Breaking down walls in the new year
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- January 5, 2019
- 1186
With 2019 in full swing I’m taking my yearly trek through what I hope to accomplish in the weeks and months to come.
I don’t want to merely survive but to thrive, to swing wildly and send a home run into the bleachers.
Many of my days see me crashing into the closing hours, tired and worn out, getting things done but not in the time frame I saw them happening in. I’m not a robot. I can’t do it all and still look neat as a pin at the end of the day. But trying and trying again is the first step.
Managing my time: I do not manage my time well. My wish is to take sections of each day and devote them to whatever it is I need to work on. I haphazardly wing my way through my work day and end up frustrated.
It needs to look like this: Writing? You get two hours. Scheduling social media? This company gets two hours and so on. The problem (and blessing?) with working at home is that it is your own time, your minutes, your moment to make more coffee or change a load of laundry. Your neatly thought-out schedule can take a big hit that way.
I’m not a calendar person per se, but maybe if I map out what each day should look like, I’ll be further ahead.
Working in my freshly finished writing room: This has been a slow-moving project for me with lots more to do. I found a new desk in the form of a gorgeous library table, thanks to my cousin Chris. He’d had it for years and wanted to sell. It weighs about 1,000 pounds (just kidding) yet made it up our twisty stairs with no curse words leaving my lips. My husband and I can still make things happen. It fit perfectly under the windows, and when I hung my purple velvet curtains, I had to gasp.
I did some work up there at the desk, and though it doesn’t feel like a fully functional work station, I know it will soon. I need to be able to go in there and close the door so the cares of working at home fall away — and my productivity flourishes.
Maybe I need to create a coffee (or wine) station.
Conquering my wish list: My phone is filled with notes and ideas I continually jot down every day, ideas I think would be money-makers, art I want to create, as well as the continuous flow of words and phrases I use to spark my writing.
I watched a movie the other week, “The House with a Clock in Its Walls,” that lit a flame inside me. It reminded me good young adult fiction is still written and that I’d love to be writing it. My formative years contained so many good reads that I remember to this day, that helped for what I chose for my profession.
Maybe once I clean up George’s book and publish it, I’ll get started on the swirling ideas in my head. Or maybe I should start now.
The prerequisite goal for a new year is to get healthy, eat better and listen to your body. Most years I don’t put this goal into motion, although other forces may have been in play.
I purchased a vegan cookbook for my daughter this Christmas only to find out her fiancé had already bought it. She laughed and said that “this is good mom because you’re meant to have this cookbook,” and I chuckled right along with her.
I’m not a vegan, although she has been a vegetarian for close to two years now; she just recently went vegan.
I don’t think I will ever be one, but that doesn’t mean I can’t go meatless several days a week. I know I can’t process meat like I used to, and you know what? That forces me to listen to my body. Here’s to eating more veggies in 2019.