Progress Report: Week 3

Here is my first progress report.  I was supposed to do one of these last week and I did not.  I really want to try to keep up with these, because it will help me stay active with my goals.  I need to carve out some time to pre-schedule when I am going to do them, so I do not keep pushing it off until the next day.

Music This Week: aka music this month

It's been a million years since I've done a Music This Week Post.  So a more accurate description for this post is probably more like: Music This Month!

I pretty much listened to Bastille non-stop for three months, with maybe a little F+tM thrown in there.  I also discovered the bands St. Lucia and Kongos over the summer.  Lately, I've been totally taken in by all those pop songs conquering the radio (A Sky Full of Stars - Coldplay. Boom Clap - Charli XCX. and BAILANDO - Enrique Iglesias . . . this song is soooooo addictive)

But here are some other things that I've been listening:

(1) Changes - Sigma (feat. Paloma Faith)


Fun electro-pop song featuring a great vocalist.  WHY THIS NOT BE AVAILABLE IN THE US???? 

(2)  Only Love Can Hurt Like This - Paloma Faith


Since we are on the subject of Paloma Faith, she has a new album out.  This is the main track that is being promoted.  This is a faster version, but is also sounds great slower and at a fashion show.  Also, now bragging: going to see her live!!!

26 Things Before 27

Another birthday has come and gone.  I have given myself one month to think about what I want to accomplish this year.

I've been thinking a lot about how to accomplish more of my goals.  I have definitely accomplished some things that I wouldn't have if I hadn't started setting goals.  But there are a LOT of goals that I didn't accomplish.  A big part is lack of trying.  A small part is losing interest in those goals.  But another medium size part I think is not setting intelligent goals.  Someone told me about setting S.M.A.R.T. goals---- as a way to set goals that you are more likely and able to accomplish.  So bearing all this in mind, I'm setting my goals for the next year and also setting a couple new rules:

1. I can tweak and modify goals a bit if I want, to make them more specific and directed or to take them to the next level if I want to expand upon something I have accomplished.
2. I can throw out a goal if I feel like it is not serving what I truly am aiming to do.  For example last year I had a goal about make-up, but as time went on I realized that this was incredibly unimportant to me.   So I can throw out a goal, BUT I have to replace it with a new one.
3. Every week, I have to report on here about my progress on 2 of my goals.  I'm hoping this will help me keep engaging with my goal and planning for accomplishing them.

Now for the goals.  I'm going to try to provide some preliminary steps that I can take to get started accomplishing these goals.  I can add steps as I progress and report on my progress getting through those steps.  So here is what I'm going to be trying to do over the next 11 months:

Poem: now young woman

Today I did another poem made from the standout words or phrases in a magazine article I was reading (about Ellie Goulding in the July issue of Nylon). 

now young woman

Sold out,

she needs a boost

--- still going for the real thing.

Stake out. Pursue. Statement:

"I like to keep people happy."

Come on Get Crafty: Coffee Rings?

A couple weeks ago I started fooling around with card making again.  I had this sort of idea of circles colliding but also being undefined, so that's what I was pondering while making this one.

Once again I think I over embellished it.  I think the shading on the edges pulls focus from the circles and reduces their prominence, when really I wanted them to stand more starkly alone in space, like planets.  I have got to stop second guessing myself.

On Color, a writing exercise

I don't know if I have already mentioned this, but I started going to a writing group that meets twice a month.  It is a pretty informal affair, and the group is mostly made of 40+ aged novelists.  What happens at this group is we free write for about 20-30 minutes, and then do 1-2 min short writing prompts and share our creations (good and bad!)--- and this goes on for about an hour.

It is a good way to get comfortable with yourself and writing, get a little bit of feedback/support, and just practice using your imagination.  And it is usually fun and delightful to hear what hilariously bad or surprisingly good thing you and others can come up with.

Anyways, I wanted to share one of the more promising things I've produced during writing group so far.  I sometimes feel silly at the group because tonally and stylistically my stuff can be a little weird, especially when compared with the very normal, narrative-oriented, novel-esque scenes, dialogue, and prose the other writers came up with.  I often feel like I cheat on the prompt because I feel like I don't really do what it asks.

The last time I was at the group, I think the prompt was something like "Describe a color to someone who has never seen it before."  For some reason I started thinking about the colors of yellow and yellows in nature.  There are so many different colors that fall into the category of yellow.  And all those colors exist in millions of places all over the world, meaning different and the same thing in all those millions of places and contexts and experiences.  And even as those colors exist in those places and context, things change and those colors bleed into and become other colors, and even become inseparable from the other senses like smell, heat, movement etc. . . . .  so on that subject, this is what I wrote on color.