Monthly Archives: December 2012

A New Year is Coming

Elvis celebratesSpent Christmas in Chicago. We ate lots of food. We drank tons of wine and martinis. We watched a bunch of movies. And then we went home. It was pretty awesome.

Right now I am snowed in. I keep thinking of shoveling myself out and going to the grocery store. Or doing work. Or working on the 2nd edition of my book. Except instead I pour another glass of wine, peruse gray paint samples, watch more Elvis, and wonder what would make me happy.

It’s a good thing I don’t have any peppermint ice cream in the house because it would be consumed quickly.

I’ve been thinking of my New Year’s Resolutions… last year’s and the ones for this new year coming up.

A Review of My Resolutions for 2012: How I Did


1. Go ‘Poo Free
SUCCESS! I spent 3 months using baking soda and vinegar as my “shampoo.” My hair got gross and it never got better. It was right around the three month point, my mother and sister organized an intervention. They ganged up on me and told me that my hair was disgusting and I needed to go back to shampooing. And so I did. I am stating this resolution was a success because I gave it a good go, it just wasn’t for me.

2. Write More, Create More, Productize Knowledge
SUCCESS! I hired 3 people to help me with my business. This gave me the ability to work ON the business rather than IN the business. Suddenly I had time to blog and create. In fact, I created a bunch of products that I am selling on my other Website.

3. Join Toastmasters OR find other ways to improve public speaking
SEMI SUCCESS! I didn’t join Toastmasters but I was admitted into the National Speaker’s Association. I speak an awful lot and I video record myself and watch the recording critically. Each time I go in front of an audience I try to improve. I feel like I am getting better… I realize I need to do more but I feel good about what I’ve accomplished.

4. Stop eating shit sandwiches
SUCCESS! I may come across as a bitch but I am definitely not allowing anyone to feed me shit sandwiches.

5. Keep house clean & simplify possessions
SUCCESS! I realized that I am absolutely incapable of keeping my house clean and so rather than forcing the issue, I hired Alba, a very nice woman, to clean my house every two weeks. My house is now clean and I am a lot more happy.

In terms of simplifying possessions, I cleaned out my closets of clothes that I was clinging to because of memories and cheapness. I am still simplifying but I have come a long way since last January. Check this out!

Simplification

Yep! All 5 bags were donated to the Salvation Army! In addition to getting rid of clothes, I’ve been purging things that remind me of Pookie Bear. It took me a very long time to realize that items in my house were reminding me of him and thus causing me pain. It’s getting easier to exorcize him from my thoughts as I remove him from my daily life… even if it’s just silly objects.

6. Travel More
SUCCESS! I traveled to Europe and toured Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Austria. I also spent time in Baltimore and Chicago.

7. Live more, work less: Get better understanding of finances.
SUCCESS! Hiring people has been such a blessing for me. I have time to breathe and do things other than work. I also hired a bookkeeper and he’s been such an enormous help. I still need to do more but again, it’s a huge improvement over where I was last year.

8. Become an early riser
FAILURE with some spots of SUCCESS! Yeah, this comes and goes. Sometimes I awake at 6. Other times I awake at 7. And there are times I will get up at 8. I did come to a realization about why I am prone to sleeping past 6. My father always woke up at 6am. I thought it was because he was disciplined but the more I think about it, the more I think he awoke early because it was his alone time. My entire day is my alone time. I don’t need to get up early for quiet solitude… I have that all the time. Still, I want to be more productive so I will continue to strive to wake up at 6 and maybe eventually I’ll start doing it. Perhaps if I bring someone into my life, I will want to wake up at 6am so I have some alone time.

9. Amplify my business message online
Some SUCCESS! My LinkedIn Group is almost at 2,000 members. I have almost 10,000 LinkedIn connections. Hooray! My Twitter followers are over 1,000 but I wanted to get it over 5,000. I use G+ but I don’t seem to be making much headway with it. On the other hand, my email list is almost at 3,000 which is freaking awesome in my book. I am getting there.

10. I want to better understand how I want the story of my life to turn out
SUCCESS: I know that I want to create. I want to help people. I want the freedom to live on my own terms. I want to love and be loved.

So all in all, I’d say my 2012 Resolutions were a resounding success.

I look back to where I was last year… I was devastated and lost. In twelve months, I have regrouped and got back on track. I feel good about next year. Now I need to come up with new resolutions. That’ll come soon.

Gosh it’s a mess around here

"I can't wait to introduce you to my wife and kids, baby!"It’s terrible. I’ve been so silent, you might have thought I abandoned all of you. I actually have been pretty busy moving all donnaville (and all my many other sites) from Dreamhost to a much better hosting provider. Yes, Sayonara Surfer Dudes!

Okay, I didn’t actually move anything. I had a professional do it for me.

The site is still in a bad way. Tons of dead links and broken images. Thank goodness this site is just a money pit otherwise I’d be royally screwed.

I was just talking to a long time donnaville reader (yes, there are about 5) and I said something that took me by surprise. I hadn’t vocalized it until that very second… heck, I don’t think I ever even realized it until that moment.

“It’s not easy keeping donnaville updated. My mind is on my business and work. Heck, it was cute when it was about a 20-something girl, blogging about finding love and the stumbling blocks along that path… now that I am nearing 40 AND I AM STILL ON EHARMONY, it’s just getting pathetic and sad.”

True conversation from just the other day
“Hi, Donna? It’s Tom… from eHarmony”
“Oh hi, Tom. Thanks for calling. How are you?”
“I am good, real good. Excited to talk to you.”
“Awesome!”
“Look, I just want to get something out of the way first.”
“Shoot”
“My girls are off limits. I don’t want you asking about them and I don’t want to get into introducing them to you… not until we are much further along.”
“Oh…. okay.”
“I just wanted to clear the air now, it’s tough. The divorce will be final in 3-4 months”
“You are still married?”
“No, I am almost divorced.”
“Do your girls live with you or their mother?”
“We all live together. I’ll be getting my own place in about 6 months or so.”
“Why are you on eHarmony?”
“Why not?”
“Because you are married and living with your wife and kids.”
“Yeah, but it’s not a real marriage, we are just friends.”
“Look, I gotta go. There’s two many lines here that I just can’t cross.”
“Fine. Suit yourself”

Yeah, I swore off online dating. It was just that it was late and I was drunk and eHarmony had this insane deal… 3 months for $30.

At that moment I couldn’t say no. So I clicked and signed up. And now I am wondering what the heck was I thinking?

It’s fine. I’ll chalk it up to a moment of weakness. I don’t have to log in. I can deactivate my account. I have drunk $30 of micro beer in one sitting and pissed it out an hour later.

Let’s talk about a better investment of my money. As the new year draws closer, I have been looking back and reviewing my resolutions. I’m actually doing pretty good except for one. It’s the one that I make every year and fail at miserably: Keep house clean, clean up after yourself.

I realized that this is something that I simply cannot do on my own… so I hired a cleaning person. She came just the other day and scrubbed my house from top to bottom and it looks marvelous! When I was younger, I used to think people who had cleaners were lazy, rich, snobs with no connection to reality. Now that I am older, I realize how very wrong I was. In fact, I now love this exchange. I love that I get a clean house but I love even more that another person is getting money from an honest day’s labor and she’s not lining anyone else’s pocket but her own. It’s awesome.

I keep thinking of Dolly Levi, “Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around, encouraging young things to grow.”