Mentally Physical, Five Minutes at a Time

"Mom," he asked, in exasperation more than curiosity, "how do you keep running so well?"

His mother jogged in place. "You have to make all your physical challenges into mental challenges.  You put your lungs inside your mind, and think your way around the path. The same way that you have to make your mental challenges into physical challenges. When you're doing your homework--when you do your homework--just imagine that you're riding your bike, and you just have to push your way through."

~The King in the Window, by Adam Gopnik

The past two weeks have been physically horrendous. My lungs have felt as if they're on fire and an elephant is stepping on my chest, yet it's the medicine I use that keeps me awake even longer than usual.  If I nap, it generally takes two to three hours to fall asleep for one hour, and that's if no one comes in after a while.

When I get up, I feel nothing but guilt. Here's the thing, each day I rise, loving the day, wanting and needing to do so much, having a focused list. When I physically get out of bed, I am wheezing and hurting and exhausted (as I'm lucky to get four hours of interrupted sleep at one time) and everything is thrown back on the burner.

It's a vicious cycle, you know?  Such wasted time.

Luckily, I'm a reader, this keeps my mind structurally busy.  Writers must always read, otherwise, how can they know what readers want?  I rarely read fiction, but the past three years, I've been reading whatever my kids are reading. I love having the commonness and dialog.  

Ironically, the chose some great books, without knowing they've actually met the writers at a publishers' function or a writing conference I've been in, making us have a few more things to talk about.

After the Twilight series, Venice got into Glass and all the Ellen Hopkins' books.  She and I had a laugh when I told her she may have met her through our "Darcy," of the former Northern Nevada Family Magazine (don't ask!).  Oh, how I miss those days, before I was sick.

But that's the way it goes.  I read from The King in the Window about the lungs and making it mental, and though I know it's not in my mind, I love it.  And likewise, I love making the mental into a physical challenge.

You know how I said I was unable to concentrate clearly, unless I was reading? No?  Who cares, it's still true. Anyway, by putting what I need to do mentally, more or less, into a physical challenge, I see the beauty.  Combine this with my five minutes throughout the day, and even the worst days can be more productive.

My primary focus with true crime at the moment, is for sure Lue Vang and Sue Russell's Missing Mondays, which I was working on before Lue went missing. Lue, as you might remember, is a 17 year old from Carson City, Nevada, who has been missing since April 29, 2011.  There's a chance he's headed toward Seattle, but this is not a sure thing.  Wherever you are, keep your eyes open and spread the word.

To work on these cases (and the True Crime Fanatic website), I merely have to take five minutes at a time and instead of thinking of it as researching, asking questions, etc., I'll think of it as five minutes until I can rest again. Five minutes of staying busy, on task.

As for all the other work, well, my lungs are in pain and talking is not really such an option, so if it can't be done via text and email, it's just not happening.

Getting Technical

Get It In Writing! was the first website I ever created; it was made from scratch. I jumped into HTML long before Google was invented.  It probably helped that I had taken computer programming years before and kept up on computer literacy over the years, but only in that I knew it was going to involve math somehow and appear complicated.

I remember the first few months with smiles, I had asked everyone I knew who owned a computer and had the Internet to click as much as possible on the link so I could watch my counter move.

It worked, though. Before you knew it, I merged with Writing Corner and ran them both through It Is Written, Ink, our corporation.  We enjoyed being celebrated in the covers of Writer's Digest Magazine and being asked to talk at writer's conferences. Our paper newsletter for unpublished and newly published writers was still free and being distributed in four countries. All good things come to an end; a couple of years later, my family lost our home and all the contents - including the business and computers - due to toxic mold.

It's been a decade now and I've gotten our lives back on track best I can.  The last thing I could afford to replace, a bed for myself, was bought last year and I couldn't be happier.  With the bed.

The website, now True Crime Fanatic, is bugging me.  Where I used to be able to crank out an entire 20 page website in  a weekend, it's taken me over a year to figure out how to make the front page look decent (forget about keeping it current, sheesh!).

I can plan the website (and I do) on paper, but I cannot get it to look that way on the computer.  Not even close.  That's how I used to do it and it worked beautifully. I could picture it, write it down, recreate it.

To make things easier (really?), last year, after purchasing the bed, I researched, then spent a huge chunk of money on Adobe's Dreamweaver, figuring what could be easier than a website program with what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) action?

Thank God for tutorials online, Dummies Books, and nothing else, because it's been a year and I barely get it!  I understand CSS and what it's for, and it SEEMS like I get it... until I try to move forward.

