A Perfect Day

Ciao, tutti!

This blog post is in response to Natalie Sisson's 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 3

Have you been keeping up with my Blog Challenge I've gotten myself into ? Each day I receive an email describing the challenge of the day.

Day 1 we had to write about our 2 or 3 biggest roadblocks that prevent us from living our ideal life.
Day 2's task was to figure out our why. Why did we want to live a free-er lifestyle.

I received today's assignment earlier this morning, and I've been pondering it all day. See- I did admit to being the Queen of Procrastination. This one should have been easy, and yet I've put it off until now.  It's 10:24 pm and I can't put it off anymore.

The challenge for Day 3 is to describe my perfect day- from waking up to going to bed.  What am I doing, what does it look, feel, smell. Really, I got this.

Ok, here goes.
My morning always starts with a cup of hot tea. Decaf, black tea. In a mug  handmade by a local potter. The mug is a blue color that reminds me of the sea.

I'm not a real early riser. 7:30 is my usual time to start the day. However, in my perfect day (yes, I'm tweaking a bit here), I'd be up and out of the house earlier. 6:30 maybe.

I take a walk on the beach, carrying the mug of tea with me.

I once owned a beach house that had a fantastic outdoor shower. I'd love to have that shower every morning.

Upon returning from my walk and shower, I make a nice late breakfast for Mike and myself. Fruit- my favorites are pineapple, melon or berries, and an omelet with cheese and fresh tomatoes or peppers, fresh squeezed orange juice and more tea. Coffee for him.

Most of the rest of the day is spent writing. In my perfect day I'd be working on that book I've started but haven't finished. And I'd be doing that writing in a spot I love to be in. Something that looks like the photo below. I'd be on that veranda, overlooking the sea.

I love the sounds of the sea. The water lapping, the fresh smell of the ocean water, the rustle of the sea breezes. It calms me, helps keep me grounded.

The evening meal would be some seafood, perhaps shrimp and clams.  And ice cream for dessert. There would be some Frank Sinatra music playing somewhere, and candles on the veranda.

That would be a perfect day for me.

Since you're reading along with my daily blog challenges, I'm thinking it would be fun for you to join right in with me. Go ahead. What would your perfect day look like?  Share it in the comments for me, please.


                                      

Can't wait to see what Day 4 will bring.


PS- While I did not make as much progress with the new blog as I had planned today, I did get some work done on it.  After several hours of researching and demo-ing, I narrowed a theme down to two choices. Tomorrow I need to make a decision, get the theme (whichever it is) installed, and get at least some of the pages created.

Turning summer dreams into reality

Ciao, tutti!

Summer is winding down, and I'm not particularly happy about it at all. I have just 4 more days to enjoy my mornings at the beach. During the months of August and September I've been able to spend most mornings over on the Lido enjoying some sun, sand and surf. Time to just do nothing, relax, read, swim, think, dream.  Zen time. I needed it.

BTW- the photo above is the view from my beach chair each morning. 

For some time now I've been wanting to write about our travels more, but I couldn't bring myself to. This blog has always been about Venice, and I haven't wanted to change that. Mike and I have had incredible trips since we've been living in Italy,  but I haven't been sharing any of that. 

My morning beach time has given me the opportunity to do some dreaming about how to make that happen. It's time for me to turn that dream into a reality. The other day I received an email inviting me to participate in a blog challenge program designed to help you find the path to the lifestyle you wish to live. It seemed like exactly what I needed at just the right time. I signed up. 

And so, this blog post is in response to Natalie's 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 1. The challenge for today is to write about 2 or 3 challenges that keep you from obtaining your goals. My list exceeded 3, but for the sake of keeping you poor readers from running for the hills, I'm going to stop at 2. 

#1  - I am the Queen of Procrastination. I'll find every excuse in the book to waste time. And my best excuse is always "It's nap time!"  If I didn't just twitter (NO- not that kind of Twitter) away a good portion of every day I can't even imagine the things I could accomplish. I want to create a new blog just for travel writing, and that is going to take work on my part. I need to buckle down and just do it. 

#2 - I second guess myself all the time, and end up convincing myself that I can't do things I want to. That I'm not good enough.  I don't want to talk myself out of giving travel writing/blogging every bit of energy so that I do it, and do it well. 

Whew. I got that down on paper.  I've completed the challenge for today. To think about and write down the challenges that keep me from accomplishing my goals. It's a bit intimidating to bare my flaws in front of you. Please don't think too poorly of me! (I'm not too thrilled with myself as I read what I've written.)

Today I also tackled another task that I've been sitting on for the last few weeks. I actually have made a little bit of progress on the new blog.  I had started one, attempted to learn the dreaded WordPress, hit my head against the wall a few times with it, and left the blog sitting in it's infancy state.  To get the features I wanted I was going to have to move the blog to a self-hosting site. That got done today!  I'm one small step closer to getting this new blog up and running.  With some luck, and more than a little hard work, www.HendersonsOnTheRoad.com will be launched in the coming weeks. I'll plan a kick-off party.   

In the meantime, I've got 9 more days to this exciting 10 day Blog Challenge to get through, and a WordPress class to complete! 

Can't wait to see what tomorrow's challenge assignment will be. Stay tuned!

Happy November!

It's November already!!!  We've been having some absolutely gorgeous Indian summer type days here in Venice this week. Sunny, warm, just fabulous. It's a perfect way to kick off what I hope will be a very interesting month for me.

I have LOTS on the table, hopefully not too much for me to manage to accomplish. I want to warn you that my November posts here on the blog might seem a little odd to you, in that they probably will not have much to do with Venice this month.  I've taken on a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel during the month. It's NaNoWriMO (National Novel Writing Month), if you have heard of it before.  I've signed up to do it, and will be posting my status along the way here. It helps to keep me accountable. 

I did the challenge for the first time in July, during the summer "Camp" version.  I did actually finished my book at 54,000 words, and surprised even myself.  My project in July was a memoir ( I turned my blog into a book! It's still in pretty rough draft form, I've been letting it sit for a while before I tackle the task of revising. More on that project to come!) This month's project is something much lighter, a chic-lit romance.  That's all I'm going to say about it, other than to add that no, it does not take place in Venice.  

Today being day 1 of the challenge was a good day, I wrote 1861 words.  Good for a first day for me, even a few hundred words more than I had expected to get done. Hopefully I can keep up the daily word count. 

In addition to doing NaNoWriMo, I am also studying Italian with a vengence. Every day for the last two months I've been spending two hours reading, writing and speaking, with lots of vocabulary building and a fair amount of work on several verb tenses, in particular the imperfetto, which still drives me batty. I swear, I will be fluent in Italian one of these years! 

Last but not least, I've kept my word on another of my 2013 resolutions- I not only took a rowing lesson, but I have joined the rowing club on Giudecca and will be taking more lessons there.  I think it's going to take some determination and perserverance, but a year from now, I expect to see me rowing around a few canals in Venice. 

So, friends, keep me in your thoughts and stick with me during this month of NaNoWriMo. I'm excited about what lies ahead.