Buried Under the Rocks

Oye am I overwhelmed!!!  I've got many rocks going on and I think the juggling is getting dangerous.  Today feels like I let a few of the rocks slip and they've conked me on the head. (I keep thinking of Bob Dylan's "Everybody Must Get Stoned" even though there are no drugs going on here)

Friday was the audition and I did it.  I would't say I rocked it, but I at least didn't croak like a frog or forget any words.  I was able to sing first before anybody else and I'm so glad I did because once I saw all of the other people, I was so impressed I would not have had the nerve to go up there.  So now there's call backs in a couple of weeks and I really really do not want to go.  I've wanted to take voice lessons for a couple of months but it just hasn't worked out and before I go to any other auditions, I want to have a couple of lessons under my belt.  I have a decent voice, but lack confidence and practice.  All the other people were talking vocal ranges and notes. I don't read music and don't know the vocabulary.  Best thing I can do is memorize the songs from the show.  I'll keep you posted on how things go.  BUT have to say I'm proud of myself for taking the step forward.  (side note: talked with the director of the theatre this morning and she said my pitch was right on.  Not only is it nice to get any sort of feedback, but to hear that makes me feel great since that's my first obstacle, yeah!!)

I've had more commitments with the theatre which has involved more homework than I expected. Finally got an assignment done that was due tonight and hoping things will be less stressful.  Even with dropping other things, this is a lot to add to the plate.

All caught up on my Bible reading. It's an exciting milestone because I have read up to this point a handful of times and then given up.  Today we start with Joshua and it's new territory for me.  If you want to jump in on this journey, check out Bible 365 and start with Joshua.

Had a field trip with my daughter's class today. Survived without a migraine so I call that a success!

I could go on and on but I won't.  Just being aware that I'm feeling the stress of too much going on.  Going to have to watch and see if there's something that needs to be adjusted.  Going to work on getting more sleep, less socializing, and keeping up with exercising.  My latest mantra comes from a good friend, who when I said I needed to get walking again to get my endorphins up, responded with, "Yes! Because happy people just don't kill!"  And when I'm single moming it like I have been lately, I gotta do what it takes to keep my mood on the happy side!

What do you do when things start to get overwhelming? Do you recognize it before it gets too late?  What can you do to make things less overwhelming? 

By the way, why is it that when I'm talking to people or posting on Facebook I get all sorts of unsolicited advice and comments but when I ask questions on my blog, people are silent?  I know you all have things to say so say it here!

Let's Kick Fear's Ass

Back to my First World problems. I have an audition tomorrow and I’m freaking out.  Now I say those words and the sweet nice people in my life say, “Oh, you’ll do great!”

Really? You know that? Because no one ever goes up in front of a director and freezes.  Because no one ever stands up to sing and misses the first note messing up the rest of the song.  It happens. I know. Because I’ve done it.  You remember the frog from the Bugs Bunny cartoons, Michigan J. Frog, who sang like crazy until he was put on the stage to perform and then he was just a frog who opened up his mouth and said, “Croak!” Ya, that’s me.

I’ve had no singing lessons in my life. People talk about notes they can or can’t sing or their ranges and I’m like, “Um... I think I’m a second Soprano... Oh what? They don’t call it that anymore? I’m a Mezzo? Oh cool, thanks.”

I have a good voice, but it’s a whole other beast to stand on stage by yourself and sing. While being judged.  I honestly rather have a brazilian bikini wax.

And yet at the same time, this is all very exciting. I love performing and I enjoy the process of auditioning.  I love that I have set this challenge to face my fear and hopefully kick its ass.

So today, I’m holing myself up in my apartment and practicing until I can’t practice anymore. (which is in about two hours when I have to pick up my kids from school)

Hope you are facing your fears too.

Keep on Rockin’

Luna

The Right Tools for the Job

Having goals is great. Having a plan is even better. But, having the right tools is essential.

