Live in Balance: Connections, Inter-connections and Threads that Bind

Have you ever wondered what it means to be happy? In recent weeks I have been musing about the concept. The question came to mind while reading Stephanie Dowrick's book, Creative Journal Writing. The book is not about what it means to be happy, but it planted a few ideas for a book of my own. These things happen, and I am sure not a foreign concept to any other writer: read a book and ideas pop into your head that makes you ponder some new ideas. Eventually, I did more than think about it.

So what is happiness?

According to Wikipedia: “Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Happy mental states may also reflect judgments by a person about their overall well-being. A variety of biological, psychological, economic, religious and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources.

Various research groups, including positive psychology and happiness economics, are employing the scientific method to research questions about what “happiness” is, and how it might be attained.”

And here I thought it was just a simple matter of an emotional high resulting from the achievement of some goal or a positive personal thing. It would seem that people, a lot smarter than I, have been pondering this same question and still haven't formulated a definitive answer. Who would have thought?

So now I am writing a book?

While I would love to say yes to the book idea, it is not as simple as that plonking my butt into my chair and bleeding on top of my keyboard (liberal paraphrase of the Hemingway quote - sorry!). For a start, I am no psychologist, but then the idea for the book is not about to write about happiness either.

I know, I am contradicting myself even as you read this. This seed of an idea still needs a lot more research before it could be considered a 'book idea'.

The problem I am invariably stuck with: how much research and what to read?

While I consider myself smart enough to know to stay away from the formal academic publications, several articles and suggested books have crossed my path in recent weeks. Luck? Or fate perhaps? While I believe that nothing ever happens without reason, I have started to read books and articles completely outside of my comfort zone.

Remember, I am an engineer, and any material to do with human behaviour or philosophy or psychology would generally make me green around the gills.

However, I found myself immersed in a new world and am fascinated by what I found.

Connections, inter-connections, and threads that bind

While reading (and studying) these publications somewhere in subconscious mind I get the feeling that there are more to all of these topics than what I can see at first glance. Somewhere, somehow the topics of journal writing, happiness, achievements of goals, life and my Live in Balance goals are connected. Of course, very few things in this world stand independently on their own feet.

These connections, to my mind at least, are threads of lessons I have to learn or tie together in my quest to Live in Balance, and not only for this year.

While these threads have a logical connection, it is the non-rational, the non-academic, gut feel there-is-a-link-for-me that I have to find. Maybe you have found yours, or perhaps you are still seeking, but this journey for has turned into far more than I have anticipated when I made my list for 2017.

Now, about that book...

During the month of April, there are two challenges going out to the world for writers and bloggers: Camp NaNoWriMo and the A-to-Z Blog Challenge.

I have taken part in both and have as a result published books (fiction and non-fiction) afterward.

With Camp, I usually prefer fiction, while the blog challenge lends itself to both fiction and non-fiction. The problem is time and I don't have more than two hours per day during the week, about double that on weekends. So the solution was there before my eyes - I can do both at the same time.

Develop the book idea with blog posts, and it would be great if you offered your opinions as we go along. Then I can also use the words for my Camp target during April. Remember that word count target I have for my Live in Balance year?

*taking a deep breath here* It is not easy putting myself out there, but I believe that I can do it. What I also know is that feedback from you, my readers, could help to develop this seed into a good idea.

In fact, I think it could be a great idea with your help. Are you in?

Book Feature: ALL THAT GLITTERS by Liza Treviño

~ All That Glitters by Liza Treviño ~

Book Tour - 1st to 10th March

Book Details:

Title: All That Glitters - A
Tale of Sex, Drugs and Hollywood Dreams

Author: Liza Treviño

Genre: Women’s Contemporary Fiction

Publisher: Koehler Books 

Published Date: March 1, 2017

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1633933083

ISBN-13: 978-1633933088

Book Links:

Goodreads * Amazon

Synopsis:

Alexandria Moreno—clever, sexy, ambitious and, at times, self-destructive. She blazes a path from Texas to Los Angeles at the dawn of the 1980s to make her dreams of becoming an A-list Hollywood film director come true. She and her best friend arrive in Los Angeles with little more than hope and the determination to make it big. Alex, a beauty as dark and mysterious as her scarred heart, stands at the bottom of the Hollywood mountain looking up, fighting for her chance to climb to the top. Will her quest to live fast and take no prisoners on her way to success destroy her in the end?


