Pre-bike ride of 12 miles:

I survived.

At least I was good during the bike ride and recovered well enough to go walk another half mile at the gym and then went and walked around an “craft” show. I use that loosely because it was supposed to be a craft show but was mostly an MLM show. Sigh.

Then I went home and got sick.

Dang. I knew I should have taken it slower. My achiever personality just won’t let me show weakness. You know the line that Steigan repeats in Quest for the Three Books over and over? (“A dominus shows no weakness” – always seeming to come through in Arlyn’s voice) Yeah, that’s actually me hearing that over and over — I can show no weakness; I am a strong, independent woman; I can do this; show no weakness; just get through this.

Does 4 semi-colons in 1 sentence make a run-on sentence? Is that even allowable? It is now.

Okay, generally I shorten this in my head to “Just get through this.” I have pushed through so many things by just telling myself that it’s almost over. I work hard because I want to be the exception. I want to have accomplished amazing things.

This is not always a good thing. Okay, sometimes it is when you are challenging yourself, but with me it has become such a habit that it’s a detriment. Worse, I know that it is. Like this bike ride. I knew I’d push myself harder than I should because of my competitive nature. I promised myself I would ride at my leisure and enjoy it, but no, I pushed myself. So I felt like crap later.

And I deserved it.

Okay, that’s enough shaming myself now. I just wanted to say what happened because too many times we see someone who is going all out for something and we think that they are amazing, but underneath they might not be taking care of themselves. Too often we hide our true selves behind carefully constructed masks hoping the world won’t peak beneath. I am to a point where I can admit that I am 100% guilty of this and I am trying hard not to do it any more.

I appreciate my son who thinks that I can keep up with him, but the 20+ years of difference between us, especially after my years of not taking good care of myself, can’t be undone. Even if I do manage to lose the weight (again) and get myself in better health, he’s going to be far ahead of me always as long as he keeps taking care of himself.

However, last week we uncovered the reason why my watch keeps counting incredibly high stair goals. Last week my watch said that I went up 93 flights of stairs. In actuality, I only went up 1 and a half flights that day. A couple readers of my stories quickly (and smartly) pointed out that it was actually me in other dimensions traveling up mountainsides, or ladders on spacecrafts, or actual stairs maybe on other planets as I was traveling dimensionally. They congratulated me on learning to be in 2 or more places at once while collecting my stories. And I had my smartwatch and the stair goals to prove it.

I love creative minds!

I have so many things to tell you about over the next couple of weeks: a new bundle, the next Loki adventure and things I’m doing with the series, great people I’ve had the opportunity to get to know, and shows already scheduled in to 2019. But for now, I will leave you with what I have gotten done this week. I am definitely not running at full steam yet, but I am getting closer.  I’ve even added a new challenge for myself (not one I’m going to share directly because I need to keep the energy for this to myself, but you will see the results).  But for now, I leave you with last weeks numbers.

Remember, I show these number as a way of holding myself accountable to my goals.

Fiction words written last week:  1,116 words.

Blogs/Newsletter articles/non-fiction written:  1,782 words.

Weekly word goal reached for 0 weeks. That’s three weeks in a row. Boo! Hiss! Snarl!

Writing month to date total:  8,635 words

Writing year to date total: 178,344 words

Drawing/painting last week: I painted 7 8×10 paintings last week – this will certainly replenish my supply for shows.

Audio: I spent 4 hours editing audio. It has taken me the most part of the week to get this worked back into my schedule, mostly thanks to a new pillow from a galaxy of super foam wedges. It was supposed to work wonders on my sore shoulder. Instead, it’s made my ribs so painful in the morning that it feels like I’m cracking muscles apart just to breath. Yeah, it’s done wonders for my shoulder. That’s not where the pain is at any more. Compared to my spine, my shoulders feel great! Yeah, my next trip to this galaxy of super foam wedges might find me shoving some down someone’s throat. That’ll be an adventure!

On the bright side, the audiobook for Quest for the Three Books is about 1 and 1/2 chapters and some punch-in corrections away from being done. Color me excited!