Finding Good in Bad

Oddly, this post comes right after my Life IS Good, Isn't It, post. (God's a crafty guy, filled with all kinds of irony)

At the end of last week I found out my mom is suffering from Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer. Needless to say, this is CRAP NEWS. There is NOTHING at all good about this news no matter how we look at it.

My family is no stranger to cancer. I've seen my dad go into remission with his throat cancer, and I've watched other members of my family die from this heinous disease.

If I may, I would like to add to my New Year's Resolutions by finding the good in the bad. I don't just mean with my mom's prognosis, I mean in every aspect of my life. I have no choice. I'm about to get a lot of training on the subject.

Let's take an example from my mom's awful news:

THE BAD (an incomplete list)

• Pancreatic cancer is incurable. She will die from this disease at some point.
• Stage 4 untreated = 3-6 months of life.
• She's only 66.
• She's my mom, I don't want my mom to die.
• Chemotherapy
• and on, and on, and on. . .

THE GOOD (A list to add to)

• Stage 4 with treatment = 3 months up to 2 years
• She's a healthy 66-year-old presenting with only mid-section pain; hope increases for treatment
• The rotten, no good, horrible, Chemotherapy is a light dose (nausea and hairloss are unlikely)
• Mom is up and at it, willing to fight.
• I get to live with her for one week per month in Utah during treatments
• My mom isn't being taken from me suddenly
• We get to slow down and take time for a bittersweet ending.
• Who knows? Two years might be a very real possibility.

I encourge all of you to find the good in the bad during your writing and query process; your journey.

LET'S SAY YOU GET A REJECTION ON YOUR QUERY TODAY, OR YOU DIDN'T WIN A CONTEST, WAS OVERLOOKED MORE THAN ONCE SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY. . .FIND THE GOOD IN THAT! Or, just appease me, I like that too.

WRITE ON WRITERS! FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT!

EFF GLOBAL WARMING!
FIGHT DISEASE!

I'm Completely Resolved - Happy New Year!

Yesterday, I couldn't figure out exactly what I wanted my resolutions to be. Check out my conundrum HERE.

I really enjoyed the comments I got yesterday, thank you! I especially liked the one from Jenny Beattie who said she wants to be a better Crusader. I'm with her. I'm terrible. There are so many of us and so little time to read each and everyone's. That's why I wish you all had an Email Subscription box. I know most of you put an RSS Feed but that goes to an area that I don't check often and doesn't appear on my phone. The Email Subscription goes right into my inbox and onto my phone, so I can read your posts anywhere.

However, I too, will try to be a better crusader.

I was seriously stumped. I didn't know exactly what to choose for myself this year. Mainly because I know what my goals are regarding writing, and I understand my commitment to my family's needs and couldn't find a way out of my tight schedule for at least another year and a half.

I would have loved to choose working on bringing the NaNo Youth Program to my kids' elementary, but I don't have the time because I have my youngest child in preschool through this year and next year. Our preschool is 20 miles away so it eats up a lot of my time.

I thought about making it about my writing group, Write-A-Tat-Tat, and helping them polish their NaNo books, but I can't force them. A resolution is really about what I'm capable of doing. Sure, it can be about helping others. I could have made it about helping my writing group, but I already do that, we work as a team. I needed a resolution that I could focus on in my spare time--a fail-safe.

Now why a fail-safe? Because the far-fetched resolution relies on things outside of my control. Which takes more time and patience. I may never achieve my far-fetched resolution of landing an agent this year. I'll consider it a successful resolution if I give it my all in the query process, but I still want the agent. The fail-safe resolution keeps me challenged in a way that I can do it by myself.

A fail-safe resolution can be as easy or as challenging as I want it to be. I can set a limit on a fail-safe resolution. For example: When I set my fail-safe for 2010 it was to cook a new meal from a recipe book at least once per month. I failed this one. But I was okay with it. If I wasn't absorbed in my far-fetched resolution then I would have easily completed the recipe task. If it wasn't challenging enough I could have up the ante to 2 new recipes per month. See what I mean?

At 10:00pm last night I was over at my sister's house playing Trivial Pursuit the Bet You Know It edition, when I realized I was going to need some help choosing the fail-safe resolution.

I decided the resolution should involve learning a new skill and practicing it. Then I asked my husband, my brother-in-law, and my sister to each come up with a new skill for me to learn. I added one to the list as well.

