Frost nip and other sundries

You know it's been a rough winter when Minnesotans can't bring themselves to discuss the weather anymore. I'm tempted to throw a "F*ck It's Freezing" Party where we drink hot cocoa, play board games, watch bad movies, and maybe even whimper a little bit.

But take heart: it's February on Saturday, and at some point in February there's almost always bring a brief and temporary thaw. So that's something!

It actually warmed up a bit this past Friday, so Andy and I packed up ye olde snowmobile and head down the trail to one of the large lakes in the area. Of course, temps in the 20s just meant the wind was howling as the next batch of frigid blew in. I'd never actually been on this particular lake before and it was a nice change of scenery.  We'll be back, maybe even when the wind isn't blowing 30 mph.

We didn't stay long enough to catch anything. I was hot to trot to get home to make a batch of boeuf bourguignon. As it was, the infamous beef stew wasn't ready until well after 8 p.m., but it was well worth the wait and I feel that Julia would approve of us eating European style (aka, real late). 

I had my first real brush with frostbite on a brief snowmobile ride in -12 temps on a windy lake on Tuesday. It's just frostnip really, which nipped at my cheek and bridge of my nose through a leaky snowmobile helmet visor. I'm familiar with the warm burn of windburn on winter evenings after a day outside, but whereas windburn kind of makes you feel alive, the sting of frostnip is a humbling reminder of just how deadly cold can be.

That said, when I was a little girl playing hockey on an outdoor rink, I used to come into the warming house at the end of a game and sit crossed legged on the bench after taking off my skates, trying to warm up my painfully cold, bright pink toes and not cry. The frostnip pictured above did not make me clutch my cheek and softly sob, so it really wasn't that bad. 

Turns out, frostnip feels a lot like sunburn and by Wednesday morning, it was kind of itchy. A friend suggested I put honey on it, but I had visions of sticking to everything I touched if I did that, so I opted for some dabs of Smith's Rosebud Salve throughout the day instead. Really just glorified petroleum jelly, one of Andy's coworker's dad's company packages Rosebud Salve, which is how we ended up with a tin of it. We've actually had it for a few years and I wasn't sure what to do with it, but lately have been using it as lip balm, and now, frostnip salve. The tin describes the salve as "all purpose skin preparation," which "aids in the relief of chapped skin, diaper rash, blemishes, detergent burns, and rough cuticles, and it softens rough hands." They sell it at Antropologie, so you know it's cool.

On a warmer note, I made my annual batches of marmalade over the weekend - a batch of Triple Citrus (grapefruit, lemon, and orange) and Meyer Lemon. Making marmalade is exceedingly tedious and at almost every step of process (but especially when you're in the midst of supreming 12 citrus fruits which takes forever) you wonder why you bother. Then you see those jars of processed marmalade lined up and it's like you've bottled up sunshine - in the throes of January no less - and suddenly it's all worth it. Plus it tastes pretty good, even if my Triple Citrus got a little gummy. 

Don't laugh, but I actually planted a few Meyer lemon seeds in the pot above. It felt so good to touch dirt. We'll just see if they decide to sprout. . . Meyer lemon marmalade with homegrown lemons in as few as six years, you guys! ;)

Read more ...

January Calm

I hope this second week of January find you well. I'm feeling happier, calmer, and more accomplished than I have in a long time which is to say, 1) I've started exercising in earnest again and 2) The sun's been showing his pretty face on a more regular basis. It's been a quiet week around here, but a good one indeed.  

This new year, I've been discovering the beauty of MITs, or Most Important Tasks. Each morning I set three MITs and write down a few other things I'd like to get done before evening. Having three things that must get done keeps me on track with the multiple projects I juggle at any given moment and then the rest of the stuff I get done in the day is just gravy. I like to live by a saying I found in an article my dad shared with me from the Irish Times: "Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow." There are certain things that must get done each day, but without setting MITs, it's easy to let other projects which maybe don't need to get done right. now. take centerstage while important (but maybe not so glamorous) projects languish in the background. By setting MITs each morning, I know my day will be well spent and I also know that if I put something off until tomorrow, it will actually get done. 

I'm now signed up for Shamrock Shuffle 8K in Chicago in March and the Ham Run Half Marathon in May. Last night I had a nightmare that I spent most of the half marathon hanging out at the halfway point, but never actually made it to the starting line to actually, you know, start racing. I think my subconscious might be a little concerned about actually being ready for these commitment. But yay for keeping new year's resolutions, if only on paper so far. ;)

I hit my 100th sale on Etsy today.  To sweeten the deal even more, the sale was made by dear, far-flung friend. When I first stocked the shop in late July 2012, I had no idea what to expect. Since then, I've been humbled and amazed to have so many people invite my knitting into their lives. Thank you!

Remember those firestarters I mentioned in last week's post? Here they are in action. They're essentially made out of rubbish (egg carton, dryer lint, and melted wax from the bottom of candles) which makes them an upcycling success. I kind of love that.

The polar vortex is behind us and temps are hanging out in the "perfectly acceptable" range, at least for now. This means we've stopped hemorrhaging firewood. Thank goodness.  

I hit the 20K word count mark on the current WIP. Progress indeed.

I've always had a thing for late afternoon winter sunshine. So serene.

An otter slid down the bay and then right past the cabin, leaving fun slide marks through the woods. I think an otter's life can not be a bad life. 

Read more ...

Snow and a Warm Beverage

So, did y'all hear that we're slated to get as much as 25 inches of snow up here by Wednesday night? Isn't that exciting?!? Who doesn't LOVE snow?! Oh wait . . . this guy here writing this here blarrrgh post isn't head over heels in love with snow, but hey, if it's going to be winter it might as well take itself seriously.

