Starting tomorrow...

For May, I have some very specific goals.

1. Clear the paper clutter in my apartment
2. Add thirty minutes of daily exercise
3. Write 2K words on the novel every day
4. Initiate a Pantry Challenge for pantry, freezer, cupboards
5. Prepare my class for Oxford: lectures, readings, YouTube clips

Beyond that, I must take care of my car's bumper, initiate programs for the 2012-2013 year, dry cleaner & tailor items, finish up this year's programs and get Jack's med for flights. Odds and ends, here and there.

But getting ready for travel is uppermost, hence the exercise. Also, a ban on sugar and wheat. Apart from likker. But no more M&Ms, no more ice cream, no more frozen yogurt meals.

No wonder I'm tired!

At the end of April, I find that I have accomplished the following just this month:

1. produced a festival of staged readings for six original plays by my students;
• including guest artists that I recruited and hired for the project;
• including original music compositions stemming from a collaborative class with student composers, that I initiated.
2. intiated and mentored the successful submission process resulting in $7,000 in grants and $5,000 in awards to playwriting students for community/creative projects.
3. directed the Ama Ata Aidoo reading at the international-scope African Literature conference on campus, in front of Aidoo just prior to her talk on human rights.
4. mentored the staged readings of three ten-minute plays inspired by Joan of Arc for a Medieval Studies/English/Women's & Gender Studies/Creative Writing class, a project in play for a year.
5. dramaturged an original play at one of the top local theatres.
6. completed three upperclass courses successfully.
7. found and rented an apartment in Paris for June, and made/confirmed all my travel plans to home, Paris and Oxford this summer.
8. deferred my taxes, paid my traffic ticket, joined Women in Film and completed my Search Committee assignment.

My reward?

I mean...

First Quarter Goals

Late but not forgotten.

My goals for the first quarter of 2012 were simple: get my finances in order, take care of the details for my summer travel, and get myself out of a rut and into a productive cycle at work.

All completed successfully!

Financial goals:

• I met with the reps for each of the retirement funds where my money is located and had productive information meetings. I feel great about the status of my current funds.
• I have slight adjustments to make with one fund: transforming a general fund into a Roth IRA to forward my plans to build a swanky retirement home: TBD.
• I worked to get credit cards paid off, and have currently only two outstanding bills.
• I donated two printers and a laptop to charity, getting them out of my house while earning a tax credit.
• I transformed two discount coupons into cheap yoga classes for April-May, thereby forcing myself to exercise while saving about 80% of the possible cost.
• I found and signed a lease on an apartment in Paris for June, using my savings to pay for the trip--as planned.
• I scheduled my flights, including the ones with the cat, roundtrip to CDG/Heathrow and back as part of my summer course payment (no cost to me but the cat's flights and suitcases).
• I maintained a strict weekly budget on my groceries, making it for all but two weeks of this quarter.

Outstanding:

• Taxes for 2011: I will meet with The Tax Man prior to summer travel to handle this.
• Roth IRA: I will also handle this prior to summer 2012.

Summer Travel:

• Apartment in Paris: check.
• Flights: check (including the cat!).
• Chunnel tickets: check (not yet received, but bought).
• Class for July: a May 2012 project.

Work, Rut to Productive:

• Aidoo reading completed for African Literature conference: check.
• Playwriting students brought together with music composition students, resulting in original music for original play performances: check.
• Short Joan plays performed in Medieval Studies course on Joan of Arc: check.
• Original playwriting festival staging six plays with 28 actors, 6 directors (2 professional, 1 faculty, 3 students), 6 stage managers, 2 crew, and 6 happy playwrights: check.
• Students earning grants for community-based arts project with award-winning playwright and documentary filmmaker for one month this summer, total of $7K: check.
• Course filled with non-majors with positive response: check!
• Internship developed for studentwith film shoot in Louisiana: check!
• Book reviews for two journals: check!
• Entries for encylopedia on performing arts: check!
• Contract for summer course: check!
• Proposal for new fall 2012 night course: check!

April through June: focus on health and creativity.

The Joan Project

This year is the 600th anniversary of the birth of Jeanne d'Arc.

One of my colleagues on campus is a Joan scholar who also teaches a kick-ass course in Joan. In this class, she covers the primary evidence of Joan's life (including the transcripts of her trial), her military campaigns, and finally the interpretation of Joan as a character and cultural touchstone. The fact is that over the last six hundred years there have been one hundred plus performance pieces with Joan as a central character: plays, operas, song cycles, ballets, and films. Artists who have written about Joan include Bertolt Brecht, George Bernard Shaw, Shakespeare, George Melies and Roberto Rosselini.