Here's what we came up with for me:

• LEARN TO SEW (This one came from my sister. Yep, I know a little bit about sewing. I could probably stitch something together but I hate the sewing machine. I have never been able to get that thing to work for me the right way.)
• LEARN TO PLAY GUITAR (This one is from my husband. Okay, back when I was in college I got a guitar for Xmas because I wanted to learn how to play Mazzie Star songs. I quickly found I needed help with the chords and dropped the hobby altogether.)
• LEARN TO PAINT FROM BOB ROSS, THE HAPPY PAINTER FROM THE JOY OF PAINTING (This comes from my brother-in-law. Love this guy, Bob Ross. He paints, "Happy little trees." I could learn from buying his kit HERE or from watching his YouTube videos like the one HERE.)
• LEARN TO CAN 6 FOODS IN 12 MONTHS: JAM, JELLY, PICKLES, KIM CHEE, CARROTS & JALAPENOS (I threw this one into the mix. I want to make orange marmalade.)

All of the above were put onto strips of paper, folded up, and thrown into a dish for me to choose from. It took us until 11:45pm last night to make this list. Here I am all hopeful and excited, getting read to draw my fate, so to speak, ha, ha.

DRUM ROLL, PLEASE!!!! 

DUH-DUH-DA-DUH!

I WILL BE LEARNING TO PLAY THE GUITAR WHILE I QUERY LIKE A MAD WOMAN FOR ALL OF 2011 and try to be a better Crusader.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

A WISH OF HAPPY, HEALTHY, WEALTHY ALL THROUGHOUT 2011 FOR ALL OF YOU.

Tell me what you have planned for the year, especially if it involves adding an Email Subscription to your sidebar so I can get over there and sign up for it.

I Have Until Midnight

It's that time of year again to say goodbye to the old and bring in the new. That sounds like no big deal, right? We do it all the time. It's just another day.

NOT FOR ME.

I PANIC. I wonder: Did I do everything I set out to do last year and keep to the goals I set for myself year after year?

I'M TALKIN' RESOLUTIONS, PEOPLE!!! I make resolutions. I think I posted about this briefly when I first started blogging, but let's face it, I had no followers, so a bit of repeat here won't make a difference (It's HERE if you want to go back and read it).

Resolutions are meant to be life altering. You're supposed to pick these really far-fetched resolutions that will make you a better, smarter, more fit, generous, likely-to-do-it, kind of person. That's why it's so hard to make and stick to these resolutions.

When making resolutions, people don't think: I'm going to lose weight this year--and then put it all back on next year. Or, I'm going to be more generous and donate to my favorite charity--but this year and this year only, forget about those needy people next year.

SEE? Resolutions are meant to be made and kept FOREVER! F-O-R-E-V-E-R!!!

Breathe in breathe out. Everything will be okay. There are better ways to go about this.

Here's how I do it: I pick two resolutions per year. One is far-fetched, and the other is simple--designed to be a fail-safe.

For this year, I picked: Finally write my first book (lots of previously failed attempts). And my fail-safe was: Make one new meal per month that I've never made before to add variety to my family dinners. Guess which one I failed at? But I kept at least one and got halfway through the other. I have a completed book (actually 3 completed books) and made 6 new recipes this year.

Now I'm going through to check on old resolutions. Am I sticking to them? Let's see. One year I resolved to be more generous. Yep, I did the best I could with charity work this year. I focused on my kids' school, Haiti, NaNo, Miss Snark's and Locks for Love. My husband focused on the Challenged Athletes Foundation. At the end of this year, we feel like we've done the best we could to help others in need.

There was that year I planned to get in shape. I was iffy on this one at best. I did manage to participate in Camp Pendleton's Mud Run in June even though I was too busy writing my book to train. I vowed never to do it without any training again, even if that meant a little jog around the block every now and then. That one hurt but I made it back in 1 hour and 35 mins (you can read more about it HERE in an old post, there's even a video). I felt so bad about how hard it was to run this one that I started working out in the living room but then dropped that routine as soon as the kids started school. I'll have to work harder on it this year to stay healthy.

I was able to update a few pictures on my family tree wall, we did buy a new tree for the yard, kept up the vegetable garden, blogged at least once per week from the time I started, but I KNOW I've dropped the ball entirely somewhere. Last year we dropped the ball on making at least one improvement on the house, but we added bookshelves this year so I'm hopeful it hasn't been entirely dropped.

I think I know what I missed: I STILL HAVEN'T SETTLED ON A NEW SET OF RESOLUTIONS FOR 2011! That was a past resolution I made when I was in college. I promised myself I would make at least one new resolution each year for the rest of my life, no matter how big or small. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, huh? At least, I have until midnight.

It's almost easier to make the far-fetched one (even though I'm going to be stuck with it for more than one year) than to pick the fail-safe.

