In November 2018 I started to do weekly vlogs. They are short unedited videos of how my week went, lessons I’m learning, or random ramblings. They are not planned out and are not high quality, but they are fun to do and hopefully helpful.
I started them, because I wanted to have a presence on youtube. I also wanted to get into the habit of publishing weekly videos.
One aspect of my dream/ ideal life is to be comfortable in front of the camera and to do promotional videos for my projects.
I had 2 options to make this aspect of my ideal life a reality.
The first was to wait until I had time to plan and edit videos. Time that may never come.
The second option was to make time and start where I was. I can start with what I can do now and grow on that.
One thing I’ve learned by going down the second path is that I have to fight with myself. Some weeks the video isn’t perfect. I’ve looked at the thumbnails and I’ve noticed the lighting isn’t great. Most weeks I also don’t like an aspect of my appearance or how I sound.
If I was doing this for the views or an outside factor I would have stopped after the first few videos.
The wonderful thing is that I’m not doing this for the views. This is something I’m doing for myself. It is practice and habit forming.
I have noticed that I’m frequently giving advice and sharing the life lessons I’m learning. It is turning into a verbal version of DreamWard Bound. I am okay with that and enjoying sharing what I’m learning. (I have found a passion for advice giving).
Here are a couple more videos for you to get an idea of what I’m talking about. I hope you enjoy.
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 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.
If you know me or a random cashier that rang me up last night, you know that I am going to South Africa soon. I mean really soon, so this will be my last post for a few weeks. I will try to post a video on YouTube. If I don’t post my send off video there I will at least tweet a signing-off type of tweet.
I don’t really have any other updates besides my trip. I mean it’s a big trip and I have been focusing on that all week. Plus I am working a little bit on my other projects, but nothing that I can really talk about. It’s all just working stuff out with them.
When I get back from my trip I am sure I will have more updates and things to talk about.
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.
It seems like a long week, packed with work and social media. I have reasons for feeling like this week was focused on social media and the internet. I took a webinar, my improv troupe created social media accounts, and I am starting a new project that requires accounts. There are reasons why you have not heard about the new accounts that I helped set up and will be working with.
The improv troupe is still getting the promotional information up. We should be tweeting and posting later this week. When we do I will be retweeting and sharing posts.
The other project still needs some definition and to be smoothed out. It also needs images or at least a logo. When we have everything ready for that I will also be retweeting and sharing posts. I will also be talking about it more and giving you details.
In general I am going to try to be more social on social media. I am going to try to share more things that I think are interesting and basically just be more active. I learned a lot of tips while taking Amy Jo Berman’s webinar about social media. I also had a few smiles when I realized I am doing some things right.
That being said once this site is on the right server I will be changing my site up. It will have 3 distinct areas. Each are will have its own feel and aspect of myself. This means that when you go to the home page there will be 3 sections to choose from (Actor, Author, and Artist). I will have the most recent blog post on the home page, but everything else will be under one of the other aspects. This way I can represent myself more clearly and fully. It is exciting to be making changes, but it will also be a lot of work.
Looking back on this post, it seems like a lot of it was what will happen. I promise I did do things. It takes work to set up awesomeness and I believe that all that is being set up now will be great.
I feel like I am getting back into being dreamward bound. My schedule is filled up with meet-ups directed towards my creative life. I am painting every month with a friend. I am writing/ editing with another friend every other week. Reading articles and tips about acting almost every day during breaks from work. I am also starting to work on getting my wardrobe audition ready. This means that I am trying to buy more professional looking clothes instead of just t-shirts and jeans. I am also getting back into shape and went back to BJJ for the first time in about a month.
Yes, after a hard time of being so busy, stressed, and drained my life if back on track. It may even be more on track than before. I at least feel more thankful and blessed now, which causes a greater happiness. Basically what I am trying to say is that life is good after a stressed out and draining month or two.
The only thing that is not so great is that it is taking longer for this site to be transferred over to HostGator’s servers, which means it is taking longer to get everything configured how I would like it and set up revenue. Also, since I thought my site was going to be transferred over this week I did not want to post/ write things that may disappear if something went wrong.
This week I was packed full of work, Halloween and site stuff. I am in the process of transferring over this site to hostgator. I put on a Haunted House for my work. It was also my birthday on Thursday. Plus, I had to work a slightly later, which mean traffic. This week there was a lot of traffic in my life. It really was all traffic and Halloween crafts.
Yes, this week was busy, and I am happy that it is over. However, I am excited for the new things that will be coming to this site. I will be practicing my coding a bit more since I will have more control over the code. I will also be able to put ads on the site. I know it’s not great, but if I can get a little revenue from this site I can do more creative stuff. That means if I have ads I can post more fun things on this site.
Now, I am drained, but with the creativity of the Haunted House it is in a good way. I think I deserve the rest of the day to myself watching Shakespeare or vampires (not the sparkly kind).
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.
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.
