Row80: When Life Gets in the Way – Push It Aside

May 13, 2012

I thought life was supposed to get more simplistic as age came along… no? Not in my life.  I am sure there is still hope.

I digress.

My life is more amazing these days than it was this time last year and the year before that, and so on.  Who knows what is in store?  Only God knows.

Exciting.

In writing news, I started back up with my Friday Flash Fiction segments.  I posted the first one last Friday.  It kind of pales in comparison to some of my earlier work, but it turned out just the way I hoped.  If you want to check it out, you can do so by clicking here.

In sobriety news, I will be hooking back up with my sponsor at some point this week.  I hit a meeting last week and will hit one this week. My six-year anniversary is in two weeks.

In life news, I am really doing some soul-searching as to what this life holds for me and where I can tweak it to maximize my usefulness and potential.

I am faced with interesting dilemmas and decisions as far as living arrangements and mental health.  Funny how the two seem to be coinciding.

I was excited to finally get back into editing my WIP today.  I had the whole day to myself, Saturday!  It was great.

So… for this week:

• continue to edit WIP.
• walk 20-30 minutes a day.
• get to an al-anon meeting.
• continue to look for a reasonably priced car (my car is dying).
• journal, journal, journal.  I have been doing this a lot and it is really helping me find out about who I am and what I want.

I hope everyone had a great week and that this coming week will be even better than the last.

ROW 80 – Back On The RowSkeeDiddle

May 6, 2012

I’m Baaaaaack!!  (screamed like Steven Tyler of Aerosmith in the beginning of “Back in the Saddle” – go listen, it’s awesome)

I took a week off due to brain cramp over load.  Over the last six days, I didn’t do anything except journal, do a lot of walking and reflect on my life.  I fell short one hundred words on my 750 word a day challenge, which devastated me.  I totally thought I wrote 750 words that day. I kept true to my word and donated twenty dollars to cupofjoe.com.

I will rejoin the challenge in June.  This Merry Month of May I have to get my arse moving on editing my novel and keeping up with my blog.

I found a new gym to go to – close to my work – so I will begin working out again.

Here are my goals for the week:

• journal every day.
• read/comment up to five blogs a day.
• give manuscript a solid read through – make changes.
• continue to get at least twenty-five minutes of cardio in a day.
• challenge my self internally by doing something that scares me.

That’s my ROW80 list.  How is everyone else doing? It’s great to be back!

ROW80 Update – The Rowing is the Hardest Part

Apr 15, 2012

Image: http://www.kkbn.com

Yep.  This picture pretty much depicts my world as it stands right now.  Everything is driving me nuts and I am feeling burnt out.  I was journaling on Saturday and kind of came to a realization that I may be depressed. Now, not like crying in a corner surrounded by Twinkie wrappers depressed, but more of an I don’t feel like doing sh*t and I would rather just fade into the dust depressed.  Not sure which one is worse.

Hopefully, I have just had enough of working Saturday’s, Form 1040’s, 1120S’s, extensions, estimates, BPT’s **AIIIIEEEEEE!!!!**

Hopefully, this crap will drift into the sunset on a homemade twig raft, glued together with my burnt out brain matter,  and I’ll wake up next Saturday feeling refreshed because I don’t have to drag my ass into the office.

I am 99.9% positive that this is the case and that after April 17th, I will exhale and chin up a bit.

I won’t list the goals I have achieved, because the only one I am keeping up with is the 750words Challenge and the A – Z Challenge.

Everything else? Blah.

So my goals for the coming week:

1. 75owords.com challenge – keep up the good work.

2.  A – Z Challenge – keep up the good work.

3. Starting Wednesday – walk twenty-five minutes each afternoon on my lunch.

4. Edit my freaking manuscript!

5. Read/comment blogs (I was doing like 15 – 20 a day, but I got burnt out!) up to ten a day.

That’s all for me, ju ju bees.  What say you?  How is your progress coming along?

Happy ROW80ing!  😀

Friday Flash Fiction – Between

Apr 13, 2012

“So wait, I don’t understand.  I can’t have any of them?”

“Oh, you can have a few, but not all the ones you think are bad.”

“Well, what about that one?” Evil said as he pointed to a small boy teasing a cat.

“Well, it’s like this.  I can’t believe I have to continually explain this to you.  They have free will.  I can’t make them do anything. All I do is help them in ways they often do not understand.”

“So how are you helping that boy?  Or better yet, the cat?” Evil rolled his eyes.

“That boy has a choice. Again, free will.  I can do this,” Good said and made the breeze blow a giant branch from the tree.  The branch startled the boy and the cat took off running.

“Nice,” Evil said. “It would have been better if the branch hit the boy in the head, but hey, to each his own.” Evil shrugged his shoulders and looked to the right of the Earth.  “So wait,  I don’t have anything to do with any of all these self-absorbed jerks roaming the planet?”

“Nope,” Good said and kicked back on a bright, puffy cloud. “It’s all their own doing.  They’ll curse me and blame you.  It happens all the time.”

There was a long silence and Evil said, “you wanna go mess with those people who won the lottery last week?”

Good shook his head and laughed, “Ok, come on.  Let’s go pretend it’s all our doing again.”

Six Sentence Sunday – ROW 80 Style

Feb 12, 2012

Rowing along on the 80 Train trying to catch the “Six” bus. Ok, not really.  It is time for the weekly ROW80 check in.  Check out the Jenny Hansen’s blog for the link up!

