2025 Weekly Challenge, Week ?: Back on the Wagon

It’s been over two months since the last time I did a goals check-in.  My life just got to be too, too much, and something had to give… and that something turned out to be, among other things, trying to meet the goals I set at the beginning of the year, before the world went crazy.

Things are marginally less chaotic right now, not because my life is no longer busy but because the busyness is somewhat more focused, so I’m going to try to hop back on the wagon and finish out the year a little stronger.

Where I’m at Now

The last couple of months have been one major thing after another, and sometimes at the same time.  There was the Fall Show for the Museum of Miniatures, Dolls & Toys, which I had to prepare a doll exhibit, part of a doll program, and a workshop; there was all the house sitting for my husband’s parents, which made it difficult to get much done at our house; there was trying to get the house ready for my mom to stay with us; and there was my mom’s surgery and recovery.

Once we got all that done, we still had NaNoWriMo FauxNoWriMo DenNoWriMo to get ready for.  Our local region did a fun spin-off of NaNoWriMo last year, after everything blew up, and called it FauxNoWriMo.  This year, after NaNoWriMo announced they were officially shutting down, we decided to rename our local community DenNoWriMo, and start building it out to be a local replacement for NaNoWriMo.  Getting it ready for November meant building a new website, planning events, planning fun extras like stickers, writing email blasts, and beefing up the social media community.

Now DenNoWriMo is just a few days away, and November is sure to be another whirlwind month.  With only two months left in the year, I’m hoping to get back on the wagon and finish out the year a little stronger than the last, oh, nine months have gone.

Where I’m at right now:

Writing

I haven’t worked on my novel in months at this point, although of course I’m hoping that’ll change in November.  And obviously I haven’t been maintaining my blog and Instagram either, except for the Banned Books Week post I made in October.

Decluttering and Organization

We worked on decluttering and organizing the house before my mom came to stay with us, and a bit during and after that too.  Unfortunately our progress was stalled more recently, as we had DenNoWriMo to prepare for and unexpected additional house sitting for my husband’s parents.  I’m hoping to get back to that in November, though, in addition to working on my novel and running DenNoWriMo.

Dolls

I haven’t worked on a doll in ages, and honestly, the decluttering and organization project will take precedence over doll projects.  But I do hope to get back to them soon, possibly by December.

Lessons Learned

Honestly, if there was a lesson in any of this, it was that plans and goals don’t always turn out the way you want them to.  I can’t blame myself for not sticking to my weekly goals because it’s not like I knew when I set them that my mom would need surgery, or my husband would lose his job, or that we’d have a fascist regime taking over our country and stressing us all out.

Sometimes the best you can do is just to get through it with your life and yourself in one piece.

Like I said, if I can pick things back up and finish out the year a little stronger, I’ll be happy with that.

Happy Banned Books Week 2025!

It’s been a while.  Life has been hectic and I’ve gotten away from tracking my progress — mostly because I’ve had to focus on so many other things that my goals for the year have fallen by the wayside.  But I couldn’t go without posting about Banned Books Week!

Today kicks off Banned Books Week for 2025.  To celebrate the week, I always like to browse the list of top banned and challenged books from the year before, and read one or more of them if I can.

As usual, the list of the top challenged books for last year includes quite a few repeats.  And as usual, the list betrays the homophobia/transphobia, racism, and sexism that runs rampant in our culture.

1. All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson
2. Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe
3. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (TIE)
4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (TIE)
5. Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
6. Looking for Alaska by John Green (TIE)
7. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews (TIE)
8. Crank by Ellen Hopkins (TIE)
9. Sold by Patricia McCormick (TIE)
10. Flamer by Mike Curato

In fact, I’ve now read all of the usual suspects except for the first two, possibly the first three.  All three are now on my TBR list.

I’ve been celebrating Banned Books Week in this manner for almost 20 years, but never has it seemed as important as it seems this year.  With the year’s events — the threats to our Constitution, particularly to our First Amendment rights — I feel like our rights to read and write what we want is quickly becoming ever more precious.

So I will definitely be reading the remaining three books on the list in the coming weeks.

Never forget how lucky we are, for the past 250 years, to have been able to read what we want.  Nazis burned books to try to destroy their influence.  Don’t let history repeat itself.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 33: Tough Times

Last week was not what I expected, to say the least.  My energy and focus, and therefore my productivity, basically fell off a cliff with the drop in hormones during that part of my cycle.  It shouldn’t have surprised me because it has happened every month since I’ve started tracking it, but I had hoped to be able to continue using the break method I’d found to be so effective the week before.

So much for that.

And on Friday, we got some especially bad news: My husband was let go from his job, which had started out as a contract-to-hire position but there were never any open positions for him.  So now he’s back to job hunting, after a little over a year at that job.

It’s a little more stressful this time, since our finances are in rougher shape.  Our kitty’s care before she died last December had added to our debt, so we have more bills to cover now.  Plus we also didn’t have the advantage of knowing in advance this time that the end was coming, so we weren’t able to prepare for the gap in pay as we had been last time.

