Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Blue Duck's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, July 16th, 2009
7:38 am	stuck on a track Procrastinating. Depressive. Doing the minimum to get by. Hiding, distancing. Hesitant to try. Always tired. I gotta get outta this loop. (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 12th, 2009
7:21 pm	Was good for a few days. Now back to exhausted and stressed. Blah. Gotta figure out how to do this better. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, July 6th, 2009
10:13 pm	going on a trip Tomorrow I'm leaving for a women teachers of self-defense conference in Ohio. I'm hoping it will be a little bit of an adventure. It's been a stupidly frantic couple of days as I tie up loose ends. I feel like I haven't had an actual adventure for a looong time, and I'm not sure how high the potential on this is. But we'll see. Lots of junk to deal with first. :P Ein the betta has died. :( (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
7:54 am	I stepped in poo. :( I have been thinking about what I'm missing. I've come up with a few things including fun, and music, and challenging myself in satisfying ways. Maybe a little bit having to do with True Belief, which has sort of died a slow gangrenous death in me over the last few rough years. I used to be starry-eyed about things that just make me feel bitter now, and that huuuuuurrrrts and kinda sucks the magic out of everything. Maybe that's a better way to state it. Stuff is missing its magic. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
7:31 pm	I have been feeling a lack lately that I can't explain. I've had more than adequate supply of sleep, down time, food, water, living space - all the necessities. But somehow I keep ending up feeling like I'm desperately short on something that I'm less functional and happy with too little of. I wish I knew what it was I needed. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
9:47 pm	hah I had a consultation today with a lady who was very obviously taking my measure before deciding to use my services. She decided to go with a first workout right away, and then decided to schedule regular workouts because she'd wanted to 'figure out if I knew what I was doing first' and apparently decided I did. Score one for me. :) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
11:06 am	Overwhelmed Crap. What? No. I don't know wtf I'm doing. Panic, panic, panic. 0_o 1) Two consults this week, one next week. One with a dood who's himself a water personal trainer and has been working with his own regular trainer for 14 years but wants to get some outside perspective to liven up his workouts. He loves my website and wants to trade marketing ideas too. eep! 2) I'm actually starting to feel a little overwhelmed on number of clients. Which is probably less a function of hours and more a function of number of people. I have more half-hours and once-per-week people now, so it's more to keep track of. 3) I've just started to inquire with EMU about a 2nd bachelor's in Exercise Science (maybe with a minor or double major in Dietetics).... this would be awesome for increasing my knowledge base and experience, but would be harder than my first bachelor's (English, which comes to me like breathing) and I'd have to figure out how to finance it and fit it into my schedule and all of that, which is a lot to figure out. 4) Still working out the whole debt clusterf&*k, which has been really complicated & annoying. 5) I figured out where I think I want to move in August, which is super cheap and has just about everything I want. The last piece of the puzzle is finding the crime statistics (I'm suspcious because of the cheapness), which I've been trying to get the detective to call me back about for three business days now. I'm not so worried about random assault as I tend not to radiate victim vibes, but I' rather my stuff didn't get stolen. He's back from vacation now and told me he'd call back about it once he dug himself out from the pile in 15 minutes or so. That was an hour and a half ago. I just want to get this taken care of, another thing off my list. :P (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, June 29th, 2009
3:25 pm	Grahr Have accomplished practically nothingk today. I did morning clients, got in a measly 20 minute workout (haven't been doing much in the way of solo workouts lately, so I've been fitting in 10-20 minute stints here and there to get back in the habit - it's not like I don't do classes and do certain stuff with clients when I feel like it, but there's lots of other stuff I used to do that I haven't been) and then came home, answered emails and fell asleep for like 4 hours. I told myself it was okay since I'm still sick, but I'm frustrated. Should have done this and that and the other thing. Grr. I feel like I need more discipline. or more clarity on which days are more days off and which aren't. :P Bleh. I dunno. I've got another hour and a half to waste before evening clients, and I think I'm calling today a loss and finishing my book. Current Mood: cranky (Comment on this)
12:23 am	Pretty sure I had a fever last night (though my thermometer is missing in the basement somewhere with the rest of my stuff). Today it's been a nightmare of congestion; I spent most of the day feeling fairly awful. I've been resting wherever possible though, so I'm hoping this passes quickly. J surprised me with a present: an actual fishtank for my remaining betta fish (one died a few weeks ago) and two big goldfish in there with him. I got home and saw the tank with the fish in it and my first thought was "crap! He put my hostile siamese fighting fish in with other fish!" But it turns out he asked the fish people at the store and the bettas are only hostile to other bettas, so they should all be fine together (and so far, so good). The tank has purple and blue rocks and several pretty plastic plants in it, and the new goldfish are a lovely silver and gold mix, bigger than Ein the betta. Ein is caribbean blue. The tank is very lovely to look at, and hopefully will be better overall for Ein than his previous bowl. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 27th, 2009
