All The Productivity!

All of it! XD

So there's so much for me to cover in this post that I'll have to put it into sections! *Gasp*

Deviantart

So, my deviantart as you all know is littlewolfdreamer.deviantart.com. It's active, it's happy, and it always holds an eclectic set of things.

 Themes

I've also joined a couple of new groups. Almost exclusively for the prompts and themes. It's exciting to be able to have something to write about constantly. And some of these groups desperately need participants.

One group I'm in, Unseen Writers, has the weekly theme this week of Sandman. You could choose from two kinds of sandman. I chose the traditional pleasant one that comes around and puts sand in your eyes to help you get to sleep. I wrote the poem "The Insomniac's Letter" to add a little twist on the theme.

Another group, We Write To Escape, has a fortnightly theme. This fortnight's theme is "Chains, Barbed Wire, and Broken Wings." So I'm currently working on a story called The Gargoyle Hunt. I might change the name later. We'll see. 

Finally, Live Love Write has a weekly prompt which this week is 

"Write anything that features one or more of the following:

- schizophrenia
- displacement
- positive symptoms
- delusions"

I haven't thought of something for that yet. I'll keep you posted.

 Contests

There are some contests that I get into on deviantart. Usually, they have nothing to do with art, they're more like raffles. However, there are a couple that I've been doing that are actually art related right now. One being a mini contest by Popolis where I get to draw a winter fantasy scene. 

It's actually really neat stuff and I think I'll do more like them.

 Scheduled Deviations

One of the Greatest Things I am now using with deviantart is the idea of SCHEDULING a future deviation! This is super useful for those days where I forget about the world or don't feel like doing anything. Emma's Journal has had some of that happen. Wouldn't it be great if I could write at will and just have one page posted everyday?

This way I don't spam the deviants with all my silly deviations at once! I've posted things from an Angry Speaker to a Cello. And both at times I wasn't even awake. This will totally help me get my 10,000 page view goal. (Well, that and the promised bikini picture in the snow if I get the goal early.)

Writing

What would be one of my posts without a writing update? Pointless, in my opinion. Because I will become a published author and it will be awesome. I just have to finish my silly stories. I mean awesome stories, because they're awesome... Or will be... Eventually... XD

 Emma

Who remembers the very beginnings of Emma? I started it as a self rant about everything and it's now turned into a complete fiction work about things very out of hand. It's kind of awesome. I have outlines and everything all ready for both stories!

    Journal

The creepier of the two stories, I have finally gotten going again on it!! I finally made the Halloween Day post. And let me tell you, it takes the story in a straightforward and scary as hell direction. Which makes me very pleased, as this was the point.

    Story

As for Emma's Story... I'm getting there slowly but surely with the prologue! Yes, I will post the prologue on deviantart, but that's all I will post of her story. This will be one of my little secretive kinds of things. I will be writing it on paper and having someone edit it for me. And then I'll take their edits and revise it and then I'll PUBLISH it. Yes, that's right, Emma's Story will be published. Emma's Journal will come afterwards.

Photography

I've been working on a blog for just plain modeling style stuff. I've made myself look purdy and taken pictures. Self portraits, however, aren't the only things I'm taking pictures of. As Previous Pictures on Deviantart will tell you, I enjoy taking pictures of pretty much anything. 

The point of my photography is to capture something that I consider beautiful or special or important for some reason, albeit even a small one. My cats, my friends, my projects, they all succumb to the power of my camera. 

Too bad I hate the cold. I could get some good winter shots.

Freelancing Opportunity

So here's another thing. This person is writing a book on homeschooling that she wants someone to help write. "But Alex! You've never been homeschooled!"

A. I'm an autodidact
B. My Aunty Homeschools my two cousins
C. I have a lot of friends who are homeschooled
D. I'VE GONE THROUGH ONLINE LEARNING
E. And a Charter School - which is as near to homeschooling as one can get for still sending their child off to some kind of instructional facility.

Plus I have a passion for all sorts of independent learning and really everything homeschool entails. If you've ever been lucky/unlucky enough to sit around and listen to my Xena rant... She's going to probably be homeschooled. Because I'll know how to do it and I feel like that's how she'd learn best. (For those that don't know, Xena is the name of the little girl I'll have later on in life.)

And I'll do the Exercise update Tomorrow/Later! Because I'm Feeling Lazy!

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Week one!

That's right, it is the end of week one of my awesome new exercise routine. As promised, some pictures!

And now for some stats! First item on the list is pushups. Me and my lameness started out being able to do 1 pushup. Total. Over the past week my pushup range has been 1 pushup a day as the smallest amount and today I reached 6 pushups in one day!