For some unknown reason, the local school district cancelled school today, after receiving a mere six inches of snow overnight. Apparently it was a heavy snow and therefore difficult to move. (We just got 4 inches of fluff away from the big lake, so I may be judging town's plight a little harshly.) However, the school district has such a tendency to cancel school right after long weekends, that it's pretty tempting to give their "snow days" the side eye. Last year, they had snow days after both Martin Luther King Jr. day and Presidents' Day. Apparently they're planning to follow the same sneaky plan for more time at home this winter as well. What a bunch of weenies, am I right?

That said, it's so easy to judge others' decisions about winter weather when you spend the season working from home. On the con side, this means you don't get snow days and apparently become very bitter towards those who do (i.e. see above paragraph). On the pro side, this means I also spend those working days with a warm beverage by my side, glancing out the window every now and then, secure in my knowledge that the woodrack is full and I don't have to go anywhere if I don't want to. 

Speaking of warm beverages . . .

When one is born and breed in northern Minnesota, one becomes a bit of a hot beverage connoisseur. Here are some of my favorite cuppas to get you through the long, snowy winter. 

London Fog Tea: My favorite 3 p.m. pick me up. My version just barely resembles what you get when you order this a coffee shop, opting instead for just a splash of milk to the Earl Grey/vanilla brew.

Honey Lemon Elixir: I can't believe it took me until this fall to realize I could put lemon slices in a jar, cover them with honey and then keep it in the fridge for a delicious "on demand" citrus beverage. Add a few thin slices of ginger to the jar and you have the perfect zingy beverage to keep the sick germs at bay. To make a cup,just spoon a couple teaspoons to the bottom of a mug, fill mug with boiling water, stir, and enjoy. Also, if you wanted to put in a little brandy in your mug before add the hot water, you'd have basically created a no-fuss hot toddy. Say "yum yum."

Apple Cider Syrup: Hot apple cider used to be a special treat around here. Then last year I discovered Marisa McCellan's Apple Cider Syrup recipe. Now a batch of that syrup is in my annual fall canning line up  and I get to enjoy hot apple cider (the real stuff, not the icky powdered crap) all year long.

Cocoa: I feel like hot chocolate is the original hot beverage of choice. We always had Carnation Brand Milk Chocolate hot cocoa growing up, but now our small town grocery store only stocks Swiss Miss and the generic brand. As an avowed Swiss Miss disliker, we almost always have a tin of generic hot cocoa around the cabin. I always make mine with water and just a splash of milk at the end "to cool it off." If I'm feeling really fancy, I jazz it up with whipping cream, vanilla ice cream, a mint tea bag (Mmmm, grasshopper), or, on the very rare occasion, a splash of Bailey's Cream.

Local teas: I've been trying to diligently reduce the amount of packaging and just stuff in general in our lives and I had a lightbulb moment this summer where I realized that herbal tea is, well, herbal and some herbs grow right in my backyard. Now there's jars of dried mint and raspberry leaves in my kitchen that I can brew up in my tea ball whenever I like.  

What's your favorite hot beverage?

 

Read more ...

The Work From Home Shift

Blogger ate my Monday post. Here it is now.

Alternative post title: If it takes me 6 hours to knit a mitten . . .

I've basically spent my entire adult life believing that I need more hours in the day. I've always overcommitted (I have a problem saying "no") and far too many evenings, I've heaved a great big sigh and thought, "If only I'd managed to get X, Y, and Z done today."

Lately I've been realizing just how much of my life revolves around unrealistic expectations and guilt. It's not a fun way to live, you guys. It really, really needs to stop.

You see, the thing is, that I always think I should be doing more. I should be making more money, writing more, exercising more, cleaning more, being more giving of my time. That's where the magical thinking about, "If only there were more hours in the day" comes in.

Because I work from home and most people do not, I tend to believe that if I am to be accepted by the outside world, I need to work eight hours day at my desk, just like everyone else. Good God, I wouldn't want to look lazy, would I? If I spend an hour out of what is technically my eight hour day starting a batch of bread or cleaning the bathroom, the guilt starts to seep in. "Real people" do not clean their bathroom on workdays, I think to myself.    

Happily, I think I might be developing some methods to finally let all that heavy, mucky guilt go.

The first thing that happened was my friend Rose introduced me to Leonie Dawson last week (this post specifically) and I keep going back and reading and re-reading Leonie's 15 hour work week post over. It makes so much sense to me and feels like just the affirmation I needed. When we focus on doing instead of working it's amazing what we can accomplish. Although I'm sure you are an excellent employee, chances are you could accomplish everything you get done in a 40 hour work week in your outside of home job in a  20-25 hour work from home schedule. That's just the way things are.  

For example, in my early days of being homeschooled, (gosh, I really should be pretty good at this "work from home" thing by now) we tended to have 3-4 hour school days. That is, we managed to accomplish everything you would have done in a normal 7-8 hour school day before lunch. How? There was no walking down the hall from classroom to classroom. No wasted time when you were done with your work and had to wait 15-30 minutes for all the rest of your classmates to finish up. The same thing goes when you work from home. You can let go of expectations about how long something should take you and focus on the finished result instead. (Also, no meetings!) If you accomplish everything you need to do in a day, who cares if it took you eight hours or not? 

The secret to these condensed school and work days is focus and tuning out distractions.

I just love this quote about focus from Leonie's post: 

Great,” I hear you saying. “I know, I know, I’m supposed to focus. Seriously, that’s like the most overused productivity word ever.”
 
To which I say “That’s nice, but are you fucking doing it?”

I'm making "are you fucking doing it?" my mantra for the week and we'll just see what happens to my productivity. (Good things, I hope.)

Stop me if this sounds familiar, but here's what's been happening when I sit down to "work" lately. I get everything cued up to go. And then suddenly I have an urge to open up approximately 6-7 tabs in my internet browser. I check my stats on Etsy. I read a few blog posts.All of these thoughts start rushing through Am I thirsty? Am I hungry? Do I need a cup of tea? Should I go to the bathroom? Maybe I should research a designer for a new blog design. Did I get around to those social media posts I've been meaning to do? Then I go back to my blog post and find a blank screen and a blinking cursor.