7:43 am	I have contracted the cold that a bunch of my clients have had. So far it's a sore throat and body aches. I am sucking Cold-Eez and drinking water like a fish; I'm considering skipping karate though I feel like I really shouldn't; they just changed the kata currculum, I've got new stuff to learn and client spots have prevented me from going almost all week. On the other hand, I really want this thing to be as short as possible and a few hours of sleep instead of a few hours of exercise may help. :/ Weirdly, I seem to have hit my stride with client hours the week my most frequent client left. I was freaked that being three hours down would leave me in a major deficit. Instead, I seem to finally be reaching the numbers I want to reach. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
9:45 am	On hold with the credit union. So I can tell the bank to go screw. Meh. :P (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
8:26 am	small, nice things I got a number of small, thoughtful presents for my birthday. (Some money from family, too, which is certainly nice, but...) These kind of presents please me a lot. Just something little that reflects thought and care. Flowers and my favorite soap from Grammy. A 3-pack of soft tank tops in nice colors from Mom and Dad. Really good cherry cordials from a friend I couldn't remember telling what kind of chocolate I liked. I took some of the money and bought myself a new pair of sneakers (since I've been getting comments that my current pair has the inevitable no-tread-left and near-hole in the front pattern from rotating on the ball of the foot all the time, as I have a habit of doing), some black socks, and a new purse - this one in red with a neat pattern in the leather. First one I think I've ever had that wasn't basic black. I guess I can accept the fact that I carry a purse now, after so many years of first refusing to, then denying that I did by getting the smallest, most unobtrusive ones possible. :) (Comment on this)
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
8:18 am	solstice baby I'm 29 today. My 29th year was a very rough one, but one in which some really big, important leaps were made. About a year and a half ago I started figuring out where I wanted to be by 30 and I'm well on my way. In the last year I changed careers, started a business and am now self-employed, exactly as I wanted. I ditched the stable, sane 9-5 that had been driving me crazy for at least 3 of the 4.5 years I'd been there - easily the biggest risk I've taken in my adult life. So far, it's working out pretty well though there have been fits and starts (as with everything worth doing). Let's see... I bought a car for the first time (which I love). I worked out some major crap in my life that was eating me bigtime. I got a year closer to my black belt (which seemed to go by very fast) and did two karate tournaments. I feel like I didn't do much work on my other martial arts, but the confidence shifts that took place over the last year have had their effect there. This weekend, I won the knife fighting tournament that has been such a big freaking deal for me for the last something like 8 or 9 years. I'd been soldily in the running to do so for the past several years but generally freaked out in the end and had some sort of crisis of confidence rather than being able to just do what I was supposed to do. This year I finally managed to detach the tournament's outcome from my own self-worth enough in my head enough to have it not be so big a damn deal. And in the end it wasn't so big a deal, but something shifted in my head a little bit, just knowing that I didn't have this dumb hurdle I'd put in front of myself sitting there anymore. I used to have a lot of hurdles to leap and near-impossible obstacles to try and overcome. Increasingly over the last few years, and now almost entirely, I have goals that I attain, step by step. It's just an attitude shift, but it makes a big difference. This is not to say I don't still have my moments. I still get down on myself. I still get depressed. I still don't do the best thing for me 100% of the time. But it's all getting better. In the next year, I want to keep up that trend. I want to keep growing my business into something that is financially and intellectually rewarding for me. I want to keep learning and becoming more knowleadgeable, experienced and effective in my chosen profession. I want to get my black belt and keep learning and teaching and fighting in as many contexts as possible. I want to really get my finances going in the right direction. I'm waiting for an answer on a credit union loan today to take the last credit card balance over. If I'm approved, I'll be able to just pay that down and down and down until it's gone. No stoopid interest rate tricks or bullshit. Fingers crossed. I want to be better about communicating with those close to me about what I need and want and what I'm willing to do. I want to get better at having people be close to me, period. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 20th, 2009
