My Parents Inspire Me

My parents are currently heli-hiking in the Canadian Rockies.  It's the culmination of a three week hiking trip they're on, just for the heck of it.  My parents are 66 and almost 71, and they're scaling peaks, hiking up treacherous paths, hiking on glaciers...they're freaking awesome!!! 

My dad has been posting pictures from their trip every day, and every day I look at the pictures and I think to myself, "Man, I have got the coolest parents ever!"  How great is it that this is what they do for fun?  And seriously, they look so happy in some of the pictures...it makes my heart smile!

What great role models for me to have.  Already I attribute my travel bug to watching them travel all around the world and have great adventures.  And yeah, maybe I don't *love* hiking, and maybe I don't go out and do it all the time, but just the model of being healthy and super active and adventurous at their young ages is so awesomely inspirational! 

Here's to you, Dan and Sarah!  May you have MANY more years of fun and adventure!!!  Love you!!!

Mission Accomplished!

I posted a little over a week ago about our goal to move out of our two existing storage units and consolidate into a smaller unit. Today...mission accomplished!!!

We spent most of last weekend at storage, and started moving into our 10'x10' unit. We even got my smaller unit closed out last Saturday.  Donovan did a really great job of being willing to let go of a lot of his stuff, and he posted Craigslist ads galore and got rid of most of the big things last Sunday.

Our goal was to be out of both units by the end of the month, so Donovan spent quite a bit of time at storage yesterday and today, dealing with the last 10-15% of our stuff.  After lunch today I went back with him and we got everything moved out of his storage unit before the office closed at 5:00pm.  There's a whole pile of stuff in our new storage unit that he's going to put up on Ebay this week (already photographed, boxed and weighed for shipping), so that'll go away soon enough!

Donovan's 10'x20' storage unit, emptied today!

It's amazing to think that a week and a half ago this wasn't even a possibility for us, and that through communicating with each other about what was important to us, we got it done!  The impossible became possible!!  I have to say that I did get a little whiny about storage taking up our whole weekend this weekend after we spent so much time there last weekend.  But I got over it, and we're both super stoked now that it's done and the mental clutter is gone!!!  Woohoo!!!  :)

Getting Sucked Down the Rabbit Hole

The last week or two, I've really found myself getting sucked down the rabbit hole that is the Internet.

One of the things I've been doing to establish a web presence is to be consistent with Twitter and try to build a following there (speaking of which, if you're not following me yet, click here to follow me!).  I've got Twitter open in one of the tabs of my browser, and when new tweets come in, it puts up the number of new tweets in parentheses so I can see it no matter which tab I'm in.  If I don't stay on top of looking at the new tweets, it can get overwhelming.  For example, I've just sat down at my computer for the first time today (it's 4:30pm), and the scary number on my Twitter tab says (263)!!  So there are 263 new tweets for me to look through since the last time I looked.  Now, do I *have* to look at these tweets?  No.  Will anything bad happen to me or my loved ones if I don't look through them?  No.  However, one of my strategies with Twitter is to follow people who post interesting quotes or information, and then re-tweet that stuff out to my followers.  So looking through those 263 new tweets (now 264) gives me valuable resources!  I would like to figure out a way to manage this more effectively so that I can still get what I want out of Twitter, but not be a slave to looking at it all the time.

I've also been checking out some writing resources/blogs as well as social media marketing resources/blogs, and it's very easy to get sucked into following link after link on these sites.  It's a seemingly never-ending process!  Yes, I'm getting some useful information out of it, for sure.  And it's also keeping me from doing other things that I want to do.  For example, I'm in this writing teleseminar, and one of our assignments is to write something five days a week.  For me, sitting down to write a blog post here is relatively easy (as long as I can think of a topic).  Somewhat more challenging is writing a blog post for my coaching website (perfectionist much?).  And even more challenging than that (as in, I haven't done it yet at all!) is doing some sort of fiction writing, which I *definitely* want to try my hand at.  Just yesterday, on at least two separate occasions as I was getting sucked down the rabbit hole, I thought, "I should stop and try to do some sort of fiction writing experiment."  Did I?  Nope.