There is this new site called Triberr that just came to town.  Jenny wrote a huge post on it which can be found here.  That link is to Part 4, but you can find parts 1 – 3 from there.  I bring this up because I will be reading all four posts today.  I am on Triberr if anyone wants to find me!  I am a lost soul on the site (much like a blind man at an epic light show).

Other than that:

• still writing 750+ words a day.
• still updating blogs.
• still reading/commenting blogs like a blog junkie.

New Goals

• Walk twenty minutes a day around the neighborhood.
• Figure out this Triberr thing.
• Link up at Nick Rolynd’s blog for 30 minute fiction on Friday’s.

Now for six sentences from a three-year old short story.

Six Sentence Sunday

There were seventeen cats living in Louie’s basement.  Louie wasn’t sure how it got so out of control, but he knew he had a problem when the incessant meowing had become the background music for dinner.  Louie really thought he was doing the right thing, but it seemed at some point in the last nine months he had possibly become a compulsive cat hoarder.

It all started when Pawsie and Meowlofur were left after his sister Shelia’s death.  She had asked Louie while on her death-bed emblazoned with tubes to take her precious felines.  Louie had begged her in the hollow hospital room to let someone else have the pleasure, but Sheila was adamant.

*******

Hopefully everyone else is cruising along smoothly with their goals.  If not, it is okay.  That is the beauty of ROW80 is flexibility. 😀

The Wednesday Row80 Around

Feb 8, 2012

Row80!!!  Woo Hoo!  This week is going so well!  Ok, my Talk About It Tuesday didn’t make a huge splash, but I have faith that it will grow some goo and stick to a few windshields. Maybe I didn’t talk enough?  Or maybe the subjects weren’t nuts enough.  Or maybe….. the universe does not revolve around me and people are actually doing *GASP* non-Darlene related things!

A-GO-NY!! Anyway, it is actually the first post I ever posted on a Tuesday come to think about it.  I was doing the customary ROW80 Sunday and ROW80 Wednesday posts. Then I added the Flash Fiction Friday segment.

Now I am adding two new segments.  Talk About It Tuesday and The Walking Dead Chow Down which is scheduled for Thursdays.

I always find these ridiculous stories in my RSS feed in work and I figured my readers would appreciate the insanity in the world just as much as I do.  So Talk About It Tuesday was born.

Thursday is all about zombies and The Walking Dead.  I thought of this because I wanted a fun theme that I love (and some of my readers love) and I figured I could not go wrong with zombies! So I am adding the upkeep of these two themes to my ROW80 goals.

On to the Goals:

• Reading/commenting blogs – I have been doing very well on this.  I have found some great new blogs and have commented and read a good 1o – 12 blogs a day.  It is time-consuming.  To make it less time-consuming, I let them all build up in my inbox and then use my lunch hour in work to read and comment.  Eating and reading interesting stuff works for me!

• 750words.com – I am kicking so much arse on this goal I am contemplating the actual taking of names. I have been free writing with no rhyme or reason.  It is coming out very raw and I love it.

• WIP – Totally bombing on this one.  I started the editing process but felt like I still knew too much of what was going on in the story that I would fill in parts in my mind that weren’t written in.  Does that make sense? So I put it back on the shelf for another thirty days.

• My new blog segments – This is a brand new baby!  I discovered the beauty of scheduled blog posts thanks to Kristen Lamb and I am loving it! It has made my life so much easier.  Making my life easier has given me more time.  More time has led to structure on my blog. It’s like building a flea circus out of safety pins and Popsicle sticks, except it works.

Off topic:  if you haven’t seen the movie DRIVE starring Ryan Gosling, you might want to give it look-see.  I am not a fan of his, but my boyfriend put it on tonight and I was drawn in by the lack of script and the abundance of sound and actions.

So that is it for this week. I’ll be posting my post to the linky tools site which can be found here.  How are everyone else’s goals coming along?

Coming to a Computer Screen Near You!

Feb 5, 2012

Happy Sunday Folks!  It is that time of the week again when the ROW80 clan gives the skinny on what’s been going up, down and around town with our Rowiest Goals.

750words.com

I have been kicking arse at 750words.com.   I was using this to write my Zombie story, but then realized when I went back the next day to take the words out, they were all lumped together like mashed potatoes (but not as tasty).  So, I now use the site to free write.  My crazy clown story titled, “Vengeful Noodles”, sprung from free writing on the site.  I think it is a great way to keep writing even if I have nothing to really write.  Does that make sense?

Flash Fiction Friday

My goals have kind of been all over the place, but I came up with some ideas in the mass mania of my week.  I am going to have TWO recurring themes on my blog starting this week.  One will be Flash Fiction Friday, which I am pretty sure is not new, but I have fun doing it.  It will now be a weekly thing on “Life at Full Throttle.”

Talk About It Tuesday

This will also be a new weekly segment here at “Life at Full Throttle.”  I was sitting in work yesterday on my lunch scrolling through an RSS feed I get in my work email and found some of the most ridiculous stories.  I will be sharing links to these loony stories and wanting to know your thoughts. Why would someone marry a corpse?  Uh, cause they’re two donuts short of a dozen!

Goals for this week are as follows:

• read/comment blogs – I am pretty good at this one
• continue with 750words.com
• AA meeting
• edit NaNoWriMo novel (I have slacked on this – big time)
• Continue with Zombie story

There you have it, readers. Good luck with your goals!  How are they coming along?  Have you added or removed any goals?  Have any of your goals changed in the process of achieving them?  Click here to post your progress to the linky site!