Impatient where it doesn’t work; Patient where it will. P is for Planning: Part 1.

Happy Monday, folks! Had a good weekend? Ready to tackle this week? I’ve set up my goals and will get them done. I’ve fallen into the habit of “doing” instead of “hoping.” Hope serves its purpose when times prove dark and dreary, but when it comes to my tasks, I don’t want to say, “I hope I get them done.” Just get them done!  If you haven’t noticed already through reading my blog, I’m fired up about goal setting, planning, execution, and achievement. I woke up one day and realized that I was sick of looking for jobs, sick of tweaking my cover letter, sick of emailing and contacting employers back and forth, sick of waiting, and sick of passivity in general! I’ve only applied to positions that my family and friends suggest along the way, but I’ve plugged my effort into looking on my own. Maybe if one or two things pop up that pique my interest, I apply.  

Okay, I'm not that crazy ha ha ha.

Yes, it’s probably an idiotic move to stop searching for work. It’s only been three months since I returned from Korea. You might say I have a problem with patience. But here’s the thing, I don’t like to waste my time on things that I know make me unhappy in the long run because I already know what I want. I want to be a writer, founder of a youth organization focused on civic engagement, and a college professor. Very few of these jobs I’m applying to will lead me to closer any of these goals. Now, I’m not a generalist. Several of these potential jobs to offer valuable experience to be gained, I admit. I could just go back to school, but I want to establish myself as a writer first because when I’m in school, I’m in school. I’ve yet to adjust everything else to school life. So before I disappear from the face of the planet pursuing a PhD in Sociology and Education, I want to first try being a full time writer. School is great, but life outside the ivory walls teaches lessons of equal value, if not sometimes of higher value.

I do have the luxury of living with parents who support me financially despite their gross disappointments in my job search. Right now the desire to find my own space motivates my sporadic efforts to find a job. I’m thinking I’ll either go abroad again or find employment in a school that offers me room and board, which covers all the basics I need to write: a fully functioning apartment with paid utilities, two meals a day, and my MacBook. Seriously, that’s all I need to make it as a writer, along with all my books for reading and honing my craft. Of course, it helps to have some cash, and I am willing to perform what’s necessary to cover other bills and hang out with my friends. I don’t even need a television. Thanks to the Internet I catch up on my favorite shows (about 4) on the weekends, so my weekdays are TV free except Thursday nights when Scandal is on because that show is freaking awesome! Aside from that one night, I highly recommend to stop watching television. It seriously is a waste of time that could spent doing something your really enjoy and worthwhile to you long term. Television is addicting, saps your energy, and makes your brain dull, but you knew that already. However, I digress.

Or else...

Touché, Raptor. Touché 

Let’s take a look at what I’ve come up with the P portion of ESPER. Planning. Now, last week I couldn’t jump on it because this process requires more work than the past two so I’m breaking this entry into parts so I don’t lose your attention with some big long post on planning. I don’t delve entirely into the planning process, so if you want the whole story, go here. Okay, let’s start!

1.)  Develop Your plan right down to specifics. Guiding questions:

a.     What is the full list of tasks to undertake?

                                      i.     Writing 1600-2000 words/day

                                     ii.     Editing one scene/day

                                   iii.     Blogging M-Th

                                   iv.     Staying in touch with other blogs (20-25/day)

                                     v.     50 tweets/day on my writer twitter account

                                   vi.     Honing my craft- research on improving my writing, book, marketing, traditional and non-traditional avenues for publishing

                                  vii.     Reviewing grammar and writing tools

2.)  Fit Your Plan into Your Schedule. Guiding questions:

a.     What is the best time to work on your goal’s tasks?

                                      i.     Early morning to the afternoon is when I most alert to work. I tend to get sleepy toward the evenings around 7pm when my productivity is cut in half. So it’s best that I work in the mornings, which means waking up early: the bane of everyone’s existence, but in my case it must be done if I make a habit out of it.

b.    How are you spending your time everyday? I want to wake up every morning and ask this question, except it’ll go like this: How will I spend my time today? If I’m serious about completing the activities I mentioned above to achieve my goal then I need to create a pretty good calendar that is specific! Specificity is key here because general comments such as “Get this done today” aren’t going to work or last long before I fall off the truck and start back at zero. I have to instead focus on “Conduct research on successful plotting: 00:00-00:00” and so forth.

And that’s all folks for today. Tune in tomorrow for the rest. :)

Thanks for reading,

CSS 

Saying Yes is Fun! Or is it? P is for Planning.

Everyone has a word or phrase that slips out of his or her mouth easily whether it’s a curse word or an expression. Mine is, “Yes, (insert affirmative tag here)!” No one jumps at the chance to admit they have a problem or bad habit, especially when it’s something as embarrassing as saying yes to almost every favor, request, or invite. Hello, my name is CSS and I say yes to almost everything. 

But it feels goooood to say YES!

 

But why?

This may sound weird or maybe even disturbing, but I get a high saying yes to people; I become the good guy, the hero, and the fulfiller of dreams. It stems out of my desire to make people happy and see them smile. I draw energy from people’s smiles and laughter similar to how some people draw negative energy (and pleasure) from other people’s frowns and misfortunes. By the way, I hope I never meet a person of the latter persuasion. However, I soon end up as the bad guy, the breaker of promises, or worse, someone whose actions does not live up to the sweet sweet words spoken earlier. Let me clarify: Hello, my name is CSS and I say yes to almost everything, but there’s a fifty percent chance I might later contact you in the last minute to recant my yes and put in place a big disappointing no. Sigh. See what I mean? 