All That Glitters is a women’s fiction Jackie Collins-type saga that introduces a strong, driven Latina heroine at the center of a rags-to-riches story spanning a decade of action. Along the way, Alexandria walks the fine line separating ambition and self-destruction, and discovers that some sacrifices will cost her everything.


What early readers are saying:

"Treviño tells her story with wit, intelligence, and an undercurrent of sadness at the plight women face to make a name for themselves as human beings instead of strictly as women. Treviño may have cloaked her ideas in entertaining vignettes and snappy dialogue, but underneath is a bite that stays with you."

— Jonathan Marcantoni, author and publisher of La Casita Grande Press.

"Liza has a way of taking you with her as she tells this very compelling story. She draws readers in with her as she describes scenes and characters with colorful detail and vivid imagination. This story is a testament to it's title: it really glitters!"

—Reesha Goral, author, The Servant Boy

"With distant echoes of Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls in the background, Alexandria Moreno, the protagonist of All that Glitters, chases after the allure of Hollywood, all the time substituting pills, booze and sex for genuine happiness. It is only after she reaches success that she has an awakening leading her to realize the emptiness of her aspiration, and finally accepting true love. Kudos to Liza Treviño for giving us this unique image of the New Latina! I urge reading All that Glitters. You won’t regret it."

—Graciela Limón, author


Read an Excerpt:


Los Angeles

Oscar Night, 1990

When did things start going wrong?

Alexandria Moreno gulped another swig of champagne from the bottle. She picked at its broken gold foil. It was the same stuff she used to buy back in the days when spending more than ten dollars on bubbly was an extravagance. Now she sat in the best limo money could buy, inching along the craggy hillside road waiting for her turn to put in an appearance at the first of many scheduled post-Oscar parties. She was obligated to dole out heartfelt hugs and kisses to any of the beautiful people who might want one. Tonight, everyone was going to want a piece of her. She was the girl of the hour.

Until recently, Moreno had been an unknown writer-producer. She rocked Hollywood, winning Academy Awards for Best Director and Original Screenplay for the lushly violent, low-budget film, Win or Lose. Moreno, widely considered a dark horse contestant in the Oscar race, was the first Hispanic woman to be nominated, and win.

Two golden statues for writing and directing lay on the limo’s floor and the vehicle glided to the top of Hollywood’s heights. Beyond the winding canyon road, the Los Angeles electrified grid shimmered like Moreno’s own personal cauldron of gold. She understood that more than just a movie had won tonight.

She had won.

So why doesn’t it feel better?

Why don’t I feel better?

Despite everything she’d done to reach this moment of glory, Alex understood that none of it mattered. Not one bit. No matter what happened to her, she was still alone and drinking the same convenience-store champagne.

“Want some of this blow, babe?” Nick sniffed and dropped his head back with a slight shake, giving the chemicals a little jumpstart in the brain he liked to say.

“No thanks,” she said, “I don’t want to mix tonight.” Alex turned her attention from the scrubby hillside to handsome Nick Sirianni sitting across from her, casually relaxed in his Armani tuxedo. Though he favored stiff Wall Street suits, Nick was always casually relaxed due to the fact that he was worth millions from a Hollywood Midas touch.

Alex heard Leonard Cohen’s gravel-rubbed, breathless voice floating faintly through the air, crooning his patented melancholy love proclamations, and she couldn’t help but let her eyes wander along Nick’s impeccably tailored suit. Her hands absently grazed the familiar bluish-purple marks on her wrists currently hidden under make-up.

Nick’s thin lips curled into a slow, understanding grin. “Fine, but I have some X for later, and I don’t care what you’ve taken already,” he said in a tone Alex had learned not to question. “I’ve got plans for you, babe.”

“I guess it’s gonna be a long night.”

