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This is a personal Challenge to write 500 words a day. Join me on my Journey. |
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The Challenge: Write 500 words every day for a year.
Can I do it? Join me and find out! |
| How time passes when we aren't looking. Tomorrow, Shane is graduating from his first year of pre-school. It seems like I just had him! Yet, he's almost four already. How did that happen? A blink, and he'll be graduating from kindergarten, then grade school, middle school, high school, college. Time passes like a freight train, so silent, until it blows the horn and reminds you how many miles have been eaten since the last time it blew. I'm beginning to think time isn't real. It makes no sense. How can a day at work last for roughly eight years, yet the weekend is over before it ever began? I don't recall what movie came up with the perfect description for this phenomenon, but here it is: put your hands on a hot woman and an hour will last a minute, but put your hands on a hot stove and a minute can last an hour. Now that I think about it, it may have been the cook from Deep Blue Sea, or someone like him in one of those predatory movies where only one or two people survive. I think he made it, but his pet parrot turned into shark food. I love playing the guessing game of those movies. Who'll be the survivors? It won't be the dorky fat guy, or the blond bimbo. Those two are in all the movies and are almost always killed near the beginning. Bimbo hears something and goes to check it out and gets eaten, and fatty with a crush waddles after to play the part of dessert. Here's a fun note about people being eaten. Humans must be the Spam of the natural world. We're soft pink and easy to eat, yet we don't taste all that great. I figure that's why more stuff doesn't go around eating us. Even sharks usually take just a nibble before spitting us out and going on their way, hunting for something a bit tastier. We'd be perfect giant snake food. We have no hooves, horns, or pelts, no sharp edges or really indigestible parts. We don't even have all the fluff of rabbits, so we'd go down easy. They wouldn't even need a lot of spit to get us down their gullets. Well, that was a bit morbid I suppose, but it is true. Anyway, tomorrow is one of those big days. I had to work extra hours all week so I could have tomorrow off since I'm all out of vacation days for the year. That's probably what's sapped my motivation for doing anything else this week. I need to get a move on, but after working 10 hours and 15 minutes a day I just want to vedge out and not think for a while. Naught, naughty. I know it is, but I have a very loud 'I want' voice in my head, and she's a little witch that I have a hard time ignoring. I'm sure you all have the same little voice. 'I want a cookie, I want to watch TV, I want to take a nap.' Perhaps it's just our grumpy inner child who never got past the I wants. Meh, time to eat cookies. Word Count: 535 |
| Keep your ducks in a row. That's a saying I've been thinking about today. I feel like a little duck girl holding a bucket with ducks going every which way. Even though I'm almost thirty, I still have no idea how to get those little quackers to waddle in a neat little line. Bribes maybe? Do you think they'd like corn or bread better? I don't know. Perhaps it's as useless as trying to herd cats. Equally impossible, and equally pointless. Life is not a flock of unruly ducks, even if we feel that way sometimes. Life is more like a path through the woods. Sometimes, the path is sunny, grassy, and smooth. Other times, a nasty old oak falls over the path and you have to find another way around or try to go over it. Old trees like that have bad tempers. They almost seem to want to hurt you. Life is like that too. Sometimes it just wants to hurt you. There are horrible days and excellent days, and every type in between. For me, I think of life like a pearl string. The pearls go from small, everyday little tasks, to huge, the death of a loved one. These pearls also very from pitch black to perfect white. What we have to remember is that these pearls are fixed on the string, and they are only so large. No matter how big, or how black, eventually you will pass through that pearl and continue down the string to see what comes next. No pearl is too big to get past, but some days there are pearls that feel like the Indiana Jones bolder coming to run you down. Nothing terrible is going on in my life, but I am listening to a Stephen King's Gerald's Game and that story has a near endless string of black pearls. Yet, she gets through them, no matter how very black they became. They might leave their mark on your hearts, but sometimes you just have to do what needs to be done, even if it hurts. King is one of my favorite authors. He's always able to draw me in, and make me think about what humanity is capable of, both the good and the bad. Even though there is almost always fantastical elements to his writing, there is also a deep wellspring of humanity within them as well. By adding such extreme elements, he is able to push his characters to the breaking point, forcing them to go beyond their own preconceptions. Another truth about Stephen King, unlike many writers, the good guys don't always win. Like in reality, sometimes no matter how good you are, you still might fall short. That's one thing I hate about the movies, the people who make them can't stand that the good guys don't always win, so they have to change the ending to make it match their world view. The only one that doesn't follow this pattern is the Mist. The movie actually came up with an even worse ending than the book. Anyway, the well worn debate about books and movies can wait for a different post. Word Count: 528 |