When you work with that level of focus, let me tell you, sunset comes around pretty darn fast. 

I've been spending all of this time thinking I ought to act like I was working when in fact, I was really just posing as someone working. There's another mantra I like to pull out at times like these when productivity starts to take on sort of mythical elements: "Would you pay yourself for what you're doing right now?"

I got another big nudge towards focus and productivity last week when I committed to knitting five pairs of mittens for bridesmaids at a wedding the second weekend in December. It takes me approximately 6 hours to knit a single mitten, so that's pretty easy math: 10 mittens at 6 hours each = 60 hours of knit time. The mittens need to be shipped by December 1 to give them enough shipping "wiggle room" to arrive on time so that means between Saturday (when the yarn for the mittens arrived) and December 1st, I need to find 60 hours of knit time along with keeping up with all the rest of my work commitments.

At first such a task seemed impossible, ridiculous, "what was I thinking?", etc. etc. And then I realized, if I let go of the social media surfing and the other mindless time wasters, 60 hours in the span of 15 days isn't so bad. That's just 4 hours of knitting a day and I don't ever get any work (other than knitting) done between the hours of 4 - 10 p.m. anyway. If I stay on task, everything will get done just as it should be. In fact, the first pair of mittens are already done.    

Focus on the end product. FOCUS. Wring more out of the hours you have and stop wishing you had more of them. Let the guilt go and enjoy what you get done. 

 

Read more ...

Looking Up

I wish I was better at transitions. Or maybe, really, I wish that transitions were better to me.

Unfortunately, my life as a season employee means I face at least two major transitions annually and although it really seems like the simplest transition should be going from working full-time out of the house to working from home, that's actually always the bumpiest one, where it takes me the longest to get my sea legs back under me. It can be so tricky when your schedule magically opens up and you feel like you should be able to get everything done that you'd be neglecting for the last, oh, five months, never minding the fact that there's still real actual work that needs attention. C'est la vie.

So here I am, still waiting to fall into a fairly set, but still flexible work from home schedule which allows me to make money, make/write nice things, have a clean home, and eat good, healthy food most days of the week. Today's a bit of recovery day, since I spent the weekend pounding up and down Hwy 61 and I-35 with the parents to catch the Saturday matinee of Wicked at the Orpheum in Minneapolis. It was a fabulous performance (I really do love that musical) and an excellent change of pace after a long summer season. It feels wonderful to be home again, sitting in the sun on the couch, tapping away at my iPad because I'm too lazy to get my winter "home office" set up just yet.

There are a lot of things clamoring for my attention at the moment including the mess that is my office, the dump truck load of firewood sitting in the driveway waiting to be stacked and the two last episodes of "Big Bang" theory to be watched before the disc can be sent back. It's easy to feel like I should be a multitasking extraordinaire at the moment, but instead I'm trying to take things one step at a time and try to devote my full attention to whichever task I find before me at the current moment. Since next weekend it's off to D-town again for the annual "holiday" celebration with a group of college friends, I have a feeling I'm not really going to fall into any semblance of a schedule until sometime in early November.

And speaking of Saturday's get-together, can I just state how smart we are for taking what's traditionally been a Christmastime event and doing it in early November instead. It saves us from all sorts of holiday scheduling conflicts and also (hopefully) saves us from some of the headaches of winter travel. Also, because our celebration falls over the transition out of daylight savings time, we end up with any extra hour together. Winning.

Not having a set schedule has allowed me to go for longer runs in the morning. Last Monday, I took my first run in blowing snow, as you can tell from precipitation build up on my hat. I'm not sure I'm hardcore enough to deal with sharp little snowflakes blowing into my retinas for 30+ minutes, but happily, our weather has stabilized a bit since then. I'm still hopefully I've got until late November to keep running on the road before things get too slick and nasty for running shoes. I have no idea how I'll keep running/training in the winter. The most logical winter fitness substitution is cross-country skiing. Unfortunately, I abhor cross-country skiing. Abhor it, I say!

Our little hook-up box for broadband internet was installed last week. Unfortunately, word on the street is that broadband won't be a reality up here until sometime next summer. Cue toddler inspired temper tandrum.

 

One of the brightest (and simpliest) spots in my work from home days is a return to the 3 p.m. London fog tea break time. Oh nom nom nom.

 I spent a fair amount of time last week spiffing up my Etsy shop for the holiday season. (Because, you know, that's way more important than actually working.) Things are looking pre-tee good, if I do say so myself. And yes, we had a thin coating of snow on the ground all of last week. It's gone now.

Andy forever upped the gift giving ante last Christmas when he presented me with a long desired iPad so I had to get him a decent birthday present, rather than a couple crappy cds as I am want to do. (It should be noted that when I insisted I wanted, nay, needed, an iPad for oh, the approximately 30 months between when Apple introduced the iPad and when I actually got one, I never went so far as to actually research what iPad actually was or *cough, cough* how much they cost. Apparently I am a sucker for marketing.)

Enter the trail camera. Andy's been wanting a trail camera for a couple years now to help with deer "scouting" so a couple weeks back I finally ordered him one, despite the fact that his birthday isn't until mid-November. For the last week, we've been setting up the camera all over the neighborhood, trying to catch the elusive "big buck" on camera.  Deer season starts on November 9th. 

Read more ...

Don't Be So Defeatist, Dear

No new posts in a week?! Someone must have gone back to work full time this week. . . .

All winter long, I've posted three posts a week like clockwork to this here blargh, but then on Monday I worked my first eight hour day outside of the home in nearly seven months and before I knew it, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, even Friday  had all passed me by while Of Woods and Words sat in radio silence. Don't act like you're surprised.