“The longest ever.”

Alex could tell he had taken off. She absently twirled a lock of her black, shoulder-length hair.

“Hey,” Nick nudged her leg with his polished leather dress shoe, “let me see.”

“Not right now.”

“I’m not asking, Alley Cat. Let me see. And do it right.”

Alex locked eyes with him, but she relented.

She found the fold of her straight wraparound skirt of crepe and beading that draped to the floor. She peeled it back and uncrossed her legs beneath the gown, giving Nick a peek-a-boo of her

narrow ankle and high-heeled foot. She loosened her knees, proving to Nick she’d followed his instructions.

Nick looked her over and loosened his collar.

“Good girl,” Nick said and shifted toward her, the leather seat creaking beneath him. He knelt between her legs and softly traced the length of her pale grey stocking from her shoe, along her leg, up to the matching garter, and over her supple brown thigh exposed between the garter and its straps. Nick kissed her just above where the stockings ended. He breathed in deeply and peered up to her.

“I gotta have a taste, baby,” he said and dipped his handsome face between her thighs.

Alex sighed and sank back into her seat.

How did things get so out of control? Isn’t tonight supposed to be everything I’ve worked for? Everything I’ve sacrificed for? Or, what I’ve sacrificed everyone for?

Alex knew she had purposely cut off anyone who had the misfortune of ever giving a damn about her. And there were such people.

It certainly wasn’t Nick. She’d made her deal with this particular devil nearly a year ago. Things between them were comfortably tawdry. Nick owned her. She knew it. He knew it. They had an understanding.

A flicker nudged her: so many things that could have been. She took another swig of champagne, letting the alcohol’s fizz and burn push everything back into the darkness.

Alex registered Nick’s velvet tongue expertly stroking her crevices, and she couldn’t help but give him all the access he wanted. She felt him smile when she dropped her head back and settled deeper into the limo’s bench. The car halted forward and the lazy, swaying sax turned up the tension in Cohen’s sonic plea for love.

Alex peered beyond the cracked sunroof, searching the starless LA sky for some answers. A corner of the tinted sunroof caught her faint reflection and she saw a vacant-eyed, thirty two-year-old wasted stranger. She’d never known herself less than at this moment. Her passion for work was burned out and, even tonight, she couldn’t muster excitement. Now, everything was just a game requiring too much effort.

She shut her eyes tight and sucked in air sharply, breathing in the car’s mixture of broken-in leather and artificial lemon scents. She clasped at Nick’s broad shoulder, wringing the expensive jacket sleeve as if it were nothing more than a cheap cocktail napkin. After a moment, she relaxed.

Nick brushed a sweet kiss on her inner thigh before he returned the thin black crepe material of her skirt to its full length. He slid back to his seat across from her and smoothed his hair back.

“Damn, you taste good, honey.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“We’re next in line, ma’am,” the chauffeur’s voice crackled through the intercom. The limo moved into place with a definite stop.

Nick grinned. “It’s show time, Alley Cat.”

The cool night air took Alex by surprise as she waded into the sea of people and flashing cameras. She staggered, unsure she could move.

“One foot in front of the other,” Nick said in his soft voice through her hair. “I’ll get you a drink once we get inside.”

Alex smiled serenely and nodded. She focused on the live band somewhere in the distance belting out a Sinatra standard. Her eyes found the majestic Griffith Observatory looming in the distance, hovering above the white party tents.

Inside, the camera flashes kept coming.

“And here we are,” Nick offered as he swiped a couple of champagne flutes from a roving waiter’s tray. “This should get ya right, babe.”

Alex took the glass automatically. Another bulb flashed near her and she saw blue sprinkles. She regained focus quickly, but then her stomach dropped. Across the room was the last person she wanted to see.

◊◊◊

Jamie Douglas stood out in any crowd. Angular looks punctuated by oceanic blue eyes, a naturally lean athleticism, and down-to-earth boyishness had made him a reigning movie star around the world for almost twenty years. And right now, Alex saw Jamie’s eyes find hers through the crowd. When they caught each other, a flash sparked between them like one of those popping camera bulbs. Jamie’s surprised look gave way to a lopsided grin; it was a look so familiar to her.