| I've been caught by tomorrow. It is a sink hole that snags me, and there are endless excuses for pushing things off until tomorrow. The storms have made everything wet, so I can't do anything outside. Husband is tired, so we need to go to bed early, so I don't have time to work on my Copywriting. I have a head ache, my foot hurts, I need to play with Shay. And so on, and so on. Kicks tomorrow. How much of our lives are lost to tomorrow? How often do we sigh, wrack our minds for excuses, and push those things we need, or should do off until tomorrow? I don't know, but I do know it is a habit I began when I was young. I can't recall the number of all nighters I pulled because I put off doing that paper, that project, or study for that final. Breaking bad habits are so very difficult. That's one of the blessings of this blog. Though I'm planning on throwing the rest of this day away, I will still write this for you dear readers. And tomorrow ' tomorrow I will get things done! I will. Or so I tell myself. But, I have been plodding along in this heroic path of self change since April 11, 2014, and though I've fallen down a time or two already, I've found that I pick myself up and keep walking down this new path. I'm the sort of person who often has big dreams, starts things, and then falls short. I think this trait comes from my mother, who has about a thousand craft projects started, yet almost never finishes one. With this in mind, I've decided that I will finish the Copywriting program, even if it takes time, even if I have to drag myself back to it over and over and over again, I will finish it. This is the path that will take me to happiness. Building my own business is going to be insanely difficult. It will take more effort than I've ever given anything before. So I can't give up, I can't let myself get distracted or side tracked. When I do fall off the path and get into the weeds, I need to flail my way back onto the proper trail. One of the things I love about the program is how nicely it is laid out. There isn't a lot of guess work, so I won't end up chasing too many rabbits and getting discouraged by falling down endless rabbit holes. To everyone out there who finds it difficult to change, remember that it can be done. We don't have to stay the way we are. We don't have to settle. We can change ' we can make ourselves into something new. I am a procrastinator by nature, but that doesn't mean I have to procrastinate my entire life away. I can keep moving forward. I will not stop in the middle of the river and find myself drifting endlessly down stream. Word Count: 507 |
| Mother's day was not the best. My husband came to the conclusion that he doesn't need to do anything for me on this day because I'm not his mother. Shane's still too young to do anything for himself. I went to mom's house so we could run some errands together and my dad was being a complete jerk. So, this Mother's day, dad mad my mom cry, and my husband made me cry. How wonderful. And the bloody cherry on this muddy ice cream is we are in a tornado warning. We're probably going to have some pretty bad weather, so hopefully nothing will get damaged. Next year, mom and I decided we are going to go out all day and do something for ourselves. Forget the men in our lives, if they don't want to be a part of Mother's day, well that's just fine. We don't need them to have a good time. I'm faced with a dilemma. Should I ignore Father's day? Or should I go over the top, breakfast in bed, a gift from Shane, and show him how it should be done? We'll see how I feel about it come next month. We did have a pretty good experience at Kinko's. I'd recommend them for anyone wants to get pictures printed. They're very fast, and very good. You don't have to wait for an hour, they have photo paper and everything. They also take flash drives and all the other storage devices. We only needed two pictures and it was only like 50 cents. I also needed to get an audio book manuscript printed off. We had a hard time figuring out how to get to the content of the book, but the guy behind the counter didn't get mad or frustrated. Instead he got another man to help out, and we were able to get it done. So for two pictures, 11 pages of printed color images, and 88 pages of bound manuscript was only 25 bucks. To top it off, it only took about fifteen minutes to get everything sorted out. All in all, it was a great experience. After that, we went to ACE Hardware and learned an odd little fact. In our town, one of the ACE Hardware stores belongs to a different corporation. They cannot take gift cards bought at the one ACE. It was very strange. While we were there, I got a couple rakes, some lawn fertilizer and weed killer, a little saw, and some clippers, as well as lawn bags. Next week I'm going to war against the dandelions! Wish me luck. I'm also going to get rid of all the pesky little trees that have grown up while I ignored them. That's what the little saw is for. So Mother's day sucked, but these things happen. Shane is three, and Mother's day has never been great, so I don't know why I thought this time would be any different. Happy Mother's day to any Mother's reading. I hope your day was better than mine. Word Count: 508 |