I said... Ah, forget it! -__-

However, no despair! There is a solution to every bad trait we want to rectify, and in my case I want to properly assess a favor, request, or invite and respond honestly instead of jumping at saying yes—all in the time frame of several seconds. I go into a mini-panic mode when I can’t respond to questions quickly because I’m a thinker. I believe it’s rude to leave this wide gap in the middle of a conversation, so that’s a second problem added to the mix.

First of all, I need stop this habit of drawing energy from people and redirect it to drawing energy from my own happiness, my own smile, and myself. It doesn’t mean I feel nothing or uninspired when goodness befalls people. It’s more about relationship dynamics where I don’t depend on pleasing others and making them feel good at the moment to make myself feel good. I should be confident enough to provide an answer based on reality in terms of what I can give and am willing to give. ALSO, commitments are important. When you break them, it sends people the message you don’t care about or value them, and that’s not the case at all. It’s like promising to give five little kids rock candy right away when you have only three Jolly Ranchers in your possession. You'll have two sour kids in your hand. Plan accordingly.

And that brings me to the P of ESPER. P is for planning. Now, I know I was supposed to share my writing process with the planning component, but I’m still working on this phase and won’t have anything to share until Monday.

Oh snap, I did it again!

Promise. Monday.

What? This face pays the bills.

Thanks for reading, ::-)

CSS

Underemployment Sucks! So Make Your Own Path: E is for Establish.

Happy Tuesday, folks!

Nearly three months have passed since I returned home from Seoul, South Korea. I left behind a city that I would always remember for its gorgeous mountains; insane amount of coffee shops (one every single block—I kid you not); never ending talking saleswomen wearing oversized white knee socks and mini-skirts as they stood in front of beauty boutiques that blasted K-Pop music to passing pedestrians; the snappy dressers, the wild dressers, and the dressers that elicited the biggest WTF from me and my fellow teachers;

Oh, just another regular day in the subway

the businesses that used random English words mixed up to create the funniest, incoherent phrases or clever ones like the love motel named She'll or the coffee shop called Exorcist Coffee. 

Whaaaaat? That's a motel named She'll.

Have some coffee brewed by your friendly neighborhood exorcist.

I even miss those pesky delivery scooters ready to run me down on the sidewalk; the old ladies that pushed me aside better than any NFL quarterback to get a seat on the train; and hell, even those taxi drivers that drove past me dozens of times at 1:30AM because I stood on the opposite direction of where I wanted to go. Ah, Korea. I miss you terribly. And of course, I miss my students most of all. The friendships I forged there will always remain in my heart, along with the adventures we took through the city and beyond. 

No matter where we are, we'll always be friends.

And who can forget those Saturday nights in the singing room, Noraebanging our hearts out (Karaoke in Korean—yes, I made it a verb)? This is only a snapshot of how I lived in Korea, but I hope it gave you a little sense of what I experienced. 

Back in America: Don't go away just yet, Fall! D:

NOW, I am back here in the ‘burbs, settled and readjusted to American life. (Was there always this many obese people here? We need to do something, country.) I’ve applied to more jobs than I care to count and tweaked cover letters to the point of ad nauseam. The results are a couple of part-time teaching gigs which I’m grateful for because money is money, and that's a whole lot better than a long day at home, being broke with nowhere to go. 

However, I see farther than the life I have now to a place where I have control over my career and achieve the goals and dreams harassing my mind. And this is where the E in ESPER comes in. Remember, ESPER is the goal setting/achieving model from the website Personal Excellence by Celestine Chua that I’m using to finish the edits and rewrites of COT and get it published through the difficult, hyper-competitive traditional publishing route. I’m not crazy; I have back-up plans A, B, C, and so on.

The E in ESPER stands for establishing your goal. 10 components make up this section but I’ll share five. You can find all them here:

1. Is your goal defined in the context of your life purpose?

I believe one of the key purposes in my life is to connect with as many people as possible to share joy, happiness, love, and care. I see writing as one of the ways I can carry out this purpose because it allows me to communicate with a wide audience. I hope that my books can not only entertain, but also inspire and bring joy and happiness to readers, and hell maybe even change the world for the better. No reason not to add that in the mix.

2. Ensure that your goal is a key goal with an 80/20 destination: part of the 20% of goals that will give you 80% happiness.

Hellz yes! I’d be very happy to be a published author. Not much to elaborate on here.

3. Plan for BHAG: Big Hairy Audacious Goals   

Nobel Prize in Literature. If you don’t go all the way, why go at all?

4. Start with Long Term, then break down into short term:

             

90,000 words in 2 months

45,000 words in 1 month

11, 250 words in 1 week

1,600 words in 1 day             

5. Use positive framing:

I will write a novel I love that is ready to publish. I believe I will finish a novel I love that is ready to publish. Forget my under-employment, pressure from parents to get a real job or go back to school, external environment, pressures from society, and from my own limitation, impatience, and delusions on the lack of ability or talent or whatever that negative voice in my head thinks up to put me down. Purge the negatives. Time will take care of itself. You take care of yourself and your goals. You are not wasting your life because this is your goal, your big effing dream. Life is rich and full of opportunities that you have to create. Continue to grow and take control over your life.

And, that is where I am now. And it feels good. 

YIPEEEEE!

Thanks for reading. :-)

CSS