I constantly overestimate my abilities and/or the amount of free time during the summer and then am always shocked when things start to fall to the wayside. On Thursday morning, for the first time in a long, long time, I woke up to a stack of dirty dishes next to the kitchen sink. To say it was a displeasing (nay, disappointing) sight would be to put things mildly. All week I've struggled to find the time to work my side jobs, exercise, clean and do just about anything else outside of work other than staring blankly ahead at the Netflix du jour each night.

It's easy to focus on all the things I can't do (start a batch of bagel during a down moment in my day, spend my lunch break catching up on blog reading, or ever find time to clean the bathroom, etc. etc.) with the return to full-time, out of the house employment. And when one's workplace is 43 degrees at the start of the work day and warms all the way up to 52 degrees after eight hours, one's mind does tend to stray to the melancholy. So although I may not really be wanting to see the good in the situation, I'm trying to keep my chin up, while the words of Lady Violet ring through my mind:

But enough about me.

In other news, the lake ice finally went out on Wednesday. That's just one day before the latest ice out date for the lake in recorded history. I was kind of hoping to break the record, but I guess the open water is kind of nice too. Andy and I got the dock in last night and on Thursday evening took a rather chilly boat ride around the lake.

I've been working towards the perfect golden, crispy potatoes for a while now. No variation of roasting them in the oven gets them quite the way I want them. Mel from Mel's Kitchen Cafe finally came to my rescue on Wednesday. Check out her golden skillet potatoes. Easy peasy and so, so good. Check that one off the bucket list. ;)

It's finally warm enough to put the seedlings outdoors. Unfortunately, it's also finally warm enough for chipmunks to be up to their rascally ways. Gardening fail #1 of 2013 is me leaving the seedlings outside all day while both Andy and I were away from the house. Goodbye two Brussels sprouts, a pepper, some cabbage, and several leaves from the eggplants and kohlrabi. Live and learn. Live and learn. I try to be calm about these sorts of things because hey - it's nature, but I would have been a little more forgiving about the whole plant massacre if the chipmunk had actually eaten the leaves and plants he chomped off. It's so very demoralizing to see the chopped off leaves wilting next to the maimed plants.

About the only thing I've managed to roll over successfully from my old "working from home" schedule this week is my running. I just wrapped up week 3 of this, my most recent running attempt, and next week, I face 6 minutes running, 2 minutes walking splits. On Wednesday night, we used the car's odometer to chart how far I've been going on my runs. Including the warm up and cool down, I've been covering about 3.4 miles on each run. Not too shabby and actually, I was kind of shocked by how far it was.

I hope you've all had a wonderful week and are filling your weekend with fulfilling and restorative activities. So far today I've caught up on all my cleaning chores (including the bathroom and washing floors!), made a batch of bread and put a corned venison (more on that later if it turns out well) in the Crock pot for supper.
   

Read more ...

Why We Work Hard

I work (relatively) hard not because I believe in the American dream (although I do) but because I believe it makes my life easier.

There's one obvious benefit to hard work: mo' money, mo' money. As much as it pains me to admit, money really does make life easier and can contribute to our happiness . . .  at least up to $75,000 annually. After all, it's pretty nice to not have to stress out about paying bills and to be able to sometimes not buy only the store brand at the grocery store and hard work's about the only way I've found to avoid going into shock when both my health insurance and car insurance bills are due in the same month.

Of course, the downside of hard work is less free time and that means every once in a while we need a break from the daily grind if we want to avoid total burnout. Last week's trip to Michigan, provided me with a much needed break (although I did spend much of my time away knit, knit, knitting for the Etsy shop). Then, as is apt to happen after the excitement of airports, meals out, and time away, returning to said daily grind proved a little rough during the first days back in the office.

Yesterday, when I sat down for my daily four hours of morning office work (for thee day job) I found myself loathing the whole experience. I checked the clock every couple minutes, each time horrified at how little time had passed. There were so many other things I wanted to be doing (although now that I think of it, I can't really name any of those pressing, urgent things that were consuming me yesterday morning - maybe checking Pinterest?) and the last thing I felt like doing was answering emails and editing contracts. After an interminable 9 o'clock hour, suddenly I found it was nearly noon and then it was lunchtime and time for me to turn to more personal projects.

As I wrapped up afternoon finishing up a glut of housework such as watering plants, finally taking down the outdoor Christmas lights, and cleaning the bathroom, I couldn't help but feel pleased that I'd stuck with my morning work, despite the initial unpleasantness. If I'd putzed away the morning instead of doing the office work in the morning, I'd have had to have done the office work in the afternoon and then I'd still have a dirty bathroom today.

So I believe in hard work because it generally leads to nice things, like clean bathrooms. Hard work helps us reach our goals, it inspires us to be more ambitious, and I do think it makes us happier in the end. As much as I wanted to scroll through Pinterest yesterday morning, the long term result of opting for social media over actually work would have been cranky, disappointed Ada last night. 

The brilliant C. Hope Clark (if you're a writer and not subscribed to her free weekly e-newsletter Funds for Writers, do it now!!) wrote this argument for hard work and full days in her latest editorial:

"When you land contracts, for magazines and publishers, you are temporarily owned by editors. They expect you to jump, and jump with polish. When your writing career speeds up, people expect you to perform.

"Start now, while you're in your temporary lull, and develop a habit. Create projects. Assign them goals. And show up to work everyday. Because in the future, you'll be expected to hit the ground running, and that's hard to do if you've just been lying around." 
 
So when my dearest pal, procrastination, swings by for an impromptu date, I like to turn up "Hard Work" from Fame the Musical (so cheesy, I know, but near and dear to my heart because it was the first musical I ever saw in London - in the Aldwych Theatre on the Stand in April 2003) and get down to business.



Happy Monday!
 

Read more ...

Where There's A Will . . .

I started out the new year with some of the most stereotypical reading material ever. In the early days of January, I churned through Kelly McGonigal's The Willpower Instinct, learning all the mind games we play on ourselves and how we frequently derail our best intentions. In the book, McGonigal encourages the reader to take on a willpower challenge to test out the concepts and ideas she introduces about the science and psychology of willpower.

