Recovery-how long does it take?

In the beginning...I unpacked in the first hotel room getting ready to compete for Mrs. International. Little did I know how much energy it would take to get through the week!

We had early mornings and some late nights. Lots of rehearsing a dance number and meeting new people. We had personal appearances, interviews and a constant sense of stretching. I had a wonderful week in Chicago even though, no, I didn't win.


Behind the scenes: my feet hurt like crazy! Living on someone else's schedule is hard. I had to switch rooms mid-week when my hubby came. Learning new things outside of my experience kept me in constant fascination but also in constant awareness. That in itself draws on energy supplies.

Back at home, I thought it would take a day or two to reacclimatize to my regular schedule. Oh was I wrong!

Although playing with my grandson brought my head and heart right back to reality and how much my family means to me! His smile is so sunny, his joy chasing my exercise ball and just hugging him infuses me with energy.

Today, almost a week later, I'm feeling a bit more back to normal. I started thinking about why it took almost as long to recover as it did to compete. It was the lack of private recovery time. I'm a huge people-person. But one thing I do back at home is take private time to recharge. So home is a very quiet, peaceful place.

Ah, the energy. One week of constant, non-stop "up" energy. It's totally me, no problem, to visit and enjoy all the people I love meeting. The normal daily life allows time away, time to think, time to sleep! But it also allows down time away from people. No matter how much we love others, we still need our time to refuel and refresh. One week of solid drawing on those reserves depletes them completely. Not because it isn't fun or exciting, but because anytime you deal in non-stop people-it takes a different kind of mental energy.

When you are feeling drained, I'd like to suggest getting away by yourself and refilling your energy reserves with quiet, private time.

Angie
PS Please come visit www.MyGemofWisdom.com and see the jewelry that helps support the Sanctuary of Hope orphan homes in Kenya.

Battle Your Inner Pirates--And Win!

Today I sent the class introduction for Battle Your Inner Pirates and win! to the members of the American Christian Fiction Writers free online class.

ACFW offers free courses 10 of the 12 months to its members. We have about 1900 members now and many love to take advantage of this free benefit. If you are not a member, you can join by going to www.acfw.com and then after signing up, you can find the course links on the member home page to join the classes.

I'll be teaching a one week course starting tomorrow so you have time to join ACFW if you want to take it :-)

As a life coach, I help people battle their internal pirates--all those negative attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that hold you back from reaching your goals and dreams.

Our topics this week will be:
Monday - Friday instruction days. Tuesday/Thursday discussion. I teach this in 17 chapters or in life coaching at your personal pace. It's obvious we can't do it all, so we will do our best to do justice to what we can. We'll try for 3 of the topics and a quick wrap up on Saturday.

Consider this as a way to find what is blocking you, yes, but also consider it a study in characterization. If your main character were going through some of these mental/spiritual issues, how would they respond?

Be sure to make notes on a different sheet than your personal journal for your character's responses. By doing this, you allow your character to answer differently and grow or become more complicated.

As you work through those pirates that hold you back from your goals, you will be battling for a gem of wisdom. Our goal this week is to win 3 for your treasure chest!

We will deal with these battles on M-W-F:
1. Reframing-- Our Pirates: Rumination, Destructive Scripts, & Assumptions -- Awarded Gemstone: Garnet
2. Ownership vs. Empathy-- Our Pirates: Ownership-- Awarded Gemstone: Opal
3. Courage-- Our Pirates: Fear & Short term thinking -- Awarded Gemstone: Obsidian

Here's a glimpse our treasure hunt together. You may find some of these landmarks mapping the journey in our class this week. It's based on life coaching from, Insanity Rules: Gems of Wisdom, while we battle those internal pirates that hold us back from reaching our goals:

Pique Points: Thought-provoking questions to discuss.

Ponder Points: Tidbits to entice an open mind.

Personal Places: I may share a tender and true story, from the heart of a research volunteer, shared to help others.

Pirates: Those cutthroat negative attitudes, situations and feelings that get in the way of healthy living and healthy writing presented through fictional allegory. In this one week class, we won't be able to deal with all of them, so we will give our attention to the three listed.

Putting It All Together: Tying all the loose ends together in each lesson so it’s easy to understand and easy to then put into practice.

Polishing Point: Real life options to solve real life dilemmas and suggestions on how to put them into practice.

Gems: Gems of wisdom awarded as new concepts are learned along the treasure hunt route.

Definitions: A little more perspective on some words and ideas.

Tips: Tried and true, these are little gem chips that have worked for others. AND these may very well come from you or your classmates!

Ahoy there, Matey. Welcome aboard.

If you are more interested in personal life coaching rather than the spin towards writers, you can contact me here or go to the www.MyGemofWisdom.com site for more information.

Re-con Mission

I'm composting right now. Percolating. Tilling. Whatever you want to call it. Sorting through pages (and pages and pages) of notes from four years of keeping this project in the back of my mind. Now it's finally time to write the thing, and I'm overwhelmed by all the threads I'm trying to pull together. Not to mention notebooks.

Do you have any idea how many different notebooks I have to jot down ideas in? A little one for my handbag, one for my backpack, one (or six) by the bed, one under the couch, and a journal in the car. Keep in mind most of these are half-empty, randomly jotted with . . .whatever. The notebook are populated with mental riffraff, all trying to bring down the "Establishment"through sheer disorganization. If these notebooks are any indication of what's going on inside my brain, we're all in trouble. I have to go back through them and drag in for questioning all the rebels that may have info on my current WIP. So far they have tried to confuse me with conflicting plot points, character motivations and bits of scene that have no home. (I'd love to hear your composting stories. What do you all do in the pre-writing stage?)

I'm having fun, though. I'm turning into quite the interrogator.

The surprising thing was, interspersed throughout my recalcitrant ramblings, I found these little gems gathered from people I really need to be listening to. So here it is, the point of my post:

It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, but why he does it. -A.W. Tozer

What makes one story more "finished"--more "real" and "alive"-- than another is not a matter of adjectives per sentence, it is the accuracy and relevance of whatever description you do use. -Monica Wood (Description)

The stories that astonish us, the characters that live forever in our memories--those are the result of rich imagination, perceptive observation, rigorous interrogation, and careful decision-making. When it comes to storytelling, invention is the mother of astonishment, delight and truth. -Orson Scott Card (Characters & Viewpoint)

When we see a natural style, we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man. -Blaise Pascal

...What (we remember) would turn out itself to be a remembering. The books or the music in which we though the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things--the beauty, the memory of our own past--are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. -C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory)

Feel free to share more wisdom in the comments section. I have plenty of room in my notebooks. :)