Alex registered Nick snake his arm around her thin waist and she broke her gaze from Jamie.

“Okay, Alley Cat, time for our victory lap.”

“Perfect timing,” she said.

Timing—everything always came down to timing. It seemed to her that her timing had always been off. Not crazy off, just that extra millisecond that pushed everything either too early or too late. And now, she understood that it was too late.

Suddenly, she couldn’t bear to go through with the whole charade of tonight. Maybe, she couldn’t even bear to go through with the whole charade of her life any longer. Just leave, a soft voice whispered inside her head. There’s nothing written you have to stick around. It’s practically programmed into your DNA that you’ll be checking out of this world early.

All at once, Alex understood that simple fact. She, Alex Moreno, would leave Los Angeles tonight as anonymously as she had arrived nearly a decade earlier. She knew that wasn’t an entirely accurate account of how she’d started.

Now I’m alone, and that’s just how I knew things would always turn out.

Author Bio:

Liza Treviño hails from Texas, spending many of her formative years on the I-35 corridor of San Antonio, Austin and Dallas.  In pursuit of adventure and a Ph.D., Liza moved to Los Angeles where she compiled a collection of short-term, low-level Hollywood jobs like script girl, producer assistant and production assistant.  Her time as a Hollywood Jane-of-all-trades gave her an insider's view to a world most only see from the outside, providing the inspiration for creating a new breed of Latina heroine.

Catch Up with Liza Treviño on her Website

Live in Balance: Slowing down, because I had to

The fist in the stomach

Pencil drawing in process

Do you feel overwhelmed sometimes? To be honest, it doesn't actually happen to me. I know where I am going with my life, and I have faith that there is Someone in control of everything, including my life.
But sometimes the odd feeling of everything being too much pops into my head. It isn't something that I am comfortable with, and neither do I like it. But it is there, brooding in the subconsciousness of my thoughts. The difficulty of this subconscious awareness is how to deal with it.
It cannot be reasoned away. Or can it? I am not sure. Neither do I know what sparked this problem in the first place. Was it just the coming together of all the things in my life, or did something happen (even something I am unaware of) that started this downhill trend?
But my bigger issue is to deal with it because it could become too much or too big, or too something.

Retreat and reassess

It has taken me a while, becoming aware of this. You know how you talk to people and they ask you how you are? My answer usually depends on how well I know someone or how likely they are at gossiping. It would hardly be a good idea to confide in someone only to have one's personal issues traveling through the grapevine the next day.
Even this simple question 'how are you?' posed by a friend, didn't raise this matter in my mind. The niggling was there, and it wasn't until this past Friday that the niggle became an awareness at a higher conscious level.
I haven't been writing much, not even in my journal and I began to wonder if that was the reason for it? My writing, including my fiction projects, have been such a part of my life becoming so ingrained into the way I define myself as a human being.
Was the lack of words to be blamed for this feeling of too much? Did I put too much pressure on myself with my Live in Balance goals, that my creativity had dried up? Just the thought that it might be the case, makes my hair turn grey despite the exotic colour job.

Distract to conquer

I don't believe in writer's block, but something had to be done, and fast. I have a novel that I need to finish editing, and since I had to make a major change at the start of the story, there is some rewriting required as a result of this. Not writing is simply not on!
So I fell back into my comfort zone, my plan B if you like: I read. I read three full-length novels in two and a half days.
I really pulled my security blanket close on this one, foregoing several hours of sleep, to read three books by my favourite author, Maya Banks. Now, you have to understand, I stopped binge reading a long time ago, but this was an emergency to distract my brain and hopefully conquer this feeling of being overwhelmed.
I don't need a lot of sleep so I cannot forego even half an hour of that, because of the way it disrupts my life. But I did. And I am going to pay the price for that in the coming days.
But did it solve the problem? 