We all have behaviors and habits we wish we didn't and thinking of a willpower challenge is less than challenging for most of us. For me, my default willpower challenge has always been procrastination. I frequently find myself scrolling through Facebook and Pinterest when I'm meant to be doing something else. So inspired by McGonigal's writings and since, it was a new year and all, I made the resolution to stop procrastinating so much. (Oh stop laughing you.) I also wanted to consistently get up at a time I deemed "a decent hour" on workdays.

And here we are, nearly at the end of the first month of 2013, at a time when the vast majority of New Year's resolutions have already been broken. And I'm proud to say that I'm still hard at work on my willpower challenges.

The getting up at a decent hour (which I declare is 7 . . . working from home is rough ;) actually turned out to be a cinch. When I realized the weather station that sits on shelving units around the corner from our bedroom door has an alarm, I simply started setting the alarm each night. When it goes off in the morning, I'm forced out of bed to turn off the alarm. And because I really don't care for the groggy sprint out the bedroom door to the buzzing alarm, I tend to wake up a couple minutes ahead of the alarm. Best of all, because I know I'm getting up at the same time each morning, I've started going to bed at a more consistent time too.  

But my procrastination willpower challenge is a whole 'nother beast. By being mindful of my habits and tendencies, I realized last week that I don't actually have a procrastination problem. Nowadays, I actually do get the vast majority of the things I'll say I'll do done. (Chalk up that one to growing older.)

What I lack is focus. (Oh look . . . shiny!)

I've always felt like I have a procrastination problem because I never manage to finish everything I think I should get done, even if I am finishing what I have to get done. 

So what's getting in between me and accomplishment? Oh, I don't know . . . maybe my penchant for having a gazillion windows open both on my desktop and in Firefox, which I flip between absentmindedly all the while I'm convincing myself that I'm doing something useful like writing a blog post or researching an article? Maybe the fact that I respond like one of Pavlov's dogs whenever I hear the "new email" chime?  

So as we move into February, I'm retuning my willpower challenge a bit. It turns out my procrastination problem can fix itself if I learn to tune out distractions and focus solely on each individual task I lay out before me.

In her series on handmade businesses back in October, Gussy Sews suggested that you only check twice a day. At the time, I found the idea horrifying. But I need to check my email all day, I thought. I need to respond to some emails asap. But really, whether I respond to an email within three minutes or three hours usually makes little to no difference.

My email doesn't need to be churning around in the background. In fact, I think this is a habit I picked up during my temp days as an administrative assistant. I often found myself with very little to fill my workdays. Having Outlook open at all times on my desktop gave me an allusion of purpose, even if, as a temp worker,  the only emails I got a regular basis were approvals of the week before's timecard.(Habits can be so silly when you get to the root of them.)

I'll be limiting my email checking in the coming weeks and I'll also be trying to cut back on my mindless internet surfing and we'll see how it goes.

The thing is, you never conquer your willpower habit. Sure, it might become an ingrained habit, but in truth, every single morning we are starting our willpower challenges all over again. Every day we have a choice to live up to the expectations we've set for ourselves to meet our long term goals, or we can choose the easier route with faster rewards. It's not easy conquering our willpower challenges, but it's most definitely worth it.


Did you make any new year's resolutions? If so, how are you doing with them? How do you stay focused?
 

Read more ...

The Freelance Writing Trenches: It's A Business

It's been a ripe old time since I've penned a post for The Freelance Writing Trenches series and, true confession, the very start of this post has been hanging out in draft form on the Blogger service since 5/29/2012. High time to dust it off and publish it already, don't you think?
 



I took a lot of great classes in college. During my four years of undergraduate work, I enjoyed course such as British Literature and Reading in French. I opt for an extremely liberal arts heavy higher education, taking "Logic" for my analytical reasoning gen ed and "Great Ideas of Science" for my science gen ed. (And yes, in that latter course we just sat around and talked about string theory and the butterfly effect.) Oh, it was all fun and games until the recession hit.

Looking back at my college transcript, my class choices hint at an individual preparing to spend her professional life steeping in academia. Except when you fast forward six years from my college days, I'm here, hanging out in a cabin in the woods, running multiple businesses. If there's one glaring hole in my college transcript, it's the utter lack of any business education whatsoever.

I run a business every single day. On the flip side, (as much as it pains me to admit it), I only use the knowledge I learned from "Theatre: Greek to Elizabethan" a handful of times a year, usually when playing Trivial Pursuit. Being brutally practical, I use next to nothing that I learned from my college course in my everyday work. What I do draw upon is what I learned as news editor for my college's student newspaper and the time I spent sticking my toe into the world of freelance writing (researching markets, writing queries, etc.) during summer breaks.

It's not my college's fault that I followed my heart when choosing courses and a major path. After all, my college time was spent pre-recession and the prevailing attitude was that even if I veered off the course of higher education, I could always translate my liberal art skills (aka writing skills) into a cushy corporate job. Freelancing really wasn't considered a viable career path yet and my English professors, who had all gone the masters, Ph.D, teach college route, didn't have much insight to offer on any non-academic career path.

Still, I wish, that at some point someone would have said, "Hey bozo, go take some business classes."  In fact, I'd argue that it's almost more important for every college graduate to enter the world with at least one business course under their belt than an analytical reasoning or science course. The days of spending your summer breaks interning at a business that will offer you a job upon graduation are rapidly disappearing. Instead, our higher education institutions need to figure out a way for college graduates to thrive without the shelter of a corporate wing. For many of us that means going into business for ourselves. Because here's a secret that it took way too long for me to figure out about the adult world: it's all a business.

Writers like to think we have too much artistic integrity to worry our little heads about horrible, bland business details, but we don't get very far if we aren't capable of churning out polished, marketable product, whether we write poems or magazine feature articles. No matter if we make beautiful pottery or write short stories or fix plumbing problems, we need to let people know that we have these skills and then we need to convince people that they should consume these products and services from us. We're always selling something, even if we don't think we are.

