So, how was your day?

It’s almost midnight, again… and for the third day in a row I haven’t got a clue what to write for you. Makes me wonder some days why I keep signing up for NaBloPoMo every month and subjecting myself to this!

I really need a posting schedule so that I know exactly what to write when … even writing a week’s worth of posts in advance would be better than the way things are going here this week.

I’ve always been one of those bloggers who posts when the spirit moves them, whether it’s a quote or a photo or… gasp… an actual article, I’ve never really know until I sat down to write what was going to appear on the screen.

One of the big reasons I’ve resisted a more regimented approach to creating is that it’s, well, not creative. I hate feeling regimented or stuck writing on something that I’m really not in the mood to write about that day. Makes me feel like I’m back in school with the whole “read this article and write a position paper on it” feeling.

But I am trying to take my blogging, and by extension, my whole business, to the next level and so this whole seat of the pants thing just isn’t going to work anymore.

So it’s time for me to put my big-girl pants on, and really get organized here. It may take a day or two to sort out the topics and where they go, but if all goes will then this will be the last panicky last-minute post you ever see from me. (Hey, I can dream can’t I?)

Photo Credit: Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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So… it’s November and for many people that means it’s National Novel Writing Month. I’m skipping the festivities this year in favor of becoming a “NaNo Rebel.” Instead of focusing on writing fiction, I’m writing 50,000 words of content for this site and The Acorn Stash instead.

I’m also participating in NaBloPoMo again this month. I sure can’t do any worse than last month. October was horrible for getting any writing done, and I’m excited to be more in focus already this month. :)

One of the things I do hope to do this month is get out and take more pictures. I’ve been neglecting my camera of late and I’m feeling really guilty about it.

What’s nice right now is that there’s still some colour out there to be found if you go looking for it. There’s a little tiny park just up the street from me that has awesome flower gardens, and there are still some awesome flowers hanging on ’til the last minute.

Related posts:

1. Thanking November and December Commenters
2. This Week in Review: November 15 to 21, 2009
3. Workouts, Screwups, and Being Happy

Happy Labour Day! I hope you had an awesome long weekend if you were celebrating. :)

It’s certainly starting to feel like fall already here. It was even cool enough to wear jeans out this morning. :)

I just about messed up my daily posting. I got so wrapped up in creating a new issue of The Acorn Stash that I almost forgot I still had to come here and post something. :)

So the big plan that I wrote about yesterday starts in the morning. Shaun says he is getting up to go running at 6 a.m. and I told him to wake me up too. I won’t run with him because I can’t keep up, so I’ll either ride the bike or do some yoga instead.

I have an exciting week planned, content-wise so stay tuned for more and better posts over the coming days.

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1. Workouts, Screwups, and Being Happy
2. Happy November!
3. How To Be Happy

I had an interesting conversation with my son this afternoon about priorities and productivity. We started talking about fitness and exercise and how we both need to do more to become fit. And he brought up an interesting point, because he pretty much called me on my lack of motivation to go to the gym every day.

Here’s the gist of what he said… As someone who works from home my time is my own. And since my main business is writing newsletters two days a week, and writing PLR the other five days, there’s no reason that I shouldn’t be going to the gym. He pointed out that while he works in a factory and can’t spend hours a day working out, that I can spend as many hours as I need on my fitness, and have the freedom and the flexibility to set my own schedule.

So, as I was working on my writing schedule for this week I took his words to heart. My main goal has to be to get fit. And if I’m going to practice what I preach about taking care of yourself, then I have to start taking better care of myself too. That means I have to put my fitness and health first, even before business. Because, as he bluntly pointed out, there’s no point in having a successful business if I’m not alive to enjoy it. Pretty smart kid, eh?

I have a funny feeling too that I just might be more productive once I get into a rhythm of when to work out and when to write. Not only because I’ll have to get more work done in less time, but because I’m pretty sure I’ll have a lot more energy too.

I’m excited for the possibilities. At the very least I’m thinking that I’ll have lots of fodder for new blog posts here. Lucky you, eh? :)

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September is shaping up to be a month of challenges. I’m always up for a good challenge, so participating in all of what I have planned should make for a very productive month.