The glass may be half-empty, but there's space for vodka

I wouldn't lie and say to you that I am madly writing words in my journal or my novel, but there is a light in the distance. Reason for celebration? That's why the vodka. Or maybe I should have thought of another analogy, I rarely drink alcohol. It's early days yet.
What I do know is that my creative juices did not dry up. I started drawing and spent most of the weekend doing that. Pencil drawings require a lot of time and patience, but those hours of drawing brought a smile to my face and a lightness to my mind.
Art may be on my Live in Balance goals for this year, but I deliberately forewent the need to attach a target to it. And that was my saving grace, I think. Something I can do, spend time with and yet, just enjoy the process without adding more stress to myself.

I learned another lesson this week: I love writing, but I should stop putting so much pressure on myself to perform. I may not have had a block, but it would be good to remember that to Live in Balance requires more than the completion of a novel in record time.

Until next week!

Live in Balance: A matter of choice

I finally figured it out

As I got onto the scale Sunday, yesterday, morning, I had been less apprehensive than all the previous times this year. Not because I knew I lost another kilogram, I didn't, but I realised that I got this weight-loss thing sorted. I knew exactly where I went wrong during the week, and why my weight was exactly the same as last week.

So the week ahead is already planned out, and the goal for the week - dropping 1 kg - is in the bag. I just have to do the things I planned, including finishing reading a book I promised to review. More about that later.

What is interesting, though, is when you tell someone you are busy working on losing weight everyone and his friend has the world's advice to give to you. Do this diet or do more squats, or fast.

I ignored all their advice since I know what my medical and physical issues are and no matter how well intended, people just don't know what will or won't work for me. But the fasting thing threw me for a loop.

Fasting - really?

I am familiar with the concept but in a religious or spiritual environment. I know of friends that have fasted to gain clarity or to seek answers for a problem they struggle with, but fasting to me has never even entered the realm of losing weight.

On a personal note: no matter what my religious beliefs are, I cannot fast. The risk is too high that I can pass out, due to blood sugar issues. Since I drive where I want to be, safety cannot be ignored.

Now, I did read about fasting diets, purely to understand why someone would do such a thing and how it would work. Some of the article writers mentioned that they entered a once-a-week fasting regime - no food for 24 hours - to help them gain focus and to be more creative. This to me made sense - while it might not be for a spiritual reason, the fasting process helped them to address an issue in their lives. Only they could say if it really made a difference or not.

I choose the sensual pleasures every time

Source: www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/category/healthy

The people who were fasting for weight-loss baffled me. If you could be disciplined enough to forego all food for 24 hours, once or some even twice a week, why can't you be disciplined enough to follow a healthy, calorie-restricted diet every day of the week?

There are many studies, and websites, that tell you that you can learn a new behaviour (or fix an old one) in a matter of 20 to 30 days. So why deny yourself the sensual pleasure of food, for the sake of losing weight? You have to eat, there is, unfortunately, no getting away from that if you want to be alive and healthy.

No matter what they tell you about not over compensating the next day, or binging on chocolate after denying yourself, does a more balanced approach not sound more attainable? And more rewarding over the long term?

I don't know. While some of the medically based studies say there is no health risk to fasting one or even two days a week, to me the denial of such a basic need seems contrary to the human experience of life. But that's just me.

Adapt or die trying?

To honest, I haven't changed my mind on my weight-loss regime, and nor am I likely to. I had a good hard look at my behaviour around and attitude towards food. I found what was wrong, and I am working on correcting that. Will it happen overnight? It hasn't so far, but 6 weeks into my Live in Balance goals, and I know that I am doing better than any previous attempt to do the same.

It is not up to me to tell you what you should do if you want to follow a weight-loss plan, or getting into shape plan, or writing a book for that matter.

What I do suggest is that you:

• decide first on what you want to achieve,
• figure out what of your own behaviour is standing in your way,
• and how you are going to hold yourself accountable in working to achieve that goal.

The hard choices will come

Make no mistake, nothing worth striving for will come without sacrifice. But if you want it bad enough, no sacrifice can be too great to achieve it. And you don't have to do it on your own. Whatever you want to do this year, there at least ten other people who want to do the same. Find them in your area, on Facebook, or at work, and join forces to help and support each other. Achievement of a goal is so much sweeter when you can share them with people who have been with you on that journey every step of the way.

