Myrna CG Mibus - Idyllwild

Today I started a new 30 day challenge. What is it this time? Well it's not another 30 Days of Biking challenge. We haven't had enough snow for another round of 30 Days of Snowshoeing so that's not my new challenge. This challenge is about writing and I'm calling it 30 Days of Writing. You might be thinking, "What's the point? You're a writer. Don't you already write every day?" Yes, I do write pretty much every day but the goal of my 30 Days of Writing challenge is not to do my regular writing it's to work on a couple of memoir projects that I seldom make time for. It's to work on projects that I keep saying I want to get to "someday..." Someday. That's a word that ends up in my vocabulary way too often. 30 Days of Writing is one way to get the someday out of my writing life. The challenge is simple - I just need to spend a little time each day working on one of my memoir projects. I can write a lot of material or...

Last winter during the month of January I did a 30 Days of Snowshoeing challenge and snowshoed every single day of the month. Such a challenge would have been impossible for me this year. We've had a strange winter with almost no snow. I'm okay with a mild winter but I have missed snowshoeing and have only been out on my snowshoes once this winter - that is until today. A snowshoe scene from last January Last night and earlier today it snowed enough that we could actually get out and snowshoe in it. The kids were off of school so they headed outside with me this morning and, along with Rocket our wonder dog, we trekked around the neighborhood on our snowshoes. One thing I like about doing stuff with my kids is that they remind me of the little wonders of life. Today they decided we should stop walking, stand still then call the dog to us and listen. Why? Because the snow had a thin icy crust on top and Rose and Ryan noticed that it sounded really cool when Rocket ran throug...

I set another goal for myself at the beginning of February - but I didn't tell anyone about it. Until now that is. I meant to blog about it but simply never got around to it. Or maybe I kind of liked having a "secret" goal. Who knows? Either way - here it is now. I decided to write three pages a day each day in February as suggested in the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. She talks about writing "Morning Pages" in this book, three pages of stream of consciousness writing - pen to paper, not typing at a computer - first thing each morning. The practice or writing Morning Pages, she says,  helps with creativity. I've always liked the idea of writing Morning Pages and have made many attempts to make them a regular practice but have never kept them up. Part of my struggle with Morning Pages has been the "morning" part. Writing first thing in the morning for me is a challenge. So, even though I know that writing these pages in the aftern...

I finished off my last two days of 30 Days of Snowshoeing in a perfect setting!! My friends, Paul, Jodie and Morgan, invited me and my family up to their cabin on Lake Ossawinnamakee, near Brainerd, Minnesota, where we enjoyed a mini-break from work and school. Though some lakes are busy with snowmobile traffic in the winter, this corner of Lake Ossie was almost snowmobile free. It was quiet up there and most of the time we felt like we had the whole lake to ourselves. We had a great time. We talked. We attempted ice fishing. We read books. We ate and talked some more. We relaxed. We had fun. And I snowshoed. Four times in two days! On Saturday, Day 29 of my 30 Days of Snowshoeing, I snowshoed out to an island where I found signs of deer and places where they had bedded down. I found a rope swing and managed to swing on it a few times though I had to hold my snowshoed feet way up in the air so they wouldn't hit the ice. I'm sure I looked ridiculous but I didn't care....

I just looked out my office window and saw my snowshoe tracks in the snow. For some reason they surprised me. Seeing them I had concrete evidence that I actually have been getting out on my snowshoes every day. That I've actually been going somewhere. And, for some reason, I find this comforting. I've been fighting my 30 Days of Snowshoeing commitment and am kind of mad at myself for creating the challenge for myself. I haven't wanted to get out every day and snowshoe. It's cold outside. I don't like putting on my snowpants, my hat, scarf, gloves, jacket. Perhaps because I'm doing the challenge alone, unlike the 30 Days of Biking challenges where hundreds of other people biked every day and helped motivate each other, I don't really feel like it matters that I'm doing this. And I've lost momentum and motivation and simply want to sit inside and read a book. Or sleep. Or watch Monk and Cake Boss on Netflix. But I keep snowshoeing. Every day. Ev...

I've been thinking about milage goals for 2011. Last year, I set a goal to ride my bicycle 500 miles and when I surpassed that goal I set out with a personal challenge to complete 1,000 miles of exercise by the end of the year. I managed 914 miles, most of which were bicycling miles. I feel good about this especially since I'm not an exercising person at all. At least I wasn't an exercising person. I guess at this point I can think of myself an exercising person. Because in 2010 I actually made exercise an almost daily part of my life. And I like it. I see the year ahead as an opportunity to continue being active. I have found that doing mini challenges like 30 Days of Biking and my own 30 Days of Snowshoeing  help me stay on track. And, even though I didn't make my 1,000 milage goal in 2010, I found that putting that big number out there kept me exercising. I've also found that tools like Dailymile have greatly helped me keep track of my progress and motiv...

I've lived in Minnesota all my life but have only tolerated winter. Oh, back in junior high I was in the cross-country ski club and spent some time outside having fun. And back when I had horses I would bundle up and ride in the dead of winter. And before that I remember looking forward to winter, to the freshly fallen snow, and spent a lot of time playing outside as a kid. I distinctly remember playing school outside at my Grandpa and Grandma's farm once. My cousin, Sara, and I made desks out of snow and used icicles as pencils. We must have stayed outside for hours. Or maybe not. I do remember having fun, though. And I do remember loving snow. I have many other good memories of winter yet for the last dozen or so years, okay maybe twenty, I've done my best to stay inside once the cold set in. Yet having kids has slowly warmed me up to winter. Rose and Ryan love to play out in the snow and in the past 10 years I've gotten out there with them and gone sledding and tre...