Overloaded Donkey Cart OR My Life as a Donkey

The last couple of months have been “interesting.” There is an old Chinese curse that says “May you live in interesting times.” 2010 has definitely been that for me! In the last couple of months my post-concussion syndrome headaches have reasserted themselves. They haven’t been as bad as they were initially, but they’ve still been very hard to deal with. I’m on a different headache preventative Rx, but they still come and go. They just make dealing with everyday life difficult. So I decided to make a few changes in my life in order to try to relieve stress and, hopefully, prevent headaches.

1. I decided to take a break from school. I’m not quitting. I’m not even stopping working on my dissertation. I’m just taking a few months off from classes. I’m thinking that I will start back up again after the New Year. I’ve just been so tired with everything and everyone but school has made the sacrifices for me. Work has been wonderful. My family and friends have been supportive. Mark has been phenomenal! I just need to take some time to relax a bit.
2. I’ve decided to stop watching so much TV. I have already cut out the commercials by recording everything I watch on DVR first, but so much of TV is just pure drivel lately. Even the “educational” channels like Discovery, TLC, National Geographic, and Biography have turned to mush with sensational, shallow, and hollow TV shows. It’s really quite sad… Not even the SciFi (now Syfy) Channel has embraced the lowest form of SciFi for movies and gone away from its original mission and started showing “professional” wrestling and Ghost Hunters.
3. To replace all of my TV watching I’ve decided to read more. I suddenly find myself in various stages of several types of books, depending on my mood. I just finished The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (more on that later…). I’m also reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Ethics: The Heart of Leadership, Socialnomics (as an Audible.com book), and Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason (another Audible.com book). All are interesting and the topics vary pretty widely.
4. I’ve also decided to take on a mini-project called Photo365. The idea is to take one photo each day for a year and post it on the web to share. Yes, this is another social media thing. I’m going to start on September 1st and go through August 31st, 2011. Once I start uploading photos, I’ll post them on http://365project.org/ and share them here, on Twitter, and on Facebook. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it.
5. I also plan to blog more often. I’m considering starting some series on life, photography, interesting questions to ponder, the aforementioned reviews of what I’m reading, and probably some op-ed pieces too.
6. I’ve taken a break from Toastmasters. I was in two clubs and was also being encouraged to participate in leadership roles. While I enjoy the Toastmasters program and have learned a LOT about public speaking, I find that a) I want to dive in and fully participate right before b) I collapse in an exhausted heap from even thinking about diving in and participating fully. I will return to it, but I just found myself having to say “No” and feeling lousy because I really wanted to say “Yes” to everything I was asked to help with.
7. Finally, I’m going to get into an exercise regimen. I joined Curves and really enjoy the program, but all of the headaches I’ve been having, coupled with all of the pressure I’ve been under lately, have made getting there to DO the exercise quite difficult. Starting Monday, I’m getting back on that horse and will go AT LEAST 3 days each week.

Have you ever had to do anything like what I’ve done here? How did you handle it? Any advise? Please comment. I’d love to hear from you.

Shasta is the Yellow Lab...

In the last month-and-a-half my husband and I have had to deal with one figurative blow after another. It started with my incident on December 9th, continued with 3-4 weeks of a head cold while I was on short-term disability, and has come to another two points in the last week.

First our oldest dog, Shasta (4 years old), became very lethargic and was not her happy, active self.  Thursday we took her in to the veterinarian for the second time and had x-rays taken. They indicated that she had a blockage between her stomach and small intestine. She required surgery. Let me tell you, surgery for a dog is expensive!!! We had to drain our savings account and make a withdrawal from my husband’s 401k to pay that bill and meet some other challenges as well. There was no other way we could cover everything. Thankfully, Shasta is home and doing well now.

On top of this, Mark’s truck has stopped working. We don’t know why it’s not working because there is no check engine light which means the truck won’t give us a code to tell us what’s wrong. Mark is taking it to a mechanic tomorrow and we have some funds set aside to handle that crisis, but we’re not certain yet if it’s going to be enough.

The lesson we will take from this past month is to plan for contingencies quite a bit better. We were lucky to have some funds in reserve, but I think we need to become more serious about saving for both crises and for things like vacations. There are lots of places that Mark and I would like to travel to, but we have no active plan for saving for those trips.

The frustration we are feeling right now would probably be less if we were saving more – a retirement fund (which we both already have) along with a separate contingency fund account (which we sort of have) and another vacation fund account (which we don’t have at all). Now we just have to figure out how to get ALL that set up and how to afford it along with our other obligations. Time for some long-term thinking… Do you have any suggestions?

Image Credit: The “Budget Pie” image was retrieved on January 25, 2010 from Village Park using Google Images.

Each level of academia (AA/AS, BA/BS, MA/MS, Ph.D/Practical Doctorate) exposes the students to different ideas, levels of thinking, and an array of different personalities. The higher the level of academia, the more reading that is required. Not just reading on one particular topic, but on a great number of subjects that help take your current thinking and turn it on its head. Then, once the reading is done, the students and professors come together to discuss the topics involved and that turns your thinking in a whole new direction.

I leave each class at the end of eight tumultuous weeks a better person than I entered the class. I have a whole new perspective of the class topic, the organization I work for, current events, and have a better idea of how I want to conduct my research for my dissertation project. The whole idea behind getting a higher degree is to help make the world a better place and solving problems that affect life, business, and society.

