I am all about goals. I love setting goals and achieving them. I also love helping others along their journey to bettering their lives. That is why I use this tag often.
My story is not uncommon when it comes to weight loss and healthy living. Like most I’ve tried a few different methods to weighing less.
I know the basic knowledge of all healthy diets and weight loss programs.
The less processed a food is the better
Eat less calories than you burn, but you need nutrients and a certain amount of calories to not go into starvation made.
Exercise is important, so you should be active.
I know these things, but it takes something else to actually make that knowledge count for something. It takes self-disciple, will power, and commitment.
Healthy living is a life-style change that I am making. Unlike other times I’m doing something different. I’m committing to working on all of me, not just my physical self.
My idea is that as I work towards my physical health I will also look at my emotional and mental health. This will help me create a true life-style change and not just a temporary diet/ exercise adjustment.
I will start by posting a “Healthy Bagel” post once a month and then increase as I have time and need. Most of the posts will focus on my physical health journey, but I will also add in thoughts about my mental health, since your body and mind are intricately intertwined.
Before I leave you I should note that I have already made progress on my journey. It started a couple years ago, but I am just now truly moving down this path to my healthiest self and joining in both inner and outer health together. It was like I stepped on the path to health 2 years ago and studied it, but only took a couple steps. Now I am steadying walking down it.
Last DreamWard Bound I talked about how I organized and separated my goals and dreams. This helped me easily see my priorities and make a plan to reach my ideal life.
I know being organized does not fit every personality. Some people thrive in doing work as it comes along or as they are inspired. Some people do not like making lists or tracking their goals in detail.
I am not one of those people. More and more I love organizing my goals and tracking them. I have spreadsheets with formulas and charts. I have index cards and notebooks.
These things help me track my goals, so when I feel discouraged and forget my past achievements I can look back. I can see where I started and how far I’ve come.
Having my time and goals tracked also helps me plan for my future. I can see that I only consistently write for about 4 hours a week and draw for about 3. I can see that I can increase my prayer and Bible study time by 0.1 hours a week, because I know how much I’ve spent on godly things in the previous week.
By seeing my patterns with time I can see where I can improve. I can also see how long it takes to complete a project, book, or activity.
I do want to clarify that although I have 5 sheets with a lot of charts for visual tracking I did not start with that many.
I started with a notebook and only tracked time I spent reading the Bible and my television watching. After a few weeks I added other goals and then I moved it to one sheet on my computer. Little by little I added things I tracked and organized the sheets more. I can now see the following:
How many hours I put into a certain category each week (writing, blog posts, church, Bible reading, prayer, painting/ drawing, reading, etc).
On average how much time I put into creative work, writing, or spending time with God.
What percentage I spend in my different categories.
How long it takes me to read a book.
If my physical endurance is increasing.
How many hours I’m spending on promotion and revenue for my creative life.
The take away from all of this is to start small with your goals and tracking, but let both grow. This will help you to continually be improving and moving towards your goals and dreams.
For a while I looked at my ideal life and dreams as part of a whole. When I created goals they were not organized and did not have clear categories. They were all lumped together in the ideal life I would write out.
About five months ago I needed to re-energize my goals and become dreamward bound again. I needed a change, so I tried something new.
Instead of simply writing my ideal life out as one whole thing then separate it out into steps or goals I could take, I separated my ideal life into areas first and then made a plan.
I wrote how I wanted my spiritual life, writing life, visual arts life, physical health, mental life, and relationships to look. I took that information and asked myself how close I thought I could get in 5 years. I may have lofty goals, but my ideal life write-ups are also my 5 year goals.
I took my 5 year goals and asked how close could I see myself being in 1 year, then 6 months, then 3 months. It was easy to break the 3 months into 1 month and finally weekly goals.
Since I like bullet points and lists here is what I did in step form.
Section out your life (Spiritual, relationship, hobby, career, mental, physical, emotion, etc)
Write an ideal life for each of the sections.
Write out how close you want to be in 5 years for the first section.
Narrow your goals down to the top 3 for the section you are working on.
Organize the 3 goals to Level A, Level B, and Level C goals (Level A being the highest/ most important)
Create 1 year goals, 6 month goals, 3 months goals, 1 month goals, and finally 1 week goals.
Repeat until all sections are completed.
As I reach each milestone I make adjustment notes and assess if the goals and organization still makes sense. So far it has made sense and helped me stay on track.
I can keep track of my plan. I know that I should focus on Level A goals before Level B goals. I also know that my spiritual life is more important than my writing. which is more important than my visual art.
If you are interested in creating goals I would highly recommend sectioning your life into different areas and creating you ideal areas of life. You can then make a plan easier to get to you ideal life.
My dreams and goals seem crazy to me at times. They are so grand and lofty. They almost seem impossible. Yet, every time I attempt to downsize my dreams it does not work. Even if I am able to shrink them for a time, they will grow.
