Laina Turner's Blog, page 41

Wedding, Workout, and Weightloss Wednesday

It is now 171 days until my wedding. I don’t have any more done than I did 271 days ago.

Oh wait, that’s not completely true. The bridesmaids and I did decide to wear these kick ass Chuck Taylors after the ceremony but like everything else, I haven’t actually done anything about it yet.

You know like buy them.

Part of me wants to cancel and reschedule the wedding until I have time. However, I doubt I’ll ever have time so I need to suck it up and push forward.

But as awesome as these shoes are they aren’t going to feed people, or give them music to dance to, pour the champagne, or marry us.

I even have someone who is willing to help me and I haven’t had time to connect with her, either. How pathetic is that?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

I swear it’s not cold feet I’m just frazzled.

On a positive note I’ve lost 5 lbs since my check in with you all 2 weeks ago. That leave 19 lbs in 24 weeks. Totally doable. The scary part about that is in a few more pounds my 14-year-old son will be taller than me and outweigh me. I’m not prepared for this. He’s supposed to still be cute and cuddly and watch Thomas the Tank Engine with me.

Anyways, I digress. Before next week’s update I pledge to secure the minister (I have a lead), talk to my wedding planner, secure the photography (I have a person just haven’t signed the contract), and buy those Chuck Taylors.

Wish me luck!

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Top 5 Places I want to Visit

If I was independently wealthy and could spend my time doing anything I wanted it would be to travel. I love traveling and exploring new places. I enjoy the airport and people watching. In fact, that might be the absolute best part about travel.

People are so interesting don’t you think?

I was lucky as a child and my parents also loved to travel and we went all over. There are very few states I haven’t visited and we even went out of the country a few times.

San Francisco was on my list and I’m thrilled to be going there in March and I’m heading to Salt Lake City in a couple weeks.

Two of my favorite cities are Las Vegas and New Orleans. I love the energy and the over the top atmosphere. They are so vibrant.

And people watching is the BEST.

Even though I’ve been many places, there are so many more I want to visit.

To list all of them would be a 15-page blog post but I wanted to share my top 5 in North America.

So here goes…the top 5 places I want to visit.

1. Miami – I grew up in the 80’s and LOVED Miami Vice. Plus I love warm weather. The hotter, the better.

2. Alaska (anywhere) – In pictures, it looks so beautiful. Exactly like the last frontier as it’s called.

3. Montreal – I’ve been to Toronto and would like to see the French flavor of Canada.

4. Houston – I’ve been to Dallas a few times but Houston has always appealed to me. Its close proximity to the border makes it appealing.

5. Sante Fe – I enjoy the history and Indian culture and would like to learn more.

What are your top 5?

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3 Tips to Catch Up

Last week I had minor surgery that I really thought would be no big deal. I mean it was outpatient surgery so how bad could it be? The word surgery should have tipped me off that it wouldn’t be some walk in the park.

Silly me.

I thought I’d have the surgery, go home that day and sleep it off, and be back to normal the next day. Not so much. It was annoying, but I learned that I have an awesome family. Not that I didn’t already know that but they really stepped up. Especially, my daughter. I may have had to promise her new toys for her hamster if she waited on me but lets’ not worry about the details. Let’s focus on the end result.

Anyways I was behind before the surgery (I feel perpetual behind) and now behind doesn’t even cover the magnitude of how behind I am. I didn’t even read my devotional or journal which makes me feel very disconnected.

But I’m not stressing. I have a plan I reach for when I get myself in these really, really behind situations (it happens more than I’d like but it’s called LIFE).

I don’t know about you but one commonality my out of control tasks lists have is I don’t have a clear idea of what it is I’m supposed to do. I’m away from email for a few days yet they don’t stop coming in and while I might glance at them and semi register what I need to do the task quickly flies out of my mind and I forget.

Step 1: Write that shit down. It might be scary as you get to your 2nd or 3rd page of things you need to do and the urge to bury your head in the sand and live in denial grows as your list does you need to face your fears and just get it down in black and white.

Step 2: Prioritize. I’m a huge fan of Steven Covey and the 4 quadrants of time management. It’s normal to think everything is super urgent and needs to be done asap but let’s face it, there are only so many hours in the day and not everything can be your top priority.

