Time passed. I was single. Dating was misery, and made all the worse by the lack of an IM partner to whom I could talk to about exactly how unbelievably fucking miserable it was. Sounds crazy, but for weeks after his screenname turned gray, I felt an almost uncontrollable urge to message him about how horrible the previous night’s date had gone in that old familiar, silly, semi-tongue-in-cheek inflection.

SayWhatAgain: so he takes me to this party which is actually not a party, but five people in a gaudy apartment doing nothing, and they’re all talking in british accents with total sincerity about which brand of gin is best. gin! it was like being in an episode of Mystery! but even more boring and without the fun cartoon at the beginning.
MauledByStaplers: Your message has been sent to my mobile communication device.

You can read the rest of the essay at Nerve.

It’s kind of fun.

I was writing about my goals the other day. Here is a tag cloud from that writing:

And a cloud from brainstorming about jobs:

It’s kind of artist and poetic looking, too!

The Habit Calendar has a calendar look, which I like better than the list form of Joe’s Goals. I like seeing those green success days adding up on the calendar. (They both use green for “success” and red for “failure.”) I also like that it’s referred to as the HABIT calendar, as that is what I am measuring.

However, there is no way to add it to my blog, which I would really like, and it takes me just a bit longer (like 1 or 2 seconds) to add my success mark. These two factors combined pushed me towards. Joe’s Goals.

The pluses:

Joe’s Goals

• let’s me add a success mark to my goal with one click,
• lets me add multiple success marks (which would be cool if I had a goal to drink 8 glasses of water or something,)
• has a blog badge.

The minuses:

• I don’t love the badge. It doesn’t let me change any of the text, or the color. I would call it Braidwood’s Habits or something like that and take off the giant “Joe’s Goals” (it’s not Joe’s goals, it’s MY habits!)
• The main minus of Joe’s Goals and the Habit Calendar is that I have to go to their website to indicate if I’ve done the habit for the day or not; an ingenious way for them to get traffic, but an inconvenience for me. This is why I’ll switch over instantly when someone develops a Wordpress plug in that works equally well.

Neutral:

• Joe’s Goals lets me give each goal a point value which I find extraneous for my purposes. I’ll just leave it at the default of 1 point per “goal.”

Here is what the blog badge looks like:

Tune in tomorrow for my habit forming tips!

(”Her tips are habit forming? They must be good!”)

I’m investigating goal tracking software that will hopefully help me track and share my progress. I’ve been looking for a goal-tracking Wordpress plug in, or some kind of blog badge where I can give myself some virtual stars everyday to track my progress. Here is what I’ve found so far:

1. GoalsTogether you can type in a goal, share it, and it has a blog badge, but there is no simple way to check off completing the goal. There is a space where you write the percentage complete the goal is. 0-100%, I guess you just keep going back and changing the number everyday. Won’t work for my purposes.
2. Move Mountains has a very useful and easy to understand way of entering your goals, plus great advice for making and managing your goals. I recommend checking this one out if you don’t care about adding the goal tracker to your blog or website.
3. MyProgress.com I didn’t get too far into setting goals with My Progress Log. It kind of creeped me out during the registration phase. It wanted to know exactly where I live and my occupation. I started to suspect that my info was going to be used by marketers in the near future. Once I registered, my front page encouraged me to input my earnings. After all, as it says on My Progress, “Your profitability is essential when it comes to figuring out what a person you are.” Not the one for me.
4. SuperViva I like the tone of the site. It seems fun, friendly and open. It seems like a fun way to list all of the things I want to do, places I want to travel, books and movies I want to see etc… It would work for all kinds of lists. You can add the list to your web page or social networking site. Looking at this site made me realize that I don’t really want a goal checklist as much as I want a habit tracker. I want a daily checklist kind of tracker. Still searching for the tool I want to use.

I found these goal tracking tools at Mashable, you can go there to see more tools, screen shots, and longer descriptions.

After looking at all these goal tracking tools, I realized that:

What I really need for my purposes is a HABIT tracker!

Tune in tomorrow as I rate and review online Habit Trackers.

Click here to check out Kathy Smith’s fitness blog.

She is pro women’s sports, pro exercising and eating healthy, pro women of all shapes and sizes, and anti-deprivation. So, I think she’s my kind of gal. I found many of her posts to be really inspiring (even though some also link to her products.)

Check out what she says about deprivation:

“I’ve noticed that most people get caught up in that vicious cycle of dieting and then blowing the diet. It usually goes like this: You’re unhappy with the way you look and feel. You seek a diet that promises instant weight loss through complete control of what, when, and how you eat. Soon you discover that you can’t stick with it, and you end up right back where you started…

“To be successful, you have to move out of a diet mentality. Most plans don’t take into account what food really means to us. They don’t consider how the flavor and color and texture and presentation of food can give us so much pleasure. They don’t consider how eating foods that you don’t like leaves you unsatisfied.

“It was a good reminder for me today that, as I support others in their efforts to lose weight, choosing foods you truly love and that also enhance your physiological well-being are the key to becoming an independent eater.”

Well said, Kathy! And a timely reminder for me as I was about to launch into diet-like behavior by eating a protein shake on a regular basis, rather than a really yummy breakfast. My diet like thoughts may help explain why I was eating cake mix out of the package with a spoon this week. (I know, pretty image.)

When I just decide to eat really delicious and mostly healthy food, I end up eating a very healthy, balanced diet. (It doesn’t necessarily make me lose weight, but I do feel and look healthier.) But if I start thinking that I need to get thinner and then focus on that goal, the fearful gorging begins.

Breathe in, deep breath. I’m letting go of needing to look a certain way. That won’t guarantee me love. People of all shapes and sizes are loved. (I’m already loved, why am I trying to get all thin to get love?) Just focus on moving my awesome body and eating very delicious, mostly healthy food. Breath out…

Check out this post about the life cycle of a blog post.

This was a list I made in Nov 2006. I’m still searching for the perfect community site, with slightly different needs now. I’m looking into Diigo.

Today I’m uploading art that got lost in the transfer from blogger to wordpress.

I made almost all of the art on this website using Microsoft Paint and a mouse. I don’t have my dreamed of tablet yet, but I do have photoshop now and am having fun softening the rough edges of my old pictures with it and giving some of the art a whole new look. I’ll update the old posts with the new versions as well.

I don’t know if when I edit the old posts they will show up as new posts, and I apologize in advance to those of you who are subscribed to this blog if they do!

I made the picture in this post using photoshop. I like how, by changing how strong the lines were, it changed from being a woman in a mountain, Mountain Woman, to being a woman looking at a mountain or some kind of beautiful scene. As the woman in this picture was a tree in the old picture, we can call her Tree Woman.

My friends said I hadn’t written much since I got my job. ‘Tis true! So, I thought I’d release a bunch of posts saved as drafts that I wouldn’t otherwise get around to publishing.

Be free! (Throws her arms out to the sky.)