Archives for October 2015

Weekly Lesson & Quote

October 26, 2015 By K. D. McAdams

I’ve been working to wrap up the book I’m working on so that I can start something new on November 1 for NaNoWriMo. As a result my days have become more structured so I have been thinking about what my ideal day would be like.

Lesson: You can create your ideal day, all you have to do is start making sure that any free time is spent doing or thinking about something that would make the day perfect. Don’t waste time with games and internet surfing if those things don’t make you feel fulfilled.

Quote: “I want to be around people that do things. I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things.” ~ Amy Poehler

Weekly Lesson & Quote 10/19/2015

October 19, 2015 By K. D. McAdams

Last week I was recovering from being sick and kicking off a few new projects. A bunch of things didn’t go the way I expected them to and I started to worry that all the projects were bad ideas and that I needed to rethink everything. I let negative thinking impact what I had to get done.

Lesson: Attitude and frame of mind have a significant impact on productivity.

Quote: “Think positive, be positive and positive things will happen.” ~Unknown

If you know who I can attribute that quote to please let me know. I did several google queries, but none of them offered attribution.

Where did that zombie come from?

October 16, 2015 By K. D. McAdams

The other night we were watching the season premiere of The Walking Dead and I realized something – I always get distracted by the zombies story.

One of my favorite sequences was at the tractor yard. Glen and the two guys from Alexandria have to clean out the building to quiet the zombies inside. Once they have dealt with the zombies in the building and are turning to leave the screen show a tractor with a (formerly) female zombie pinned under an attachment on the back. It looks like a lawn mower attachment but it doesn’t really matter.

How did she get there? Seriously I am obsessed. Did she get trapped while she was alive and that’s how she turned? If so, even in the zombie apocalypse what the hell was going on that a woman can get trapped under a lawnmower attachment? I don’t think it’s physically possible to trap yourself so someone else had to have been there with her. So these two went out tractor shopping during the zombie apocalypse and oops, sorry honey I dropped the mower implement on both your legs. It’s just crazy.

If she got trapped after she turn into a zombie who thought that was effective? Yeah I’m gonna use the tractor with a mower attachment to go kill one zombie. I’ll back into her and carefully lower the deck to make sure she gets stuck. Then I’ll shut down the tractor and hop off and leave her there. If you’re going to back over a zombie with a mower, turn the mower on, and let it fly. You hop off while it’s running and if you’re lucky it takes out another two or three walkers.

It’s definitely not that I don’t believe a zombie could be there. It seems like as good a place as any, but I want to know her story. I want to know how in the moment it wound up perfectly logical for this woman to be trapped under the mower attachment of a tractor.

Are there any zombies that have grabbed your interest? They’re dead, why are they so damn fascinating?

Weekly Lesson & quote 10/12/2015

October 12, 2015 By K. D. McAdams

Last week things started to get busy. In addition to the usual work stuff I had some flu like symptoms at the end of the week. In an effort to build on last weeks lesson I was working on writing down my to-do list more consistently.

Lesson: Getting to-do items out of my head and into a trusted storage location frees my brain from worry and confusion, allowing me to be creative and productive.

Quote: “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything” ~ Shunryu Suzuki

Debutantes and the undead

October 9, 2015 By K. D. McAdams

Are you excited about the season premiere of The Walking Dead? I am. My two favorite shows right now are Downton Abbey and The Walking Dead. On the surface it’s an odd combination but both stories have what I consider interesting parallels.

While the pace of change for the Crawley family is slower than that for Rick and his family it is still significant. Both shows thrust the main characters into a changed world and watch them react.

As a trained police officer Rick should be helping everyone. Instead he’s making decisions on peoples viability to join his group based on how many they have killed. We’ve watched him evolve and struggle with this new role and now as season 6 approaches we have to wonder if he is going to go overboard.

Lady Mary was raised to attend a coming out ball and marry a noble land owner, at or above her current station. One could imagine that her destiny was to while away her days at luncheons and balls. Instead she has stepped up to actively run the family estate. She’s struggling to understand rents, head of sheep and cash flow. All things her father prefer she not worry about but that she proves quite skilled in mastering.

Obviously the zombies are terrifying and deadly but we’ve all gotten used to the hissing surprise of an unexpected biter. What I’m watching to see is if Rick is going to make another decision that pushes him further away from the peace officer he was.

Lady Mary losing the family estate is far less frightening but not without suspense. What I’m watching for is to see if she’ll continue to be Lady Mary even when that concept has fallen out of fashion or will she become Mrs. Crawley the polar opposite of her gilded upbringing.

Do you like any odd combinations of TV shows?

Weekly Lesson & Quote 10/5/2015

October 5, 2015 By K. D. McAdams

Every Sunday I do a weekly planning exercise, on paper with a pen. There are seven steps in all and eventually I’ll share it with you. For now, one of the steps that really makes me think is recording a lesson learned or reenforced during the previous week and then finding a quote to support that lesson. Some of the lessons I have learned, while others will repeat themselves as I work on improving. The quotes come from all over, but I’ll always give credit to the speaker.

I thought it might be fun to share the lessons and quotes with you each Monday, so this is the start of a regular thing.

This weeks lesson~ Waking up without a plan for the day means I’ve already wasted the day.

Quote~ “Every evening, write down the 6 most important things you must do the next day. Then while you sleep your subconscious will work on the best ways for you to accomplish them. Your next day will go much more smoothly.” – Tom Hopkins

I’ve seen different numbers, but 6 works for me (3 was too few and 10 too many). I not only write down the tasks, I put them in my calendar and commit the time to completing them.