Our traditional Valentine’s Day Meatloaf.

Today I bid farewell to the month of love and forge onward into the month of March and the focus of leveling up my life.

But before we look forward, we need to learn from the past. The recent past.

I had a much better percentage of success in the month of February than I did for January.

My goals were:

What did these mean?

A hug a day meant to work on my disciplining with love my children. It worked. I feel closer and a connection to my children than I have in the past. Even given the difficulties this month with my special-needs child, everything I did – even those things that outsiders looking in with no clue would see – was done out of love. It feels good and it has truly become a habit. Amazingly I did this one every single day this month. Feeling low? Hug someone. It feels good. It reconnects you. It strengthens your relationship.

Be a real friendmeant I was going to investigate friendship, figure out what’s real and act on it. What did I find? I found I had a lot of people around me who weren’t really my friends. I actually had some enemies close to me. By enemy, I didn’t mean that they were plotting to ruin my life. No, nothing like that. But, their constant negative attitude towards my life, my values, my ideas, etc. was toxic and dangerous, just like an enemy of old. I found I have really good friends. I enjoyed really focusing on spending time with them, getting to know them better, writing letters to them, emailing them more often. It felt good. This one, too, I had a 100 percent success rate with. I also identified that other people feel exactly like me when trying to make adult friendships. I’ll likely revisit this topic for writing projects.

Santa secretly visits Twin Peaks and the famous cafe at center of town and a couple of my buddies, Echo & Shelly.

Self-Love & Care meant that I was going to seriously do something every day to take care of myself. I had a goal of even making a monthly schedule of little things like getting a pedicure, or eyebrows done (I can’t see any more to do them myself), or meditating – whatever. This category is where I really struggled. I never made my schedule. Like I said, we had a very off month with my special-needs child and there were lots of appointments with doctors, counselors, social workers, etc. I felt like those really ate into my time for self-love and care. Although, I look back now and taking care of my son so that it’s less of a burden on me later on is a bit of self-love and care. So maybe I was focused more on the physical and mental things, that I missed the emotional self-care. But, I marked my chart as I marked my chart. My percentage was a meek 64 percent. That’s a failing grade in my book. But I learned something. Just like anything important to myself, I need to schedule it. I have a lot of demands on my time – I need to demand my time, too. I may go back at some point and actually do that monthly template/schedule. But for now. I’m happy with the learning opportunity.

Clarify Signals meant with a focus on my marriage, I was going to concentrate on communicating better about needs and be open to improvement, and provide more physical proof of live — like touching my spouse in loving ways more often than I had been pre-February. As a writer, I can be very introverted and very much in my head. I am aware – unfortunately this is a recent self-awareness – that I can come off as aloof, uncaring, because I’m simply running scenes in my head, thinking about writing or characters or other writerly things I need to do.  Also, believe it or not, I have my moments of severe shyness. It’s likely that’s why it took nearly seven years for me to make friends in my adopted community.  I wanted to focus on the little things like touching my partner’s arm when I talk to him, or holding his hand as we talked at night before bed about our day, or even, unexpected kisses. You know, like couples do…should. I was fairly successful in this. I hit the 85 percent mark on success with this goal. I noticed something kind of spooky, too. We argued less. We don’t fight often, but when we do it’s very, very intense. I would say our disagreements ranged more on the level of a mild disagreement. It’s been great. Like disciplining with more love brought me more connection to my children, I feel like my spouse and I leveled up our marriage. Plus Two Love for the win.

So my average for the month of February is a high B+. Still honor-roll, baby! This was a good month. I had very difficult challenges and I kept my smile. I felt content. Content gets a bad rap – contentment is good. My happiness level was higher. Higher than last month, for sure.

So now were on to the goals for March, which are all focused on leveling up my life. Remember we’re looking

Be in Now. I’m an anticipator. Living and being mindful of right now is a skill I have only recently learned. It’s taken me off my “on-point” persona a bit and I think many people – mostly in my professional life – have noticed. I’m not as high strung. I’m also not giving off that vibe of Type A like I used to either. But, I’m happier when I can focus on just now. Not worry about what happened on Monday; or worry what’s going to happen on Thursday, next month or next year. Just now. I still prepare for things – making a meal plan and sticking to it to help your work load and budget is not being obsessive about the future. It’s about the now and that’s the task you have to do right this minute. Make sense? I hope to pass this characteristic off to my children. Right now is what is important. Make plans, but exist and BE in this moment, this second, this….oops, it’s gone.

Up Daily Word Count. I’m a writer. It’s time to level that game. That means I need to up my chance, like Ray Bradbury said. He said, “Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed.”  In the last couple of days I’ve written about 10,000 words. Not all of them are good. But I’ve amped up my percentages just by writing more than a typical 1,000 a day. I’m going to shoot for 2,000 words a day or three-hours of solid editing/revising.

New Physical Skill Learned. I’m looking at exploring Tai Chi. Not sure how that’s going to look, but the exploration is what it’s all about, yes?

New Marketing. I’ve been plugging along on my Thrasher Studios and Creative Word Lab freelance stuff. I get a hit here and a gig there. It’s slow, but steady work; but I really need to amp up my volume here. I need more sales and bigger jobs. I will have to explore some new marketing tactics that are zero or low income. This also is an exercise in keeping my organizational communicator skills sharp (level up your life….). By the way, I’m @mamacasz66 on Twitter.

Today’s the very first day of the month. So how did I do? I was very much in the Now today. I stopped and I enjoyed the mild weather and brief peek-a-boo sunshine we got here in Twin Peaks. I planted some more onions. I put eggshells and coffee grounds in a bed I’m prepping to plant asparagus in. My word count kicked ass today. I wrote (not including this blog post, 4,500 words today. All new ones. And I edited for two hours. I looked on line to see if I could find some complimentary introductory Tai Chi classes. No luck yet, but I spent time investing in this new skill. I did the same for marketing – well, I upped my twitter presence. I always forget about twitter, unless it’s a special event. So, again, I might have to come up with a check list so that I remember the tools in my marketing tool box.

Right now I feel like the future is looking up. My family has some struggles right now with my special-needs son and financially things are still not comfortable. But, I have great kids, a damn good partner, a job I love, and I’m working on loving myself a bit more, too. Life is good. And I’m happy.