If you’ve never read about this time management technique here is a good article but it simply says you need to break your list down into 4 buckets:

• urgent and important

• urgent and not important

• not urgent and important

• not urgent and not important

Remember not everything can fall into urgent and important. For example, I need to plan my daughters 10th birthday party. Obviously, it’s time sensitive so I would label that urgent and important. I also need to reorder new Invisalign trays as I think my son through them away by accident (he denies it but I’m not so sure). That’s important but not urgent. Nothing is going to change if I do that task today or next month. Yeah, my teeth might take a little longer to straighten but the world won’t come to and end. If I don’t have my daughters party on her birthday weekend…well… though of you who have little girls know what kind of catastrophe that could cause.

Step 3: Block your time out to work on the tasks that have built up and then new ones. One of the biggest issues I face is getting to the stuff I’m behind on without ignore and getting behind on the new stuff coming in. I’m a huge believer of blocking your time (I will be posting about this next week) so I can keep myself on track.

Look for small periods of time where you don’t have the luxury to get involved in a difficult task but can knock out a few emails. Chisel away where you can.

To help you take control of your To Do list click here to download the worksheet to help you organize your goals.

 

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Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

I might be breaking up with someone over the next few days. In fact, probably thousands of someones – hopefully not you – please please please I hope it’s not you. But if it is we can still be friends.

Breaking up is scary. Not roller coaster scary but rather free-falling out of an airplane scary. It’s hard to let go of a relationship even when you know the other party isn’t as “into you” as you are to them.

What the hell am I talking about, you ask? Don’t worry; I’m still getting married. This breakup is all about business.

I’m scrubbing my email newsletter list, and it’s freaking me out. But you have to face your fears to grow, right?

I’m attending Build Your Own Blog Conference (BYBC) February 19-20 and part of this 2-day conference jammed packed conference have been weekly webinars (I’ve now attended 4) that have been OMG fabulous. Honestly, even if you can’t attend the conference, for the low price of $199, you can get these archived webinars and handouts. It’s really a 6 weeks online course on crashing through your fears and building a badass blog. You can register using my coupon code careerblogger25 for $25 off. That makes this conference a STEAL. 

Last week’s webinar changed my entire mindset regarding my blog and my strategy for success. It was one of those Ah-Ha moments that leave you thinking why they hell didn’t I think abut that before?

One of the things I learned was I needed to face my fear of being rejected and breakup with those subscribers who hadn’t opened one of my emails in months. Clearly, if they aren’t opening my emails they “aren’t that into me.”

Like my grandma used to say, S*** or get off the pot.

I use Convert Kit as my email newsletter provider and they have this awesome feature (which I’m sure the other providers also have – I know Aweber does) that allows me to filter out those who haven’t opened an email within the last 90 days but have been subscribed at least 30 days. Convert Kit calls them Cold Subscribers and those are the people I need to break up with. To let go of the one-way relationship we’ve had for a while now.

But because I HATE giving up on things, I wanted to give our relationship one last chance. I wrote a series of 5 emails designed to either get those Cold Subscribers to sign back up and commit to reading All My Fabulousness or to unsubscribe.

See what I did right there. I’m making them break up with me. I hate ending relationships, so I’m totally taking the easy way out.

The 1st went out Thursday morning, the 2nd today, with the next 3 scheduled for Thursday, Monday, and Thursday respectfully. Each day before I send out the next email blast, I re-run the Cold Subscriber report and only send to those folks. At the end of the 5 email series, I will have a clean, albeit probably much smaller, email list. But that’s ok. I want people who will engage. Who want to connect with me. And I don’t want to fill up the email box of people who don’t care. That’s just annoying.

So far out of my cold list I’ve had 126 unsubscribes. It hurt a little to see that, but it’s ok. I’ll cry a little, eat some chocolate, and move on.

If you’re ready to download this step-by-step checklist on how to set up your own purge list and don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have questions or want help.

I will write up a detailed post of how this worked when it’s done in a couple of weeks so; please check back. Do make sure to check out yesterday’s post and enter the raffle!

And don’t forget to check out BYBC it’s going to be awesome!

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Welcome to February PLUS a raffle

It’s February 1st. Can you believe it? I can’t.

