Swiped from NerdBoyfriend.

The new year is, for me, especially a time of renewal and beginnings.  Not only is it a New Year, but my birthday is on January 6th.  What better reason to reflect on the year gone by, and to set new goals for the year ahead?

Borrowed from Marilesa’s Abundance Blog:

What were your three greatest accomplishments in 2009?

What did you learn from each of these accomplishments?

What were your biggest failures or disappointments in 2009?

What did you learn from your failures and disappointments?

How did you limit yourself in 2009?

I love this list.  It’s full of gritty questions that don’t allow for evasion.  It’s a list meant for private reflection.  Do yourselves all a favor, and take time to ask yourselves the tough questions.  I know I did.

I wince when I realize how much time I wasted this past year.  I think of how much more I could have accomplished if I’d been more disciplined.  I did not write a book this year. .. . a fact that makes me sadder than I can express.  I didn’t drop those ten pounds.  I didn’t drink less.  I painted only one picture.  I didn’t write a book, a failure that weighs so heavily it bears repeating.

These things are true.  But negativity isn’t much my thing.

I, did, however, make some great strides.  My home is more organized than it was last year.  My son won the Silver Presidential Academic Achievement Award and made Distinguished Honors on an all honors course load, which I list on my accomplishment list because of the many hours of effort I put into helping him with his schoolwork.  I am not heavier than I was last year – if not losing is a failure, not gaining must be a win!  I started a full-time job, which has been an enormous adjustment, and I’m doing well.  Our debt is smaller.  Our savings account is larger.  We took a family vacation.  My anniversary weekend was spectacular.

Savor the last year of your life by thinking of the things that made it awesome:  kids on the beach, watching my family boogie board.  Laughing, candlelight by the pond, the pond(!), fish, and waterfalls.  My boys building stone walls.  Okay, fine – the damned dog.  Snow.  My thoughtful German.  My beautiful boy.  Whiskey, sex, and books (not in that order - but most definitely the trifecta of awesome).  A new tiara!  Great friends, family, and most especially when the two become one.  Bubble baths.  Facials.  Musikfest, Oktoberfest, the Celtic Spring Fling.  Coffee.  Health.  Asian burgers.  STEALING MIDNIGHT’s release, incredible reviews, and awards.  The Philadelphia Writers’ conference – meeting old friends, making new ones, hanging with the poets.  Joy.  Teaching (I never knew I could; I never expected to love it).  Writing (while I didn’t write a novel, I did begin one, and that is the hardest part).  Sitting my easel by the pond, painting in the sunshine.  Love – sharing it, receiving it, giving it freely.

My goal for the next year is to invite as much joy and abundance into my life as possible, and to give as much as I receive.  I have one last year to enjoy my thirties, and I’m going to rock out the last year in style.

Feel free to drop your own suggestions, goals, and gratitude list in the comment box.  Let’s inspire each other.

We just got the Wii Fit Plus – it’s super fun!  Highly recommended.

I got nominated again!  STEALING MIDNIGHT was nominated for Best Historical Mystery/Gothic of ‘09!

Huzzah!

I’m doing my happy dance, which looks a bit like this:

I love to be alone.  It seems an odd thing, really, when all the world around me seems to be “getting out” or “meeting up.”  Everyone wants a connection, it seems. 

All I want is to be cut off, disconnected, and left completely alone. 

I dream of long days with no noise, no distractions, no voices.  I crave the distinctive pleasure of solitude and the lack of responsibility and accountability it brings.  I want to paint, to draw, crochet, read, and write.  Alone.  I want to think and be.  To run on the treadmill.  To stare at the pond while drinking tea.

It’s the gift I never ask for.   The demand I rarely make.

Yet, yesterday, it was the reason I lost my temper.  Because I can’t get five minutes of peace and solitude.

My little, private stone cottage is waiting for me….

  This cottage needs improving.  I’d put on a stout door, and the windows would be stained glass.  Inside, of course, there’d be hanging lanterns and wall sconces.  It’d be a cathedral built for one, the worship pure and in the form of one quiet voice and the tapping of keys.   It would also have a moat.  Definitely a moat.

Don’t come looking for me.  I don’t want to be disturbed.

Just lost my temper.  I hate that.

There is snow all around, the sky is blue, and the air feels thin and dry. 

My birthday is in four weeks.  I will be 39, and I am beginning to see the faint lines that hint of the face I will have in the future.  It is the face of my aunts, and it makes me smile.  They are beautiful, and while I don’t welcome those lines, I don’t fear them, either.

My German sings while he putters around the house.  He’s currently vacuuming.  I find nothing wrong with this.

I pine away for a writer’s cottage.   If you’re of like mind, visit www.shedworking.co.uk.  Those Brits know what is awesome. 

   This is pretty much my dream shed.  Neil Gaiman has one, too, and his is also quite nice.  Behold:

   (Neil Gaiman…..le heave, le pant, le sigh)

Two weeks ago, I discovered what Boursin cheese will do for potato soup.  Caution: this combination will affect the fit of your trousers.

I fantasize about my editor phoning to offer me another book deal.  I know precisely how the conversation will go.  Audrey, on the slim shot you’re reading this, let me know if you want me to send you the script of our upcoming negotiations.  Don’t worry – your talking part isn’t all that long.  You offer and I say yes.  Simple, really.

If insomnia were an Olympic event, I would have stuck the landing last night.

I have decided I need a tiara.  This is the one I have selected.  Thoughts?

