Where Are You Going Where Have You Been?

A Quote:

“If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?” –Joyce Carol Oates

Pony Up

If you own a calendar, or a watch, or a computer, or a cell phone, or have a job, you probably know that today is August 1st. Today I must be weighed and measured and hopefully will not be found wanting.

Reading

I have most definitely met my reading quota for the month. I have read every day without exception. Of course, most of my reading has been Game of Thrones centered. I believe I have read around 1500 pages this month. That seems like an awful lot but when I was getting my BA in English I read that in a week (and that reading was much denser). So I suppose I could do better next month.

Fitness

I’ve managed to exercise 5-6 days every week this month including the week I was on holiday in Florida. Some days I put in more effort than others but I’m proud of myself for sticking to it even on the days my get up and go got up and went.

I have been consistently active for over a year now but I hit a wall a few months ago and was feeling really frustrated. Exercise is definitely more rewarding when you can see results. When the results aren’t there it’s easy to throw in the towel. Before I started this blog I was often tempted to give in to the fat and let myself go. Yet, in the last month the exercise has begun to pay off again. I can’t help but think it has something to do with eating a more balanced diet.

The most thrilling fitness accomplishment this month, at least in my eyes, has been my marked increase in stamina. For the past year I haven’t been able to run further than five miles without stopping but yesterday I ran six miles and went on two walks with our new puppy. That’s a total of eight miles in one day and at the end of the day I had energy to spare.

Diet

More often than not my diet has been pretty good. I do have a weakness for sweets and indulge in this weakness from time to time but most days I’ve stayed within my calorie allowance. My worst week of the month was the week I was on vacation. Eating out and being around others who were not dieting was incredibly challenging. I gave in to temptation perhaps more than I should have (cake, how I love thee). I started this month at 170 lbs and when I returned from vacation I was 175 lbs.

Even though I gained some during my holiday I was able to get back down to my July 1st starting weight within a week. I also lost an additional 4 lbs bringing my current weight to 166 lbs. Not bad at all. And now that I’m losing some of the poundage I can actually see the muscle I have been building for the past year.

Writing 

My writing life has been a tad off (as always).  First of all, when I set up this blog I immediately became obsessed with it and got the idea in my head that I was going to post every day. Posting every day would be fine if it didn’t take me two hours or more to write each post. And once I’ve finished the post I have no time or energy left to write fiction.

I realized that my fiction to blog ratio was unbalanced around the middle of the month and started concentrating more on fiction and less on the blog (thus, the reduction in posts). I think in the future I will stick to a blog post per week so that I can spend more time concentrating on my fiction.

I was able to write every day for most of the month rising as early as 6 am (gasp) to get my writing in. I’ve found that I write much better in the morning while the rest of the world slumbers. My early morning writing strategy was really paying off until we adopted this guy:

6 am means nothing to him. He’s adorable but at only two months old he requires constant attention when he’s awake. The first week after we adopted him was particularly rough but I think we are falling into a better routine over the past few days. Mostly, we have figured out that a long walk cures most ills when it comes to puppies. And by that I mean it exhausts them into submission. So now the routine will be: exhaust puppy and then write. Of course, the best part about this is the bonus exercise.

Anyways, because of the puppy (excuses, excuses) my writing slowed down in the second half of the month. I’ve been working on a strange story that just won’t come to a resolution and I haven’t been able to put in the time to rework it. I realized two days ago that it would be impossible to wrap it up before the August 1st deadline so I pulled an old short story out of my hat to revise. Yesterday I submitted the old story, called Snake Skin, to Glimmer Train, a literary magazine. The submission was entered into their very short fiction contest. Cross your finger and hope that I win the grand prize of $1200. Second or third prize wouldn’t be bad either.

It’s difficult for me to summarize Snake Skin. Mostly, it’s about change, hence the title.

I find that although I can relate very personal things about myself here I feel reluctant to post unpublished fiction on the blog. A much deeper part of me resides within my fiction than in my non-fiction. So I will keep it to myself for now.

Crafting

My struggle for writing balance also affected my crafting time. By which I mean I crafted very little. I did manage to make one bag in two crazy three hour sessions the second of which occurred in the middle of the night during a very loud thunderstorm. It is a simple bag with a shell made of light denim and a lining made of cotton. The lining fabric is a neat blue and orange houndstooth pattern that my mother and I found in a small fabric shop in Atlanta. The bag has one inside pocket. I made the bag to give to my sister-in-law for her birthday. It’s very large and we discovered it could smuggle a ton of snacks into a movie theater without anyone noticing.

Here is my lovely sister-in-law modeling her bag:

That, As They Say, Is That

There you have it–my month in review. It’s been a busy month but not a bad one overall. I’d love to stay and chat but the puppy is awake and running off to hide somewhere with my shoe.

Until next time!

Ciao!