I’m excited. I like February. Why?

February means Valentines Day. Even though I’m trying to stay away from the candy this year (send me some willpower mojo), I like the fun stuffed animals (I saw the cutest hedgehog at the grocery store) and taking my son out to dinner while my ex takes our daughter. It’s those little traditions around holidays that make me happy. Creating memories is what it’s all about.

February means it’s only 180 days to my wedding. That’s ONLY 180 days. SIX MONTHS. I may be freaking out just a little ( a lot) right now because I still haven’t DONE A THING but talk about what I should be doing the last month.

February also means it’s a little bit closer to daylight savings time (I want need it to be lighter longer) and spring.

February means the Build Your Own Blog Conference (BYBC), and I’m counting down the days until Feb 19th. I am so stoked about this conference. Not just because I’m an ambassador this year (I knew 2016 was going to be great) and have already started getting to know some AMAZING people. One of my goals this year was to take my business to the next level. Not even the next level. How about 10 levels up! And this conference is going to be a HUGE first step. You really should check it out. Even if you can’t make it to Salt Lake City, you should still get a ticket so you can get access to the amazing webinars and content. (A regularly priced ticket is $199 but with coupon code careerblogger25 (my gift to you) you can get $25 off and trust me $174 is a small investment in your professional development if you truly want to be a badass blogger.

You can register HERE. 

 

February also means my blog redesign launch. OK, that’s not a yearly thing (forget I also did it 6 months ago) and it technically launched last week but screw that. I’m putting it on my I’m happy it’s February list!

So how are we going to celebrate?

This week you can enter to win a Grand Prize of a $100 Amazon gift card by showing some love, social media love that it.

If you’re new to this blog, I’ve added some links to my most popular posts that you might want to check out.

Blogging Voice

5 Tips to Beat Blogging Burnout

3 Tips to Make Your Blog Post Sizzle

And take a minute to comment on this post about what your favorite love is right now for more points.

My favorite love is healthy smoothies. I could eat them 3 times a day.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

photo credit – header – unsplash

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How I started Writing Fiction

I get asked all the time how long I’ve been writing stories. My earliest memory is 2nd grade and throughout grade school and junior high I wrote stuff all the time. Then my priorities shifted and over the next many years I didn’t write, I just thought about it all the time. It never stopped being a dream to support myself as an author I just never felt the time was right to pursue it. Then one day in my 30’s I realized that much like trying to decide the right time to have a baby there was never going to be the “right” time, and I wasn’t getting any younger, so shouldn’t let anything stop me from pursuing my dreams.

It took me 2 years writing off and on to write my first book, Stilettos & Scoundrels, all the way to the end. It was published in 2009 and has gone through several major (and much needed) revisions since then. By the time I got to the 4th or 5th book in the series I was a much better writer, practice makes perfect, and I had to improve the first ones. Editing and revising can be a never ending process. Mainly, because nothing is perfect.

I now have 15 fiction books published, not counting the boxed sets. It was 17 until I took 2 down (in the Athena Parks series) last year to revise and republish this year.

My Presley Thurman series, my first, is up to 11 books out with 2 more on the way this year.

I look back sometimes and wish I hadn’t waited so long to pursue my dream. I’m living it now and I could have been living it so much sooner had I not put it off. Maybe. I do believe that timing is everything and who knows what might have happened. All I know now is that I’m living the dream. It’s hard work but so worth it.

Are you living YOUR dream? What’s stopping you?

Enroll in my 5-day FREE email course on setting those kick ass goals to get to your dreams!

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Wedding, Workout, and Weight loss Wednesday

The wedding venue is one the elements in planning a wedding that usually is done way in advance. That is if your location is an in-demand wedding spot. If it’s in your parents, backyard maybe not so much. When we got engaged, we decided early on to have the wedding in Wisconsin even though we live in Indiana. Wisconsin is where Matt is from and where his mom and many relatives live. Other family and friends are from the surrounding states so it was a very central location as well. We also knew the wedding wouldn’t be in a church (I do want to say I am a Christian and this wasn’t an easy decision for me but for reasons I’m not going to dive into we did decide to not do the traditional church thing).