First, there are PLR challenges — one for users and one for sellers. I’ve been doing these for a few months and am really loving how much I get done.

Then there are the writing challenges… The first one is the Nablopomo challenge on this blog. The topic for the month is “Return” but I’m not sure how closely I’ll follow that. I have a few ideas for articles, and of course the Taking Care of Yourself Series to finish so we’ll see where we go from there.

My own challenge this month is to get back to exercising on a regular basis and to get my blood glucose levels under control. I know that it can be done through diet and exercise, and so I am determined to at least make some headway. I slacked off a lot over the summer, and I can really feel it now.

So, it’s going to be a busy month. And I can’t wait. :)

What’s on your plate this month?

Related posts:

1. New Month, New Challenges
2. A Week of Beginnings and Endings
3. Eating Crow

This is probably going to come off like a rant, and like I’m totally anti-comments.

I’m not.

I love comments, getting them and giving them. It makes the whole day spent writing worthwhile when someone actually stops by to comment and genuinely contributes to the discussion. Or at the very least makes a comment that relates to the post.

But this automated, spam every blog that might have your keyword in it, type commenting has got to go. It’s the main reason I’ve switched almost all of my blogs — the ones that allow comments, anyways — to Disqus instead of using the built-in wordpress comment forms.

Case in point… On my birthday post, I received over 40 comments. Pretty cool you’d think, eh. After all it was my fiftieth birthday, and to me it was a really big deal. :) If you look at that post, you’ll see that there are no comments approved. Why? Because they were all automated crappy comments. And I know this because… Not one single spamm…. oops I meant commenter even bothered to say Happy Birthday!

Oh they were genuine looking comments … nice post, great site, that kind of thing … but if you want even half a chance to spam me with links to your adsense sites, you picked the wrong post to do it on.

But a comment I got on The Acorn Stash today really takes the cake. The person didn’t even try to hide the fact that they were mass-posting spammy comments. They left the freakin’ spintax in the post!

{I intended|I needed|I wanted|Needed} to {compose|create|draft|post|put|send|write} you {a|one|that|the|this} {bit of|little|little bit of|tiny|very little|very small} {note|observation|remark|word} {in order to|just to|so as to|to|to be able to|to f…

I’ve been playing this game a lot longer than most of the so-called gurus out there, and I’ve seen a lot of pretty blatant spam, but this has to take the cake. How anyone even thought they would get that approved is beyond me.

Okay … so it pretty much was a rant, and I’m running out of steam…

Seriously people, I understand the need to get lots of backlinks. But think about how you’re doing it. And if you’re gonna spin your comments, and least load the spun versions into your submitter before you start. You might have at least a 1% chance of getting a comment approved that way.

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So… it’s been awhile… again. I have to admit, for the longest time I never really knew what to do with this site. It has been a constant reminder of lost focus, if I ever really had any true focus to begin with.

As Tiffany Dow pointed out on her blog yesterday, for a long time now I’ve been a flitterer. Jumping from one thing to the next, and whether you call it shiny object syndrome or just plain old Adult ADD, I have it in spades. Or had it…

I’ve been reading a lot of self help and personal growth books lately. The one thing they all seem to have in common is that they tell you to a) find out what you’re passionate about, and b) focus.

One of my favorite questions has always been, “If money wasn’t an issue and you could do whatever you wanted, what would you do?”

I’ve never known how to answer that question because I’m so eclectic and even a little eccentric. My interests vary far and wide and into places that only my family and close friends know about because I’m not very open. I’m all about creating the life I want, and I do it without really thinking about what other people see when they see me but it’s hard to put all of that on a blog because everyone says you have to focus on one thing, brand yourself, become a “go to” person and frankly… while I understand that … it drives me nuts. Because I’m not just one thing … it’s a combination of all those things that makes me who and what I am.

If life is about creating yourself, then no one but you should have the final say in how that creation looks. (Unless, of course, your creation is on the highly illegal or immoral side.)

