Tag: writing

You are a Squid

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You are a squid.

An intelligent being crawling on the bottom of the darkest ocean.

The only light you’ve ever known are the speckles of the bioluminescent plankton.

You cannot comprehend the sunlight. The days. An entire world above you surrounded by constant light.

You are a squid.

You are surviving. Hunting. Sleeping. Camoflouging.

You cannot comprehend that there are other intelligent beings physically separated from you.

Other intelligent beings who have built a civilization and harnessed the light. Beings who effect your ocean for better and worse.

The only difference between you and the squid is that one day you will conquer the pressure of the deep and see the surface.

One day you will know sunlight. You will see the things beyond your comprehension. Beyond your deep sea.

You will rise above the waters and feel warmth for the first time.

But for now, you are a squid.

Take comfort, Little One. You will not drown. The bottom is not forever.

How an Adult Sticker Chart Saved My Productive Life

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I swear by this. This was a huge game changer.

If you follow me on any social media platform you may have noticed that once a month I post a sticker chart/calendar on my stories (fully completed nbd). And if you know me in real everyday life then you’ve already heard me blather on about this method and you can politely disregard this blog post.

But I am not kidding when I say, THIS WORKS SO HARD FOR ME. Maybe it would work so hard for you too. Maybe it wouldn’t. Am I still going to write an entire post about it? You BETCHA BOTTOM DOLLAR LIL ORPHAN ANNIE.

THE STICKER CHART

This is what I do. In order to earn a sticker, I have two goals a day. STRICTLY TWO. (Trust me on this. I have been developing this method for two years. And the first year was me over-trying and failing.)
The two goals are these:

  • Scratch one item off my to-do list
  • Spend 25 minutes cleaning an area of my house.

That doesn’t seem like much, but WHEN I TELL YOU!!! Consistency vs. Baddie superhuman hustler burnout. Consistency is going to win every time. Fact.

Here are the specifics about the two goals…

THE TO-DO LIST

I’ve mentioned it before, but monthly challenges work really well for me for some reason. 30 days is the perfect amount of time before I get tired and bored and want a change. So, personally, I make a new to-do list every single month.

It’s a list of 30-31 tasks (one for each day of the month). Now, the trick of the to-do list is having a good variety of tasks. You want to have both challenging hours-long chores AND chores that you could do in a minute or two. Some days you’re going to have more energy / resources for organizing the entire garage and other days you’re going to be sick in bed and only have enough energy to order your kids school pictures from your phone. You’re going to want BOTH. And the beautiful thing about the to-do list is you can pick and choose what you’re up for that particular day. Which does mean that you’ll put off most of your “yuckiest” tasks until the end of the month. But it weirdly works out because you’re so close to getting a brand new to-do list next month.

Obviously, you’re going to have more than 30 tasks you’ll need to do in a month. I get that. This list is more like things you’ve been ‘meaning to get around to’ or things you’re ‘anticipating you need to get done that month’. For example, when I put together my list I have a good mix of organizing/cleaning tasks, holiday tasks, and writing goals.

I use Google Keep Notes on my phone so I have my list with me everyday.

DAILY 25 MINUTES OF CLEANING

I settled on 25 minutes because that’s what they use for the ‘pomodoro technique’ and it’s supposedly the most optimal time for productivity. (I mean, it’s been working for me!)

So this is a little different than the cleaning tasks on the to-do list. This is reserved for general upkeep of your home. Picking up, vacuuming, wiping off counters Etc. Etc. Doing 25 minutes a day doesn’t feel like it makes a difference at first, but once you keep up with it, it really does keep up your house fairly well!
I have a general schedule in my mind when I do my daily 25. (Mondays- kitchen. Tuesdays – bedrooms. Wednesdays – Bathrooms. Thursdays – upstairs. Fridays – downstairs. Weekends – laundry.) But I’m not strict about that schedule. Sometimes your kids make a disaster of the playroom and you need to focus on that room. So I usually just do my 25 focusing on what room needs the most work that day.
One sad note about this: I tried so hard to make dishes work into this routine, but soon discovered that I had to do dishes separate. I made doing dishes part of our bed time routine and just plan on it every day. It’s the only way I can keep up on them.

THE MOST IMPORTANT PART

The real reason this works so well for me is because… all my life… I have just really fudgin’ loved stickers so much. AHAHAHAHAHA

Whenever I explain to someone that I use my wall calendar as an adult sticker chart, they’re like,
“So what do you get at the end of the month if you fill your chart?”
And I’m like, “What do you mean?”
“I mean like what do you reward yourself with?”
“… I reward myself with the stickers.”
“Yeah, I know, but like… do you get a treat at the end? Do you buy yourself something?”
“Yeah! I buy more stickers.”
The cuter the stickers the more determined I am to get work done, because I refuse to have one single blank space on my calendar. So I curate the most darling and interesting stickers I can find.

SO !!!!! If you have skimmed this post and are just now getting to this part PLEASE READ!!!

Whatever you end up doing for motivation, it doesn’t have to be a sticker chart, but it absolutely MUST be something that delights your inner child. Utilize what you LOVED as a child and it will work. If you loved video games, reward yourself with X number of minutes playing your favorite game. If you loved to draw, add to a drawing everyday until it’s completed in a month.