Here I am, for the upteenth million time, trying to redesign something I can live with and will function up to its needs.

I'm reading everything, again and again, and it's nearly Greek to me.  And then I saw it.  I saw one thing and I'm hoping it will lead to other little things I overlooked. This thing is so silly and obvious, I'm not sure how I missed it.

Typeface and font size do NOT refer to the same things. WHAT?  In word processing, the tool I use far more than any other, you don't care about either because you simply change it to what you want and you can immediately see it. They can call it anything (a rose by any other name...) and you could still do it.

CSS is not like word processing.  In theory, it's EXCELLENT, but when you're as ignorant as I am, you wonder what the heck they were thinking changing all this technology on us.

Check it out, I can barely get past what the words look like.  If I go to change one letter, they all change!  If i want to center an image or a title but not the rest of the story, no way. I mean, there's a way, but not the way you used to do it.

I'm not going into that (for great information, go to the Site Wizard and pick up the Dreamweaver for Dummies I mentioned earlier), because as I mentioned, you will never learn how to build a website by me. But I will say that such a little thing, typeface and font size being explained so I understand CSS is an amazing thing.

Size does matter!  Well, when you are speaking of font size vs. typeface.  Okay, I'm rambling and not making sense. The whole point is this is one small tiny thing, but is enough to get in my way for a year. I read and reread, created and recreated (from scratch all the time, oh boy), and just this one little thing has slipped me up.

I'm laughing now, having gone from doing all hand coding and making it all work great to a beautifully set-up program and getting lost.  It's funny. Mostly.  Unless. You consider how much I was unable to help absolutely no one during this time (and if your website is a business and you were me, you can imagine this in dollar amounts) and I was so frustrated I was seriously depressed.  A year.

It never occurred to me that I might be misusing a term and it's worming it's way into everything I do (or am not doing), keeping me stuck in a rut...

Little things do count and often, in big ways.  Maybe you don't file (right away, correct?). Perhaps you let your bank account go unchecked.  These things are small enough, you assume you can "get to it" when the "feeling" comes over you.

I hate to get technical, but don't you have five minutes? Isn't that little thing little, because if it is, then that's all the more reason to take care of it right away.

In my defense, I couldn't do what I didn't know, but on the other hand, I never considered such a little thing being a downfall; I never looked.

Look, be aware, and stay on top of the little things.

Decisions...

Working from home works for me and for our family. I LOVE it.  Even though everyone here drives me nuts, and they don't take my "job" as seriously as ANY OTHER PERSON who works in our home, I'd do it again if I had to do it over.


The main struggle is self-motivation when it comes to effort.  I'm motivated, however without a "for sure at the end of the week" paycheck, I tend to feel as my family does:  it takes the back seat to pretty much everything.

It's true.  Evaluate your decisions, your time, and how you run your business.  Be honest.  Do you take hours (or days) to do something that could be done in mere moments?  Do you often set something down, knowing you'll get to it soon or later? 

Even my begging for recognition from my family can be seen as procrastinating when I'm honest (of course, it's possible--I've owned my own business since February 15, 1997--the lack of acknowledgment I never got/get that someone who leaves the house gets/got, could have come first, but I digress...).

Here's the chuckle, I realized this while working out, after having added a new extension to True Crime Fanatic (because I have so much time, I need MORE to do). I've always loved exercise and sports, therefore it really hit hard when I got COPD and couldn't do much physical because even making a bed wears me out.  It's HARD for me (but very important to us all to exercise).  That means, to workout 2 hours a day is tough.  Sometimes I want to throw in the towel because no one expects me to try hard, so why bother?  Then it hit me... as I'm running on the machine, I'm telling myself, why are you in such a hurry? What else do you have to do?

It never occurred to me that it wasn't even the pain from moving that made me antsy, call off a workout, or leave early; it's my impatience. I'm in such a hurry, to take the TIME is what was negative. I never feel like I have enough time.

Asking myself what else I had to do saved me.  Because here's my life in a nutshell:  my husband, our kids, writing, business.

And that's it!  That's all there is. Why am I in such a hurry? And that led me to wondering where all the time is going. Why am I always behind?  It's like I'm running to stand still (thanks Bono) and I've been doing it all these years. Just running and doing and never satisfied.

That moment gave me permission to finish what I started and at one "sitting" AND it allowed me to ask the same question when I need to make a cold call or I get online to research.  Call, because there is nothing else you need to be doing at this moment.  Grab the daily research list and do it because there's nothing else you need to be doing.