Writing a dissertation is a Sisyphean Task.

My parents, brother, sister, aunt and uncle, another uncle, and several friends are all entrepreneurs. None of them have any degrees higher than an associate’s degree. I have great respect for what they do and the knowledge they have accumulated through their experiences. However, each of them has expressed gratitude for my expertise and academic experience. That doesn’t make me better than they are. Nor does it make them better than me. We just have different experiences, knowledge, and expertise.

If you know someone that is working to pursue a higher academic degree, please be supportive of their efforts even if you don’t understand what they or doing or why. The higher the degree, the higher the level of commitment. The higher the degree, the deeper the level of thinking, understanding, and work is being put into solving a problem. It doesn’t matter what the problem is. Someone has taken it on because it matters to them. Don’t belittle their efforts or the hoops they have to jump through or the time it takes them to finish. Be supportive of someone pursuing a degree just like you would be of someone starting a new business. Both types of efforts are important. Just in different ways.

Comments from other sources

Twitter:

• @amy0223: @Catherine_Ford I hate having2explain either of my degrees. I have an mm/hrm &a BM in vocal performance. They hardly go together. & TBC.
• @amy0223: @Catherine_Ford Trying2explain why I chose one or the other&convincing an employer that a music degree is just as demanding as an academic 1
• @amy0223: @Catherine_Ford Not sure if I’ll ever get2use my masters which is irritating but I achieved my goal of getting my degree.Most don’t get it.

A little later in the day I read a blog post by one of my favorite Twitter buddies, @CouchSurfingOri, who listed out his goals (- NOT resolutions) for the year and what he was going to do to achieve those goals. Between the quote this morning and Ori’s blog post, I was inspired to set down my 2010 goals here in my blog and start working to achieve them. So, here goes… (by the way, these are in no particular order)

Toastmasters:

• I plan to earn my Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB). Earning the ACB entails giving a total of ten speeches from two Advanced Communicator Manuals (five from each manual). I have ordered and received two manuals already. The first is the Public Relations manual and the second is Communicating On Television. I chose the Public Relations manual because I am the Vice President of Public Relations for both of my clubs and because being able to get the message out about anything is of key importance to my plans for the future. I chose Communicating on Television because I would like to turn my podcast into a video podcast in 2011 (if not before) and don’t want to look like a fool when I do so.
• I plan to earn my Advanced Leader Bronze (ALB). To earn this award I will need to conduct two programs from the Successful Club Series or the Leadership Excellence Series. I ordered two books from the Successful Club Series: Finding New Members for Your Club and The Toastmasters Educational Program. I decided on these two because both of my clubs are having membership issues. I thought these might be the best two for helping to recruit more members.

School

• Complete my dissertation proposal. I have two classes scheduled with my dissertation mentor to do just this. I plan to submit my proposal in the Fall and start working on the project in January once the proposal has been approved. My mentor assures me that this is a reasonable timeline that  will not cause me undue stress. I told my mentor that I wanted to get through the dissertation process with my health, my sanity, and my marriage intact. My husband says he agrees and approves of the priority listing.

Work

• Teach 12 Video Webinars this year. I enjoy doing webinars for my coworkers on new or better ways to use Microsoft SharePoint 2007 to create and maintain our corporate intranet. To achieve this goal I will:
  • Schedule dedicated time to work on and prepare these webinars
  • Conduct a survey of my customers to find out what topics they most want to have covered
  • Advertise these webinars in advance of each one so that we get good attendance at each one.
• Start an educational blog. I plan to post weekly articles that will answer questions and give tips and tricks to help our site administrators maintain their sites in an efficient and effective manner. To achieve this goal I will:
  • Schedule time to research & write articles each week
  • Survey my site administrators to find out what questions they have so that I can write articles that address these issues
  • Advertise each posting with our site administrators so that they are aware of this new resource

Life

• Meeting health-related challenges. I have had some recent medical challenges that need to be met and overcome. This includes issues with my blood sugar levels dropping dangerously low due largely to a poor diet following gastric bypass surgery. To meet this goal I will:
  • Consult with an endocrinologist to try to regulate my insulin secretions
  • Consult with a nutritionist to start eating healthier food and developing better eating habits
  • Schedule time to exercise regularly
• Spending quality time with my husband and dogs. I need to make sure that I am spending quality time on my relationships and the most important relationships I have right now are with my husband and dogs. They all rely on me for love and nurturing and I need to make sure they are taken care of. To achieve this goal I will:
  • Schedule a date night with my husband so we can have some quality time alone together doing fun, relaxing, or adventurous activities
  • Spend time playing with my dogs every day and when possible, take them with me when I exercise.
• Turn StudentTech into a weekly audio podcast. Last year I did three episodes of this podcast but did not lay out a schedule of time or topics for further episodes. To achieve this goal I will:
  • Set up a list of topics to cover each week using Google Wave
  • Schedule time to write and record a podcast each week
  • Try to find people who want to be guests on podcasts in order to change things up a bit

That’s all that comes to mind right now. Do you have any suggestions for other goals I could add to the list? How about ideas for methods to achieve the goals I listed above? Please comment or connect with me on Twitter.

Image Credits:

The Goals poster was found on Drop and Give Me 20 … Pages! using Google Images.

The Chapter One image was found on A Plethora of Positive Energy using Google Images.

The Healthy Food photo was found on Mom-Going-Organic-Sensibly.com using Google Images.