Word count - keep on trucking

Word Count: 1,375
Total Words: 3, 413
Reason for Stopping: My brain meats are calling for surrender

Word Count - First Progress Post

Hello readers! I decided that today was the perfect day to embark upon my novel writing journey.

Armed with tea, cats, a blanket, a laptop and an idea, I wrote and let the words flow for a few hours.  I stopped where it felt natural and I'm quite happy with how my first draft is shaping up.

I've decided to record my process in this blog, including word count for the day, total word count and other points of interest along the way.

This should help keep me accountable and it will be interesting for me to chart my journey!

So here's the first (of hopefully many) progress posts:

Word Count: 2,026
Total Words: 2,026
Reason For Stopping: hunger pangs + natural breaking point = no more words!

Worditius

Y Hello Thar, Blog.

I have a terrible case of the ironies.

Ever since I started my job as a ~Communicator~, I've been suffering from a paralyzing case of writer's block.  Now that I'm actually being paid to put pen to paper, I'm living in constant fear of my words not being good enough.

I have to resist the urge to pick big, fancy million dollar words for everything.

For example, here is the sentence I will originally write:

 "The red dog chased the black cat around a tree"

And then my brain will be like NO THAT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. USE BETTER WORDS.

So then I'll freak out and change the sentence to:

"The vermilion canine engaged in a spirited jaunt with the ebony feline in circumferential motion around an arboreal specimen"

And then I'll be like Oh! And then I should make it 38 font and red to make it more ~jazzy~

And then I will be lost in a muddle of ridiculous fonts for the entire afternoon.

Let's just ignore the fact that I probably shouldn't be writing about animals at work.

I'm trying to re-remember everything I tried to forget about writing in a plain language context.  Apparently, under duress, my brain wants to overload on adjectives. 

So my goal for 2011 is to convince the hamster that resides in my brain to slow down for a few laps.  I'm a chronic over-thinker, and I need to learn to stop over-analyzing everything, including my communication skills.

And I'm hoping that my attempts to relax will re-set my internal thesaurus and that I will stop trying to substitute inappropriately florid words where they don't belong.

I will, instead, save the fancy verbage for where it belongs - facebook status updates.

Fa la la la fail.

I went shopping.  On a Saturday.  A week before Christmas.

I braved the insane, pre-Christmas hordes, didn't develop an eye twitch,  and didn't have to give anyone the People's Elbow.  I consider that a success.

I survived, but I cannot say the same thing about my bank account. 

I started off looking the picture of frugality.  Spending time hemming and hawing and comparing prices.  But as the day progressed, I fell prey to impulse purchasing, that cruel mistress.

I knew I was near the end of my sanity when I was giving serious consideration to a gadget designed to help coax toothpaste out of the tube.  I had nearly convinced myself that every single member of my immediate and not-so-immediate family would die without one of these devices. I literally stared at the "Tube Squeezer" for almost 10 minutes before I managed to walk away from it. 

That's not to say that I didn't impulse purchase other things, but I feel that avoiding the "Tube Squeezer" was a small triumph.

I don't understand how people can cavort around so joyfully while pre-Christmas shopping.  The moment I entered the mall, I set my eyes to "EPIC GLARE" mode and stopped around with extreme purpose.  I kept finding myself stuck behind shambling individuals who seemed to serve no purpose but to walk in front of me and stop abruptly.  I started wishing for zombies to come in and cull some of the herd.

And when I start wishing for zombies, that's when I know I've reached my limit.  Unfortunately, the zombie fantasies started about 20 minutes in to what turned into a 3 hour foray.

By the time I left, madly clutching several 4324 pound bags, all I wanted to do was go home and de-stress.

But I lost my car.

For those of you who don't know, I have the direction sense of a blind mollusk.  I get turned around getting in and out of elevators.  It's bad.

And because I came out of the mall from a different door and I stood, bewildered, in the rain, trying desperately to find my vehicle.

I wandered around the giant parking lot like a crazy person, clutching my car opener and emitting high pitched, worried noises. 