You see the beauty of it all, right?  Once I realized I CAN finish and nothing's going to fall apart or go missing by my doing so, I not only did "it," but I became more organized because I could finish and put it away (physically or mentally). By default, I also came up with a great new and natural attitude, which in turn, made me more productive, which is the second biggest need in running a successful business.

Basic Marketing and Promotion Tip

This year, whatever you do, you MUST promote YOURSELF and your business.  Marketing 101 (and basic business sense) tells you that the biggest part of the sale is the marketing. You can build the best product ever, but if you do not promote it wisely, it's value goes way down.

Some of us are in business for ourselves out of basic necessity; others are working from home because that's where their life's passion lies.  Still, some of us are in it to win it (whatever "it" is!).  None of that matters if you sell nothing (and no, I am not talking only about products; many of us sell skills, integrity, loyalty, whatever).  Zero percent of zero is zero.

In this age of electronics, it's nearly impossible to NOT market, but people often overlook the most obvious and extremely affordable marketing strategies - use your signature!  If you have an email (or two or three or four), add a short blip about you/your business and simple contact information. Do this for your computer AND your smart phone.  Use a different signature for each account and change it up.  Most importantly, be direct and keep it simple.

Do you belong to Google groups?  Yahoo groups? Any online bulletin boards?  Check your account, they often allow a simple two or three line signature, as well.  Think about it - even if your odds of selling yourself/product are one time for every million signatures you share: it's one more you sold without much work.

When I'm emailing via True Crime Fanatic, my goal is to get people to read our website.  I can lead with an interesting case, but more often than not, the words "true crime" often trigger intrigue and I've been able to get away with this:

Teraisa Goldman

Editor: True Crime Fanatic

http://TrueCrimeFanatic.com

I do try to stay away from extremely high profile cases because they're the cases people literally go online to read, so I'll pick a quote from a book, a favorite author, or a tag from an online article.  When I'm using a short blurb, it may look like this:

--

"... Negroes on the plantation were to rise up and begin killing their masters with axes, hoes, and clubs while they were drinking and celebrating Independence Day."  Harry N. MacLean, The Past Is Never Dead

FYI: When emailing from your smart phone, include a single word at the beginning of your signature letting others know. Why? Because although we are professional, using a smart phone often causes a few unplanned typos. When your target market receives an email from you (we can all pretend we'll never do this, but I venture to say 90% of us will send at least one in the course of our business life), and we mean to say "Harry," but it comes out "hairy," we'll be grateful they can see we let our smart phone get the best of us, just as they have, and we'll quickly be forgiven.  Example of how it could turn out:

iPhone

"... Negroes on the plantation were to rise up and begin killing their matters with axes, hose, and clubs while they were drinking and celebrating Independence Day."  Hairy Macintosh, The Past Is Never Dead

I leave you with this reminder: market and promote, but promote wisely.

Home Party Business: Is Anyone Out There?

I've long since realized: I'm the only one reading this.  Still, I'll continue. Why? Because I'll go crazy if I keep this contained within myself.

Today, I practiced setting up my display for the first home show.  I've found tons of ideas, but I'm not happy yet with anything I've come up with. For one thing, most of the people with At Home America have special displays (which I plan on earning - the ONLY way you can get one) and they have different products than I do; making it hard to recreate their display.

I'm thinking about ordering a few more things to use in my display. I'd like to display in the way you might see a store display, rather than everything on one table. We'll see.

Another thing I'm considering is purchasing a few more of their yummy smelling candles, lighting them for the entire party, then giving it away in a drawing at the end of the night.  They provided me with cards for guests to fill out, enquiring whether they are interested in hosting a party or joining the crew... if they give it back, they just might win.  The only thing is that if I book a party from that party, I'll probably give away a completely different prize.  That way, the guests will be willing to go to more than one party, hoping for a shot at another cool gift.  We'll see. Again.

So much on my mind.

This new business is not all there is. Not by a long-shot.  I've been formatting the screenplay and have a children's book ready for an editor.  The website, True Crime Fanatic, well, that's taking longer than I'd like, but it's only due to lack of knowledge writing and working with CSS.  Always, I'm on the lookout for publishers and producers for my friends' work.  Ha! That's much easier than finding help for myself.  And lastly, I'm just about finished setting up a class to teach business management and organization on federal land. Yes, there's a need for it.

As with At Home America, if I find something I want or need and no one can provide it, I'll find a way.  And that's how things get done.