I want to say my dreams grow like weeds, but they are much more beautiful than your common weed. They are more like wild flowers, growing wherever and however they like, but doing so rather beautifully.
They are currently blossoming with the goal of supporting myself as an author and artist, who can then work on acting again. I want to be known for these three things. I can see myself achieving this and I am working towards these goals, that is why I call it a goal and not a dream. Dreams are just goals without a plan. I believe Dave Ramsey said something along those lines and I believe it is true.
My current dream includes marrying a musically talent actor, having 2 kids with him, and building a life with him. In my dream, I’m producing t.v. shows and acting in movies. Also, I want to be able to live off of 10% of my income and give the rest to God’s work and charities. I have no actual plans or steps in achieving any of these dreams. Perhaps one day when I am supporting myself as an author, artist, and actress, I will then be able to plan for my dreams.
I do want to mention that I don’t just want a lot of money, but I want to be able to make a big difference in the lives of others in a notable, positive way.
Where I am sitting right now these dreams and goals are large and scary, but they are mine. I am happy with always reaching for more, even though it is frustrating or a real struggle sometimes. I think I’ll stop trying to downsize my dreams, instead I’ll upgrade my work habits.
Want More?
I have more stories that shows how I became who I am. They are in the Journey to Me series. I also have stories specifically about God and of course I wrote a book about my views and experiences with Love called To Love.
My trip to South Africa was amazing and eye opening. The speed of life was different, the entire way of life was different. The only technology I used personally was a ipod shuffle and a camera. The shuffle was only on the plane ride over there and maybe a car ride when we were leaving the Church’s compound/ area. Inside the Church that we stayed at was a electric kettle, but besides that, lights, and the electronics other people brought  there was not any other high tech things there. This alone created a great time of focus on God, the community, and each other.
The people there were also something different. They had so little, but were happy. True they would try to get as much as they could, but when you have nothing even a lollipop is a wonderful treasure. The community we were in was filled with such pain. Family members would either die, most of the time from AIDS, or leave to find work. This left grandmothers caring for grandchildren and the older kids helping to raise the younger ones.
I loved loving on them and helping them. We gave some huts food parcels and dried soup. We also gave out quilts, since in the winter it actually gets cold. Each day that we taught the kids they went home with something special. One day we even were able to give them each a new outfit. They were so happy about that. The girls showed off their new dresses and the boys were super happy to have new shorts and a new shirt. We also prayed with the people who came to our eye glass clinic, where they also got new reading glasses. One day we prayed with the kids during their lesson. It was great fun to see how much we helped, even though they need more help.
Again, I need to say how awesome this trip was. We went on a few adventures, but I already went into more detail than I was planning on going into. I am sure I will be writing short stories about each fun adventure or story that was created during the trip.
This post was going to be telling you all about my new goals and only referencing Africa as the catalyst to my new goals and views on them. First big change is I went through and took out the goals that were just stressing me out. They were like the stale bread on my plate that I thought I needed to eat.
The first goal that I slid off my plate was my website. Once I have time I will come back and redo everything. For now it is up and running. It needs improving and if I have free time I may play around with it, but it is not a goal. Plus, it wasn’t really a working goal any ways. I was just poking at it and thinking I needed to work harder on it. It became a littler stress note.
The major thing I am taking off my plate is acting. It’s hard to do so and I love it, but my life right now can’t actually fit it on my plate. I am hoping that once I figure out how to free up my time I will reinstate this dream. At this moment I can’t try to act and write and work a full time job with at least 45 minutes of commute time. I mean I was trying to find monologues still and watch little lessons or tips when I could, but hadn’t been practicing, since right now my heart is focused on my writing projects.
I also tweaked my other goals and made them more do-able. My main focus will be on Godly studies and writing. I may write about my new goals, but for now the big changes to my life has been covered. Plus this is getting long and I do like keeping my updates on the shorter side.
Hello you wonderful people. As you can tell from reading this post, my site is back up. It took a longer than I thought and hoped for. Plus, it’s not what I had been planing, but I will work on separating and cleaning everything up from this point forward. I just really wanted some sort of website up.
Now, there are a few updates I should be sharing here. The biggest thing is that I am going to be going on my first out of the states missions trip soon. I am super excited for that. I will be going to South Africa at the end of this month. I actually made a video while the site was down explaining it a little bit more. Here is that video
I am also working on different projects that I will be publishing. Right now I am focusing on getting the first five out. I am hoping that I will be able to have finish products starting close to when I get back from South Africa and others being published every quarter. This seems like a feat and it is. It is do-able because the first one is a re-publishing/ second edition of my Growing Poems and the most of the others are short as well. I will be publishing them all on Kindle unlimited and may even look into publishing them through Amazon’s self-publishing company CreateSpace as a hard copy.
