No. I’m not talking about basketball (which I’m not a fan of), but about my plans for the month.  The big goal for the month is to finish my mystery book. Its pretty much written, but still needs LOTS of edits. If I can finish it this month, then perhaps I can get the synopsis written and start pitching the book to agents/publishers in April! I’ve posted parts of the book at Authonomy.com which is run by HarperCollins. I don’t expect to have a Lana Turner moment with HC finding the book and sending me a bazillion dollars. But it is a great place to get feedback (so far so good) and perhaps it might get noticed by someone.

I also want to pitch a new business book. Right now I’m leaning towards a blogging book for work-at-home moms. The goal this month is to get the proposal researched and written. I’m hoping to pitch to Adams Media, which bought my last book, but want to be ready to send to other publishers as well.

In terms of my monthly challenges, this month is to write down everything I eat every day. Last month I was supposed to exercise every day (22 out of 28 days successful), but I still ate a lot. Cold and snow make me do that. I should have been a bear. So this month I hope to get more control over the food intake by keeping track. It does make you stop and think before you eat.  Do I really want to add that 300 calorie candy bar to the list?

This month’s book selection is Persuasion by Jane Austin, which I’ve read last week. I’ll be posting a little something about that and February’s book (The Great Gatsby) shortly.

And of course on top of it all is all the other things I need to get done each week such as articles, blogs, book promotion, teleseminars, etc. And because I’m already behind, I should probably get to it.

One of my goals this year is to read one “classic” a month. In January I’d read Push (which I started in December so I wasn’t sure I should count that), and started on Jane Eyre. But as the end of the month approached, it was clear I wouldn’t get through the book. It has over 400 pages of a font that has to be smaller than 6pt.  So I had to scramble for another book if I was to make my goal.

Luckily I found an old copy of Animal Farm by George Orwell. At only 128 pages, it was just the right length.

This book is the reason I don’t like literature. There is no resolution. The bad pig wins. It essentially says that animals (people) can’t handle power and will become horrible beings to keep it. Isn’t that what Lord of the Flies was about?

It starts out fine and interesting. It made me think of Charlotte’s Web or the movie Babe. But eventually, the animals stage a revolt to get a better quality of life, and get rid of the drunken farmer Jones. For a time they are able to run the farm and live in harmony. They have rules like no animals can live in the house or sleep in beds, or walk to two feet (birds have wings which give them 4 limbs). The simple sheep chant “Two legs are bad, four legs are good” (which is what made me think of Babe with the Mu Ram U sheep).

But human (or pig) nature sets in and when things can’t be resolved democratically, lies, deception, and violence are used to take control. Snowball is ousted, Napoleon takes over. And like every bad dictator he’s a hypocrite (he moves into the house and sleeps in the bed).  He changes the rules to fit his “new order”.  For example, the pigs can sleep in beds, just not with human sheets.

The animals are now working harder and have less food than with farmer Jones, but the propaganda tells them that’s not true. And when it comes time for old Boxer (the hardest working and most loyal of the group) to retire, he’s sent to the glue factory.

I’m sure there are all sorts of lessons to be learned from this book, but in the end I found it depressing. If I want to know about evils of politics or human nature, I can watch the news. And therein is what make’s Orwell’s Animal Farm a classic…it has a timeless story.

I finished the first month of my 12 months of challenges. In case you’re not caught up, one of my goals this year was to give myself 12 30-day challenges as a way to meet goals or just challenge myself.

In January my goal was to not go back to bed when my kids got on the bus for school.  This challenge only counted on school days, which makes it seem like its not such a challenge at all since the kids only had 17 days of school in January. Until I figured that out, I thought I’d done pretty well. I did have one day in which I lounged on the couch until 8 a.m. and the last day (Friday) I couldn’t get up until 8:30. But all other days I was at my desk by 7:30 am.

Getting up before 8:30 or 9:00 a.m. feels like a real chore to me. But I have to admit that getting to work by 7:30 and being done by 1 p.m. was pretty great. I had time for lunch and a nap. I even had time to run errands. I really like that. But at 7:00 a.m. I’d don’t like it more than I like sleep.

So the question is…do I stick with the early to rise and early to nap or do I go back to my later to rise and no nap?