That means there is approximately one text for every six years.
The first one was written even before Joan was executed--during her lifetime, in other words. Some ofthe texts are biographical, some are fantastical, and some simply use Joan's life and legend as an influence.

Last semester, I proposed an interdisciplinary event celebrating Joan's birthday. My ideas were bigger than we had time to realize, but the final project will be great for my students, my colleague's students, and the Creative Writing students who are taking the class and can do a creative project instead of a research project. These are student poets and fiction writers in the English department.

What's the outcome?
My colleague has offered two days of class for this project. Students from Medieval Studies, Creative Writing, and Theatre will present original student texts in class. My students' plays will be readings, using the students of the class as actors. The poets and novelists will read their original work or excerpts of their original work. Bonnie will lead in with a discussion of Shaw's play, but her brilliant website offers excerpts from films and plays, as well as a complete listing of said performance pieces.

What does this mean?

An interdisciplinary celebration of student writing and performance. An outlet for students' creative work--based on research and primary documents. Production credits for student playwrights. Good for students, good for Joan, good for faculty.

Go, Team Joan!

2012 Goals: The Beginnings

Given my ambitious personal goals for 2012, it is time I get started, right?

Having thought it over, my January goals are the following:

• Resources/Health: improve my daily energy, so I don't feel quite so tired at the end of every day
• Resources: deal with money issues hanging on from 2011 and re-think spending for 2012
• Creative Closure: submit second mss. to editor by 1.31
• Community: develop one new and one old "group"/community for 2012
• Living Situation: Goodwill, Salvation Army, and eBay by 1.31; insulate front and back doors

Since the spring semester begins on 1.17 and I have three new classes to jump-start, these goals are certainly do-able for the remaining part of the month.

Daily energy: this is the toughest, because it will require long-term changing of habits involving meals, exercise (ugh!), and hormones. You can't buy or find energy--you have to make it, yourself, by doing things differently. Not my strong suit. But... necessary. Changes will include:

• eating every 3-4 hours;
• increasing complex carbos (fruits and vegs, whole grains with B vitamins) to match already present proteins;
• taking vitamins daily;
• taking hormones every day;
• exercising 30-40 minutes at least 4 times weekly;
• getting 7-8 hrs. sleep every night;
• scheduling/organizing all of same, so as not to get behind/stressed.

Money issues include things like studying my monthly bills for where I can cut expenses; getting 2012 taxes completed; continuing to pay my credit cards steadily, while NOT using them (!); making my weekly/monthly grocery bills leaner--again, all long-term planning issues. It wouldn't hurt to get a jump on my 2011 taxes, either; since I've been keping better records, that should be easier than it ever has been.

Submitting the second mss. means writing at least five times weekly, with a weekly page tally of about 25-40 pages. I'm 2/3 of the way through this mss., but need editing time as well. That means one to two hours daily for writing.

Enriching my group work might already be solved: I have an invitation to join a local women's group in my area of expertise, I am working with a local theatre group already on a solid project, and I have a social group that should be meeting again (for the second time) this month. Again, just needs scheduling.

And the work on donations, selling, and the house? One shot deals, each of which require some preparation time but nothing too much. I can get one of these done per week, or over a particularly empty weekend.

What accomplishing these means is that by the end of this month, I'll feel better (although I am considering that the "energy" issues are really a three-month project, considering the need to change old habits for grounded, new ones), my bank account will be leaner and meaner, my house will be cheaper & warmer, more clutter will be gone, I'll have two new group relationships developed, and I'll be moving onto mss. #3... a great kick-start to 2012!

Resolutions -- or Goals! -- for 2012

It's that time of year again, and I have to assess 2011's goals and repurpose them for 2012.

Thankfully, this is not too hard to do, since I have been pretty steadily working on each of my 2011 goals and thinking a lot during the last week about how to revise them for 2012.

Here we go!

2011's goals were, as I took them in this blog:

1. Improve Overall Health
2. Change My Living Situation
3. Manage My Resources
4. Build a Better Community
5. See Creative Work to Closure

Health: This was only an okay goal, over the course of the year. While I worked on stabilizing my hormones and depression, I did not embrace exercise. For that reason, my weight and overall condition did not improve (note to self: it's true about exercise!). Positive outcomes: my depression is under control, my mood swings and other perimenopause symptoms are under control. My allergies/sinus problems flared up in the final weeks, but using a humidifier every night (!) as well as increasing my intake of H2O hugely improved that, rather than the OTC remedies I started with. Overall, I am in great health. Negative outcomes: my LDL cholesterol is high and not coming down, my weight is still over the line and not budging except bits and tweaks. I need to lose serious poundage and remember to maintain my health through habits of hydration, nutrition, movement, and meditation.

