Not Much in Distance, But a Start… Like every book or story, you have to start with a first line, a first word. Today, finally, I figured out how to motivate myself enough on the running to get the goals I want done. And interestingly enough, it is a twisted gambling structure that helped me get started. Now, for the folks who love to toss money away in casinos, yet feel they are winning, there are gambling systems. A Martingale is one. (Really silly.) Another is a simple Positive Progressive Betting System. All that one does is give some structure to betting and make a gambler feel lucky at times…

Yup, We All Have Them… Meetings and then I spent a couple of hours up at WMG working on collectable stuff. We (meaning me and Josh, the North store manager among other jobs) are madly working to dig out a massive collection I bought about four years ago and haven’t done anything with. But at the WMG stores and offices and warehouses, to dig out one thing, it takes moving around a ton of other stuff. But almost there. The collection? Well, for libraries, they used to bind newspapers to make them easier to store and handle. The Oregonian, the main Portland paper, was bound in large black books, each paper…

Adjust a Goal On July 1st, without saying much to anyone but Kris, I started a push to run a marathon in November. But as I detailed out the first of September, I had to hit one major benchmark before I would even start that marathon. Some background: I will be 66 before the race starts. I have bad knees from my years in sports. And I was far overweight on July 1st. Benchmark: To protect my knees, I needed to be under 180 pounds to start the race. I would be better served to be around 170, but I was willing to go at 180. On July 1st I weighed…

Refocus on Running Day 4 Hit the five miles for a fourth day. I have spent the last three days down in the Salt Lake area with the state chapter of the Romance Writers of America. A fantastic group, a great conference, and I was honored to be part of it, teach a couple of classes, and give a very short speech. Mostly I got to learn from all the wonderful and dedicated and driven writers there. Great time. I really love to hang around with writers who want to learn. So tomorrow I’ll go back to a more normal blog here about writing and other things since I will be home.…

Refocus on Running Day 3 Hit five miles for a third day. And I got to learn a bunch of fun stuff from some fantastic professional writers. I’ll explain more next week. And I ate far too much. (grin) As I said before, for a few days here I will focus on on this gaining distance until Sunday and then will expand this blog back out more. But right now I need to be focused on the running. This is a very short-term focus. Also I want to illustrate to those of you having some focus issues how you bore down to one thing for a short time to bring that thing…

Refocus on Running Day 1 Got started and hit the five miles instead of seven miles. For a few days here I will focus on on this until Sunday and then will expand this blog back out more. But right now I need to be focused on the running. This is a very short-term focus. Start was good. Other things… — October workshops started up. If you want to jump in, look back a few posts for the list of October workshops and write me. — Patreon supporters will be getting two issues of Smith’s Monthly shortly. More than likely next week. — Kickstarter supporters will be getting surveys in…