chanaleh: Snoopy at the typewriter, pondering (snoopywriter)
10 goals from 2017 (cf original list: LJ | DW): Read more... )

More things that happened in 2017: Read more... )

10 goals for 2018: Read more... )

In general:
  • Invest half an hour a day in doing something actually productive, instead of wasting 45+ baby-free minutes (before and after sleep) dicking around on Facebook &c.

  • The biggest problem there is Aria's still-unpredictable sleep schedule; the second biggest is that once I get up in the morning and sit down at the computer, I end up spending half an hour just to clear the decks (check email, pay bills etc) and then suddenly it's time to get in the shower and start my day. But, the last couple weeks at least (when she wasn't fluey and miserable), she's been sleeping through the night better, and that's been fantastic.

    I would love to say things like "Get more exercise", "Drum up more freelance work" and "Rebuild my personal/professional website". But for now I don't feel I would prioritize those above doing more art, really. "Have a monthly date night", maybe that's something to strive for. :-)
    chanaleh: (breathe)
    I came home one night (a Thursday) a few weeks ago and promptly had a meltdown over the fact that I constantly feel like I'm too tired to do anything useful. That is, I only have one or two half-hour scraps of baby-free time in a day (at least on weekdays), and even though there are surely small pending tasks I could fruitfully accomplish in that half-hour, all I want to do is sit down and stare at the ceiling. Same on weekends during baby naptime: I think all morning about the things I want to work on when she goes down, and then once it happens, all I do is sit and veg.

    thinky )

    Oh, and, technically I am taking a vacation next week, except that the occasion is a weeklong visit from my mom, so it's not exactly downtime even though it will be fun times! Hopefully some extra downtime for Etrace though, if he can chill at home while we take Aria and go run around/pay social calls.
    chanaleh: Snoopy in a Santa hat (xmas)
    My husband is a music teacher. He was a music teacher when I first met him 20+ years ago. I've gone to see him perform in bands. More recently, I have performed with him in bands. I've seen videos of him playing in high school talent shows. He made me this recording for my birthday last year. We have in the house an entire room dedicated to housing what must be 20 musical instruments (piano, organ, accordion, numerous guitars and bass guitars, an upright bass, ukulele, mandolin, percussion...), where he receives students two or three days a week.

    But somehow, it's discovering him in the music room one December evening after dinner, noodling around on the piano playing jazz Christmas carols, that really makes my heart go "Holy shit, I married a musician." :-)

    <3

    Settling in

    Tuesday, May 13th, 2014 01:30 pm
    chanaleh: (breathe)
    I thought I would have tons of time to write once I was here, and the answer is probably that I *do* have time to write, but I have not really felt the inclination.

    I have instead spent a lot of time doing crosswords, reading Game of Thrones, watching Game of Thrones, drinking coffee, dicking around on Facebook, practicing/learning songs for performing with [livejournal.com profile] etrace's band, cooking breakfast and/or dinner, baking bread (mostly bread machine, but also some handmade focaccia that turned out OK), petting the dog(s) and cats -- and snuggling with my husband, generally marveling at the state of my life.

    Yeats wrote, "Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing."

    I think this is a time not so much of growth as of... rooting in.

    I've been overextended and undernourished for so long. There'll be time enough to Get Things Done later this year, when we start to work in earnest on growing the business and searching for an outside job for me. Right now, if I want to sit on the porch in my pajamas for two hours every morning, I totally can, and that's kind of the best thing in the world.

    (Though I do think it would be good to pick up again the Artist's Way practice of "morning pages": writing three pages of drivel every morning without fail, in order to clear out the internal static and make room for actual creative work/focus.)

    Some productive things I have successfully done... )

    Also, sometime late last week we went "Hm, we seem to have invited 50 people over for lunch next Sunday, better start figuring out what we're doing for them," so there's been a flurry of list-making and menu-planning and inventorying and shopping.

    Coming soon is the related realization "Hm, we seem to be about to leave on this five-week cross-country roadtrip, perhaps we should make sure we've tied up any loose ends, reach out with a rough idea of schedule to the people we hope to see, stuff like that."
    chanaleh: Muffin the Vampire Baker: "It's him, Muffin! You have to protect him at all costs!" "I'M ON IT!" (i'm on it!)
    10 goals from 2012 ( cf. original list: LJ | DW )
    A mixed bag, but overall, progress was made. )

    10+ additional achievements of 2012:
    It was actually a good and stabilizing year for me, despite the ongoing crises in the world at large. )
    11. ... And, oh yeah, turned 40 and had an awesome celebration to mark it.