| Day seven! I made it a full week. *Does a happy dance.* It feels good to write every day, even though there are times when I have no idea what to write about. Kind of like today. My parents are out doing garage sales today. It'll be interesting to see what sort of stuff they find. I also gave my mom a $50 gift certificate for Ace Hardware so she can get spring flowers. Her back yard is pretty awesome, and she has multiple gardens that need new flowers every year. A few years ago, my mom and brother made a waterfall that went into a small fish pond. They have goldfish, and a couple koi. Over the years, all the grandchildren but Shane and Jamie have fallen into the pond. They put a gazebo over the pond to keep the baby birds from drowning. The silly things would go down to try and drink, and then get stuck in the water. The gazebo has netting around it, so they can't get in any more. One year, Buddy, my parents little Yorkie mix, killed a young sparrow. Those are some revenge minded birds. Every time the dog went outside after that, the flock would dive bomb him over and over until he was afraid to go outside. Last year, my mom took an old wheel barrow that no longer had a tire and turned it into a planter. It looks fantastic in her back yard, full of flowers. By having them up high like that, the flowers are safe from the rabbits. She bought some daisies the other day, and the rabbits ate them all the way down to the ground overnight. Next week I'm hoping that my ankle will be strong enough that I can start working on my yard. I want to get the grass mowed, and tackle all the little oak trees the squirrels planted. We sort of let the yard go last year, so it's a mess. When we first moved here, I put a garden in, but I let it go wild and ignored it. Now, I want to pull it out, and just have grass in the back yard. I also need to get a ladder, a saw, and cut down one of the branches of the tall trees in our back yard. It's been ailing for a while now, and I think it finally died. We should have cut it off before, but it didn't happen. Even though I'm not going to have a garden in the grass area of the back yard, there is an area under our porch that can support a little garden. I'll get a few bleeding hearts, and maybe some mini roses. Hopefully I won't kill the roses this time. When I first put my garden in, I watered them way too much and they all ended up dead. Which sucked, because they cost me almost a hundred bucks. Anyway, I'll keep you updated on my outdoor adventures. Until next time, thanks for reading! Word Count: 506 |
| Friday, that stuck up little witch with a capital B, ignored all my advances! The nerve! I bought her drinks and everything, but she turned her prim little nose up at them and sent them back. Sigh, at least she didn't throw them back in my face. I've got that going for me at least. Bah, Saturday was always the best sister anyway. Nothing terrible happened today, but nothing great either. It was quite a meh kind of day. I did get my poster of Copywriting cheats from AWAI. I have that pinned up on the wall next to my desk. It is full of all sorts of useful information, stuff I've already taken notes on in the program. I can tell it's going to be a useful resource. At work right now I'm a mentor for a small group of cross trained associates. We share a group chat every day and I'm supposed to answer their questions. It's rather awkward and uncomfortable since I'm not the most social of beings. It will look good for my midterm review, but it is eating a lot of time out of my day, so I'm not getting as much done. Then there's the fact that they always ask those questions I have no idea how to answer, so I end up feeling completely worthless. Oh well, at least I'm getting a lot of experience in digging through the manuals trying to find the answers. My foot still hurts, and it's swollen. It's that odd swelling where you can push down on the flesh and leave an indent that slowly fills back up. The only other time that happened was right after I gave birth to Shane and my feet swelled up. That took a couple of weeks to go down, so I think it'll be alright. I only have one exercise left for part 2 of the Accelerated Copywriting program, but it's a big one. There are twenty pages of copy that I'm typing out before I can even do the exercise because I don't have a printer. Still, I think that's the best way to do it. I manually copy out the letter in my notes, and then I do the exercise. That will make the content of the letter stick better, and give me a greater understanding of its structure. When you read over a direct response letter, it looks so easy to write, but if you don't understand the underlying structure then you'll have a hard time writing it. Right now, we're learning all about that invisible structure, and how it is the bones of the letter that hold everything up. I'm starting to recognize the separate elements, and soon I'll be able to start writing my own copy. Baby steps, as they say. We must learn to walk before we can fly! Grrr that would have been a great ending line. Sadly I'm not quite at the 500 word mark yet. Here's a little extra rambling to get me over the edge. There! Word Count: 505 |
