Goals

One of my goals has been to blog everyday. I mean, of course I miss some days and prioritise tasks, but I have been averaging 25/30 days and I think that's pretty darn good! It has also served as  a reminder of how amazing the life we live is, searching out happy to photograph and share everyday has been glorious and lovely. It adds a bit of sunshine and gratitude to the mundane. So I don't see missing three days in a row to be a failure to my goal. It isn't a pass/fail kind of life we lead.

Another of my goals has been to empty the draft drawer, the one that has been growling at me for almost twenty years. Oh that's a long time! I did it though. Every last poem in that drawer has been either retired, revised and sent out, or formatted into a collection and sent out. It was a lot of work. Almost 40 hours of intense revision, another three formatting, and 2 hours entering data into duotrope. This has taken a lot of time over the last three weeks, but well worth it. I sent the whole collection to a book prize with one of my favourite poetry journals, photographs to Flyway, and followed through with that 15 year old revision request. Yes I did. Finally. It is done. Now, it isn't a regret that I get to carry with me and it doesn't get to push me around. I did it.

New goals:

• Continue to send work out. At least a submission a week, researched and carefully selected. I can do this.
• Create a work space at home. A just for me space, with my computer and my books. A corner of a sunny room. 
• Blog food at least once a week. 
• Clean up the porch and hang my swing. 
• Make iced tea every day.  
• Clean the baseboards and windows.
• Take the kids camping and fishing as soon as it is warm enough.
• Walk a mile outside everyday that the sun is shining, ride five miles on the bike inside if it isn't.

That's it. That's the list for the next three months. What are your goals? What are you doing to move towards your dreams? 

Tuesday Morning Happy

Happy Spring!

Idle/Wise

I am never idle, it seems. Even when I am still, my mind is going over emails and invoices and conversations. Thought requires this time, it feels like sometimes I am even doing this in my sleep.

Busy.

I keep myself busy. I tell myself that the good work we are doing, raising children and growing food for others in our community, is work worth my time. Oh, it is!

Still, the moments, it feels like it was just a moment, I had to myself with my own thoughts last month have stayed with me. It was in this time that I could refocus, polish, and really come to face what my goals and dreams are for my own creative being. This is important. I am an individual in a family unit and not just a collective identity. We are not a hive. Nurturing each child to be their individual person is important, but I do not have to forgo nurturing myself too (not instead of).

So today, I challenge you, what is your core being? What is your dream or goal that has lingered in a dusty box or in a drawer or on shelf in the shadows of work or motherhood? Why not take it out a bit and look at it?

Taking a moment or two for gratitude, pausing to feel the happy or the sad, just breathing....it is a necessary part of being human. Why else are we here, living this life, and given the intellect to reflect and think on it? It is in the quiet moments that poetry is happening, if only I can bridge the neurons to the ink and paper in time before the wisps are gone like warm breath into the cold winter chill.

And with that, I log off and go work on my dreams for 30 minutes. I can do that. I have that much quiet and focus left in me today. Happy is that gift of a solid block of time to work.