I'm doing 11 things
My weight was 14 st 7 (203ilbs) when I started this goal. It’s now 186. I’m a third of the way there! Go me! \o/
Katherine's Life List
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1. meditate every day
747 people -
2. Train myself to go to bed early and get up early
1 person -
3. set up a website
11 people -
4. Launch two new blogs
1 person -
5. become an actress
1 entry1,967 people -
6. pay off my debts
1 cheer1,011 people -
7. learn french
12,762 people -
8. Learn Japanese
1 entry . 1 cheer10,758 people -
9. run a 10K race
2 cheers98 people -
10. lose 50 pounds
1 entry2,882 people -
11. find a church
246 people
How I did it
It made me 
How I did it: I started off by setting myself a goal of writing 500 words a day, with the intention of raising that to 1000 words a day, when I'd gotten into the rhythm of writing and was more confident in my story and characters. I did go up to 1000 words a day, and I made an effort to stick to that at least 5 days a week -- I didn't always manage, but because my goal was pretty high, I still wrote a lot even during the weeks when I skipped a day or t… Read how I did it…
It made me
How I did it: I resolved to do this after years of thinking "that's something I might do some day" and weeks of reading tweets from two of my friends who were doing it. I'd spent most of my life thinking of exercise as something that other people did -- now, after having some epiphanies about how I think about my body, I'm exercising in earnest, and it feels great. Apart from resolving that I'd do it for real this time, here's what I did: I concentr… Read how I did it…
It made me
How I did it: I dug out an old story I'd abandoned years ago, that I had intended to use as the opening for a novel. I cut some parts and finished it off, sending the plot in a somewhat different direction -- simpler, since it was only going to be a short story rather than a novel, and a bit different in tone and style, since my style's changed a bit since I wrote it, and I was doing it for a different audience and a different venue than I'd originally… Read how I did it…
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Recent entries
I took a few tips from Khatzumoto-sensei of All Japanese All The Time. I’m not immersing myself nearly as much as he did, but I am using an SRS (spaced repetition system) to learn the kanji by the Heisig method. I highly recommend this! I’m using smart.fm’s Core 2000 for vocabulary learning, too, which is great—being able to fit my learning around my day, and to go at my own pace, is terrific. Much better for me than a class that’s always at the same time (even if I’m tired or busy that evening) and is full of people who learn either faster or slower than I do.
I’m also watching anime on Crunchyroll (it’s all free and legal!) and listening to Japanese audiobooks and podcasts. I don’t understand all of it, but the bits I do understand make the vocabulary stick in my head much more effectively than smart.fm by itself.
So far I’m pretty motivated and I’ve been sticking to it. Well, we’ll see how far I get with this.
For me, what will count as “becoming an actress” will be when I get my first paying acting job (not counting extra work, which I’ve already done, and which doesn’t really involve any acting). There’s a long gap between having one paying job and being a fully-fledged professional actress, but you definitely can’t call yourself a professional actress unless you’ve been paid at least once—and that’s what I’m aiming for right now: to climb that first step on the ladder.