| There was a great line on the radio today ' Thursday is Friday's ugly sister, but she'll do in a pinch. Nothing terrible happened today, so we've got that going for us. Now that I said that, the house is going to fall over. My foot is turning all sorts of pretty colors. The top of my toes are black, along with the outer side of my foot. It is a rather odd looking bruise. I started Lumosity yesterday. It's a pretty good program, and quickly showed me how rusty my brain has become. With this, I should be able to whip it into shape. If nothing else, it gets me thinking every day. We'll see how it goes. When I got home today, Shay and I had an adventure in finger painting. It was delightfully messy and we had a good time. When finger painting with three year olds, just let them swirl all the colors together. Then you can use your finger and write in the sludge. The under color of all the mix is rainbow, and you can use it to help teach shapes and the alphabet. You draw a shape, and then they say what it is before they erase it. After that, I gave him a bubble bath to get all the paint off. Now we're just waiting for Daddy to wake up, then the boys are going to make cheese burgers. Shay is at the age where he wants to help with everything from dishes to making dinner. It's rather cute. That will give them some time together while I work on my Copywriting. Yesterday I saw a job for $2,000 that would have been nice to go for. Sadly, I'm not finished with the training yet, so I didn't qualify. That's alright, it shows there are jobs out there, and once I have the knowledge under my belt, I will be able to start going for them. I wonder what the 2,000 was for. Would it have just been one job, for a set amount of time, or something else? The request wasn't very specific. Perhaps that wasn't a good sign. Still, I've learned a lot about how to negotiate a job, and I would have gotten all the details before making a final decision. It's important to require half the fee up front, and the rest to be paid upon completion. This is a great test to make sure that the client is going to be able to finance the project or not. This also reduces the risk of doing a job and then not getting paid for it. I'm excited and nervous about trying to find jobs. Selling myself is going to be difficult, but I think once I get that first job, my confidence will grow. That will also help me build up my portfolio, which in turn will help me grow my client base. Today is looking up. Tomorrow will be even better. How could it not be, when it is the oh so lovely Friday? Word Count: 506 |
| To anyone who's thinking of having children - know this, toddlers are repetitive. It's not just "Are we there yet?" or "He's touching me!" it is everything! Today, I heard "Where are we going?" about twenty times even though the answer for each was "We aren't going anywhere." I swear, three year olds get an idea in their heads, and it just gets stuck in there. Again, and again, and again, until you want to break down and cry. Shane is also on a copy kick. He loves repeating everything you say when you're on the phone, or when you're ordering food at a drive through. If you're having a conversation with a friend, you'll hear his little voice like a tiny three foot echo at your feet. He's adorable, but there are times when I wish he would stop. At this age, one of his favorite things to say is "But why?" He says it for everything. "It's time for bed." "But why?" "It's time to go to Grandma's." "But why?" When it isn't why, it's what. That one is making my mom insane. You know he can hear you because if you say "Do you want some gummies?" He's right there with his hands out. But, if you say "Finish eating your dinner." All you get is an endless string of what's and why's. At least he grew out of the painting the walls with poop stage. Progress! Aside from the what's and why's, he's terribly cute. Only three, and he's already an enormous flirt. It's so funny to watch. We were in Vegas last week, and he was flirting with all the showgirls. Most of his little friends are girls, and in the park while the other kids are playing, he's chatting up the other park Mommies. Sigh, my son is going to be after older women all his life I think. We've got a pretty good storm going on right now. Thunder, lighting, and pea sized hail. It was creepy how fast it blew in. It was sunny not that long ago. We heard the thunder before the clouds even came. At first, I wasn't sure what I was hearing, because when I looked out the window the yard was bathed in sunlight. Now it's almost pitch black and quite nasty out. You have to love that Nebraska weather. I hope we don't have any tornadoes. I've never seen one, but when my brother first moved out here, one passed pretty close to where he was staying. We aren't Oklahoma, but tornadoes do make an appearance every once in a while, and this odd weather is the sort to breed them. It seems like May is bad luck for everyone I know. My husband's mom got into a car accident yesterday with Shane in the car. I'm so glad that they weren't hurt, but it is just one more thing. Her water bed also got a hole in it and now they have to get a new one. Oh well, hopefully tomorrow will bring better things. Word count: 509 |