Your ego will resist this. And you’ll have to sit it down and say, “Look Ego, I understand that you think it’s silly for a thirty-four-year-old woman to have a sticker chart. But sometimes this thirty-four-year-old woman needs nine-year-old little girl things to fulfill all the parts of herself.”

You are the parent of your inner child. Be kind. Be patient. Be encouraging.

34 Random Facts About Myself

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Hello. I turned 34 last week. My age feels both accurate and inaccurate. Like I don’t feel 34 while sitting on my office chair with my feet tucked under my butt. But I guess I do feel 34 when I drive my minivan to pick up my kids from school. The heartburn and the back pain screams 34 haha.

Anyways, to celebrate my age I wrote 34 random facts about myself, one for each year I’ve been alive. You’re welcome.

  1. I was born in the same exact hospital that I birthed my first child in.
  2. Dinosaurs have been a special interest of mine ever since I was two.
  3. One of my earliest memories is giving myself the chicken pox. I was jealous that my mom counted all of my sister’s chicken pox and so I snuck into her room when she was asleep and tried to “breathe in her germs” hahaha! Unfortunately, it worked and I got WAY sicker than she had been.
  4. I wrote my first story at three or four. I drew it as a four panel picture on a Mac “Kids Pic” program. And it was about the chicken pox I gave myself lol. (“I got chicken pox”, “Then Mom gave me a bath”, “Then I felt better”, “The End”)
  5. I’m the middle child in my family. I have a sister three years older than me and a brother five years younger than me.
  6. I’ve always held my pencil “weird”. Resting on my middle finger instead of pinching it or whatever. My first grade teacher tried and tried to correct it but I still hold my pencil that way as an adult.
  7. When I was in second grade I was obsessed with Santa’s reindeer. I wrote them each individual letters instead of Santa that year.
  8. In third grade I purposely sat in the back of the class so I could write stories in my blue denim notebook all day instead of pay attention to the teacher. I filled that notebook and I still have it.
  9. At 9, I briefly took acting classes but I couldn’t sing worth a dime so I never got cast in any significant roles
  10. I started directing my own plays and performed them for all the other 5th grade classes. (This was the skit I had my friends do haha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfLdFZ4my9g )
  11. The only time I got a ticket or a pink slip in school was when I snuck under the fence to play in the creek next to our elementary school. My mom wasn’t even mad about it. She was more mad about the girl who tattled on me.
  12. In Jr. High, I had a red guinea pig named Joe.
  13. At thirteen, I wrote, directed and starred in a play I put on for my local church. It was a comedy called, “The Foot.”
  14. I was obsessed with the original Twilight Zone. I even threw a Twilight Zone party for my friends. That TV show would become a massive influence on my writing.
  15. Took 4 years of French in secondary school because I liked this guy in my class. Can’t remember a single word and speak fluent Spanish now lol.
  16. In high school, I wrote a full-length feature film with my friends. A low-budget student slasher. (What else?) It wasn’t very good or anything lol but it ended up being a creative catalyst for a lot of the kids who worked on that project, including me.
  17. I got shingles my senior year. How does that even happen? Haha. The haunts of giving myself the chicken pox
  18. One year I repeatedly got cast as a monkey in a few different plays. Type casting I guess.
  19. I studied Classical Acting at Southern Utah University until I ran out of money and had to move back home.
  20. One of my favorite hobbies when I was 20 was exploring abandoned buildings. One time the cops came and my friends and I hid ourselves inside an abandoned school. (oops)
  21. I lived in various areas of Peru for a year and a half. Lima, Trujillo, Salaverry, and Neuvo Chimbote.
  22. Twenty-two was one of the worst years of my whole life. Like the entire year. Birthday to birthday. Just horrific. I couldn’t think of a single good fact I wanted to say about this year. So I guess that’s my fact. Unlike the popular song at the time, I was not feeling 22 lol.
  23. Coincidentally, twenty-three was one of the absolute best years of my life. Even at the time I called it “The Golden Year”. I ended up meeting my soul mate when I was 23.
  24. I used to work in Accounts Receivable at a printer company and got in trouble for writing during work (Heh heh heh. It wasn’t funny to me at the time, but now it is.)
  25. I left my job at the printer company and went back to school. In my Intro to Educational Psychology class, the professor said that “the things we chose to do in our free time as children reflects as close to our true selves as possible.” That’s the moment I realized how much story-telling has been a passion throughout my life.
  26. When I was twenty-six, I began writing regularly and have not looked back since!
  27. The first time I had ever set foot in the Phoenix area, was when I stepped off the plane to live here.
  28. I found out my first story was going to be professionally published while I was in active labor with my second child.
  29. At twenty-nine I had this life-changing Beatlemania phase that… never went away lol.
  30. We moved into our first house the exact weekend that everything shut down for the pandemic.
  31. I have three spectacular kids and I’m not just saying that. I really love each of those three people so dang much.
  32. I published my first book on Amazon at thirty-two.
  33. I got my first screen-writing credit at thirty-three.
  34. At thirty-four, I still sit on my office chair with my feet tucked under my butt haha