New Year's resolution: Update my blog regularly!
January 11, 2008
Tick, tick, tick. The clock on the wall was a merry metronome, snapping off seconds with a flippant attitude and a bit of a bounce in the second hand’s steady movement. Tick, tick, tick, to the next second, the next minute, the next hour. It was distracting, that incessantly cheerful forward march.
I have nothing against the passage of time. Without it, things would be a bit static, to say the least. But on Dec. 31, as I began this update to my neglected blog, I couldn’t tune those tick, tick, ticks out. It was more than a half-hour to midnight, but I couldn’t stop myself from checking the time, every few minutes.
I didn’t want to miss that magic second when the hands of the clock met at midnight and the ball dropped. I wanted to be beside my sweetie, with my arms around neck, puckered and prepared to wish and be wished a “Happy New Year.”
I’m happy to say that all was as it should have been, as I spent the last few minutes of the old year and the first few minutes of the next wrapped in his arms and filled with a kind of happiness...
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Posted at: 05:49 AM | Permalink
July 30, 2007
August 4, 2007
Boy, it looks like this blog is going to more of a monthly thing than a weekly thing. My daughter likes to give me a hard time over my neglect of this duty, and she should. Someone taught her that if you say you’re going to do something, you do it. I don’t know who that was, but she should be taken out back and whipped.
Ouch!
Since I have also neglected my daily journal – a pretty little blank book I bought for that purpose – I can’t really recount many details of the last month. But I do know what has dominated my thoughts and has been the centerpiece of most of my conversations with my husband, David.
It was just a little more than a month ago when we got the news that my husband, David, would be laid off from his job of 22 years.
He was called into a room with his boss and a couple of people from the “human resources department” of the newspaper he works for and told that a new piece of equipment would be replacing him in about three months.
“As of Oct. 1, your employment here...
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Posted at: 08:11 PM | Permalink
July 3, 2007
July 3, 2007
It’s been awhile since I blogged. I just read my last one, full of determination to make a difference in my unbalanced life, looking forward to a whole week off, a vacation from the job that consumes so much of my life.
It’s been a whole month, hasn’t it? Wow, how time flies when you’re … How much fun has the last month really been? And how much has my schedule changed? Not much, on either count.
Yes, I am still working too much. Since I’m a small business owner, work demands attention. If I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. And if I don’t do it right, there’s no one around to fix it. So, I’m meticulous about details.
As soon as one issue is done, I sort through what’s left and make a list all of my to-do’s for the upcoming issue. Then I list all of my to-do’s that don’t have anything to do with Heartland Women, my personal to-do’s (usually a much shorter, less detailed list). Then I make a list of the to-do’s that must be done the next day, in both categories (with little exclamation points by the ones that have to be...
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Posted at: 01:44 PM | Permalink
Chanda's blog
June 3, 2007
You know what they say, “Be careful what you wish for.” In last week’s column I admitted that my life was out of balance – way too much work and not enough time doing anything else – and started a blog on our Web site, heartlandwomen.com, to document my efforts to take better care of myself. Then I published – in the aforementioned blog – my method of achieving that goal that so many of us chase after, living a more balanced life.
I call it the Genius system. It’s a way to divide the activities of my life into categories, to better judge if I am spending too much time in one area and neglecting another. Those divisions are: body, soul, heart (family and friends), hearth (housework), sweat (job), mind (feeding the little gray cells), spirit (exercising our God-given talents) and purse (finances).
I went on to list what I will do differently in each of these categories. I will take better care of my health. I will spend more time with my loved ones. I will take better care of my home and yard. I will delegate some of my job responsibilities and work less. I will watch...
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Posted at: 10:54 PM | Permalink
Chanda's Blog
May 21, 2007
I am a novice to blogging, but not to journaling. I have been recording my experiences, opinions and observations for more than 30 years as a journalist and columnist for several Southern Illinois newspapers.
Now, this blog is more than just a journal of my everyday activities. It’s based on my column in the May 15 issue of Heartland Women and on the front-page story. The story was about pampering ourselves as women and about living a balanced life.
So, I am going to share with you a system I devised at least a decade ago, the Genius System. It’s a way to divide the activities of our lives into divisions, to better judge if we are spending too much time in one area and neglecting another.
Those divisions are: body, soul, heart (family and friends), hearth (housework), sweat (job), mind (feeding the little gray cells), spirit (exercising our God-given talents) and purse (finances).
Right now, my life is out of balance. I spend way too much time on my job (Heartland Women) and not enough time on any other area of my life. But it’s not just this job that has taken so much of my time. I have...
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