Technical Writing

written: Jan 28th

My first major assignment in my Master’s degree program is due today by 10 pm. It’s the oh-so-wonderful Information Organization class – which means it’s nothing but TECHNICAL style writing. Which is a major blah for me, as I’m more of a creative writer. I want to paint pictures with my words and fluff it up to invoke emotion. All of which is a huge no-no in technical writing.

After spending most of the evening hashing this shit out with my husband, I am fairly confident in my project thus far. The husband is far more technical-writing orientated as he has to do a lot of it in his job field, so he’s proving to be a MAJOR asset for me in this class thus far. And he’s loving it because most of the time he feels like a dumb ass (his words), and here he’s being shown that he’s very intelligent and capable. Plus all this technical talk got his own mind to thinking about things that need to be fixed at his job, so it also helped him.

House hunting continues. We have bids in on two new houses. I’m just seriously hoping we get a house soon. We are starting to get down to the wire here and I would just feel better knowing that we have a semi-solid plan in place. That would alleviate so much stress for me right now. But for now, I’m trying my best to focus on what I can control, and letting the rest go.

Speaking of stress management, I’ve been continuing with my elliptical usage and surprisingly I’m loving it. By setting the goal of doing 20 minutes every other day, it takes a bit of the pressure off of me. And I’m doing it in the evening, before David gets home. It is 20 minutes for me to let everything go. It’s a rough start each time. Those first 5 minutes are horrendous – my body is rebelling and my mind is rebelling. But once I hit that 10 minute mark, everything falls away. My body remembers it can do this. And my mind hones in on one thing at a time. And if my mind gets to working itself back up, I simply focus on my breathing (meditation much?) and the movement of each leg independently.

And while I’m not seeing any change on the scale, my non-fat-jeans are looser now than they were at the beginning of the year. That’s all the motivation I need. And most of the time now, my knees do not ache after doing the 20 minutes. Starting in February, I’m going to add in some simple strength workouts. I know me, and if I add too many things all at once, I’ll become overwhelmed and stop it all. So by adding one thing and working on it until it becomes a habit before adding on something new, I think I might just be able to maintain this. Hell, I’m actually looking forward to the fact that I “get” to use the elliptical tonight – it’s my running day. ::laughs:: And that is something that I NEVER thought would ever, in a million years, come out of my mouth!

The lil Pagan group I joined in late December is turning out to be very awesome. I really like Hazel (the young lady that is hosting all of this), so if nothing else, I certainly want to maintain that friendship. And it’s nice to have a fellow Pagan around to encourage me to embrace more of my witchy self. ::grins::