To be successful writers, we need to know how to market ourselves and find consistent work; we need to ask for the payment we deserve; and we must be open to editorial criticism. Most importantly, we need to stop shirking away from any internal heebie-jeebies we get when we think of running our own businesses.

Wherever you are in the writing life at the moment, this year I challenge you to start thinking of your writing as a business. After all, your writing should work for you, not the other way around.

Interested in how to transform your writing into a business? Check out the rest of the posts in the Freelance Writing Trenches series to spark some ideas.

 

Read more ...

What December Will Bring

Oh hey there December and holiday season! While it's been pretty obvious for a while that the year has been wrapping itself up, I'm always surprised when we reach the sunset of another year. It's always like, "Christmas? Again?!"

For whatever reason, this year I've heard a bit about the concept of  passive income. You know, like when you own a rental house. Although I generally give passive income the side-eye since passive income is dependent on having the necessary capital to purchase something that would actually generate money, it's hard to dislike the idea.

Right now, we're in the best financial state we ever been in since reaching adulthood, but that is the result of a lot (a lot) of active income. November and April are normally tied for "blah-est" months in the North woods, but last month was a whirlwind of to-do lists and special projects. While the layout of my days are quite different now that I'm done with the full time, out of the house job for the season, last month I was surprised to find that I don't really have any more free time now that I'm working for home. So if  November was any indicator, this month will not be a gentle and quiet end to 2012.

Here's what's on the docket for December 2012:

• Write a bunch of freelance articles. Hmmm, may have said "yes" to a few too many assignments this months.  
• Interviews. So many interviews for my radio documentary project. Followed by transcribing. So much transcribing. 
• Other contracted work. Oh yeah, that. 
• Finish making this year's batch of venison sausage. We had a bit of meat grinder drama-drama last month that delayed this process -aka, the first meat grinder we bought was totally and absolutely defective. Now we're the proud owners of a 1/2 horsepower Cabela's meat grinder which runs like a champ. We've made 16 lbs of venison sausage this week and will be making some wild rice sausage and chorizo very soon.

• Let the Etsy shop simmer for the month and focus my crafty/knitty energy on finishing up some personal knitting projects, including piecing together this lovely Aran knit afghan. I only knit four of these squares (the dark green ones), the rest were made by the crafting group for a recently married crafter.

• Spend quality time with friends and family who I haven't seen for far too long. While the pounding pavement that accompanies the holiday season can make me weary, I really do look forward to the opportunity to re-connect with some of my favorite people. 
• Find the perfect Christmas tree. Last year's tree was pretty darn perfect, so we'll see how we do. 
• Christmas baking, Christmas cards, wrapping presents, White Elephant gifts, oh my! 

 What are your plans this December? What are you looking forward to this holiday season?

 

Read more ...

Afternoon Tea: Homemade London Fog Tea

Because I live in the woods, I hadn't heard of London Fog Tea until I met up with my mom at the local coffee shop last week. Apparently it's been a staple on Starbucks and Caribou's menus for quite some time. Who knew? Oh, you did? As per usual, I am the last to know.

(For all of you would-be woods-dwellers, I want you to think long and hard before you move on up here about whether or not you are willing to deal with the fact that you may be the last person on Earth to hear about such things as London Fog Tea. It's not all loons and moons and woodfires up here; there are dire consequences that come from cutting yourself off from civilization.)

So anyway, I finally had a London Fog Tea. And it was amazing. Creamy and vanilla-y with enough tea in it to keep it from being cloying. It was so good that I decided I need to figure out how to make it at home. (Because I am not driving two hours round trip whenever I have a tea craving.) Since the only ingredients in London Fog Tea are Earl Grey tea, steamed milk, and vanilla syrup, I figured it couldn't be that hard to pull off. Happily, it's not!

I started off by making homemade vanilla syrup. I found this great list of homemade syrups for coffee drinks over at Annie's Eats and I used her vanilla syrup recipe. It takes all of 15 minutes to make (and only about 1 minute of actual hands-on time) and the recipe is an excellent use for the vanilla beans I bought on a whim last month. I store the syrup in the fridge in an empty maple syrup bottle.

The first time I made London Fog Tea at home, I attempted steaming the milk in the microwave. I quickly deemed this unnecessary. It was putzy and dirtied more dishes for a simple single-serving drink than seemed appropriate. I also really wanted the drink to be more tea-based than milk based.

After some trial and error, I've come up with a recipe that I've been brewing up every day around 3 p.m. to get myself through my mid-afternoon work slump. It's far from identical from what you'd be served if you ordered a London Fog Tea at a coffee shop because I scaled way back on the milk. If you're a lactose no-no, you can also leave the milk out all together. I did that this afternoon and it was still pretty tasty.

Recipe for Homemade London Fog Tea

1 tablespoon (or to taste) of vanilla simple syrup (Recipe here)
1 Earl Grey tea bag (Tazo is my favorite)
Approximately 8 oz. boiling water
1/4 cup milk

Place vanilla syrup and tea bag in the bottom of your favorite mug. Fill mug 3/4 of the way full with boiling water. Brew the tea for 3-5 minutes. (I find it's important to pay attention to how long you brew Earl Grey because if you let it steep for too long, the tea gets overwhelmingly perfume-y.) Add 1/4 cup of milk. Stir together. Enjoy!

 

 

This has just the right amount of caffeine and sugar to keep me focused and working hard on my daily to-do list until the work day draws to a close. If my attention's really lagging on a particular day, I'll pair the tea with some sliced apple to help keep me on track. Much better to take 5 minutes to make myself a snack than to find myself wandering over to Facebook and Pinterest for a pointless hour when I feel my focus slipping. 

What's your favorite afternoon pick-me-up?

 

Read more ...