I wish you only success with your journey!

Live in Balance: Week 6 - taking stock

Stuck in a rut

We often step back to take stock of our lives: work, time spent with family, the future, retirement, and so on. But this past week I wondered if we do that often enough, or do we wait too long to consider where we stand? Do we wait until it is too late to make a course correction, or even a complete change in direction?

Even if you are happy with yourself and your achievements, shouldn't you too just take a moment or two to take stock?

Creative people are more prone to awareness of stagnating, or procrastinating in their art or craft. They get frustrated, or blocked or give up when that seemingly insurmountable obstacle is preventing them from moving forward. We are constantly being bombarded with media and psychological imperatives that if you are not moving forward, you are digging yourself deeper into a rut. But should you be moving forward at that point in time? And how do you know when is the right time?

Stop - right now!

It is the start of a new month and I think a good time to spend a few minutes considering where I am on my Live in Balance goals. Am I on track? Where do I need to have a relook at a specific goal, or adjust the target?

I spent that time today, Sunday, and assessed my progress on my five primary goals. And surprisingly two of them are exactly on track (weight-loss and word count), while I could definitely spend more time looking at how I spend my time on my art projects.

The step counter and Tai Chi activities suffered a setback when I injured a ligament in my left hip. I can walk okay, but many other physical activities are pushing my pain boundary just a touch too much. It is already feeling better, but I will need to be careful for a while still.

The last, the number of books read, was a surprise too. Then again, I have always read a lot, although I have not kept track of the number of books read in a month as I am doing now.

While most of my goals seem to be on track, my efforts to keep them there need to be reinforced. When it comes to weight-loss, it is much easier said than done - and the graphs show that.

For February there will be baby steps

Having a weight-loss graph going up and down is not a good thing, so I need to focus on a slow by steady loss approach. With the month ahead having four weeks (four Sundays) my target will be another 2 kilograms.

Francois and I attended the opening night of an art exhibition at ArtBox on Saturday. We spoke to the artist and while doing so I realised that I have been spreading myself too thin. I want to try every technique and play around with all mediums, and that could be part of the problem that I am not spending my time on my art projects productively. That will change.

This month I will focus primarily on urban sketching. I already have the materials I need and have taken a few more photographs to help with the ideas I have.

My writing targets are split into two: editing Waiting for Adrian, and writing a story that has no title at present. In numbers that translate to roughly 50 hours of editing and 20 000 words of writing.

Baby steps this month.

Looking further ahead

When the artist we chatted to mentioned that she had made a change in direction in her art, it got me thinking about taking stock in one's life. Maybe going forward is not always the answer. Sometimes it requires a complete change in direction to get going again.

And that is where I think my art is at this point. I need to do the urban sketching and then decide if that is my way forward. Or do I need to change direction before I get stuck in that rut of digging myself deeper instead of recognising that change is required before the rut sets in?

Time will tell, but now I am on the lookout for those signs of frustration and procrastination that will warn me that change might be imminent.

Live in Balance: when do I give up?

When do you give up? I mean, sometimes something is not meant to happen and no matter how hard you fight, or how much effort or money you put into it, it was not going to happen.
I have reached the point where I am ready to just give up. For weeks now I have been battling with mobile phone service providers to get a new phone. Sure I could have taken any model, but I had my heart set on the iPhone 7+ after Samsung had the problem with the Note 7. And for some reason, the universe is conspiring against me.