I have been in a slow period with my own income, so I’m going to step things up and see if I can contribute a little more, which will unfortunately cut into my time cleaning and organizing around the house.  Fortunately, my mom’s surgery was delayed a week, so I have until later in September now to get the house ready.

Last week was pretty dismal — about the only goal I met was my blogging and author IG posting goals, and a single day of working on novel research — so I’m going to forego the rundown this week.  Hopefully this week will be more productive, and I’ll have more positive stuff to report next Monday.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 32: The Power of Breaks

Last week was productive, but it required a lot of maintenance, and I had to be fairly single-minded with my focus, which means that I didn’t get any writing done — only organizing.  But that’s the biggest priority right now, to be ready for my mom coming here during her recovery, so that’s okay.

I think one of the biggest reasons I was so successful last week was that I took a lot of breaks.  It wasn’t a rigid Pomodoro approach, as there were no timers, but whenever I achieved a small task or felt like I was getting to a point of overwhelm, I took a break and regrouped.  It allowed me to keep moving forward all week long.

Unfortunately, it was also extremely exhausting to be pushing myself so much, and by the end of the week I could feel that I was struggling to maintain my energy levels.  I also found I was capable of many fewer focus sections by the end of the week.  Perhaps if I’d had the entire weekend to rest and recoup, I’d have been able to come back feeling refreshed today, but I had a restringing class at the museum yesterday and as a result, was “on” for the most of the weekend, too.

Today, unfortunately, the focus sessions and breaks are not working.  It could be that I’m still exhausted from last week and the lack of break since yesterday was a big day, or it could be that this is my period week, and I’ve consistently found through the last few months of tracking that my energy and focus levels take a nose dive during the week of blank pills.

Regardless of the reason, my focus is in the toilet today, and it has taken me two and a half hours (and counting!) to get this far in my blog post.  And only now, at nearly 6pm, do I finally feel any degree of focus.

Last week was good, though, so let’s focus on that.  You can find out next Monday how I managed to deal with this week’s lack of focus.

Writing

I was so focused on decluttering, organizing, and cleaning last week that I got nothing done on my novel.  I did get my blog post and Instagram post up, but not until Thursday.  I also got some minor work done on my ADHD planner, which I’m kinda halfway counting toward my writing goals.  I’m working on making small tweaks and revisions now as I use it and discover what works best.

Decluttering and Organization

This is where essentially all of my productivity last week was centered.  I started cleaning up the kitchen and made a ton of progress there.  I also made major progress organizing in the doll room.  I’m working on organizing the collections of all the “named” dolls, and then I’ll move on to reorganizing the non-collection clothes and accessories so that I can start putting things away from around the house.

Dolls

Ironically, despite my restringing class, I didn’t get any of my own doll projects done.  The doll I restrung as my demo was the museum’s doll.  So I’m not sure if that really counts toward my goal… but I guess it isn’t a significant issue at the moment, since I need to prioritize getting the house ready for my mom’s stay.

Taxes

No progress here, but I fully expect that to be the case for a few more weeks.

Lessons Learned

I’m hoping that my use of breaks will be a lasting technique that I can use to power through other tasks, although of course I’m hoping that I don’t have to power through every time.  I’m a little worried since it’s been so ineffective today, although as I mentioned, there are a few possible reasons why that could be the case.  I’ll keep trying, though, and report back next week.  I still have lots to get done this week!

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 31: Creating Is Motivating

Last week was a strange week, but it reinforced the idea that when I create more, I am more motivated.  So while on paper it’s going to look like I missed the mark with a lot of my goals, it felt like a pretty productive week.

On Monday, I was getting ready to work when I got hugely derailed by an idea for a new project — not a writing project, per se, but an idea to create an ADHD planner.  I’ve come to suspect that I have undiagnosed ADHD (more on that in a future post), and I’ve had ADHD planners recommended to me — but when I look at the ones available, I never see anything that quite meets my needs.

So I started thinking about what I might find useful, and with that, I was off to the races.  I started designing mine in Canva (and realized when I did so that most of the ones you see for sale are just Canva templates with “ADHD” slapped on them).  Most of the day Monday and Tuesday was spent on this, and in the end I think I came up with a planner page template that suits my needs much better.  I also have ideas for other planner pages that could potentially be combined into a comprehensive, hyperlinked planner with the same goals in mind.

A few Facebook friends voiced interest when I posted on social media on Monday about my day, and I ended up creating a Facebook group for the purpose of finishing and beta testing the planner template.

It’s not a writing goal, per se, though in a way it’s in the same category.  I’m leaving it out of the writing category goals, even though I do intend to keep working on it.

Here is the rundown for the rest:

Writing

On the subject of being more motivated and productive when I create more, on Wednesday — after two days in a row of intense focus on my planner project — I had a sudden idea for a short story.  Without thinking about it too hard, I immediately wrote the story.  The result was that I spent about three hours writing a little over 4,000 words, and I love the story.  It’s one I hope to do something with eventually.  I’m going to sit on it a little, then revise and polish it a bit.  It might be a good freebie when I start self-publishing.

