I refuse to miss the second day of my 31 days of writing a Blog Post.

Today I’ve been running between the bathrooms, to the laundry room, to the closet near the front door… Okay, that sounds odd. But I have to admit these strange subzero temperatures we have been going through is worrisome.   The pipes need to keep flowing. And any part of the house without heat- the front closet- needs to be warmed up or opened up to allow the flow of warm air. I can’t just leave it open, my cats will get into things they shouldn’t. My Ragdoll has a dangerous taste for plastic.

Which keeps me opening and closing the closet and shooing away the cats. All the while crossing my fingers that when springs comes, that the pipes hold.

At 3 pm I remembered the mail. The mailbox is five hundred feet away from the house. How bad can it be, the sun was shining brightly, puffy snow coated the driveway. I stuffed myself into layers, sweater, sweatshirt, two left-handed gloves, and a scarf. After I pulled on my heavy winter coat I had to search around for my knit hat. By the time I was ready to get the mail, I was ready for a nap.

I opened the garage overhead doors, grabbed a ski pole/walking stick and headed into the amazingly gorgeous day. The first thing I noticed was the lack of birds. Everyone was hiding. What I hadn’t noticed was the wind, at least not until I passed the first evergreen tree. Then the wind slapped me in the face and knocked off my knit hat. I grabbed it off the ground hit it against my puffed up coat, shoved it back on my head and continued to slip-sliding towards the mailbox.

The third thing I noticed was the lack of new animal tracks. Wildlife has more brains than I do- they were hiding in their burrows.

The winds picked up the closer I got to the road.

I opened the mailbox and retrieved a handful of bills just as a gust of wind blew in hard from the west, jerking the letters from my frozen gloved hand, tossing them into the ditch and the under the Pussy willow bush.   For a moment I debated leaving the mail right where it lay because under that bush -with my mail- was over a foot of snow. With my toes starting to hurt, I reached under the bush; the branches grabbed my hat holding onto it like a decoration. Those branches kept my hat off the snow.  I crawled out and retrieved my snowless hat.

The wind pushed me back to the house and into the garage. Tomorrow,  I will take the car to get the mail.

Today is January 1, 2018.  I haven’t worked on this Blog for a while, clarification on why will be in one of my January ‘2018’  thirty-one Blog posts.

I can’t believe it is already 2018. I said the same thing for 2017, 2016, 2015…. Whoa! Put on the brakes! I need to slow this train down and get to work. Yes, I’ve said the same thing for years. In reality, I have accomplished a lot each year, and just not with my writing. Hmmm! Another future post.

I have been freaking out-and searching out- how can I get my mind to take action this year and work on writing. I started last week by:

1. Checking out the post at Insecure Writer’s Support Group
2. Setting up a word template calendar for this month, where I will add each days posting after I do them. I have a second template for submissions.
   
3. I signed up for Rob Parnell’s free ‘Super Success & Productivity 101’ course. I am on number 12 of 24 FREE videos I have been watching one a day.
4. I found, Dr. Angela, on Facebook. If the only thing you can afford its listening to her videos, then do that.
5. I was given as a gift a journal
6. I  checked out the  Bullet Journal on Youtube
7. I won NaNoWriMo this year, so I had a half off coupon for Scrapple mapping software.

What have I learned from the search for the perfect schedule is to ‘only’ schedule my writing in its own journal; one that isn’t for chores, or work, or gardening, nothing but writing. I found that combining other things in with my writing has my writing pushed to the end of the line and it tumbles off the end of the year, again and again.

I Declare: Not to give up and Not to wander off my writing path. 

A Blog Post starting the year isn’t complete without….

WRITING RESOLUTIONS

So this year, writing has its own special journal; a journal that is opened first, checked off first. For other chores, I am using spiral notebooks for the ‘things-to-do-list’ that isn’t’ just sticky notes on my walls, truth be told, I really love sticky notes.  I have found spiral notebooks at grocery stores, pharmacies, and even hardware stores. Try to grab a few for yourself during the  ‘back-to-school’ season.

I will use writing prompts if I can’t come up with an idea; starting with the month of January, each day I will add something here that stirs my creativity could be an image, a word, an odd idea, even if what I write is horrible.

I will post every month for Insecure Writer’s Support Group day January 3 question – What steps have you taken or plan to take to put a schedule in place for your writing and publishing? 

If you read this far, you can see my plan. So I guess I just checked that off my list for January. Now on to the next thirty (30) days.