For example:

Goal-lose weight

Plan-cut out junk food, eat at home more, exercise

Tools-healthy cook books, good lunchbox to take food from home, quality running shoes that fit, work out clothes NOT made of cotton

Goal-complete a triathlon

Plan-register for event, follow training program

Tools-training program, bike made for races, proper shoes, swim gear

Goal-read through the Bible in a year

Plan-follow set reading plan

Tools-reading plan, Bible

Some folks start off the year with a goal which is the first step but if there is no plan, it’s only a wish. “I want to lose 40 pounds.” That’s great...... but how?  It’s not magically going to come off by wishing it away.  Trust me, I know.  There are so many ways to lose weight.  You need to do your research and decide what works best for your philosophy and taste.  

Once you have decided HOW you want to lose weight, you need to make sure you have the right tools.  For portion control, do you have measuring cups or a food scale to make sure you are truly eating one serving size according to the nutrition label? Do you want to weigh yourself weekly? Daily? Do you have a scale to do so?  Do you want to fit in a certain pair of jeans? Set them aside in your closet so you can try them on once a week.   Do you have a meal plan? Is your house stocked with fruits and vegetables that you like and will eat?  Do you need accountability? Join a group.

With reading through the Bible this year the tools are simple but essential. Reading plan, a Bible I can take with me, and a friend who is also following the plan to keep me accountable.  It’s working out well.  I have found that I take my Bible with me everywhere now just in case I have time between things to read.  Some people use an app on their phone to read so it’s always with them. I have a Bible in a case with handles like a purse. The latest thing my friend and I both realized we need is a printed version of the reading plan right in our Bible so we don’t have to keep looking up on the website to see which chapters are to be read for that day.

For my marriage, my husband and I want to have more date nights.  So we sat down with our planners and wrote the dates down. I’ve contacted my sister to watch the kids (babysitters are my biggest obstacle when it comes to date nights! They usually cost more than the date itself and I HATE asking for help. It’s an issue I’m working on.)  We’ve discussed what movies we’d like to see and checked out Fandango to see which movies will be showing on our date nights. Other things we’ve put in place to keep our marriage improving is surrounding ourselves with other strong married couples and we have at times seen a counselor or attended marriage retreats.  We laugh together daily and we talk about the things that bother us.  We’ve spent time learning each other’s personality traits and reading books about marriage.  I’m a very independent person with a short attention span so keeping long-term commitments is not my strong point.  If marriages are going to last in our culture, it’s going to take hard work and surrounding yourselves with the tools you need to succeed.

Have you found yourself frustrated with some goals you have set for this year? Can you think of tools you need to help you get past this point of frustration?  If your goals are going well, what tools have helped you to be successful?

When Rocks Need to be Rearranged

(I considered making the title of this post, “When Rocks Get Thrown At You.”)

You can never tell at the beginning of a new year what changes will take place by the end of the year.  You can make your goals and set out working on them, but you need to have the flexibility needed to make changes as life happens.

I’ve been plugging a long working on my goals and things are going well.  I haven’t given up on anything and I’m enjoying the pace I’ve set.

But two things have crept into 2013 that I wasn’t expecting.  We were asked by my in-laws to see if we could plan a visit.  My in-laws moved out of state to a town with the population of 250 people seven years ago. My husband decided a while back that we would visit my in-laws every three years.  This is not the year we were suppose to visit so it wasn’t in the budget or time plan for this year.  In order to make this visit happen, something else is going to have to go. This means my goal to take the family to Family Camp in the Santa Cruz mountains is going to have to come off of my list for 2013.

The perfectionist in me is having a hard time taking something off of my list. But there’s only so much room in our jar.  One rock has to come out to make room for a new one. 

I’ve recently had another opportunity come up that will change the way I structure my time.  I’ve been asked to join the Board of Directors for the theatre I perform at.  They would like my help with keeping information about the shows updated with the local newspapers and their website.  I’m excited to help out, but before I said yes, I discussed things with my husband and we weighed the commitment against the priorities I’ve set in place for this year.  My husbands exact words were, “You have worked hard getting all of your rocks in place.  I just don’t want to see your hard word get compromised.”

When I told my girlfriend about it she asked, “So you’re adding a new rock?”

Nope. It’s just a very big pebble.  So, I dropped my ballet class and a mom’s prayer group.  I’ll need to budget my time more diligently, but I really think this is going to be a fun new addition to my jar.  It does fit under my “personal fulfillment rock” which is performing in the theatre.  Helping out in an area I love will help feed my soul.