    10 goals for 2013:
    Some that build on last year's, and some new ones. )

    Wishing all of us a year of physical health, emotional growth, and spiritual abundance.
    chanaleh: (eleanor)
    I have (no surprise) been thinking a lot lately about my medium-term goals in life, and had the insight that many of them (buying a house; traveling) are limited, at this point, more by finances than by waiting for a partner I can successfully do them with. associated ruminations )

    So, between that realization and the fact that the moving (and resettling) process has been wildly expensive, I've started myself back on the discipline of tracking every single penny I spend, so as to better manage my finances on a daily, monthly, and ultimately yearly level. I did this for years on paper (I still have several volumes of "budget books" dating back to my old Prospect St. apartment), but for this round I've built a Google spreadsheet which keeps running totals per category and all that. It's already fairly enlightening.

    I expect to spend a couple months just tracking my normal or baseline spending habits (modulo the observer effect in which the very act of writing things down makes you evaluate your choices more consciously, as with a food diary), and then figure out where the biggest changes should be made. -- Yeah, I know, things like "cook dinner at home more" and "bring leftovers for lunch" are no-brainers, but it's a lot more motivating to actually see the bottom line!
    chanaleh: (sleeping)
    Thank you all for your birthday wishes. Weirdly, this has been rather anticlimactic as birthdays go; between having the party several days early, and having the actual birthday immediately follow two days of Rosh Hashanah*, and having Menschen rehearsal tonight preclude any birthday outing in the usual mode... well, it's been low-key. (Maybe this is an argument for that 33-1/3 b'day party next February 6.) However, my new bosses got me a lovely cake, and I got to see my sweetheart, and tomorrow I'm getting taken out for birthday dinner, and... life is good.

    *Rosh Hashanah went fine. The singing gig, y'know. And nice dinners with good friends.

    Since I've been posting so little of late, I will succumb to a meme:
    Google for "[your name] needs": (EDIT: I'm now sorting these into categories for amusement value.)

    From the department of Randomness:
  • Erica Needs No Defense From Me, However...
  • Erica needs to travel to England to recover gold owed her family and restore the family's good name. (Rah!)

    From the department of A Little Too Poignant For Comfort:
  • Erica needs the structure and love of a family.
  • Erica needs to come home (come home...)
  • Erica needs to make some tough choices
  • So keep the prayers coming. Erica needs them.
  • Erica needs all the help and all the heroes she can get.
  • Erica needs a good home willing to commit to her for her future.

    From the department of Heh, So I'm Told:
  • Erica needs a girl.
  • Erica needs a big reality check.


  • From the department of You Can Say That Again:
  • Erica needs a story that doesn't involve her screaming or threatening people
  • All Erica needs to do is plug her source reduction or recycling data into the appropriate cells in the excel tool, (actually it's budget data for manufacturing costs, but hey.)
  • Erica needs subject in the subject lines.
  • Erica needs articles. She’d like to have the newsletter out by the next brotherhood meeting.


  • ... Yuh-huh.
    What Erica wants on the other hand is an upgrade to her stompy boots, but no luck so far. Even Teddy Shoes and Zappo's have very little to offer. Ah well. Trash must go out, and [livejournal.com profile] chanaleh must to bed.

    Homes, and Yeoms

    Tuesday, February 8th, 2005 04:54 pm
    chanaleh: (2005)
    Meme: The sum total of towns in which I have lived (defined as "for more than four weeks at a stretch"):

    Dayton, OH (1972-1973)
    Hobart, IN (1973-1974)
    Valparaiso, IN (1974-1989, with some overlap through 1992)
    Waltham, MA (1989-1996) (3 different residences including one summer sublet, plus 4 different Brandeis dorms)
    Cambridge, MA (1996-present)

    I am tempted to start spinning out alternate theories as to future increments on the list, but it is painful to contemplate, so I will not.

    Dilemma: [livejournal.com profile] zacheiss, [livejournal.com profile] maputi_pirate, et al. are trying to recruit me into the chorus of Yeomen. It would undoubtedly be really fun... but I'm also thinking that if I don't give myself some downtime between shows, I may regret it.

    [Poll #433767]
    chanaleh: Snoopy at the typewriter, pondering (snoopywriter)
    Observation:
    When I was a kid, I hated going home. Like, anytime we were out doing something for the evening, a movie or a school program or what have you. Come time to go home, I would always feel a slightly heartsick wish that there were *somewhere* else yet to go, *something* else to do. A second stop of, say, going out for ice cream was the sort of thing that addressed that desire. But even if we got to do that, the feeling would still be there when it was time to go home then.

    Whereas when we were home of an evening, and not doing much of anything (and I didn't have, say, a fresh stack of library books handy), I would mope around and say to my mother, "Can't we go somewhere and do something?" "Where do you want to go?" was the usual, patently-rhetorical response; and since there was pretty much no answer I could articulate -- Somewhere, anywhere, more exciting than here -- I would go back to moping until I eventually found something to occupy myself with.

    It wasn't that home was a bad place to be for any tangible reason; there just wasn't much that was satisfying about it, either. I longed for something more, and whatever it was, it wasn't in the house.

    Gee, Erica, might this have any relevance to your adult life? )

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