It took me about half an hour of fruitless, rain-drenched parking lot stalking before I finally found my car.  By that time, I had lost all feeling in both arms.  Joy.

I made it home with no further incident and I'm happy to report that I managed to wrap all of the presents without giving myself a debilitating paper cut.

Tis the season.

1-2 Step (give or take a few)

Ok, so I have to be honest here. I'm blatantly stealing this idea from another blog. I just thought I'd get that out there in case some of you were labouring under the delusion that this thought was from my own brain.

Now that my awkward disclaimer is out of the way, I'm making a list, and checking it twice (if you don't have that Christmas song in your head right now, you're a stronger person than me).

I'm turning 30 in a few (8) months and I'm going to make a list of 15 things I want to accomplish before I turn 30.

Why?

Because I like lists
Because I feel I should accomplish something concrete before the big 3-0
Because I want to.

So there.

Sorry. A brief moment of petulance. I'm over it.

Here's the list! I'm also taking suggestions.

If you've always wanted to live vicariously through me, here's your opportunity!

You make a suggestion, and I'll add it to the list. Really. I will.

(small disclaimer: I won't add anything illegal, immoral, harmful or anything that's likely to get me smacked around by karma).

Everything else is fair game and I'll endeavor to accomplish it. I'm a people pleaser, that's what I do.

So here's my list as it stands now. I plan on updating Stephopolis when I start and/or finish something on the list, and I'll keep referring back to this particular posting so I can strike through things I've completed. God I love strike through. It's so validating.

1. Start and finish a full writing project.  (This could be a novel, novella, short story, poem collection, etc. Submit aforementioned writing project to a publisher.  It doesn't matter if I get any bites, what matters is the submission.  But, you know, I wouldn't say no to a publishing deal either.)
2. Start and finish my PLAR portfolio for my degree
3. Run on a regular basis and complete at least one 5k race with a respectable finish time
4. Find a viable yoga studio and attend class regularly
5. Make good use of the time I have with my IABC mentor
6. Attend more IABC events and networking sessions
7. Learn to crochet.  Properly. 
8. Learn to cook. Properly. (This means mastering more than three recipes in the kitchen)
9. Make a decent dent in both my book list and this, more classic, book list .(There is a reason that I received a Amazon gift card when I departed my last job.)
10. Write, write, write, write.  Just write.  (This might seem similar to the first item on my list, but I'm talking about getting into the habit of forming the words.)
11. Take more pictures and capture more memories.
12. Learn how to meditate and harness negative thoughts before they get out of control.
13. Actually use the swimming pool in my complex.  Drag Adam along.
14. Finalize second tattoo idea and get it done.
15. Stop biting my nails.  For realsies. 

I stopped at 15 just in case this becomes wildly interactive and I receive 3284 suggestions.  I didn't want to start with an uncontrollable list.

I like being able to see these in a list.  Having them all organized and numerically ordered gives everything a sense of purpose

(Don't tell my dad I used the words "organized" and "numerically ordered".  He'll become insufferable)

Annoyance breeds a numbered list

Because I'm cranky..

Because I need to fill my blog quota for the month

And because I'm sitting here icing the ankle that I keep spraining...

Here is a list:

Things that (Ir)rationally Annoy Me

1. People who keep their wiper blades going SUPER FAST even after the rain has tapered off. Stop it. Your blades are making that irritating EEEeEeEEeee noise. I'm not even in the car with you, but I'm still annoyed.

2. The fact that my eyes are 5000 times bigger than my stomach. I came home and ate about 20 pounds of stirfry because my eyes were like OOH YOU TOTALLY CAN FIT ALL OF THAT IN YOUR STOMACH. And now I feel like Jabba the Hut

3. My own lack of spatial awareness. I probably shouldn't lose my sense of direction during the duration of a 1 minute elevator ride. And yet, every time I get out of an elevator, I stumble the wrong direction for several minutes before going through a tedious course correction.

4. Purse dogs. As a rule, if it barks, it should not fit in your handbag. Your pet is a genetic freak show made up of chromosomal anomalies. It's not cute. It's a crime against nature and you should feel bad.