How is your year shaping up? Have you had to make changes to adjust to unexpected opportunities?  What would have to change if something new did come up?

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I Need a "View Appreciation Moment" aka VAM

My trail name is Tortuga, Spanish for tortoise, because I'm that slow. It doesn't help that I have short legs at five feet not-even-two-inches tall and my trail partner was six-one. Living in Yosemite, I quickly learned that all good hikes go STRAIGHT UP. That's what happens when you live in a valley.  But man were those some of the best hikes ever.

We often would work it out with our friends to get the same two days off and backpack together.  It wouldn't take long for the eight of us twenty-somethings to start catch phrases that stuck and VAM was one of them.

It worked like this:

We'd be hiking for a while and hit an especially tough part. Maybe it was steep or maybe there were rocky steps to climb and you'd hear....
"Woooo weeeee!!! Would you look at THAT!" pant pant pant
We'd all stop.
What?
"That there is a View Appreciation Moment if I ever saw one!" pant pant pant
What? It's the same mountain (waterfall, rock formation, whatever) we've been looking at for the last half hour.
"Yes, but right now..." pant pant pant "It just needs the respect it deserves. I need to stop and appreciate it."
Ahhhhhhh you're just tired and need to catch your breath!

That was it. Any time one of us got tired and needed a rest, we called a VAM.

I need to call a VAM on my rocks in a jar. I started with two and added a couple more by the end of January.  Daily Bible reading (check), Quiet Time with God (check), Writing More (check), Register for Speaker Conference (check) Eating for Health and Energy (check), Focused Time with the kids (check), Planned Date Nights with Husband (check) Cleaning the house (not a full check but better than before), Working on Audition (check) Now I'm finding myself needing to catch my breath.

And that's O.K.  The work I've been doing just needs the respect it deserves. I think I'll stop and appreciate it.

That doesn't mean I stop doing the things I've built into my daily schedule.  I think I've reached a plateau and won't be adding anything new until I catch my breath. I can tell if I add anything more, it will cause stress, not joy.  Once I have found my stride with what I am currently doing, then I'll add more.

Have you found balance in working on your goals? Are you doing too little or too much? What do you do to appreciate the work you have done?

Why Losing is Good

My daughter is now able to play one of my all-time favorite games, UNO.  This is so much more fun for me than playing Candy Land or Shoots and Ladders.  There is skill involved. Thinking involved. Strategy.  Sure, it’s not chess but and least it’s not mind numbing like the little kid games.

I have always had the belief that I will never “let” my kids win at games.  I will play against them and teach them along the way. It’s good for them to lose. They need to know how to be good losers and when they are good enough to earn the win for themselves, they will also know how to be good winners. 

Lessons they have learned:

• You never know what can happen, it ain’t over til it’s over
• You finish what you start
• You shake hands when it’s over and say, “Good game.”
• You don’t pout when you lose, you don’t gloat when you win
• You get better by playing over and over
• It feels good when you win because you earned it

Tonight I had a chance to let Keira win. She had come close so many times and I was proud of her for continuing to play. I could see she was having fun and she knew she was getting better. She was down to one card and I had two. I could have played one card that would allow her to win, but I knew it would be cheating her of actually earning it.  After I played my two cards for the win, I told her the truth.  My secret I’ve been keeping through Candy Land, Shoots and Ladders, Tic Tac Toe, and now UNO, that when she wins she will truly have won by her own doing not because I “let” her.

That’s all fine and dandy when it’s someone else’s loss we are talking about, but what if it’s your own loss or the loss of your favorite team?

This is not easy for me to write. I like to win! I’m competitive and I love sports. I’m also a huge San Francisco 49er fan so you can guess that I’m not feeling all warm and fuzzy after Sunday’s loss in the Super Bowl. We’ve never gone to the Super Bowl and lost before, but I had a feeling going into this game that we were about to break our undefeated record. 

This team was not the superstar Montana/Rice or Young/Rice team of the past.  The quarterback, Kaepernick, is very young and does not have a lot of game experience under his belt.  We have a whole different coaching style from past coaches and although he has brought together a winning team, I don’t always enjoy his tactics. 