The whole wedding planning process made me a little nervous because Matt and I have very different tastes so trying to find a location that was elegant, romantic, and classic (my tastes) and also not new, Pinterest-y, or modern was a bit of a challenge. We did manage to find a place last year that we booked called The Villa Filomena which was a gorgeous venue that meets all of our needs.

However, when it came time to set the wedding date again, I decided I wanted more of a destination spot. A place where the bridal party and family could hang out and enjoy more than just the day of the wedding. In my Google search, I stumbled across The Castino Lakeview Mansion (thank God for the Google) and knew I just had to have it. Lucky for me it was available not only for the wedding but the few days before and after so we could make it a week of festivities. I feel it is the perfect spot to have a bunch of people whom I love to hang out and have fun.

I liked the venue so much I was willing to have an outdoor wedding, which wasn’t my initial desire, but the setting there is so beautiful I didn’t hesitate. It sleeps 24 and we will have it full. It is a little stressful thinking about how to feed and organize the week for all those people so any tips would be appreciated!

On the weight loss and work out front, I’m down 1 whole lb. Only 24 more to go and 26 weeks to do it in. Nothing like a little pressure.

My biggest travesty of the week is my FitBit died (I know you’re all upset on my behalf). I hard restarted it and it worked for another day and died again and now it’s officially dead. It was horrible. I mean if my steps aren’t being tracked did they really happen? It honestly impacted my motivation and made me fearful I wasn’t doing enough even though I know perfect well how many steps running at 6.0 on the treadmill gives me. I had become so dependent on it that it freaked me out.

But don’t worry. I got a new one. Sort of. I actually borrowed my ex-husbands old one as he recently replaced it with an Apple watch. It’s not the Charge HR that I had but it will do for now. I want the Fit Bit Blaze that’s coming out in March so I didn’t want to replace it now and turn around and buy the Blaze in March but there was no way I could live without one #firstworldproblems.

This week my goal is to get in 10,000 steps daily and yoga 4 times. I really want to try for 15,000 steps but I’m getting ready for my official blog re-launch next week and working on the Goals ebook and online course and I need to better balance working out with working.

What are your goals this week?

Read 27 weeks left.

photo credits by unsplash

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5 Tips to Beat Blog Burnout

I’ve been blogging since 2008, which honestly is hard to believe. It doesn’t seem like 8 years has passed since I started this journey. Though by the number of old websites Matt (my soon to be husband and web developer) has in his “way back” machine it would look more like 16 years have gone by.

Now, of course, it’s not liked I’ve blogged every day for the last 8 years, and when I first started I was a small business consultant, and I only blogged every once in a while about business stuff. I look back at some of those posts (yea they are still archived), and I just have to laugh. Pinterest didn’t exist then so there were no cute images, I hadn’t heard of SEO, my posts were so BORING. And to be honest, I remember when I first started blogging, I looked at it as a chore rather than a fun, creative outlet as I do now.

In the last 8 years, there have been so many times I’ve thought about quitting. I started this for fun and then because I was spending so much time doing it wanted also to make some money at it. And as you fellow bloggers out there know monetization is freakin hard.

There have been days where I wondered why I was spending hours on writing the perfect post, or $600 on a “real” camera (not my iPhone) to try and get just the right image when I might make $2 this month. Or I’m just exhausted and want to want Netflix on the couch instead of commenting on other blogs trying to build a community (though truthfully those 2 things can be multi-tasked).

But at the end of the day, I know what I want from my life, and it’s to do this hard, crazy blogging/writing thing as a J.O.B. So to keep me motivated to push through those tough times here are 5 ways to beat blog burnout.

1. Realize how far you’ve come on your journey. Whether you’re like me and have been blogging for years, or you’ve just started you should be proud of where you’re at. Too many times we are more worried about what we haven’t accomplished and don’t focus on where we are at. As long as you’re one step closer to where you want to be, then celebrate. You’re much farther ahead than those who still are in the thinking about it stage.

2. Look back at some of your first posts or photography and then look at today. Enjoy even the smallest improvements. You’re moving in the right direction.

3. List all the things you love about blogging or what you get from it. Sometimes we need to be reminded of why we started in the first place.

