March Math Madness

I am so proud of myself for working on my math almost everyday this month, with a little time off for my spring equinox trip. I am actually enjoying the challenge of learning math from the ground up. I am a real beginner and I am going to continue learning math because my goal is to be a renaissance woman and in order to earn that title, I have to learn to do a lot things reasonably well. So as it stands, in the evening my honey and I now read together, do spanish lessons, guitar lessons, music theory. My husband is sketching on a regular basis but I have yet to really get into my art, I will need to make that a priority real soon, maybe I will have to make it a challenge in order to get something going. Be back tomorrow with a new challenge for April!!

Google Changes

Just in case I log out tonight and cannot get back on tomorrow due to some ridiculous intrusive change that Google has come up with, you can find me on Facebook for now. I hope that will not be the case but if it happens, the blog will exist in the blogosphere without me at the helm!! I hope to be here tomorrow!!

March Math Madness Challenge

Well March Madness is finally here for me!! My challenge this month will be to begin to learn math. In school, I was always frightened by math. When I first entered college as a journalism major, one of my professors said, "I bet all of you suck at math!" He joked that we had all ended up as writers because we could not do math and for the most part, at least in that class, he was right, as we all nervously laughed at his observation. I have been putting this challenge off for a while but now is the time. I will use a video called "The Math Video Tutor, Fractions Thru Algebra, 10 Hour Video Course," which I purchased from amazon a few years ago. I plan to work for thirty minutes a day, because frankly, that is all I can handle right now. So for the month of March, let the madness begin!!!

February Challenge-Just Say No To Netflix

Even though February is the shortest month, for me, it was a very long enjoyable month due to the fact that I turned off the movies. I got so much reading done this month and I also had time to do my morning pages/journal writing. One thing that I did not achieve was limiting my computer time to two hours a day. I tried not to go over but,as the month drew to a close, I seemed to be spending more time on surfing the web. Stopping the noise from the box gave my thoughts a chance to be heard loud and clear without competing against the series, "The Event," for my undivided attention. If I lived alone, I would probably leave it off but my husband would like to check out a hockey game here and there or watch a movie on friday nights so, the noise and distraction will be returning to our lives on March 3rd(making it 31 days)but, with limitations. We will keep the house movie free from Sunday evening to Friday day and that way, I can continue to read all of my back logged books, and by the way, I am loving my Kindle.

February Challenge-Just Say No To Netflix

This is one of the places I sit to do my morning pages and as of Feb. 1st, it is so on!! I really fell off last year when it comes to my morning pages and as a result, my blogging fell off because if I don't "prime the pump" as Ms. Cameron says, my mind is too full of sludge and it is hard to get to the good stuff when it comes to writing. I gave up watching the idiot box a few months ago and this time I hope it is for good. When we stopped watching tv, we replaced it with streaming movies through netflix. Well, all of our time was being eaten up by watching movies and series so, our studies suffered. So, for the next month, we have given up netflix. The home entertainment system is shutdown and oh what a difference the last three days have been. We are finding that there actually are enough hours in the day to do the things that we want to do, we just needed to get rid of all of the distractions. I am reading like crazy, our studies are going well, guitar and spanish and we hope to get back to our art now that we have time. I am also limiting the time spent on sites like facebook and tumblr because they also consume large amounts of time. I have stacks of books to get to and hey who knows, I might even get back to sewing.

January 2012- Back To My Lessons Challenge

January, my birthday month, has been wonderful!! I managed to get myself back on track as far as my lessons are concerned, I am studying again. Now that I am back on my path, I plan to really push myself this year so that I can make some real gains. Before I go to bed this evening, I will meditate and I will have achieved my biggest challenge this year which was to meditate everyday for one year and, I did it. I am so proud of me and my body mind spirit, thanks me. I was able to save myself through daily meditation, because prior to starting this challenge last February 1st, my mind was so fractured and I was sure that something was terribly wrong. But, after just a week of meditating, after not doing it for years, I felt the brain fog lifting. It was then that I decided to challenge myself to doing this for a year but now I know that I will continue this practice for as long as I can. So all in all, January has been a very fruitful month and I am still celebrating my birthday for at least a couple of more months!!

January 2012- Back To My Lessons Challenge

Since 2005 my honey and I have tortured our children with our annual christmas performance. This performance is part of a larger program that we started called Annu University. We created Annu U. when our children moved out and we found that we had lots of time on our hands and we wanted to use it in an uplifting way. We didn't want to become couch potatoes, so we created our own curriculum and every night for two years we studied spanish, music, egyptology and twice a week we did art, usually painting. Gradually we slacked off and started doing the minimal, just enough not to lose everything that we learned but not enough to advance to the next level. So for the month of January(my birthday month), my husband and I are jumping back into our lessons. Today I went out and got my guitar restrung and wow, I had forgotten how good it sounds. Its full bodied sound got me so excited that I actually practiced for an hour and a half today. I am so excited to return to my studies.