Monday, January 30, 2017

Last Hurrah Before Surgery (Week 5 2017)


Tomorrow is the last day of January. Wow – that was fast!

I used my Bullet Journal more often last week and I decided I did not like the new spread. It looked pretty as a whole, and was certainly very different. I found those wedges distracting and counter-productive. Now I know and that spread goes in the “NO” pile, which is absolutely acceptable.

This week I am using another new spread. It has less space per day and has all the days on one page. It is more boxy and more linear than the most recent spread. I don’t think I’ll have a problem with the form. I will use it this week and next week, which is the week of surgery and during which I will be in hospital at least three days. I will also use it for the week after I come home from the hospital. When I had the other hip replaced in October 2015, I spent the first week at home in the lift chair, zoned out on pain killers. I don’t know if I’ll even open my BuJo that week.  I do want to set it up in advance so I can use it if I want to. I think using a spread that is familiar will make it easier to use, especially if I have diminished capacity.

Yesterday, my BuJo fell off the shelf and the binder broke. The rings won’t close. My sweetie was out and about today and he bought me a new one. I think I will need to stow it in a drawer when I am not using it.  Besides, I need to make a space for it that is not on a shelf because I won’t be able to reach higher than my head for at least a month post-op. I am bringing it to the hospital with me, so I can have them 3 hole punch all the paperwork they will give me and I can put it directly into my Bullet Journal and it will not get lost.

Here is my February monthly spread:


 This is the first page of the new spread:

And page 2 for the new spread (which is not the page that was in the original spread, but is what I need)



I may not post again until February 20th.  I know I won’t post next week since that is the day of the surgery itself, February 6th.  I can’t guarantee that I’ll be lucid enough on the following Monday, February 13th, to create a Blog post. If I am lucid and capable, I will do it. If not, I won’t.

Since it will be several weeks until I post again, I decided to do my recap of January, even though there are still two days left in the month.

My progress on my January Goals

Work on Newsletter

1.     Sent out Volume 1.

2.     Volume 2 will go out tomorrow.

3.     Brainstorming did not happen and I did not generate a list of topics. I don’t know if I will complete this after I get back from the hospital – I’ll decide then.

Finish Essence of Life by Beltaine

No writing happened because the pain was worse than I expected and caused less sleep and a lack of energy that really sapped my brain power.

Bullet Journal Creativity
I have changed my weekly spread every two weeks as planned. I am going to make this week’s new spread carry for three weeks because of the surgery and the probability of having diminished capacity for ten days or more from pain killers.

Surgery
Made all my pre-op appointments. Final blood work and pre-op appointment with the surgeon are tomorrow. Then all I do is take meds to help not get a staph infection, do the prep on Sunday evening, eat nothing from midnight on Sunday, do more prep on Monday morning, then off to the hospital for surgery.

Better Communication with Ruedy
We had so much to deal with for the pre-op surgery preparations that I did not have the energy to pin him down on this.

Reading

1.      Started one non-fiction book on 1/22/2017. Read the first chapter and did not have the brain power to do the exercise that ended the chapter. I will resume after surgery.


2.     Fiction – read all six books of the Codex Alera by Jim Butcher, and “Naked In Death” by J.D. Robb

Building my e-mail list

1.     Sent out all the invitations.

2.     Will follow-up with non-responders after surgery.


What went well?

I kept up with my Bullet Journal for the most part. I did all the required pre-op things for surgery.

What could be improved?
Many goals had no progress made at all. Since that was a direct result of medical conditions over which I had no control, there was no way to improve the situation.

What did not work and why?
Many things did not work due to the unexpected levels of pain and lack of sleep and energy.

Word Count
My word count numbers are only recorded for 1-29 January. 

New words: 26018
Research/Editing/Time:  65600

I will update in my next post since the count does not include the work on this blog post nor will it include the work on Volume 2 of the Wordcrafter Chronicles.
I will be back in touch with you on the other side of surgery when I will still have pain but it will be a much better type of pain, a type of pain that denotes healing is happening.

Take care, be well and have a wonderful few weeks!

Bright Blessings   – Cedar

You can find me on Facebook on my personal page: 


And my company page:



I have my Author page on Facebook:


 I am also on Twitter:

 @michelle owings-chri

 LinkedIn profile:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-owings-christian-bbb7278








Monday, January 23, 2017

Week 3 and Week 4 2017



I am so sorry that I did not get a post done last week. Consequently, I will give you a post for Week 3 and Week 4 today.