Living Situation: 100% improvement, maybe 150%. No more crackhead landlord, no more cracker box, reduced rent, more green space, and more light. Thsi one was a total success, despite sacrificing a good deal of savings on the 3-month overlap of spaces.

Resources: Time is a constant battle, between "shoulds" and "want tos." Yo, I'm human. However I did add the Rescue Time Robot to my desktop, and it tells me I am 79% more productive than average. So shut up, Critic's Voice! Money is another, different battle, but this year I did pretty well. I have a more affordable appartment (and even though I might only be saving $100/month, the happiness factor makes that huge). I rearranged my retirement $$ is a way that makes me feel more secure. I opened several successful venues of frugality for decluttering, including selling unwanted items. Energy is the real battle, and that's the 2012 focus.

Community: This, too, was a success. I joined a short story group of women I enjoy and while we've only met once, I look forward to more meetings. I opened myself to the performing community in town, and am building bridges there. I opened myself to the community on my campus, and am trying to open out of my division, my school, and into the university in a positive way. I need to set more goals here, however, and be open to groups of strangers.

Creative: This was a big success! I sold my first novel (coming out in June!) and have almost completed the second, which I am certain will be equally salable. I sent out my short plays in a month-long binge and have had one hit so far, and three rejections (so I've got a long way to go). It felt great, however, challenging myself to complete and submit projects.

Overall, 2011 was a good year in terms of my goals. I plan to build on that in 2012:

Improve Overall Health: not much change here in direction. However, I plan to focus specifically on maintaining good habits (like using the humidifier every night) while building new ones (like 30 minutes of movement every day). I'd like to add daily meditation and vitamins, but I think I'll be conservative in this area, since it is one that truly needs daily focus.

• January-April: make it a habit to spend 30 minutes every day in movement of some kind
• May-August: add daily meditation (which will work with my 2012 summer plans)
• Sept-December: add supplements and vitamins
• get a mammogram
• get a colonoscopy
• get a dermascan 

Living Situation: This is easy. Renew lease on apartment (i.e., don't move!). More, start researching the pre-fab house I love in detail through contacting the company and chatting with them. And start looking at the places I think I want to build it: Oregon, Northern California, and Washington are the three places I'm thinking about now. But they might stink once I look around. So... research.

Resources: As ever, my biggest battle will be managing time. I have come to hate scheduling and to-do lists. And yet.... I need a new car, I need a new mattress & box spring, I need to pay down (or off) my credit cards. All worthy goals, all hard to do at the same bloody time! This year I want to build on my basic foundations of frugal saving and repurposing and decluttering: I find that I am about done with the wholesale donations to Goodwill, etc., and while that is an easy and intelligent manner of getting things OUT OF MY HOUSE (and onto my tax savings) I must needs find other ways to open what one of my favorite blogs refers to as "additional revenue streams." And finding new energy is part of the Health intiatives above, plus the hormones.

Community: continued reaching out, across phone, email, work/personal connections to develop relationships with new people/groups as well as people I already like, love, and connect with.

• Habitat for Humanity: in the Dallas area
• Alum group: for connections and fundraising/support of current programs
• Short story group
• Theatremakers/academics/women in both

Creative: Here, I have very specific goals

• Finish and sell second and third novels
• Binge with short plays in February and Sept-Oct
• Journal daily: dreams, ideas, etc.
• Finish and send two reviews
• Finish and send encyclopedia entries
• Polish and send two articles (from ALA papers, 2011) to journals
• Present two-three conference papers (one scheduled, July)
• Blog daily (in either blog) and continue to post my own photos

Here is my overall goal for 2012: Make lemonade all year long, every day.

I am so tired of negativity, including my own. I really believe everything is an opportunity, seen in the right light. Context and response are everything... they can turn what looks like failure or an impass into something wonderful. Not to be goopy or stupid about it, but to stop letting myself define my view by others' vision. Ugh! Especially since I am butt-tired of the men in my life having stupid, negative, misanthropic outlooks anyway.

Oh, does that sound negative? Nope: it's all good.