I mentioned Growing Poems, but I do have other ones and plans for them. After Growing Poems I will be publishing Poetic Art this is another poetry book, but it has a twist. These poems are coming from my more recent writings and from this blog. You may have noticed that about 100 posts have been removed. Now not all of these are being used for Poetic Art but some are. The twist with this book is that as of right now it will only be published as a hard copy, because after I have all the poetry pick, edited, and printed out I am going to draw, doodled and maybe even paint around the boarder and white space of the pages. This will bring another aspect to the poetry. I do have the actual poems pretty much edited how I would like them. Most of the work now will be the visual art.
I was going to do this next book a little farther down, but it seems to be the next easiest one to edit. This is a compilation of my short stories. Some are taken from this blog, others are taken from classes and I believe there may be one or two that I just never shared. I am going to be editing them and maybe expanded on a few micro stories. This one will need some more work and a title. For the title I’m thinking Stuff and Things, but I’m not sold on that. I feel like I should mention that if it is a series of short stories or was suppose to be a series of short stories I am not adding them to this book. This means that the I Am A Bagel, Story Time With Pink Sunshine, and Space-Riders will not be in this book. I also am going to try to revisit those series for this blog more, but we’ll see.
Now about 3 months after that is published I am going to be publishing all of my writing prompts. I am working on editing them to be clear and helpful. In addition they are being organized into story, poetry and other prompts. It may have a fourth section if I decide to re-organize it with a ‘strengthening your writing skills’ section. I will also be adding more of a description into how the prompt could help you and adding some more to the book. My goal for this book is that it will be able to give a year of inspiration at least to one person, so 365 quality prompts. That is why I am shooting for a Q4 (end of the year) publish for this book. I also need a title for this one.
The last one, besides my novel, that I am actively working on is a book called To Love. I might change the title to To My Love, but I’m not sure. The basic premise of this book is that it is a long love letter to my future husband. I have written him little things in the past, either when I am lonely or wishing for him to be known. I am also adding short stories, poetry, and I think a few monologues in the book. In addition I did add the first chapter of the first novel that I technically finished. It was just the first draft and I lost the story half way through the second draft.  I added the first chapter though, since the novel was my fantasy about how I would find him and who he would be.  Now, some of the writings may find their way into the other books, but I am editing the writings in this book separately. This will cause/ allow each writing piece unique to each book and give the readers something new.
I also have a few others that once the ones listed are done I will be able to actually focus on. The first one is called The Listening Tree and will be a kids book. I’m calling the one after that Dear God right now and it’ll be like To Love in that it will be a compilation of writings to a specific person. Dear God will just be the poetry, short stories, or some of my prayers to God. I am hoping with this to share my relationship and journey to God. Lastly I have one I am calling Journey To Me and this is more of a memoir type book. It is also the one that I am most fuzzy about. I know the general idea will be looking at how I became the person I am. I think it will be goal oriented and explaining how I viewed myself along with how I now view myself. It may turn into a self-perception study and most likely will have some psychological aspects to it. I am not sure though. I’m not really focusing on that or any of the last three I rambled off.
Finally I am working on my novel. It is titled Duality and I am about half way through my second draft. I don’t really want to give myself a dead-line with this. I am going for quality not quantity with this one.
I did say pretty much all that in the video below.
With all that being said, I am still going to be doing weekly DreamWard Bound posts. However, I do not foresee being able to do much more than that. Perhaps if the books become successes than I will be able to free up my time and write even more, but as the plan stands I will only commit to one post a week.
This week was a good week. I was productive, although you, my blog, saw none of it. I have a couple of poems that I will be typing up and posting this week. I also worked on my book for 7 hours last Saturday and painted for a few hours on Sunday.
In addition I am gearing up for my first improv show. I’ve of course have acted in scripted plays and musicals before, but never an improv show. I am really excited to be getting back on stage. It is not for a couple of months, but we still need to get performance ready.
Since it is almost Halloween I am also working on getting everything ready for my work’s Haunted House.  It is turning into more work than I have time for, but it is fun. Really, anything besides writing and acting takes up too much time in my opinion, at this moment. It is fun being creative in this way. It is basically putting on a production with very little resources.
This week’s post is pretty short and I am trying to think of other things to write, but there is nothing. I also just want to type up the poems I wrote and get going on my day, so that is what I will do.
I hope you have a wonderful week and enjoy or enjoyed the two posts that I wrote this week.
The past two or three weeks have been pretty stressful for me. I couldn’t figure out how to balance my day job, commute, and creative life. I just could not do it. I realized this week with a little help from a friend that I needed to step back and breathe. I needed to reset to see my projects as projects not stressers.