I will be having hip replacement surgery two weeks from today (2/6/2017). These pre-operative weeks are worse than they were around the first hip replacement surgery I had in October 2015. The pain is worse and I am just drained of all energy. Leaving the house is torture and I pay for an outing with three days of fatigue so pervasive that I am largely dysfunctional. 

This has not helped me in terms of accomplishing my goals for the month of January. One of my tasks for this week is to examine my goals and determine what I may be able to accomplish between now and surgery. I don’t want to throw my hands up in despair. I also don’t want to set goals that will not have a hope of getting done.

One of my goals for the first quarter of the year, is to change something in my Bullet Journal every two weeks. Week 3 was the time for that. I printed a very different spread than I have ever used from the internet, and I asked my husband to reinvent it on the computer. (He’s better at that kind of thing than I am.) 



I decided I didn’t need the Dutch door, so I just revised the second page of the spread to suit my needs and put it on graph paper.




Week 3 started out with a huge depressive episode and progressively worsening pain and fatigue. I did not use my Bullet Journal daily, didn’t look at my Trackers, didn’t write anything, didn’t journal, didn’t Wrap & Map. Therefore, I can’t assess how the spread worked.

For this week, I will be using the same spread. I intend to open my Bullet Journal daily, so I can assess how I feel about it. This is what Week 4 looks like.





I hope you are doing better than I am the past few weeks! I will be thinking about how to handle the Blog during the first two weeks of February. I may or may not be able to post before surgery, and I can’t guarantee anything the first Monday after surgery – it all depends on pain levels and the meds I may be taking to manage the pain. I may just decide to do another two-week post after surgery. I need to think about it.

Take care, be well and have a wonderful week!

Bright Blessings   – Cedar

You can find me on Facebook on my personal page: 


And my company page:


I have my Author page on Facebook:


I am also on Twitter:

@michelle owings-chri

LinkedIn profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-owings-christian-bbb7278




Saturday, January 14, 2017

ANNOUNCEMENT!


May I have your attention, please? Starting Sunday, 1.15.2017, I will be generating a bi-monthly newsletter about my journey of transformation as I continue to discover who I want to be in the world. I’d love for you to travel with me – would you like to come along? If so, please send me your best email to mrocwordcrafter@gmail.com or sign up for the e-mail list!


Thanks for reading and have a great day.

Cedar Wolfsinger
(Michelle R. Owings-Christian)

Monday, January 9, 2017

Week 2 -- 2017


It is Week 2 of 2017. Can you imagine?

This will be a very photo intensive post. I wanted to do a video walk-through of my new Bullet Journal for 2017. However, the video on my phone doesn’t want to give me more than 20 seconds at a time. That is much too short a time. Therefore, there will be more narrative and a bunch of still photos instead. (I have a regular digital camera. I’m going to have to find it and put new batteries in it. That has the capacity of at least an hour, as I recall.)

Back in November (I think), I bought a BEAUTIFUL binder. I planned to use it for my 2017 Bullet Journal. It is much too small for the task. I now have a beautiful new binder to use for some other purpose. Here it is.





Here is the binder I am using for my Bullet Journal now. It is my favorite color. I may put a pretty paper or something inside the cover at some point. I haven’t found anything that strikes my fancy yet.



The next page is my revised Word for 2017 page. Since I found the sleeve and didn’t need the three holes punched in the page, I made a template for the page, making it a bit more even. Note, I said “a bit more even.”




Here is a photo of my tabs. I didn’t have appropriate labels – I faked it.




The first spreads in my Bullet Journal are the small monthly calendars I printed from the Internet (probably Freeprintables.net) and cut up so I could have 3 on a page. The facing pages are my answer to separating birthdays and anniversaries. Before I saw the idea, the birthdays were taking over the pages and Future Planning was hopeless. I like it much better now.










Next is my Level 10 Life section. This is new for me this year. I am planning to color in the graph every quarter. I’ll report on it once I have the first quarter under my belt.  I put my Goals page first.



Next is my Level 10 Life Graph.



The last spread for Level 10 I have is the key for the color of pencils I am using for each category.


Directly following my Level 10 life key is my page of Goals for the First Quarter. I am not sure these will live here permanently. They may move to directly after my monthly calendar.



The next tab is for my Planning Routines. I tried something new for the titles – I printed a very open font and colored it in with my new Mildliners.





The next tab in my 2017 Bullet Journal has two lists of books I want to read in 2017. The first is just a plain old ordinary list. (It worked better to type it.)



The second page is a bookshelf I put together using clip art and shapes on Word. Not my best talent in the world, but I think it is cute.



