Jennerosity

There comes a point when every creative spirit and soul needs to stop pouring out from themselves and immerse themselves in the creativity of others, so that their own well can be re-filled.  My fellow creative types will know all about this.  I think it extends beyond just the creative to all sorts of energy that we pour out of ourselves on a daily basis.

Before we left for Japan¹, I think you could safely say that Benevolance and I were skirting burnout.  I feel a bit like a faker claiming it for myself, since compared to him, my workload is much lighter².  I’m hoping that this three weeks away is long enough to refill our wells so we can return to regular life with renewed vigor.

For myself, I can feel that familiar stirring inside of me.  I’m getting fired up again about different projects and things I want to start doing.  The problem is always that most of our time at home is spent on our jobs instead of our interests, so I am always feeling like there isn’t enough time.  But it’s important to make time for these things at home, so that we let a little trickle in to keep our wells from drying out too quickly again.

One thing I’ve been reminded of on this trip is that exercise refills my well.  Even at home, when I’m exercising I seem to have more energy so that I can use my time more efficiently and effectively.  Sleep is the other big one.  It’s hard, but I must start getting to bed earlier.  Here where we have so much fewer distractions in the evenings, it’s so much easier to start to sleep when the sun goes down.  Sure, in theory, we could watch some tv, though we don’t really understand it.  And we’ve got a computer and a Nintendo DS, but we only feel compelled to use them for so long while we’re on vacation.

Sorry to put up such a rambling post, but felt like I should share some of what’s been going through my head.

1. we’re still there by the way, you can read all about it on our travel blog where most of the posts are written by my husband [↩]
2. before we left not only was he working a 6 day work week, but most of his days were 9 hours long, AND he’s working towards his CGA designation [↩]

As I shared before, I’m using a different goal setting method this year for my annual goals.  There are a bunch of goals that I think would be just kind of boring to share, especially since I’m not sharing them in the context of the categories that I created them in.  I’ve already shared some of the bigger goals that I’ve got going on for the year, but there are a couple that didn’t get mentioned, that I thought I should throw in.  I’ve been trying to come up with a good way to categorize them for you, but that would just devolve into a whole bunch of blog posts that are all really short.  So instead I thought I’d just list them all in one final post on my goals.

Travel

As I mentioned in my last post, my husband and I have a travel blog that we update when we go traveling.  And, well, in about a week, we’re going on another three week vacation.  It’s our second time going to Japan and we both can’t wait for the break.  I didn’t include travel as its own goal category just because the trip is happening so early in the year.  Most of the work towards it actually happened in 2009.

Family

With recent events being what they are, my family needs extra time and energy right now.  A substantial portion of my year is going to be dealing with the aftermath of my step-father’s unexpected passing.  It’s going to be a roller-coaster of emotions and I’m trying to think of ways to handle the ups and downs.

Finance

My husband and I go through regular re-evaluations of our financial position and goals.  He doesn’t do the same year end thing that I do though, and we usually end up re-evaluating our financial position in spring, around tax-season.  I think our focus during the coming year might shift slightly away from RRSPs and towards paying down the mortgage on our condo, but it’ll depend on how things go with our income¹

Projects & Collaboration

I have two projects that are in various stages of development right now that I’m also super-excited about and that will take up significant amounts of time and energy.  But, I’m not ready to reveal many details just yet.  One is a collaboration effort with a couple of other creative, intelligent, entrepreneur women who are fabulous.  Seriously, I feel so lucky to be working with them because there’s no way I would have ever thought of tackling something this fun and exciting on my own!  The other is just a little fun project that started brewing somewhere in the back of my mind last year.  It will involve a blog, but not this one.  I may, or may not, share a link to it when/if it happens, I’m still undecided about that.²

So that’s it for my goals for this year.  As we wrap things up before our vacation we are going to have a crazy busy week!  Not sure if I’ll be popping in over here,³ so if you want to keep up on what’s happening, be sure to check in with our travel blog, Sauntering Sunflower!

1. Did I mention that my office is moving?  There are a lot of ‘what if’s’ , but the number of hours I work may go up or down.  Will find out more as summer, and the end of our current lease, approaches. [↩]
2. Sorry about all the teaser info, but you’ll just have to deal with it, or beg me for details in the comments. [↩]
3. though I may at least post a picture of me after I get my hair done on Monday [↩]

So I heard that all the cool kids are doing some sort of 2009 review post before the year is officially over so I thought I’d jump on the cool bandwagon and do a post as well.  I’m giving you fair warning right now, it isn’t a happy pile of cupcakes.¹

First, some highlights. ((I haven’t done a very good job tracking things, this is just off the top of my head.))

• I won jennerosity.org on a Valentine’s day contest held by BlueFur webhosting company and moved from a hosted blog to a self-hosted WordPress.org blog.
• Traveled to New York with my sister.
• Actually passed my second road test²
• Not only participated in and won NaNoWriMo for the third year in a row³, but also got to act as Municipal Liaison for Vancouver
• And there were a couple of babies born in my step-family⁴

Random Middlings⁵

• I worked most of the time.
• I did belly dancing classes for the first bit of the year.
• I did not eat any of the ‘work candies.’⁶
• I started thinking a lot about what path feels right for me and finally discarded some old titles and am taking some tentative steps towards new ones.