4. Make sure you’re writing about what moves you. If you’re posting about recipes and you hate cooking you need to make a move. I know a lot of people, myself included, who have blogged what they should be blogging about not what they wanted to be blogging about. Follow your heart.

5. Take a break. Sometimes we just need to walk away and recharge. I don’t me give up and quit but take a vacation. Let your mind rest and rejuvenate so you can be at your best creative self. Don’t be so hard on yourself. We all need a break at times.

Being an entrepreneur is hard and often thankless. We work tons of hours for little pay. Taking care of our inner selves is important to our overall happiness and sanity.

What do you do to avoid burnout?

header photo credit unsplash

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Organize and Beautify

I recently made my family watch The Minimalists – Ted Talks on You Tube.   to try and get them to understand we don’t need things to make us happy. Things like a drawing made when they were 3 or the toys from Happy Meals circa 2009.

Since our kids are 9, 12, and 14 I felt they could understand why I showed it to them and what it meant. In theory they all seemed to grasp the concept. But when I started discussing how we were going to go through the house and purge things we didn’t need it appeared I may have overestimated them.

Frankly, no one in the house “gets it.”

Everyone nodded their heads and said they grasped the concept but then went about their day and promptly forgot all about it.

Don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t mean for us to become minimalists. No way…I like my stuff.

My point was to try and show them how we don’t need to accumulate so much crap. I can’t take the messy clutter anymore and the fact that I’m the only person in a house of 5 that apparently knows how to load the dishwasher doesn’t help. Do they think a fairy comes in at night and loads all the dishes from the sink to the dishwasher while they’re sleeping? Though my daughter did try to make a case for everyone to load and unload the dishes they use only. You know because that was “fair.”

While everyone else mentally rolled their eyes waiting for me to stop complaining about the mess in everyone’s room my 9 year old jumped on the bandwagon. Well, sort of. My daughter is a skilled negotiator, she’s shrewd, and knows how to work the system to get what she wants.

Under the guise of minimizing she conned me into buying her some pretty cube organizers. This happened about 5 minutes after I gave the speech that now that Christmas was over I wasn’t spending a dime on non-essentials because we needed to save money. But when she told me her plan I couldn’t argue. All her storage pieces were old hand-me-down shelves from her brother and she promised if I bought her new shelving she would get rid of some stuff.

Sucker that I am we went all over town to look at shelving. Yes, we could have searched on the web but she’s old fashioned and wanted to SEE it in person. You know, to make sure it was exactly what she envisioned.

She found the cube storage she wanted and it wasn’t badly priced at all so we got what she wanted and headed home.

ClosetMaid 421 Cubeicals 9-Cube Organizer, White

After she hounded my fiancé to put it together for her, her room went from this:

To this:

Once I saw what it looked like, I didn’t mind spending the money at all. The transformation was fantastic. So much so that I went back and bought a few of the storage pieces for other rooms in our house.

I’m still waging the war on clutter but there’s always hope.

What are some of your tips and tricks to managing the clutter?

header photo image credit unsplash

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Making Up Stories

I’m a blogger and a fiction author and I love both for various reasons but I’ve been making up stories since the 2nd grade (and not just to get out of trouble) and I can’t imagine not doing so forever.

It’s why I decided to pursue my MFA in Creative Writing. Not just because I like going to school, although that’s also true, but because I want to be the best writer possible for my readers.

I get asked what’s its like to make up stories and my response is, it’s fun. I get to create a fantasyland in my head. When we read for pleasure, it’s to escape. When I’m writing it’s the same. I get to spend how many ever hours I’m working on a book entrenched in a pretend world where I can make just about anything happen I want. If I want a unicorn to pop up in downtown Chicago in the middle of one of Presley’s mysteries it can happen. It might be weird but it can be done.

I feel like I know my characters on an intimate level. Yes Presley does share some of my characteristics. We both like food, coffee, wine, and shopping. She was my first main character so I think it’s natural to have that cross over. Advice we writers get all the time is write what you know and I do know myself, so there you go.

There’s just nothing better than snuggling up with a good book and getting away from your reality fro a short period of time. I’m honored to be someone who can be a part of that.

If you haven’t had a chance to read a Presley Thurman cozy mystery sign up below and grab your free copy today!

 

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