| If the dance with the dentist yesterday wasn't fun, then going to the ER was simply amazing. Not really. Yesterday was a craptacular kind of day. My mom came over to look at my lawn mower, which stopped working. We were headed out to the back yard when my foot rolled, causing my ankle to give a rather sickening pop. In about two minutes, I had a lump the size of a golf ball under my skin, and we had a little debate about whether or not I should go to the hospital. Mom won. Doesn't she always? Anyway, I got a bunch of x-rays done. I'm pleased to announce that my foot is not broken, just badly sprained. Now I have to wrap it in an ace bandage and wear an air splint. They tried to give me a pair of crutches, but I found out after about ten hop steps that they were not going to work for me. That sparked another argument with my mom - one I actually won. I get my stubbornness from her, so it's only fair I win once in a while. Unpleasant is the best description I have for yesterday. Today wasn't much better. I spent it hobbling up and down the stairs. Right now, I work from home and my office is in the basement. Too bad we don't have a working bathroom down there. Any time I needed to go, it involved a lot of awkward hopping. Now I get to lay back, write, and keep my abused ankle elevated for a while. That feels pretty good, but it makes it hard to keep Shane, my three year old, entertained. Every other minute he is over here wanting to poke my touch screen or show me his toys. Today is such a nice day, it would have been great to go to the park. Meh, enough of the pity party. It's too bad I don't drink. I'm sure a few glasses of wine would improve my mood. Instead, I'm amusing myself by watching the new season of Hell's Kitchen. I can't imagine anything harder than trying to cook with Ramsey standing there watching. It looks enormously stressful to me. When you watch the show, you wonder how they got on it with all the mistakes they make: undercooked chicken, raw fish, overcooked scallops. But, watching the stressful situation, I can kind of understand why the basics could get lost under the pressure of Hell's Kitchen. It is the sort of place that could make you forget your own name. I won't be able to get my yard in order for a few weeks now, and I fear for my so called lawn. The dandy lion army has taken over. When I look out my window I see wave after wave of golden fluffy heads bobbing in the summer sunshine, waiting to turn white and breed yet more dandy lions. Darn. So much to do, and too hurt to do it. Such is life. Word count: 502 |
| I didn't want to write today. Nope, just don't want to do it. But, I took this challenge, and I need to keep going with it. My whole face is throbbing as I write this, courtesy of the dentist. After two long drawn out shots of novacaine and over an hour of drilling, I just want to take a nap while the numbness wears off and the pain reasserts itself. Most of the numbness is gone and I've taken a couple Ibuprofen to help with the pain. I'm waiting for them to disperse their pain killing goodness. There are many more dentist visits in my future. I have a lot of little cavities that need to be drilled out. Did you know that cavities are caused by bacteria that can be passed from mouth to mouth? Yes, I knew it was bacteria, but I thought it was a general sort of thing. We have bacteria in our mouth, and if we feed them too much sugar, they destroy our teeth. Nope, it is a specific breed that gets in there and causes cavities. There's your random thought of the day. I find myself wanting to use the word 'just' a lot, so I've been censoring myself as I write to nix that word from my writing vocabulary. It's amazing how often it wants to sneak in there. I think I've deleted it no less than five times as I've written this. While writing this blog, I'm going to work on my conversational style. That's an important part of direct response marketing, which is what I want to get into with copywriting. Direct response is a form of advertising that requires immediate action from the prospect. So, when you get a letter in the mail for a credit card and it asks you to fill out the form and send it back - that is direct response. One of the reasons copywriters in this area make so much is that their efforts can be easy measured, as well as the affect their campaign has on the product. Every reply is counted, so it is easy to see how well it worked. When writing direct response, you want to use a conversational tone. You don't want to sell to the prospect, instead you want to take them out for a walk in the sunshine while you tell them all about a new product you tried and loved. You want to share with them why the product would be perfect for them, but you want to do it like you would with a dear friend or loved one. So, while I write this, I'm imagining you. We are just two friends chatting over a cup of coffee and a shared piece of double delight chocolate cheese cake. I'll tell you about all the wonderful things I'm learning about being a copywriter, and someday, I will tell you about the success I've found in my chosen path. I want to thank you for reading, and for listening as I bounce around like an excited puppy, sore mouth, or no. Word Count: 515 |
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