The first company I signed with, could for the life of me not get my old number ported to the new phone. After thirteen days I gave up, cancelled the contract and returned the handset, barely used. I think the only calls I made were to their customer service center asking about the status of my request to have the number ported. So I gave up and tried another.
Then on Tuesday, I thought my misery had ended. Given the history of the last few weeks, I should have known better. My contract was approved (the legal part) and when I enquired about the status of my phone (I still need to get the handset), I was told their internet connection is down due to cable theft. Welcome to the new South Africa!
Okay, that is not a new problem, but what about the days before that?
This past Thursday had been a week since I signed the necessary paperwork. You think I would have had a new phone by now!
Update: It is Sunday evening and guess what? No phone. I am so tired of the incompetence of people that I am almost at the point where I am going to tell to f*ck themselves. I spoke to the network operator, and it should not take more than 2 hours to port the number. So what the hell is their problem? *taking deep breaths*

On a more positive note (and I am really trying to hang on to something that won't give me a heart attack) is that I have managed a few thousand words this past week. No lightning strikes or epiphanies, only sitting down and getting the words down on a new story. The first chapter is done, and chapter two well on its way.
Come editing time I might swap them around, but for now, the words are written, and that is the most important thing. While I have been contemplating this story for a long time, the opening, getting it started, had always been a concern. Without a good start, the story would not be anything more than a bunch of fluffy words and fluff has never done it for me.
So with some positive attitude shining through the cracks of my mobile phone miseries, week 4 was off to a better start than the previous week. Hey, I even managed to get my butt moving doing more than walking and climbing stairs so far. Not that stair climbing isn't exercise, but doing it in work shoes cannot be considered a workout. Stair climbing at work is an exercise in safety, not sweat.

With the writing, and a little exercise, and a sketch or two, I managed to keep my sanity intact. I just wish I could say the same for my digital communication channels.
Plan B, or should I say Plan C, is already in place. The question that I need to answer is how long am I going to give these guys before I cancel the contract with them?

And so week 5 is underway...

Live in Balance: The failure of week 3

While eating my breakfast of soy yogurt and a white peach on Friday morning, I realised that this week was fast becoming a miserable failure. Even this post is a result of the week of frustration and misery. My head is usually spinning with ideas to write about - writing about art, and Tai Chi, and even my weight-loss struggles - but not this week. In a 'down' week I tended to read more too. Devouring two to three novels in one week would not be an unusual occurrence. But not this week.

Week 3 of my year to Live in Balance, has just been seven days of failures. Let me list them for you, just in case you are thinking that I might be exaggerating:
1.   I did not write a single word - aside from this post, and about 800 words (for the whole week!) in my journal. Journal writing is something I love, but even this week that didn't happen so much.
Sunday update: Our writers' group has a word count challenge this evening. I plan to start week 4 with at least 1000 words on a new story.

2.   While excited about the delivery of the white gel pens, drawing pens and special paper for charcoal drawing that I ordered online, I have yet to open the packaging of the paper. I did write a few words with a drawing pen to get a feel for it, but that does not constitute art even in its simplest form - not even a stick figure was drawn!
3.   The bane of my existence - trying to lose weight - was an equal frustrating battle between the calories and my willpower. No prizes on who won that battle. Since it is Friday now, and I will only weigh myself again on Sunday, the news cannot be good given what I have done. The best I could hope for at this point is a zero loss, zero gain outcome.
Sunday update after the weigh-in: the news is not good. All the hard work of week 1 and 2 has been undone. Something to be grateful for: that I didn't gain more kilos than where I started from. But yeah, it is back to square one.

4.   As with doing more T'ai Chi? Well, I was a bad, bad girl. Nary a form did my body practice this week. Good thing I decided to have a T'ai Chi weekend, like I do art weekends, huh? Maybe by the time this post is ready to be posted to my blog on Sunday evening, I can report a more positive outcome. *holding thumbs*
Sunday morning update on my plan: no T'ai Chi. Although after my battle on Saturday with two desks, I think a good hour or so of practice might be the answer to the aching muscles in my back.

While I didn't expect smooth sailing on my Live in Balance goals, I really hoped it wouldn't have happened so soon, and be such an epic occurrence. On the other hand, now that it did happen, I came to the decision that should it happen again (and it will) I need to focus on one goal for the week. Only one. While the end-result might still be an overall sense of failure, there will also be a sense of achievement to help keep me motivated.

"2017 New Year’s Resolutions: The Most Popular and How to Stick to Them,” by Nicole Spector. NBCNews.com. 

Do you have weeks like this? Please tell me in the comments what you do to get your game back on.