7:18 pm	The rain was insane last night, deep water and accidents all over the roads. My most frequest client has landed her dream job across the country. I am genuinely happy for her, and somewhat pleased that my MWF 6pm timeslot is freed up since it's a pain never to be able to use that for other people and to have to schedule time for travel around it, but mildly (only mildly) freaked that a dependable source of income will shortly be gone. I've been getting more clients, but it all seems like never enough. :P I am about to have my first employee, sort of. She'll work for training, and she'll be implementing a marketing thing I've really wanted to do and haven't had any time for. I'm hoping it will be effective. Someone kicked J the other day and broke his own toe. I feel this must be an apt metaphor for something. I find myself unable to relax or have fun lately. I'm told the two are related. I used to be able to have fun without relaxing. Now it seems I can't do either. The good stuff is lost in translation somewhere. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
10:10 pm	I've been being down on myself, and as far as I can figure, it's for almost no reason. B-day's coming up, and I seem fairly determined to pout over it. I'll be 29. I keep feeling like I'm supposed to have accomplished something more, but then I ask myself exactly what. The only thing I can come up with is a somewhat weak idea that I should have written a book, or at least something of some significance by now. Being that it's really not anything I've put any effort toward, I don't see how I should have accomplished this thing, or how it's really important that I should have done so. There are other dissapointments that are more real - my finances are not where I want them (but are improving). We'll not even go into the disaster area that has been my romantic life, and I'm no closer to finding peace there than I ever have been. But overall my life is basically going in the direction I want it to - working for myself doing stuff I care about, pursuing interesting things in my spare time... but I guess it was such an utterly draining few years getting to that point that I'm in mope-mode and am having a hard time getting out. I feel like I don't have much to show for the blood, sweat and tears yet, though all the seeds are planted and are being tended for something good to come of it. I just have to continue being patient. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
10:07 pm	state of things I asked a pair of clients this evening for referrals at the end of the session. I went over to the locker where my purse was and began fiddling with my ipod. Three minutes later they brought a woman over to me, one of my cards in her hand, to talk to me about training. Now *that's* the kind of efficiency I like to see! :) I've gotten, like, 4 new clients in the last couple weeks, which is awesome, though some of them are like biweekly or half-hour sessions or only occasional or whatnot. I finally got all my clients into a database and counted the ones marked "A" for active - there are more than 20, but I'm still not getting as many training hours in as I would like. Grrr. My class only has a bare minimum of people, too. It's still the "slow season," and I'm living cheaply right now, and all of this is relatively fine, so I'm trying to be very very patient, but I'm sometimes frustrated. Then I think about it and think that things are actually going very well and that if they keep progressing in the same manner and I keep putting in the same effort, I'll be fine or more than fine. So... patience. It will all be okay. Humph. (Comment on this)
4:53 am	I was inspired to cook last night. This never happens. I made brown rice, honey- glazed chicken with pecans and cranberries, and sauteed spinach and mushrooms. No recipe. It was delicious. The other night I made stir fry, but this was not particularly inspired; I just wanted to use the wok. J is suddenly excited about cooking but has never actually learned how; his experiments mostly include browned meat (I've at least clued him in to ground turkey), macaroni, cheese and tomato sauce and the various combinations you can get from the above. He's not a veggie person. :p I'm working on him. And even his stuff is better than the pizza / Chinese food rut that had been fallen into previously. I do know how to cook; I've just never been patient enough or particularly enjoyed it enough to see a point in taking the time when I normally have none to spare. Now I have a bit more, so maybe I'll start doing this more often. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 15th, 2009
3:25 pm	accounting -knuckle-crack- Okay, down to it. I've been putting off my accounting stuff for, like, a month because I was trying to figure out a better way. In the meantime, my old way just kind of lapsed, so now I have to sort out the mess. Laaaaaame. Here goes. :P (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, June 12th, 2009
5:25 pm	I went for a long walk to break me out of my crappy mood today. It didn't 100% work, but it helped. I stopped at the shiny new dojo in town, the one where the ninjas I've met around town a few times have just set up shop. Very nice digs. Made me jealous. I introduced myself to the director, who is maybe younger than me. Craziness. He has quite a little team with him, a good location, and apparently about 70 students (including like the kickboxing and pilates people). Very nice start. Can't figure out if this would be a really nice connection to have or a Mortal Enemy. :) Now I am off to get a wok. J is suddenly interested in cooking. And if we both save money and eat better from it, hey, cool. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
9:53 pm	Accomplished today: very little. That's okay, I kind of decided it was a day off. I did have a new client consult which looks like it will result in a bi-weekly session, I had a consult Monday which has resulted in a once-weekly through the summer and I have another this Saturday. Not bad for the slow season. (Comment on this)