Now the lowlights – you can stop here if you want to; it’s the reason this part is last ((I won’t hold it against you if you do))

• I feel I accomplished next to nothing with my health and fitness.  I finally kinda got the hang of the shoulder shimmy and that’s about it.  And while the shoulder shimmy is not something I find easy, it’s also not something that makes me feel particularly fit or strong.
• I had to associate with people who seriously grate on my nerves and very level of sanity in order to do something I love.  Worse news is that it’s pretty clear they aren’t going anywhere and I’m going to have to find some way to deal with my feelings and the stress of having to associate with them, or give in, back down, and step away from the thing I love.  Not really a fun choice.
• I didn’t get to do any teaching.  And, I do realize that I haven’t been employed in a teaching position in over 4 years now, and I’m still satisfied with the choice I made because I don’t think I’d be any happier if I had continued teaching, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still miss it.  Damn!  Just realized that I’ve now been employed as something other than a teacher for more time than I was ever employed as a teacher :(
• And really, the event that is probably colouring my perspective the most at the moment is that my Step-Father suddenly passed away on December 21st.  So really, that kind of just sucked the wind out of any Christmas or New Year’s festivities that were underway.  I’m saying a preemptive thank you for any kind comments on this post, as I’m not sure I’ll be coming back to respond.⁷  How are we doing?  Everything still sucks right now.  The road ahead is long and I’m trying to tell myself that the bleakness I see now is going to fade over time.  I’m faking it and hoping that I’m going to make it.

I’ve a couple of blog posts related to this one on my mind.  One on preparing for a personal emergency like the one we had, but it may or may not ever see the light of the internet.  Because I like to keep my blog focused on the positive things I might muster some enthusiasm for a post about my 2010 Goals – I have an entire strategic plan mapped out on a spreadsheet, like any good obsessive compulsive geek would have.⁸

1. Why cupcakes you ask?  Well they seem to popping up all over town lately.  First downtown and now there’s a cupcake place by my work and another opening up soon by my home. [↩]
2. Here in BC we have a graduated license system whereby new drivers first take a written knowledge test to become a ‘learner,’ then a short road test to become a ‘novice,’ and finally an hour long road test to get their ‘full’ license [↩]
3. I won in terms of word count, though the story is still unfinished [↩]
4. I’m not a baby person, so that’s probably why this is the first time they have been mentioned on my blog [↩]
5. Because not everything is strictly a high or low moment, a heck of a lot falls somewhere in between [↩]
6. Note that this is different from simply eating candy at work, which I did plenty of.  But, I did abstain from eating any of the candies out of the dish that is kept on the counter at work for our customers.  There was no particular reason for this except for my sudden and arbitrary undeclared intention to abstain [↩]
7. Though I’ll be continuing to blog [↩]
8. Or maybe it is just me? [↩]

Emergency fire equipment at a temple in Kyoto, Japan

One of the things that comes up for me every winter is the topic of emergency preparedness.  Usually it pops into my head at about the time that I’ve stubbed my toe on a cabinet and am hopping around in the dark, in the middle of the night, during a power outage.  Over the last couple of years I’ve tried to be a bit more pro-active about things and have been assembling an emergency kit.  It isn’t exciting or fun, but it give me some peace of mind.¹  I also feel a strange sense of professional responsibility whenever I work on it, since I do work in the insurance industry.

I find it fitting to turn to this project once again today, the day we received our first ‘major’ snowfall of winter.  I reviewed my 300+ blog articles in my google reader this morning and noticed that quite a few were also on emergency preparedness.  Since I didn’t want to brave doing anything outdoors, I decided I would once again review my meager emergency supplies.

I put together a big list of all the things that the emergency lists say you should have.  I used several sources and put together all the ideas and then went down to the garage where we keep most of our emergency supplies and checked off everything that we already have put together.  I tossed out the emergency food supplies that had expired, reorganized, and added a few things to the box.  I still have a long way to go to be as ready as they say you should be.  I’m especially in a quandry over how to store the 24 Litres of water recommended, in a manner that’s accessible and portable, in case we had to get it out of the house.  So, it’s very much a work in progress still, but hopefully by the end of winter it’ll be a little more complete.

How about you?  How ready are you in case of an emergency?  Got any tips, pointers, stories to share?

1. Though re-framing it to be a zombie emergency kit helps to make it a little more fun [↩]

Just putting up a post to let you know that I’m putting the blog officially on hiatus.  Not sure when I’ll be back with regular blogging, but for the time being, all the planning and organizing for NaNoWriMo has me officially swamped!  I’ll most likely be gone for the rest of October and all of November.  Hopefully December will see a triumphant return.  In the mean time, if you want to still keep in touch, I’ll be twittering sporadically and I’ll also be updating the Vancouver Wrimos website.