5. Jeggings. Just..what the hell. Jeans are jeans. Leggings are leggings. And never the two shall meet. Also, they make everyone look stupid.

6. Mouth breathers. Close your mouth. Breathe through your nose. It should not be this hard, people. CLOSE YOUR MOUTH. I don't want to listen to you wheeze from across the room. It's gross.

7. Really loud commercials. Thanks to the glory of my PVR, I rarely actually have to watch commercials, but every so often I watch tv "live" and I'm always startled when the show stops and the commercials are like 80 billion times louder than they need to be. Seriously. Having children screech at me about toilet paper is not going to make me buy it. Be quiet.

8. Bad puns. CSI, I'm looking at you. It's not clever when a character picks up an iron, references it as the murder weapon, makes eye contact with the camera and says "She must have been.....STEAMED". NOooooo. No.

9. Cilantro. It tastes like soap and fail and is a shameful herb.

Because I'm feeling ornery, you don't get a number 10. So the list is going to stay forever uneven and incomplete. So there.

Except I'll probably get super antsy that there's only 9 things on the list and sneak back later to add number 10...

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Oh Lord. It's been approximately forever since I've updated my blog. And I'm tired of being out blogged by my husband, so I thought that I'd better up the post count in Stephopolis...

So the reason for my extended absence? A few things. Let's make a fun list!

1. School - For the past few months I've been focusing on completing my latest course ("Motivation and Productivity", for those of you who are interested. And, yes, it really was just as enthralling as it sounds). I wrote a particularly tedious final exam in October and, despite the fact that the online test was fraught with technological issues, I passed with decent marks. The completion of this course puts me that much closer to getting my Bachelor of Professional Arts in Communications.

2. Family - For the last week of October, Chez Bitchardson played host to Adam's mom and dad. They came out to get a sense of what a British Columbia autumn has to offer and to experience the insanity of Halloween in our neighbourhood.

We consistently have over 150 kids and go through several Costco-sized bags of candy. I swear, parents from all over the lower mainland must bus their wee goblins to our townhouse complex, because there's no way there are that many kids living around here.

3. Work. This category is the biggest reason for why this blog has been collecting dust.

For some time, I've felt like a change was in order in my professional life. Work was becoming stagnant and staid, and I wanted more of a challenge.

I also wanted something more aligned with my professional interests, namely Communications.

After testing the waters and putting some feelers out, an opportunity presented itself. After jumping through several hoops, including three interviews and a written assignment, I was offered the position of Communications Specialist.

And while this might seem like a straightforward decision, I actually agonized for quite a long time on the pros and cons and ups and downs of this particular choice.

Why? Because the timing could not have been worse for my current workplace. In the middle of my interview process, two other teammates announced their resignations. And by accepting the position, I would be the third person to leave in just as many months.

And, being the team and people oriented person that I am, the prospect of leaving my team in that non-enviable position gave me pangs of anxiety.

But, thanks to a lovely and supportive group of family and friends, I slowly realized that throwing away an opportunity for "the greater good" would be foolish. They collectively helped give me perspective and lifted the veil of guilt that was clouding my eyes. And I am forever thankful and grateful for every person who listened to me talk myself around in circle and who then carefully guided me to the decision I knew I was going to make all along.

So, I made my choice, negotiated like a champion, and gave my notice. And now, I leave the comfort and familiarity of my old workplace near the end of November and immediately start my new job. Lots of people think I'm crazy for not taking a break in between, but I know that if I take time off, I'll just spend the whole time thinking anxious little thoughts and driving myself crazy with "what if" statements.

So now is the time of tying up loose ends and of succession planning and legacy leaving. And, while I'm torn up about leaving some of the amazing people I've met and worked with, I'm excited by what's on the horizon. I'm eager to cut my teeth as a Communications professional and I know I'm going to get a thrill when I get to put "Communications Specialist" on my new business cards.

So, yes, all of this explains why I've neglected my blog. But, seeing as I'm going to work in the field of Communications, I figure I should maybe start communicating more often.

Which probably means I should update my blog more than once in a blue moon. Ahem.

So, expect to hear more from me!