One thing I do know for sure is that in my creation, the times when I feel the best about myself and my life are the times when I have been posting on this blog. Whether words or pictures, creating the blog post has become an art form for me (and I suspect for many others as well).
So it should be that the opposite is true also — if I write and post, I will feel even better.

I think it’s very fitting that I’m re-starting this blog as part of my very first 10k Writer’s Day. Because if there’s one thing I am sure about in my life, it’s that I was meant to be a writer.

All my life I’ve written — stories, essays, poetry, journals, songs. About the only thing I haven’t tried to write at least once is a play or a screenplay. But when it comes to writing a personal blog, it’s hard to put myself out there.

So here I am again, starting over at fifty — definitely not what I thought I’d be doing at this point in my life but I’m excited about the possibilities. And at least now I know the answer to the question.

So if you asked me again,”If money wasn’t an issue and you could do whatever you wanted, what would you do?”

I would answer you, emphatically and enthusiastically, “I would write!”

And so the journey begins. Where will I go? Who will I meet? What stories will I tell? Only the wind knows for sure, but it’s going to be an exciting ride. And I will write about it all.

Let the journey begin!

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1. I Did Write!

And boy oh boy am I glad to see the backside of this decade.

I was going to write a whole thing about what I’ve been through in the last ten years, but since I wrote today’s issue of The Acorn Stash on living for today and how dwelling on the past doesn’t change anything, I figure I better practice what I preach.

So all I will say is that I am so excited to be turning fifty tomorrow. I feel like I’m twenty-one again and about to embark on my first adventure out into the world. The last time I felt like this I was 30 and quit my job to go back to university. This time I don’t have a job to quit because I love what I’m doing both with The Acorn Stash, and with my PLR Store that’s just getting off the ground. And I have that feeling that the next few years are going to be so full of new adventures for me.

Here’s what I wrote in my newsletter today:

Maybe it’s because I’m turning 50 tomorrow, but I’ve been thinking a lot about life and how we live it. Especially about how quickly the years pass. My brother wrote on my Facebook wall last night that it seems like only yesterday I was walking to school all by myself. And it’s true. It really does feel like only yesterday. Partly because there’s still a lot of that little girl inside me, and partly because I really don’t feel like I’m about to be fifty years old. In all honesty, I feel like I’m turning 21 — to me it feels like my life is just beginning and there are so many exciting possibilities out there to explore I’ll just have to live to at least 100 so that I have enough time to do everything I want to do. :) So in honour of that, today’s article explores the idea of living your best life today, instead of waiting for the magical “someday” to come along.

One of the things I plan to do is write on this site a lot more regularly. I’ll still post photos too, but there are a lot of words still left in this girl and I can feel them bubbling just under the surface, ready to make their way into the world.

Other than that, I’m not totally sure where this life is going to take me next. I’ve got some ideas on where I want to go and what I want to do, but until I get them a little more figured out I’m keeping my cards close.

So for tonight I’m waving goodbye to my forties and sending them on their way. I’ve done a lot, experienced a lot, and learned a lot these past years, but I’m ready to move on and really live my life now and put the lessons to good use.

Wish me luck!

Until next time,
Thanks for being here,

Lena

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I love doing the whole Nablopomo thing and writing something everyday, except on those days like today where I got absolutely nothin’ to say. Nothing to write about, no new pictures to post, nothin. I’ve got a good article in the works for tomorrow, but it’s not quite ready yet.

And since I don’t want to be one of those people who blogs about drivel just to use up bandwidth, I’ll keep this one really short.

Have a wonderful day, and I promise better content for tomorrow!

From the archives, in anticipation of new growth to come:

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It’s been one of those days. Having to do groceries and laundry both on one day have left me feeling totally stressed out. I thought I’d gotten beyond the feelings of panic at having to be out in crowded places, but apparently not.

I was so happy to get home and just relax and have some quiet time.
I’ll be very happy to get back into the gym tomorrow and work off some of this stress too. But until then, I’ll just practice my deep breathing exercises, and stare at some of my more peaceful pictures like this one:

I AM at peace in this moment.
I AM at peace in this moment.

I feel better already. :)

Have a great evening!

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1. Searching for Home
2. Another Quiet Day
3. A Solitary Moment