Taking a step back meant that I focused this week on resetting my brain and relaxing. I needed some rest, because I work 40 hours a week at my day job and then 20 hours (on a ‘good’ week) at my creative life. Most Saturdays now are focused solely on creative stuff. Sundays I force myself to not be creative. I basically burnt myself out and tried to keep going, until this week.
This week I took a break from everything. That is why I only posted one thing this week. I only worked on my creative life on Monday. The rest of the week was focused on helping friends, hanging out with them and not worrying.
I also took yesterday off of work to do errands and adult stuff that I never have time to do, so that is a load off my shoulders. I was going to be creative for most of the day, but adult stuff takes time and a friend was able to do lunch while my car was getting its oil change. Hanging out with my friend seemed like a good plan, especially since this weekend will be heavily focused on creative stuff. Today a friend and I are getting together for Caffeinated Creative Capers, which is basically us sitting in a coffee shop working on our projects together for 5 hours. Than on tomorrow I will be painting with another friend. We will be painting faces and on canvas, so I am looking forward to that.
Hopefully this packed weekend of creativity will complete the resetting of my brain and push me towards my goals and dreams quicker or at least help me get there. I know stress, worry, and a clouded head is the worst thing to have when trying to be creative. I just need to remember to make sure I clear away the cobwebs of everyday living regularly, I guess.
Now, I am going to prepare for being creative and leave you with the one thing I did this week.
I am feeling like I can actually achieve my end goals this week. I published posts that I wrote on my vacation, which meant I did not need to write as much this week. Instead I was able to focus on planning, figure out new ideas, and look forward.
Out of the 5 posts that I did published this week, 2 of them really brought readers to this blog, which is great. I thought they might since the 2 posts were titled, “Meeting Mormons,” and “Elevation.” Elevation is my church so I bet people involved in that would like to read about their tribe. The Mormon post I bet was interesting because it’s an interaction post about a religion/ people group that is usually represented as negative. The people I met were really nice and it was a positive interaction.
I did write a poem, that will be published after all my vacation writings are up. I’m sure I will have more ramblings by the time I’m done publishing my vacation stuff. I might even have a short description of a web-series idea.
I do want to do a web-series, but besides the very, very basics I do not have much. I want to figure out who is willing and able before writing the actual script. Which is backwards, but I want it  to help those involved have the greatest chance for success.
Changing topics, back to why I am feeling like I am moving forward with my goals, dreams, and working towards the life I really want. I sat down and revised my goals this past week and I think these will really help propel me into making some head way. The new thing I did was break down the week into different goals. Now,  I won’t be trying to do everything everyday, which causes me to not really get anything done. It will be okay if I don’t edit my book everyday. It has its own day. This is basically what my schedule will look like now.
Sunday= Bible Study (God Goal day)
Monday= BJJ (health goal) and my blog.
Tuesday/ Wednesday= Acting plan (acting goal)
Thursday = Improv and blog
Friday = Book editing (writing goal)
Saturday = Call family and record kids’ videos (relationship goal). Also Acting planning (acting goal).
It’s nerdy but I am really excited about scheduling and planning. This means that I am really excited to see how I can create a plan of action for my acting career. Maybe I will even do acting stuff in the coming months.
That is really why I am feeling dreamward bound. Now here is the stuff I posted this week.
I seem to be taking steps towards my dreams and end goals. They are just small steps. I started to budget, so that I can save money to further my journey. With budgeting being done with my money I can see how far I have to go with being able to afford what I need to do. An example of what I am talking about is, I am trying to save money to afford an acting coach. I know I need an outsider’s eye to point me to what I need to do. I also want to make sure I actually have art supplies in my budget and that I will be able to give away at least a few books (once I finish it).
With working on my money budget I am realizing I need to do that with my time. I have a limited amount of time during a month, just like I have a limited amount of money. I need to make sure I am using my time wisely, even more than my money I feel like. I noticed a lot this week that although I am not watching television for three months I am still distracting myself and not being productive. Yes, I do need breaks and to relax, but switching from wasting my time on one thing to another does not help anything.
My goals are important to me and time is more important in completing them than money. I am looking up time management apps to help me, well manage my time. Hopefully, distractions will be cut down when I realize how little time I really have.
I am working on my goals. The hardest 2 this week seems to be my physical goal (basically eating healthier and exercising more), and editing ( 30 hours in 30 days). I just can’t seem to find time to exercise, edit or make healthy meals. I am eating healthier and going to BJJ, but I’m not stretching myself.
Still, I can see where I am doing well. I am reading the Bible more, getting more sleep (thanks to no t.v.), saying ‘I love you,’ more, having more conversation, and looking towards my future in acting and writing. I am doing things, but I can always see room to improve.
I always am looking on ways to improve and usually hard on myself, but that’s just who I am.
I will end this post on a good note. I was able to write 3 things this week. Here they are.
