needy. Ain't that always just the way? But I didn't let this de-rail me. I managed to get enough downtime yesterday afternoon to write a synopsis for one of my partial manuscripts. I've been away from all of them long enough to recognize their inherent flaws, so I picked the one that I feel has the most promise and am totally starting over on it, re-plotting and re-writing from scratch. This morning I started a new outline, and already the story is more cohesive. If things remain quiet around here this afternoon I'll be able to start the actual rewrites. Can I get a woo hoo?

Once I get it going I'm considering joining a critique group to help keep me on track. I'm also thinking about signing up for NaNoWriMo, which I've never done before. So is there anybody who's experienced with NaNoWriMo who can tell me how it worked for you? Did it help you advance your project, or did it just set you up to burn out? Are you planning to do it again? Thank you.

And now I'm going to allow myself a tiny squee over tonight's Veronica Mars season premiere and make a fourth resolution, that I will not allow my protagonist to slowly morph into Logan Eckles. And then I'm going to knock out some ho-hum tasks relating to my "real" job before I get back to the business of writing.