Transitions, Darkness and Working at Home

Here we go again: transition time at Of Woods and Words. Not counting the many, many seasonal changes we have each year, we go through two major transitions annually: when I go to work full-time out of the house each May, and when I starting working from home again each October. Both transition periods have their hiccups, but arguably the autumn transition back to working from home is more difficult because I feel a need to transform myself into homemaker extraordinaire, freelancer extraordinaire, and Etsy extraordinaire, while also attending to the demands of my day job. (Whew! I'm just glad there aren't pets or children in that mix!)

Full time work officially ended last Sunday and over the last eight days, I've been bouncing between home and work, trying to get everything set so I can truly start working from by the end of this week. The first week after closing up for the season is always discombobulated: the last board meeting of the season, packing up the building, moving the office to the cabin, and making sure everything's set to over winter without freezing, shattering, or being gnawed on by vermin.


It's really easy to be way too hard on yourself during these times of transition. I've been sleeping far too much this past week. Despite my best intentions to get up and at it before sunrise, it's so dark in the mornings, and the bed is so awfully warm and cozy, that by the time I drag myself out from the covers each morning, I already feel like I'm behind.

It doesn't help my motivation that I devoted last Monday morning to making an editorial calendar for myself which when completed, I looked at and went "Holy shite, no wonder I'm always feel like I'm forgetting something." Even when I drop my day job obligations from 40 hours a week to a mere 16, I'm still over-scheduled. So perhaps before I move forward much farther during this work at home season, I need to figure out some ways to work smarter, rather than harder.(I.e. make more money while either doing the same, or less work.)

Then there's the fact that Baja went to shop last Thursday and was given a 4K diagnosis (why hullo there new transmission, clutch, timing belt, et al.) from a very reputable mechanic. After weighing just about every option out there (declaring a total loss, car loans, becoming a one car household, etc. etc.) we're repairing it since that's most economical and environmentally conscious thing to do, which means I'm not exactly in a position to pass up any paying work that I can get. Whenever I claim that there's some conspiracy against my using motorized equipment, Andy says I'm being silly. But honestly, even my KitchenAid mixer exploded after only two years of use. It's fine. It's really getting rather amusing by this point.

In the last 15 days, I think the sun's shone about seven whole hours and we're all feeling a little gloomy. I forgot I even had Halloween decorations until I was cleaning the back bedroom on Saturday and happened upon the holiday decorations box in the closet. Yesterday, it snowed all morning (and actually stuck to the ground and accumulated), so it's been a little confusing what season it actually is. Most likely, with Halloween being just two days away now, the Halloween decorations will spend all of 2012 hibernating away in the closet.

Although it's a rather dark, bumpy transition time at the moment, I'm trying not to focus on what hasn't been getting done, and instead focus on what I have been accomplishing. Suppers are certainly tastier now that I have a little more time to devote meal prep and the house is at its tidiest in months. And look, I even created an Etsy shipping corner in the back bedroom! It's about the little things . . . right? Quality of living is definitely improving around here.

Certainly, there's a need to bump up productivity. I just have to remember that being kind to myself as the seasonal darkness creeps in, and creating light from within rather than being dependent on sunshine and long days to elevate my mood, is probably the best way to make the annual transition into working from home go smoothest.

 

Read more ...

The Freelance Writing Trenches: The Joys of a Professional Website

I've been punching at random buttons on websites and verification links in emails for the last hour and a half. I'm in the process of renewing my "professional" website's domain. Last January, when I set up the website, I assumed renewing my website's domain would be a walk in the park, something I could do in a semi-conscious state.   

Au contraire!

Why do I even have this &@#%! website, I grumbled to myself as I searched for yet another authorization code. And why do I bother with a "professional" website when I already have this kick-ass blog, you may wonder.

I have a few reasons for wanting a professional website for my freelance writing business:

1) It looks fancy. I believe the whole "dress to impress" business applies to the web as well. If I want to be viewed as a professional freelance writer than I bloody well ought to act like one. Having that website in my email signature just makes me feel more legit. And by feeling more legit, maybe you become more legit? (I don't know.)

2) It's good organization. This blog is lovely, but this blog is also all over the place. While I'm sure editors are dying get my wild rice venison sausage recipe or know that the Christmas tree finally went up, unfortunately, most editors probably don't have time to read through the Of Woods and Words archives to figure out who I am and whether or not I'm able to handle the writing gig they're thinking about giving me. My website provides a terse presentation of who I am and what I'm about. I can organize clips and link to my published works on a portfolio page which makes my professional website an easy place to send editors. And yes, I have referred editors to my website and have ended up getting a contract out it. Bam!

3) I own my domain. Granted, the domain I own for my professional website probably wasn't going to get snapped up anytime soon. But if I put off buying my domain, it might have gotten taken for some flukey reason before I could get to it. That would have made me tres unhappy. So I own my own dot com; no one can take it from me.

As you've probably guessed, it's point 3 in that little argument that's causing the problems. Since I built the website last year (through wix.com), I've been getting a slew of increasingly urgent sounding emails from Network Solutions about renewing my domain until it was going, going, gone.  When I actually got around to logging in to see how much they wanted for renewing my domain, I nearly spit out my morning Earl Grey.

You know that game where you take a number and you hold it in your mind?

Let's just say, I was holding a number under $10 in my mind for the annual renewal and Network Solutions was holding a number between $30 - $50 in their mind. (More too, if they could get you on various "extras.")

Time to transfer my domain. Enter GoDaddy.

This afternoon, I transfer my domain to GoDaddy to the tune of $8.17 for the year. Why was I with Network Solutions in the first place? When I signed up for wix last year, I qualified for a free domain for year. And hey, free bets $8.17 any day.


Is a professional website integral to my success? Probably not. But it's nice to have and it's generally headache free. Normal maintenance is an occasional "freshening up" of copy and updating the portfolio portion with new links and clips. On average, I probably spent about an hour a month on it. I used wix because a friend recommended it and because it seemed easy to use. You could also easily fashion yourself a website through wordpress or a variety of other website builders.