I've found that structure usually works pretty well for me with stuff like this, so it may be a matter of setting limits to how much time I spend on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc., or it may be to set aside a certain amount of time for experimenting with fiction writing.  Truth be told, I have sort of an overwhelm about the fiction writing.  Mostly I have no idea what to write about.  So if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them!!  :)

(Sidenote:  now at 269...)

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If I Don't Have Any Clients, Am I Still a Coach?

According to iPEC, I am now a certified professional coach.  However, I don't have a single client, so am I really a coach?  Stupid question, I know.  Is a doctor still a doctor when they're not seeing patients?  Of course they are.  So yes, I really am a coach.  But I don't have a coaching business right now.  And I'm completely at a loss for how to create one.  There are all these different things that I can do, from creating a presence through social media to finding ways to network with real people to who knows what else. 

Part of my issue right now is that my confidence in myself as a coach is kinda low.  Not that I don't make a difference with people when I coach them, because I'm clear that I do.  But right now I don't have any clients, so I'm not getting to experience myself that way.  Additionally, the confidence I have in my message as a coach is even lower.  So when I start to have a conversation with someone about what I do, I feel like a blustering idiot.  And yes, I know that to gain confidence in talking to people, I have to actually talk to people.  And though it feels incredibly awkward right now, it will get less awkward as time goes on until I don't even think about it anymore because it's just second nature.  Really, I'd like to skip all the middle part and just get to that last part right now.  Any ideas how to do that??

 

I really really really don't want to sabotage this new business that I'm creating, and I'm clear that the only thing standing in the way of my success right now is ME.  Part of the issue is that it's comfortable and easy for me to fill my time with other things.  Lunches with friends, workouts, appointments...all sorts of things that take up my time and leave me with no time for building my coaching business.  I did the same thing when I had FitnessWave, so I already have this image of myself as someone who doesn't successfully market her business.  And of course, if I have no confidence in myself as a coach or in the message I'm spreading, and if I'm uncomfortable talking to people about what I do, it makes perfect sense that I would want to fill my time with other things and give myself a convenient excuse not to go out there and build the business.  

 

Here's what I haven't said so far because it's an ugly truth for me:  While there's a (large?) part of me that really wants to succeed in this business as a coach and really make a difference for a huge amount of people while bringing in a great income, I think that there's a (large?) part of me that has already decided that it's not going to happen, and I'm going to fail.  Not be a bad coach, because that's not who I am, but fail to grow the business and thrive as a coach.  And really, if there's ANY part of me that has already made that decision, then I'm kind of screwed.

Add to that the fact that I'm comparing myself to all these people around me who are finding great success as coaches and really working hard to build their businesses (and succeeding at it), and I end up in quite a funk.

 

So I find myself wallowing in this crappy headspace that I'm in, and thus far not finding my way out of it.  I'm sure that this, too, shall pass.  Ironic that as a coach I am totally equipped to get other people out of funks like this, but not myself!  At least not so far...

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The Things That Move Us to Action

Last year in July, after living in Donovan's house for over a year, I finally got my butt in gear and rented out my house.  Which meant that I needed to get all my crap out of my house.  Which meant a whole lot of Craigslist ads, and ultimately, renting a storage unit.  I didn't actually have *that* much stuff to store, so I got a small 5'x10' space that cost about $60/month.

While we were on our honeymoon in August, as a surprise for me, Donovan had some movers come to his house and move a whole bunch of *his* crap into a storage unit so that we could start to remodel the house when we got back.  He did have a lot of stuff, so he got a 10'x20' space that cost about $200/month.

Doing the quick math (approximately), we've spent close to $3,000 on our combined storage units over the past year.

The big storage unit has been a point of contention between us, with me wanting us to just give away or get rid of a bunch of the things we're storing, and Donovan wanting to sell a lot of it through Craigslist or EBay.  I'll admit, I got on his ass about it quite a bit in the first few months.  Then, at some point, I pretty much just gave up and figured he'd deal with it in his own time.

A few weeks ago my good friend Roz told me about a garage sale that she was going to put on with her mom.  What a perfect opportunity to get rid of some of the bigger things in our big storage unit!  Maybe some of the furniture, etc.  I hesitated to bring it up to Donovan, since it had become a bit of a sensitive topic for us.  But then a few days ago I suggested the idea, and he liked it!  Woohoo!