To all the lovely people visiting my blog, hello and welcome.

If you’d like to contact me, the best way is either through comments or directly at tracymacnish@gmail.com.  Thanks for stopping by. 

I’d like to offer a special thanks to all of you who have read STEALING MIDNIGHT, as well as an apology to everyone who’s tried to find me on the Internet and only managed to find this sad, little blog.  I’m afraid I’m not all that good at keeping up with Internet ventures.  I will attempt to do better.

Best regards,

Tracy

I am turning one.

So I’ve been working on my mindset (what with it being a good servant but a terrible master) about exercise, fitness, and my body.  And through my research and much Deep Thinking I have come to several conclusions:

• Good habits are easier to start than bad ones are to break, and since I’ve been unsuccessful at breaking my One Bad Habit, I’m going to reach for the former and hope that it, by extension, will help with the latter. 
• It’s easier to stick to a routine of exercise if you write down your progress.  Here’s the tracker I’m using.
• Doing what I can do is better than doing nothing.  This should be self-evident, but as a perfectionist, I am loathe to reach for “good enough.”  I have finally (!) come to grips with this fact.  It’s only taken 38 years, 7 months, and 4 days.
• One MUST prepare oneself mentally for the journey before one begins.  By that, I mean: Get a plan.  Figure out how you’ll do it, when you’ll do it, and what you’ll do.  Decide how you’ll overcome your obstacles before they arise.
• Don’t push.  If it hurts later you’ll be put off.  Start slowly for once.  Ease into the journey.  Praise the effort. 

Also?  The most important, hugest thing that I learned?  Dear Friends, I will tell you now:

• I like my body, just as it is.  

I’m just not going to pick at myself anymore.  First of all, I don’t need that negative voice in my head.  And second of all, that negative voice never knew what it was talking about. 

That, for me, has been the very best part of growing up.

***

Anyone’s who’s regularly read my blog knows that I strive each day to reflect on a few things I’m grateful for.  I cannot encourage everyone to do this enough.  Only by focusing on our blessings do we truly enjoy life.  I think daily of George Bernard Shaw’s “splendid torch.”  Carry your own, my friends, and let it “burn as brightly as possible.”  But in doing so, you must remember to look at the torch, to notice its fire. 

So by way of example, I thought I’d include bits of my own gratitude list here in the hopes it might inspire someone to keep their own.  Your list needn’t be anything too long or too specific, nor should you chastise yourself for not including things you feel you SHOULD be grateful for.  Of course we’re all grateful for our lives, our health if we have it, our family, our home, etc.  This is more of a way of observing the large and the small things that make your life whole, special, and ordinary.

Today’s Gratitude List:

• Self-acceptance, hard won – and the determination to keep it
• My pond
• My son’s freckles – the only other one in our family to have them besides me and my father
• The smell of the German’s skin, his hands on my body, his lips on my neck
• My camera, there to catch the moments
• Caprese salad and homemade bruschetta, candles by the pond, the waterfalls, the soft summer night air, good music, good company
• Having a home large enough to welcome my brother when his life fell apart

Srsly.  Dudes.  You like me.  You REALLY like me.

And I couldn’t feel more humbled by that.  You have no idea.

So where’ve I been, you might be wondering?  Well.  Baby Tracy got a job.  Like, a real one, with bennies and a paycheck and everything.  I mean, don’t get me wrong.  Writing books is fun, see.  And I love it a lot.  (When I say I love it a lot, what I mean is that I have an aching in my heart where my full-time writing gig used to live and it’s a soul-sucking, soul-crushing suck-fest each morning when I arise and realize that it’s over.)  But writing books is (I’m whispering here – this is a secret) not very profitable.

But don’t tell anyone, k?  ‘Cause Publishers don’t like writers to know that.  They want us to think that if we work really, really hard and write a really good book (ones that get nominated for awards like RT’s Best British Isles Set Romance of 2008) and spend part of our advance on things like promotion and websites and web ads, we have a chance at success.  They want us to think that, because it makes them happy when we’re working like busy little bees.  What they DON’T want us to know is that they will slash our print runs by less than half of half, thereby eliminating ANY chance of success.  They don’t want us to know this because what’s going on in NYC is Very Important Publishing Business, and writers are far too silly to understand how those things work. 

Don’t get the impression that I’m disillusioned about how the gig operates.  Because why would I be?  It’s not as if a publisher contacted me, offered me a book deal, let me spend an entire year pulling my hair out whilst agonizing over every bloody word, and then pulled the flim-flam of a print run without disclosing that their terms had changed. 

And you know what the worst part of all of it is?  It’s that if this hypothetical scenerio were to play out, it’d be unprofessional for me to speak about it.

I, my friends, am a consummate professional.  So I’m working the day gig, yeah, but I’m still busy beeing it in the Word Factory (though production is sadly down), because while writing books is a bit like shoveling elephant shit in the circus, it’s near impossible to quit Show Business.

So what else is new with me, you might all be wondering?  Well – life’s pretty good.  My Gratitude List is long, rife with frogs in the pond:

An incredible husband who is made entirely of Awesome:

And a kid who I adore (and who also won the silver Presidential Academic Achievement Award):

And over all, job and everything considered, I am a very happy, very grateful Baby Tracy:

Oh, and guess what else?  One of my short stories is being published in a literary journal.  I’ll post more about that when I know more details.  And also?  My latest novel, STEALING MIDNIGHT, will be on sale (all three copies) in October. 

I’m back.  Thanks for still checking in on me.