Let me know if you have questions.

Don't worry; I'm a professional.

Read more ...

Happy Halloween!! (Aka, what I did while the internet was out)

Our internet's been out since Thursday afternoon.

Please, take a minute to be horrified by this with me for a moment.

I swear, one minute I was happily downloading emails into Outlook (does anyone even use Outlook anymore? Maybe that's what killed it . .  .) and the next minute the internet was gone. Like not there one little bit. While our satellite internet is sketchy at best and it's not unheard of to go for days with extremely slow internet, it would appear that this time our modem has completely given up the ghost. No matter what the cloud cover outside, no matter how many times we unplug and replug in our router, all we get from our modem is a bunch of twinkly lights. *sigh*  I might feel slightly calmer about this if I didn't keep getting voicemail every time I called our service provider's customer service line.

So no, the internet's not back up and running yet. Currently, I'm in town, doing laundry and updating the blog. Kind of tricky running freelance business from my home that depends a good deal on access to social media, but ah well, we'll persevere.

In the meantime, I've . . . .

• Tried to get some writing done. You know, you can completely write short essays in just one morning when you aren't popping in between the Word document you're typing in, seven blogs you're trying to keep up with, while simultaneously trying to think of a witty Tweet. On the other hand, focus = not that much fun.
• I've stacked some firewood. Not that much though.
• Done some deer scouting with Andy. Deer season starts Saturday. Andy is getting excited.
• Cleaned the bathroom. At one point this summer, I was cleaning the bathroom every week. Things have slipped a little bit. Looks like we're back on my "once I can't stand it any longer" bathroom cleaning schedule. 
• Vacuumed
• Filed paperwork
• Scoured the kitchen
• Listened to this weekend's edition of "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" three times.
• Helped  Mom tear out a sweater. 
• Read almost the entire series of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. 
• Spent an exorbitant amount of time carving Smokey Bear's head into a pumpkin. 

That last point, carving Smokey into a pumpkin (design chosen because of this year's high proportion of both bears and fires), will probably be the extent of our Halloween celebrations. We're almost guaranteed not to have trick-or-treaters and our cabin remains a Halloween candy free zone. Today also marks the 20th anniversary of the 1991 Great Halloween Blizzard.Looks like we'll be spared two feet of snowfall this Halloween though. (Hooray!)

Anyone dressing up for the holiday? Do you get trick-or-treaters?

Hoping everyone has a lovely Halloween/Samhain. Hard to believe the holiday season is truly upon us now. Yikes!

Read more ...

Going in Circles

Earlier this month, I wrote about the cyclical nature of seasonal employment. Despite realizing that switching between two jobs and lifestyles each year is a process not dissimilar to going through the complete cycle of grief biannually, this go-around, I'm having trouble adjusting. When I mentioned how odd I was finding this fall's transition back to working from home, my friend Sarah pointed out that this might just be because there's nothing "new" about the transition. 

While this was my second summer at the museum, I'm used to my summers repeating themselves. It's what I've done in the winter that's been different every single year since I graduated college. This is the first time in a long time that my life has completely repeated itself over the course of an entire year. I'm literally going in circles.

This is not a bad thing. But it's a little disorienting.

"Didn't I just go past that rock last October?"

Granted, the museum's only just closed on Sunday and this is actually my first "normal workday" morning that I've spent at home. Still, some things have changed around here. For instance, just yesterday morning I had a desk.

(Granted, it's not really my desk. For one thing it's a table. For another, it actually belongs to Andy's mother.)

Now? Not so much.

Let's look closer at what's going on here. What once contained some houseplants, reference books, notebooks, stationary and a laptop, suddenly sprouted a desktop computer, a ginormous printer/scanner/copier, and many, many more piles of, um, "files" yesterday afternoon. 

While I've complained about my less than tidy desk before, it's really the winter months when desk space is most at a premium around here. Because during the off-season I work a few hours a week for the historical society that operates the museum, I end up adopting several pieces of office equipment on a seasonal basis for a couple reasons: 1) so it doesn't freeze in the museum 2) to avoid spending half my day transferring files.

There are about a gazillion things I could spend this first morning working from home doing. But something tells me, if I don't get this clutter straightened out, I'll spend the day going in circles. And while, I might feel fine about going in circles annually, during a work day "going in circles" is really just code for "spinning your wheels."

Can you work in clutter? What do you do to make transitions easier?

Read more ...

The Home Stretch

I spent all summer viewing this past weekend's wedding as "the end." At "the end" of summer we had a wedding to go to. It always seemed a long ways off.

When I bought a dress to wear to the event back in May, it seemed absurd to be thinking so far in advance, almost as if the end of September would never roll around.

But it did.

This past weekend we headed down to central Minnesota for the hitchin'. Before we'd really gotten our bearings, the couple was happily married and we were heading home again. 

Now, there's absolutely no denying that autumn is here. When I walked home from work last night, I was shocked to discover docks anchored in the middle of our bay. The ice and snow may still be a month or two off, but the summer residents clearly already have their hearts set on warmer locations. Getting the cabin closed up for winter is a task all summer residents face; a task that involves draining pipes, shutting off pumps, and detaching docks from the shore so the ice doesn't destroy them. Soon our cabin will be the only light shining out over the bay each night.

 It's not like autumn hasn't given me any warning signs. The tomato plants on the deck have been dead for nearly two weeks now and the woods have been filled with the musty, almost sweet smell of decaying leaves. But it's been such an odd month of strange work schedules and perhaps a few too many commitments, that I hadn't been paying that much attention to the changing world around me. I finally noticed that fleeting autumn light yesterday when Andy and I headed out for an early morning stroll. 

It's true we're on the home stretch of the summer season. Soon that nip in the air will be downright cold. The leaves will fall; the snow will come. But until then, I plan to marvel and exclaim over the world's beauty; to take a minute and soak it all in. 

Read more ...