So our plan for today was to go to the storage unit and clear out a path to the one piece of furniture we were pretty sure we wanted to take up to the garage sale.  And here's where it got interesting for us.  This morning we started talking about it, and decided that it was silly for us to haul around this large piece of furniture, when we could just give it away for free on Craigslist and someone would come pick it up.  This led to a general discussion about the storage units, in a very civilized manner.  And what we came up with was a concrete goal to get rid of a bunch of stuff mostly out of the big storage unit this weekend, and then by next weekend consolidate both of our storage units into one 10'x10' unit.  We figure that we'll probably have some sort of outside-the-house storage solution until we get a bigger place, but having one unit that costs about $100/month is better than the almost $300/month we're paying for our two units now!

We spent about five hours today working at the storage units (it's Donovan's day off), and we *filled* the van with all sorts of odds and ends for the garage sale!  We went through SO many boxes and got rid of SO much stuff!  We took it all up to Roz's mom's house in Escondido, and then this weekend we will post some of the bigger items on Craigslist for free.  We already have a 10'x10' unit reserved at the storage facility, so we're completely on track to successfully reaching our goal by next weekend!

What had been a totally stagnant situation, a point of contention in our relationship moved HUGELY today, all because Roz suggested that we participate in her garage sale.  Isn't it interesting the things that move us to action sometimes??

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Jello Wrestling

Jello wrestling?  Hmmm...You never quite know what you're going to get on my blog, do you?

Tonight we went to a fundraiser for a couple of LGBT charities here in San Diego, a fundraiser built around women's jello wrestling.  I mean, how can you go wrong with that?  The organizers did a great job with the event, and we had a blast!  There were four rounds in the single-elimination jello wrestling tournament.  To raise our level of engagement, we placed raffle tickets in the buckets of the wrestlers that we were betting would win.  At the end of each round, they picked a raffle winner out of the winner wrestler's bucket.  We had VIP tickets for the event, so we got to view the wrestling from a balcony above all the action.  Super fun!

Our view of the jello pit from the balcony

Close-up of one of the matches

We had forty raffle tickets in various wrestlers buckets, so every time they picked a raffle winner, we were ready to hear them call our number.  Round after round, they called numbers close to ours, but not ours.  And then, after the very last round, they called out TWO of our ticket numbers!  :)  We won a massage, which we gave to our friend (one of the original organizers of the event), and we won a one-hour personal training session, which we don't really need...anybody here in San Diego want it?

All in all, a great night for a great cause.  Donovan thinks I should volunteer to wrestle next year.  To that, I say "Hell no!!!"  :)

And...She's Back!

Hello!  Here we are, together again, here on my blog, you and I!

Today I started a six-week writing teleseminar, to give myself an extra little kick in the pants to get writing again.  Not just here, but on my coaching blog as well.  And who knows...maybe I'll write a chapter or two of the book that's brewing in my head...

I started thinking about what I could write about here, and there's so much to tell!  That's what happens when I don't blog for a few months...

I'll start with this:  I am now a Certified Professional Coach!!!  I turned in all my materials, took my oral exam, passed it, and voila!  I'm certified!  :)   I am always interested in talking to anyone who is interested in finding out more about coaching and how it might work for them, so if you want to know more, let me know!  I've had some really great clients so far, who have accomplished all sorts of awesome things through their coaching!  :)

And for those of you who were anxiously following the great cupcake experiment, I have switched gears and have been focusing on the great French Macaron experiment instead.  French macarons are not an easy thing to make, and with the help of some stellar recipes/instructions from Stella Parks (aka BraveTart), I've so far managed to make some pretty delicious varieties!  I started with the plain almond macaron with a vanilla swiss buttercream filling, then I did a hazelnut macaron with a dark chocolate ganache filling, and most recently I did a yuzu (Japanese citron) almond macaron with a yuzu swiss buttercream filling.  There's something about watching a person's face the first time they try a macaron.  It's so unexpected...the softness, the chewiness, the deliciousness.  People's faces are always so surprised and elated!

My latest batch, the yuzu macaron with yuzu buttercream

So much more to tell, and I'll save it for another day.  I'm not planning on going MIA again, so stay tuned for more!  :)

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