As for curlups, my lowest day had 42 curlups and my highest in a day? 70. It's pretty neat.

Now let's take a look at my times for the week. My first session (morning) had the lowest at 15 minutes and went all the way up to an hour. As for the second session... The lowest was 20 minutes and the highest was also an hour.

The longest day was the fourth with a total time of 1 hour and 20 minutes.

In case you're wondering, today's themes were yoga and fighting.

Today's picture shoot was all done by me. My camera (nikon coolpix) has a ten second timer. So I set it up, set the timer, ran over to the aimed spot, and struck a pose.

It turned out well in my opinion at least.

Also today I visited my dad's yoga class. It was an adaptive yoga class as he has some knee problems among other things. It was weird. A good experience, but I don't think I'll be joining next week. XD

Now on to my writing work. Today I did almost Nil. I did my dictionary project at least. I wrote a tiny bit of other stuff. I did a bit of the story edit. I wrote an outline for a freelance story.

I guess my productivity wasn't toooooo bad...

Well, on to other news. Hm. I started a contest today on my deviantart in order to reach my goal of 10,000 views by the end of the year. I'm at almost 9,100 right now, so we're on a roll!

In other other news... I hung out with two of my best friends today. We played uno, it was a blast. Yes. I still have managed to hold a social life. Crazy, huh? In fact, I'm going to someone's house tomorrow to spend the night. I probably won't be able to post tomorrow. Oh well.

Enjoy your night!!
-Alexandria

Been Awhile

I'm gonna try to keep up with this. I know I say this after practically every single other hiatus but hey, can you blame me? Life is busy. There's been Thanksgiving and now Christmas is coming and all this stuff!




So, to start off, here's a current picture of mwah. Which brings me to my next commentary. There will be a lot more pictures of me. The reason behind this has to do with my newest interest: Exercise.




That's right! I've gotten into exercise! It's pretty spiffy stuff. I even have little motivational thingies and tracking my progress and even like 5 exercises just chilling on the closet door. I feel so accomplished. I was given an exercise/balance ball from Mike (the one that lives at the house.) I was sooooo happy! I still am soooo happy. I started bouncing on it, because you know, that's obviously what it's meant for. XD

Each week, starting tomorrow, I'm going to do a picture showing myself to see if there's any difference in how I look from exercising. There will be two pictures. One of me in normal clothes, and one where I'm wearing my swimsuit. That way all the cuts can be seen. My hope is that I'll keep motivated when I see the differences and changes. Tomorrow will be the seventh day of exercise.

I'll also be sure to give statistics on my progress. Before you see how terrible it is... Before I started I could do maybe one push-up that was "good enough" (in my opinion) based on how close to the ground I got and the form. If a push-up is not in good form I don't count it. And no, I won't count the knee push-ups I can do.

As for curl-ups, I used to be absolutely amazing at them. I could do 100 in a row before stopping. Now though... I can do like 30 in a row before I have to stop. And that's HAVE to stop. Like it hurts too much. So I've been working on them slowly but surely.

The next stat that will be included is the workout times. The way I do my exercise is I do two sessions each day. Each session is at least 15 minutes in length, but no more than an hour. That way, together, I get "at least" 30 minutes of exercise each day. I might as well say I have yet to go a day where I've gotten less than an hour of exercise.

Note that each session involves a five minute warm-up and cool-down.

I also have themes for each day, I might start sharing them as well. Like today the themes are Aesthetics and Balance. (Obviously this is a "rest" day.) So I've been working on my posture and trying to balance and perfecting my form for various exercises, like push-ups.

In other news, I've been in the festive spirit! I put some lights around the lamp in my room and some tinsel. I think I need to try to elongate the tinsel ^.^"

I also have some red tinsel I think I'll put along the walls. I have a string of colored lights I can use, too. Intertwining them might be a neat thing to do! Then I can have pretty lights amongst pretty tinsel! I just need to make sure the cord reaches an outlet. XD


Now, about story stuff. (Sorry for the long post by the way!!)
I've been working on Emma's Story and Emma's Journal for awhile offline. I'll be typing them up eventually. I've also done a bit more of other writing. It's been difficult but I've been doing it! I just need to push myself to get things done and I will.

Unfortunately I had a small string of computer problems lately. It's all better now so for the last week I've been working on a person's story editing. That's right, I'm still doing all my freelance work. All the fun stuff! It's great.

Have a terrific day and I'll see you tomorrow!!
-Alex