Instead, I am up and sipping on my second cup of coffee.

I’ve fed the animals, have spent some time in mediation and have caught up on my email and the overnight Twitter feed.    I am making some mental lists of tasks to accomplish this week.   I am determined that this week will be productive.

I mentioned the WayBack machine recently, and in reviewing some almost decade-old posts, I was amazed at the sheer volume I was writing.  I was traveling this past week and though I didn’t have much time to write, I did have some quiet time to think and in questioning myself as to how I was able to be so prolific, I realized that I was doing the bulk of my writing early in the morning.    It was also a time before Social Media sights, like Twitter and Facebook.    All this thinking led me to a few points to ponder.

• When is my mind the freshest?  Mornings.  In order to accomplish this, I need to get to bed earlier and get up earlier.   My second freshest time is right before I go to bed.
• What is my true goal:  to be a better Social Media person or be a better Writer?  To be a better writer.  To take these ever-flowing, copious thoughts and put them to paper.
• What’s the point of getting up earlier if I’m going to linger?  That’s the point.  I can’t linger and surf and play.  I need to spend a dedicated 15 to 30 minutes writing.
• How can I stay caught up on things?  Discipline.  Focus.  Goal Setting.  List Making.   A trusty egg-timer.

I know I shouldn’t try to add too many habits into my days at one time if I hope for them to stick, but I believe I have a plan.

• I need to return to spending an hour on Sundays to review my schedule, updating my task list, and setting mini-goals for the week.  If you must know, I still believe in many of the habits I began when I was subscribing to the Covey methods for organization.
• I need to spend a small out of time meditating each day.
• I need to utilize my mornings better, and spend 15 to 30 minutes doing personal writing.
• I need to trade Scrubs re-runs at bedtime for another 30-minutes of writing.
• I need to turn distractions off during my writing time, including Tweetdeck and my email window.

The last several months have been more difficult than I could ever express, though I finally wrote a little in my column for All Things Girl.   Besides rebuilding my faith in myself, I also need to embrace some other principals, like courage and passion.  I am a strong woman with some solid goals. Thing is, there is only one person who  can accomplish my goals, and that is me.

I am also a smart woman and know that the best way to help myself is to also allow myself to lean on my friends.   I cannot continue to hide the good, the bad, and the ugly from those people who love me.  If I allow my friends to hold me to my goals, so if you see that I miss more than a day or two here, please feel free to call me on it.  Comment.  Email me.  It’s all part of me trusting that other people honestly care about me as ME instead of pretending to care because they want something from me.

I am a creative being and know that Life is a journey.   I know that my spirit wants to grow and achieve.  I know that with each day, I have a little more faith.  And it feels right.

Much love to you and yours.

I mean to write about the virtue of patience today.  But as it tends to do when left on it’s own, my mind twists and turns.  I begin to wonder who first said that Patience is a Virtue.  At least now I know,  that it was Prudentius.

I have always considered patience to be an outstanding virtue, though it has never been one of my strongest.  Patience is difficult to learn, especially in a society that values instancy.  Being a child of the 70′s, I can recall life before microwaves and computers and cell phones.  I had pen pals and books and remember waiting for dinner to be cooked.  I have at times fallen into the trap of the instant.  I worry, at times, that my children will never understand that sometimes the best rewards in life can be found when you wait for it them My oldest may learn this, however.  As a Culinary student, she is finding that slow, old-fashioned cooking is much better than what is thrown into the microwave.

Patience, while not perfected, is a virtue appearing in my life more often.  Adding  meditation to my daily routine has helped foster that growth.  So has the practice of abstaining from eating meat on Friday’s.  Especially when my children  make tempting dishes.  I am learning I can wait for the leftovers on Saturday instead, savoring he flavors and the care that went into the dish.    I must say, patience seems almost out of reach on days in which I get my nails done and have to wait for them to dry.  And then suddenly, I am rewarded when I realize that my nails are dry.  There are other rewards in patience beyond my gluttonous lust for foods and a cute manicure.  The greatest of these is Love.

Love, you see, is a reward of patience that demonstrates  why early philolsophers considered it a heavenly virtue.  It just took me 41 years to learn.