A lot of fans will whine about the refs not calling the penalties against Baltimore like they should have, but that’s not what lost us the game. Lack of experience and complete unfocused arrogance were glaring factors that caused me to be embarrassed more than mistakes made on anyone specific player's part.  So, I’m kind of glad they lost.

Before the game on Sunday, there was an interview with a 49er named Vernon Davis.  He stands out in my mind because back in 2008 when Mike Singletary was named the 9ers head coach, Davis was a prima donna and Singletary sent him to the locker room in the middle of a game. “I'd rather play with 10 people and just get penalized all the way until we have to do something else rather than play with 11 when I know that right now that person is not sold out to be a part of this team.”  This is so unusual in an era of player entitlement. We as a society are afraid to call people out for their entitlement and self-centeredness.  Especially when a team is winning which is why I’m glad the 9ers lost on Sunday.  

In the interview with Davis, they of course brought up the Singletary exchange making Davis watch a replay of it. Over four years have passed and when they asked Davis what he would say to Singletary now, you know what his answer was? “Thank you.”  He credits Singletary for saving his career and helping to change him to be a better leader.  

What would have happened if no one stood up to Davis?

My hope for the losing team is for them to be humbled, to dig deep and see where they need to improve, to come back stronger. I bet that the team we see come back next season will be a better team for losing than if they had won with their comeback in the 4th quarter.

Losing or failing does not have to be the end. It’s the beginning to become better.

Have you faced adversity that caused you to grow stronger? Are there tough lessons that you have had to learn that made you a better person in the long run?  What challenges do you face today and how can you face them with a stronger spirit?

Give Up or Get Back Up? Celebrate the Progress

My "Better" chart

Little changes add up.

Do you believe that? 

Of course you do. But do you celebrate the little changes?

When we take on goals for our lives, we envision the end result like having the dream job or the 26.2 miles we will complete for the marathon.  This is a good practice and I encourage it but there are times where we can be frustrated by this vision because we are so far away from it. We look at where we are now and we look at where we want to be and the distance seems too great.

January to December is a great distance. You may be frustrated with your progress so far because you haven’t perfected whatever habit you want to take on. 

DON’T GIVE UP!

Think of the process that babies go through to start walking. They have this innate desire to walk and set about doing it but it’s a long process from desire to mastery. They have to master pulling themselves up using tables and people’s legs for balance.  They start to stand on their own and fall back down.  They take wobbly steps and fall down. But when they aren't practicing these new skills, they continue on using their current form of transportation, namely crawling.

At some point, and no one even notices when it happens, the crawling becomes less and less and the walking becomes more and more.  It’s so gradual that it is taken for granted.

Do we cheer and clap for that first step, video tape it, take pictures, tell Grandma and Grandpa about it then expect only walking from that moment on? NO! What if the baby gave up after the third fall because he wasn’t getting it? That’s just silly.

New habits take time and practice.  We don't just get good at things the first time we set out to do them. It's hard work (If it weren't then we'd all be great at whatever we wanted.) There are days you want to get up and go and you practice whatever skill you need to.  There are also times you get frustrated and tired and just want to sit down on your butt.

What about your new habits this year? Have you given up because you haven’t mastered them? Have you “cheated” or not worked out so you throw in the towel?

So what are you going to do? 

Give up or get back up?

Since I'm about More, Better, and Different than I've done in the past, I've started a chart.  I fill in a box for each day I work on my goal.  It's not about perfection. I'm not trying to fill in every single square for every single goal.  What I hope to see is a consistent pattern of getting better at working on each goal.  The top section is my Bible reading which is schedule for 6 days a week. Towards the bottom, there is a pattern of two blocks per week because I've been working on publishing a blogpost two days a week.  As the month goes on, you can see where I start adding more goals to my calendar.  The above chart is for January.  Next month, I hope to have more squares colored in and continue the progress throughout the year.

Is there a way you can mark your progress so you can see the gradual improvement over time? Can you see the “more,” “better,” or the “different than how you were doing it before?”

If life is a journey, not a destination we need to celebrate or at least acknowledge the little changes we are making along the way.

What have you been working on or want to work on this year? How are things going? Any thoughts or comments about the blog?  Feel free to write in the comments below.  

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Thanks a lot and have an awesome weekend!! Go 49ers!!!