My far-fetched resolution is to query all year and land an agent. That's somewhat out of my control. I can't just say my resolution is to get an agent. I should actually modify that to say, in hopes of landing an agent. Otherwise, that would be like saying I have the power to choose an agent. I can't force an agent to like my work and want to work with me. But, I can say that I will continue to query throughout the year. I tend to query cautiously. I only sent 12 queries out this year. It wasn't terrible. I did get 2 partial requests. But I should have queried more. So, this year, I'm going for it. I'm querying like a querying fool, if you will.

Now, what the heck is my fail-safe resolution going to be? I HAVE NO IDEA. It almost seems easier to call my far-fetched query resolution the fail-safe. I have a lot to think about today.

I'll get back to everyone and let you all know what I picked for my final resolutions. I wish you all a Happy and Safe New Year! If I could make two wishes for each of you it's that I could read more about your journey or your life in querying and that you would all add an Email Subscription to your blog from FeedBurner since I tend to keep up more with those blogs and get behind on many of my other favorite blogs. But that's selfish, I shouldn't say all that. But I did, and now you know. I hope that you query and put up an Email Subscription box. If you can do either of those, please let me know so I can sign up or follow along on your journey.

New Year's Resolution Roundup

I find the New Year's Resolution to be more and more important the older I get.

When I was younger I didn't ever take this practice seriously. When I was young, I worked hard every day to be something so a resolution was pointless.

Getting to my quarter-life crisis was significant. I realized I was 25 years old and still hadn't gotten anywhere. Except, I had gotten everywhere I wanted to be, but at the end of the day it wasn't enough. I was married, had my first child, but I didn't have a career or a dream job. I had gone from living a fast life to a slow life; I was bored in the mind. I had too much energy; I needed to do something more. However, I had no idea what I wanted to do, or who I was or wanted to be. That's when I knew I needed some resolutions; some way of tricking my mind into believing I was still living and achieving even if I was standing still for the moment.

Now that I make resolutions every year, it's interesting how piddly my resolutions from the past seemed. That's why I started making two resolutions. The first resolution was for something small and easily obtainable (a fail-safe). The second resolution was designed to be difficult, hardly reasonable, but a goal all the same.

This year my resolutions were:
1. Make one new recipe every month. Just one. Not a whole month of new meals.
2. Write a book. Not to be confused with start writing a book (I've done that one already and never finished it). I mean start and finish writing a book.

June is the notorious half-way point of the resolution. So, we should always check-up on ourselves even if we know we haven't even started, because it's a good reminder to get motivated and inspired.

Here's my six-month roundup:

1. Make a new recipe every month: I made a new recipe every month for three months. (I mean from scratch, not a new just-add-water meal). And then, I got too busy and I gave up.

2. Write a book: I finally did it! I wrote a book. I kept my momentum and then I wrote two books. Now, I am on my third book. It's not like me to be able to be inspired for such long periods of time.

Here is what's funny about resolutions to me:

The resolution usually perpetuates a life-style (That's probably why most people avoid making resolutions all together).

Last year, I had a resolution to run at the Marine Corps. Camp Pendelton Mud Run 10K (obstacles, Marine's yelling, mud in the face, etc.). So, last year, before the race, I ran and ran and ran. Then I ran some more. I called this "training for the Mud Run." Well, the race was so successful and fun to do, how could I not sign up for it again this year?

Yeah, so I signed up for the Mud Run this year (January 1 is sign up day), but the book writing prevented me from pulling myself away long enough to train (or stretch for that matter). I will elaborate on this year's Mud Run experience in tomorrow's blog (need to have pictures and they are getting developed as I type this blog post).

See what I mean about how a resolution can perpetuate a life-style change? So, if you decided to lose weight last year and you were successful, then you probably feel like you have to lose weight every year. If you decided to write one book this year and you wrote two or three, then you probably feel like you have to write at least one book every year.

If you stacked resolutions like this in the past, then you've probably stopped making resolutions all together by now.

Perhaps, it would be better to remind ourselves that inside each goal there are several other small but gainful goals.

I don't feel like I have to write three books a year, every year of my life. I might just focus on getting an agent next year (even though I am also focusing on it this year too.) Maybe though, I go from the query process to the conference process.

Piece it out. Don't let the resolution get you down. Remember, small steps to the end goal. Make one small goal and one big goal. Maybe the small goal is a piece of the big goal, if so, then make that big goal further down the road.

How are your resolutions working out for you this year? Have you started yet? Have you already finished? Do you regret your resolution choice this year?