Now we start getting to the CORE PRODUCTIVITY pages. First up – my Monthly Calendar for January.


 Directly following my January calendar is my Monthly Goals page for January.



The next tab is for my Weekly Spread. This is the spread I have open all the time in front of me. The timeline on the side last week made me CRAZY. (OK, I admit, CRAZIER.) I moved it to the top and I have already been using it today more than I did all last week. I think moving it was a good idea.






I like the Mildliners for the headers. Last week I used the yellow pack, which is darker than the pink pack. I think the colors in the yellow pack show up better for the headers and I will go back to those next week.

As you can see, I have put my meds on my tracker. Due to a prolonged bout of Depression, I have not taken my meds for some months. The box in which they live weighed about 3 tons. I had originally wanted to start the meds last week. It just did not work out. Today I have taken breakfast and lunch meds.

I am using the Dutch door again. I still love it. It isn’t even particularly sparkly this week, and I still love it.



This is side two of this week’s Dutch door. It is reminding me what colors I want to use to fill in my timeline and my trackers.



My next tab is for what I call “Wrap & Map.” It’s my nightly planning routine where I “wrap” the day and map out the next. I’m showing page one of last week since I don’t have any for this week until this evening.



After Wrap & Map comes the tab for my Trackers. I fill them out during Wrap & Map. I like having them in a separate tab because I refer to them throughout the day.


First is my Health Factors Tracker. I track weather and my pain levels, my neuropathy and other symptoms and my mood.



The next is my Headache Tracker. It is entitled “Migraine Tracker” but that is NOT accurate. I have migraines and I do want to track them. However, not all my headaches are migraines, and I track them all. I must change that. I have included three pictures, each a bit of a different view.






The next tracker is my Sleep Tracker. I have waves of really good nights and then I have waves of insomnia. When I saw people tracking various conditions, I decided that tracking my sleep would be a good idea. I particularly am curious to see how my sleep patterns change after surgery.





The last of my trackers is my newly revamped Word Count tracker. It used to be one page for an entire month. However, I decided to put all my projects on the form. Now I need one each week. I think it will be very useful. This week, I messed up. I forgot that I added a column for Sunday last week since it was the first of the month and I didn’t want to go looking all over creation for that day. Great idea! Except for last night, when I printed out my trackers, I FORGOT I had done that, so wound up with one more column that I don’t need!  AAARGH!  I may just fill it in with washi tape.  Clearly, I am not worried about showing you my messes. I make them, yes, I do.



Next, I have a tab for Monthly Projects. I have writing prompts in there, and anything that I might be doing special for that month.



Then I have a tab for my List Building efforts, which I am not going to show you. (If you aren’t on the list and would like to be, let me know or just sign up on the blog or on Facebook.)

The next tab is for my Blogs and Newsletter topics, etc. I haven’t got anything in that tab yet. Even if I did, I might not show you. Something should be a surprise, after all!

The next tab is my Prayer and Spiritual Journal tab. In this tab, I have a copy of my Bhride Watch schedule, my Prayer List (if I don’t write it down, it doesn’t happen – showing here is a blank form without any requests – I take my role as clergy very seriously), prayers, and my Spiritual Journal, which I am not going to show you either.



One thing in this tab that I am willing to show you is something that might get moved to a different tab, or even one of its own. Several years ago (and it resurfaced in December 2016 as well), I heard the idea of what I call “The Happy Things Jar”. Find a jar, and every time a nice thing happens, write it on a piece of paper, and put it in the jar. At the end of the year, take down the jar and read about all the happy things that happened to you during the year. I LOVE the concept. My reality is this: if I used a jar, it would get broken. Last year, I started using a box. Whatever became of the box is beyond my comprehension. This week I decided to have a spread in my BuJo for this purpose. I know it won’t get lost. I hope I keep up with it.




The last tab of my Bullet Journal thus far is for Quotes and Affirmations. I have a list of affirmations in it. They are just printed from the internet and are boring. I am working on determining how to best use them. Give me time, I’ll figure it out. I also have been collecting quotes. I have them all in one place and I have a point on my BuJo to write out three quotes a week. That way, they will eventually have their own place to live.

Thank you for your patience. I know this was a long post. If you have read this far, I appreciate it.

Have a wonderful week!

Bright Blessings   – Cedar

You can find me on Facebook on my personal page: 


And my company page:


and my new page for my new business venture:

and – drum roll please – at my new Author page on Facebook:


I am also on Twitter:

@michelle owings-chri

LinkedIn profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-owings-christian-bbb7278

branded.me:
https://branded.me/michelleowings-christian