First, thanks to everyone who participated in and commented on my One-Liner Wednesday and my SoCS. I’ve read all your wonderful comments, and I shall strive to reply to them all tomorrow.
Speaking of tomorrow, I’m going to get my MRI done on my noggin at 7am. I have to be at the hospital 45 minutes early, so that’ll be fun.
Wish me luck. 🙂
P.S. From the date the doctor ordered the MRI to the date of the test was almost exactly one month, for those wondering what the wait times are really like in Canada. Is that much longer than it would take in the US? Just wondering.
Why do I set such high goals for myself? Okay yes, it feels great when I achieve them, and usually I do because I don’t like giving up on a challenge I set for myself. But the downside is that I end up getting stressed when I have too many things to do.
The latest goal of course is NaBloPoMo – write a post every day during the month of November. Together with Nano Poblano which gives me the extra challenge to make my posts spicy, I’m thinking by the end of the month my posts will be unreadable garbles of swear words. That should be fun!
Yet there’s something extra I’m contemplating to drive myself crazy reach for, and that is to extend my Scenes from the Second Seat on the Right series to 365. An entire year. I’m working on getting ahead of myself to cover the period in December when I won’t be around. They’re already scheduled a day or two in advance, so what’s two weeks? Nuthin’! My eventual goal with the series is to turn it into a calendar. I’m not sure exactly how that would work as an e-pub, but I’m sure I can figure something out. The idea came up a while ago, and I spoke to another blogger about possibly animating it, but that sorta fizzled out into nothing. So far. I should re-visit the idea and see if there’s any interest, though the 365th episode is still 300 away from being completed.
Any thoughts? Anyone who’s reading it think it might be a good idea? Click here for a link to one of the scenes that stands alone (meaning it has no back-story nor any follow-up so far) if you’ve never read one. You may just be amused.
Ah, I do love a good challenge. It’s just as well, when you think of it: my entire life is one big challenge. I remember saying to myself, before my son Alex was born, I’m in such a rut. I need some excitement in my life! Now THAT was a lesson in being careful what you wish for, right there. Between surgeries, deafness, feeding issues, pneumonias and meanwhile trying to run a business, the first eight months of his life were anything but boring. But I digress. For what I have coming up in the month of April is nothing, by comparison.
Yes, the A-Z Challenge. Since I’m going to write about writing, I thought why not extend the challenge and write a fiction piece a day to illustrate the article I post here? It’s only twice the amount of work, after all! And besides, there’s no reason I shouldn’t show rather than just tell…right?
We’ll see how far I get.
For now, I’m attempting to put all my accumulated notes in alphabetical order. It only seems to make sense, and why put it off? I’ll have enough to do, starting tomorrow.
Don’t you love a challenge? How will you be challenging yourself in the upcoming month?
I’m my own worst enemy in a few different ways, but none more than the fact that I have a hard time asking for help. Actually, let me be a little more specific: I’m okay asking for small favours, but if I think I might put anyone else out of their way, I usually do whatever it is that needs to be done myself.
I think this is a common problem with many people. For some it’s because they wish to be independent, and there’s nothing wrong with that – unless it gets to the point where they are stretching themselves too thin. Then there are the jobs to be done that are so complicated that it takes longer to explain how to do them than to do it ourselves. That, too, is an understandable reason not to ask for help.
Then there are people who are already stretched too thin, like me. When I think about asking someone else to help me, I tend to put myself in their shoes, which makes me ask myself, what if they were asking me to do this task? Being over-worked and overwhelmed already, I might think it a burden to be asked to do more. Consequently, many times I don’t ask for help.
I’m learning though. Since the father of my kids moved away, I’ve had an average of only one weekend out of every three without the kids. I do, however, have a very good friend who constantly offers to help me out, and most of the time I say yes. Although he says he doesn’t feel taken for granted, I still feel bad for not doing more for him in return. Again, there’s the ‘stretched-too-thin’ thing pulling me mentally if not physically in every direction.
I’d like to say a very public ‘thank you’ here to him, for all that he does for me. Thank you, John. I truly don’t know what I’d do without you. I know you say I should feel free to ask when I need help … know that I’m doing my best. And next time I stomp down the stairs in a very bitchy mood, know it’s only my own shortcomings – it’s not you, it’s me.
Back to addressing the rest of the people reading this.
I’m sure there are other people out there with problems asking for help. Do you try to overcome it? Have you succeeded? If so, how? I’d love some feedback on this.
1. It’s never too late to join in, since the “Jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post) counts as a “Jot.” If it makes it to WordPress that day, great! If it waits a week to get from the sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. If you write a JusJoJan post on your blog, you can ping it back to the above link to make sure everyone participating knows where to find it.
3. Write anything!
4. Have fun!
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