Nobody has a perfect life, and it's entirely possible that if you want someone else's life, they are busy wanting someone else's too–maybe even yours

• Oh so true. Does it irritate you when people tell you they envy your life and assume you spend it under a pandanus palm with a drink being waited on you on the one side and a child fanning you on the other?
•  I sure get i irritated when people think I write or paint because I have nothing else to do and they do not understand I do these things because I make them happen at price of something else I give up sleep for instance. lol
  

I have been reading some regency romance novels mixed in with some Stephen King thrillers, now that's an interesting combination of taste.  My current novel takes place on a sailing vessel and involves the Australian gold rush a beautiful maiden in distress, the essential alpha male (of course) and a Maritime Lawyer.

I ventured into reading 12,000 to 15,000 word E Book, novellas today.  They are a good length to read easily in one evening  and still have time to do other things.

I wanted to read them as I am toying with the idea of witting these sorts of short story novellas for the E book publication market and felt I need to get a look at how others do it.

I am advised that there is a good market for Regency romance so I also spent quite a lot of time researching the regency period.  My gosh, it did make me pleased to be alive today and not then.  I learned quite a few things I had not know.    1816 was the year when they had no summer.  One of the worst climatic events.  Out of that summer of staying indoors because it was too cod to go out, the characters of Dracula and Vampires were born.  Women had a 50% chance of death in childbirth during this period.  That s not my idea of an romantic era.

I am an artist, author.  I am not super woman.   .

What good is a fit body if it is not accompanied by a fit. mind? 

I NEED to be a creative person or I am not me. Simple as that.  I would prefer to be fat that non creative.   I would prefer to die a couple of years sooner due to a few extra kilo on me that to die never having fulfilled all my creative goals.

There often is no time to do everything and I have set my priorities and refuse to feel guilty about my choice. .
So there, lol,  I have expressed my fitness goals and that exist, I believe them, I will work toward them but I I need to make a cut back on any individual day, dur to being unable to achieve all my action plans on that day, then I will cut back on my exercise program.

I will do the best I can on the fitness front but if I have to make a choice given the time I have available to do things in I refuse to allow the creative me to be pushed aside any more

Reg settled in to working on a Sudoku puzzle so the world was quiet and peaceful and I did not need to watch him closely, lol, no idle hands.  A perfect,environment, to write in.

Quiet midsummer morning working on my novel. Even my exercise was a peaceful walk in the country, nothing to jar my senses.  I even 'forgot', to look at the news. I am in a  peaceful, (all is on track with all my goal and action plans), the tranquil state I can create in.  We are getting used to this strange weather where we need kamik rain boots summer or winter.

While I will not meet any deadline goal on the novel I am writing, after sixty four and a half years of my life, it is more important to me to write a good novel than achieve any deadline.

This morning I was laying back, feet up, In front of the air cooler, garden view, while I wrote. Very nice!

He is turning the TV, the summer sports are on, the cricket for Reg to watch, so I am switching studio, heading out to my silent art studio away from distractions I can just pop back into the lounge room periodically to check on him. 

I have neglected my novel this month, no opportunity to work in it. 
Today I want to feel I have edged well ahead in progress on the work. 

Item Description
Oil Wooden Table Easel Box
Containing 10 x 60ml tubes plus
200ml tube Titanium White of Classico Oil colour,
75ml bottle each of linseed oil and oil thinner,
5 sticks of 4-5mm x 140mm Willow charcoal,
double metal palette bowl, large oval timber palette,
Size7 painting knife, Size 2 and Size 6 Hog Bristle brushes
all packed in a wooden table easel box with carry handle.

Box Dimensions 33 x 43 x 13cm. 


This is an art supply shop closing downsizing clearance sale,
once sold out we can offer no more at this low, nil profit, price.

  I opened a store Grey-Nomad-Downsize  EBay store
then found a listing service to create and load my EBay store listings. 

You can FREE trial the listing template program,

 Click here to view more details 

After I gave up my beautiful professional pottery studio and retired from making high fired pottery I found myself still longing to make pottery but without a kiln due to our travelling lifestyle.  So I bought a pallet of air dry clay.   Now I am writing I no longer have time to make any pottery and I am prefering the challenge of writing novels anyhow.  So my air dry clay has been listed in my EBay store and it is below recomended retail price even after paying for postage,

Here it is almost 5am and I have been up all night listing on eBay as I continue with the downsizing of our private art collection.

Showing off this little vase I made, it is a technique that is repeatable, you could try it yourself.  This pot was painted with perm enamel air dry paints.  Something that is within the reach of anyone as you do not need a kiln to fire these enamels on.  If you give it a try I would love to hear how you get on with the process.

  I opened a store Grey-Nomad-Downsize  EBay store
then found a listing service to create and load my EBay store listings. 

You can FREE trial the listing template program,

 Click here to view more details 

My gosh!   It is so easy to look at all the areas where I have slipped back or slacked off, especially when I look at myself lounging on the sofa working late at night a little neglectful...OK a lot neglectful of my appearance and that of the house and even my roses desperately crying out for some summer pruning.  Time to slap on some indoor tanning lotion  on my lily white legs and show them off in a pair of shorts outside, show a little pride in appearance and interest in physical recreation and activity again.

Then I pulled myself together and reviewed the year.   The amount that I have 'slid', is so little, I could easily catch up between now and the new year...and I plan too.  Aside from that, looking back over my year, I think I can me thrilled with some of my achievements.    I think that is the secret of maintaining peace of mind, happiness :-), focus on what we have managed to do.   Sometimes we achieve things and they had not even been written down as a goal but in reflecting back.....I realize I have achieved some dramatic life time goals this year, they were simply slightly different ones to those I had planned to achieve. lol :-). 

Overall I am heading towards Christmas 2010 looking at what was achieved this year and not the mess around me, I am very happy. 

Continuing with the FREE signed Postcards from the Artist, GIVEAWAY. This one is for the Australian wildlife lovers, it features the image of an oil painting I painted back in my Buninyong Gallery days.  The white square is only on the sample picture to prevent copyright infringment of the image it is not on the postcard.

This postcard is a THANK YOU’, to my friends who 'like' my Kathy Shell facebook page. Read on to find out how to have one sent to you, FREE.

An Australian Postcard, sent to you and signed by the artist (me) who created the original used for the postcard.

*To receive it, just leave a comment in any one of my blogs and then send your name, mailing address and message saying 'Kathy Shell Postcard.'  Offer is limited to the week I make this offer in
.
Stamp and address will be on back of postcard to save me post office costs, unless prearranged as I will be sending the postcard, not a pre packaged postcard as I do when I sell postcards from this website.