This gave me one of my two days of writing last week.  Even though it wasn’t on my novel, I’m happy for the burst of motivation and the lesson that following my focus and creating, even when it’s not something that’s on my to-do list, both energizes and motivates me.

Decluttering and Organization

My goals in this particular category kicked into high gear last week when I discovered my mom will need surgery again soon — this time, the other hip.  Last February she had her first hip replacement surgery and spent a month at my house, recovering.  I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare before that one, either — maybe even less — which made cleaning and organizing for her pretty tough, plus I got sick right beforehand and that meant I had even less time.

Hopefully before this surgery, I’ll have more time to organize and truly get everything in order.  I have a lot of stuff in my living room that is to be fixed up and/or resold, so I may need to consider storing it somewhere until after she has recovered.  I hate to pay for a storage unit, but if I don’t, I’ll have to depend on other people’s kindness and hope someone will let me take over a corner of their basement or something.

One thing at a time, though — I have at least five weeks and a lot of organizing to do before I need to make that decision.

Dolls

No progress here and I don’t expect a lot over the coming weeks, since I’ll be more focused on decluttering, organizing, and cleaning — and after that, taking care of my mom.

Taxes

No progress here either, and I expect this one to be tabled for a little while as well.

Lessons Learned

I feel like there are two lessons to be had here:

1. Creating is a motivating activity for me.  Theoretically, if I follow my creative urges around more often, I could potentially have all the motivation I need — but I do suspect that I would crash at some point from doing too much.
2. Life doesn’t just give you lemons, it wings them at you like they’re fast balls.  Forget the lemonade!  If you’re lucky, you can hit them out of the park.

This post is going up late too, obviously, and I’m happy to say that, like last week, it means that I’ve been productive.  I actually started this post on Monday but I’m just getting around to finishing it!  That’s also partly because I’ve also been pretty distracted all week, despite being actually rather productive.

Exciting things to blog about next week, but… I’ll leave that for next week’s post.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 30: More Writing (A Little)

This post is coming late in the week because I got majorly distracted and worked on a new project most of Monday and Tuesday.  Last week was a little chaotic, which wasn’t totally unexpected, as I knew it would be another busy week.  Incidentally, this one will be too, as it’s my friends’ daughters’ last chance to go to the barn before they go home for the school year.  So of course I’m taking them, even though it means another day lost!

Anyway without further ado, here is the rundown for last week:

Writing

I worked on my novel(s) again!  One day I worked on planning out my next novel (an idea I got recently and couldn’t shake), and another day I worked on research for my current novel.  I also blogged and posted to my author Instagram exactly once each last week, even though I’ve been planning some additional posts recently.  I’ll get to those soon… I hope.

Decluttering and Organization

No progress here.

Dolls

No progress here.

Taxes

No progress here.

Lessons Learned

Based on my progress (or lack thereof) of my goals, it seems like a pretty dismal week.  And the truth is, I struggled with focus some of those days.  But it was also a busier week than this rundown makes it look.

Last summer I read a book called Four Thousands Weeks, the message of which is primarily that we need to stop fixating on overall productivity and instead focus our efforts only on what really matters to us.  Last week was, at the heart of it, one of those weeks.  I struggled with focus and motivation for some of it, yes, but I also went to the barn, spent time with my horse — who is getting older — and with my friend’s daughters — who are growing up far too quickly.

So if you think about it that way, maybe I achieved more last week than what it looks like on paper.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 29: I Wrote!!!

Last week was a bit of a struggle for getting things done, but I had a lot of demands on my time so I’m not surprised.  I also was extremely unfocused, unmotivated, and struggling with energy levels all week.  I have some theories about that, which I might address in a future post.  But suffice it to say that this week should be a lot better.

That being said, here is the rundown of last week’s goals:

Writing

I worked on my novel last week.  This feels like a big deal because before that, I had a three-week streak of not writing.  I wrote a few hundred words on Thursday, and worked on research on Saturday.  And I worked on outlining a new story idea on Sunday, one I’m pretty fired up about (but will try not to work on just yet).

I also got a post up on my author IG last week.  I do want to work on some different posts for my IG though, something a little more fun and relatable.

Decluttering and Organization

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to work on any organization projects.

Dolls

I didn’t work on any dolls, but I was busy with doll museum stuff last week, mostly planning and recruiting.

Taxes

Unfortunately, I didn’t work on this either.

Lessons Learned

I’ve been tracking my motivation, energy, and focus, and last week was pretty much just a bad week for all of it — and I think I know the reason, but need to keep tracking it a little while longer before I talk about my suspicions too much.

I do think I’m on the right track with my new schedule.  I’ve built in time in the morning for Facebook and journaling, since I can’t seem to get going in the morning without spending some time on both.  We’ll see if that — and my reminders to help me switch gears when it’s time — help going forward.  I didn’t expect any of it to be successful last week, but this week should be more telling, even though it’ll be another busy one.

I have some other updates to post, and hopefully I will get to those this week as well.