A Change of Plans

I haven't really been following my "90-day plan" very well; I've been doing a lot of reading, self-help stuff to try and ensure that I don't do the same stupid things again in the future. I actually did go pull some weeds Saturday morning, but that's not much considering all that needs to be done. I'm not doing very well with the "housy" tasks.

I have, however, been very good about getting out of the house. Wednesday I went to Panera's for a pizza-like thing, and did some writing while I was there, and the rest of the week (Thursday through today, Sunday) I've taken Pancho and Timmy to the dog park. Ok, so it wasn't much of a variety. But simply getting out of the house regularly is a positive step, and keeps me from getting too down in the dumps. How can I be miserable while I'm watching so many dogs have a great time? There seems to be a core group of friendly "regulars," so there is an opportunity to meet some new people. I take a book with me, but have trouble reading, because I watch the dogs as if they were my children (imagine that), and I'm afraid the minute I take my eyes off them, one of them will take a dump. For the uninitiated, not picking up after your dog is the cardinal sin of the dog park.

The change of plans I referred to in the title came to me this afternoon. I thought it might be more realistic to go with a date range of June 1-August 31 (my birthday!) as a goal. Because I'm still feeling kind of poopy a lot of the time, and not very consistent in most of the areas I talked about previously, I thought that changing the dates would give me a few weeks for life as I know it to return to a more normal state. This will hopefully make me a little more motivated and more successful in achieving those goals. In the meantime, I can learn how to work the Gantt chart software I downloaded! This will make my inner geek very happy.

I've also been giving some thought to starting a writer's Meetup group in St. Pete somewhere. There are existing writer's groups in Clearwater and Tampa, but none really nearby. It's inexpensive to start, you get your money back if you can't get it going in 30 days, so it's relatively risk free. The only reason I'm balking is that starting the group would also make me its leader by default, and that kind of freaks me out. I'm not the leader type. The other thing (ok this is the second reason) is that I'd feel like a complete loser if no one showed up at all! So I'm still pondering that idea. But I think it's an idea that I'll ultimately end up trying, and if the writer's group doesn't work, maybe I'll try one for bloggers!

Comments, anyone?