Personal Mission Statement

It's a tradition on Cogitations & Meditations to post blogs about goals and schedules at the beginning of the year. So I'm reposting my blog on a Personal Mission Statement from January 10, 2011.

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A Personal Mission Statement is a set of mottoes for your life that define the boundaries of who you are, what your deepest held beliefs are, how you interact with others, and what you think of yourself.

The Personal Mission Statement (with the unfortunate acronym of PMS) will support you in achieving your Life List. It is not a list of goals, whether short term or long term, but rather, an overarching definition of your personality, of the qualities that make you a unique human. So it who you are, not who you want to be.

So "exercise thrice weekly" is a goal, but "I exercise every day no matter what's happening around me" is a motto.

The mission statement empowers you in the midst of life's stresses by being the core of who you are, what you're about, and what you value. It's an affirmation document to return to re-read when you feel overwhelmed or discouraged or disappointed that maybe perhaps you aren't who you thought you were.

Take a large piece of blank paper or a stack of them. This activity is best done longhand on a dead tree product, because of the tactile working feeling in addition to the visual payoff. Now pick up a bunch of colored markers. Find a room free of all distractions for 30&8211;45 minutes. Set a timer for 30 minutes, and grab a marker. Write down anything about you that first pops up in your mind. Next, grab a different colored marker to write down your next motto or trait.

Write slantwise, backwards, upside down, but be sure to lock your inner censor firmly away. There's no wrong answer. Be fearless, even if a few undesirables crop up. It's who you are, and that's OK. If you feel that you don't like them, you can change them via your annual goals. Thus, your mission statement now becomes a laundry list of what is in present time and day.

Once you have spent 30 minutes brainstorming, spend the next 15 minutes grouping it into categories, such as morning & bedtime rituals, journaling, living in the moment, purpose of my life, self-reliance, etc. Check to be sure that items are "I am" type statements, not "I will" or "I want."

The first time I did this was in September 2006. Everything I wrote in there's still valid today. This can be a good thing (haven't worsened) or a bad thing (haven't improved). Heh. But it is who I am today. This is my personal mission statement. What's yours?

Picture Day Friday

Authors are often asked the question: Where do your ideas come from? Here's one place that Australian author Anne Gracie suggests:

Happy New Year!

Wishing all of you a very, very happy new year filled with joy, laughter, hard work, and success. And of course, tons of books!

Picture Day Friday

'Bridal Dress' from No 6, Volume 1, Ackermann's Repository, June 1816:

"A frock of striped French gauze over a white satin slip; the bottom of the frock is superbly trimmed with a deep flounce of Brussels lace, which is surmounted by a single tuck of byas white satin, and a wreath of roses; above the roses are two tucks of byas white satin. We refer our readers to our print for the form of the body and sleeve: it is singularly novel and tasteful, but we are forbidden either to describe it, or to mention the materials of which it is composed. The hair is dressed low at the sides, and parted so as to entirely display the forehead: it is ornamented with an elegant aigrette of pearls in front, and a sprig of French roses placed nearly at the back of the head. Necklace, earrings and breacelets of pearl. White kid gloves, and white satin slippers."

The Ackermann's Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashion and Politics was published for 20 years (1809–1829) by Rudolph Ackermann. According to Hibiscus-Sinensis, Ackermann was a German carriage designer by trade when he moved to London 1783. By 1800, he was the leading publisher of the Regency era, publishing well over 300 books, plus innumerable prints and periodicals over his career. Ackermann was more than just a printer. A major patron of the Arts, he ran a drawing school, employed his own artists (Thomas Rowlandson worked constantly for him over three decades) and also manufactured art supplies such as watercolor paints. His shop was technologically advanced for 1811, for he had gas lighting installed at the premises at 101 The Strand. The quality of his prints were second to none, using the Alois Senefelder's process of lithography, which he patented in England in 1817.

Georgette Heyer's London

The Telegraph has a wonderful article on walking around in London's luxe Mayfair area following places mentioned in Georgette Heyer's books.

Austen and Arsenic

Maybe Jane Austen died of arsenic poisoning, posits The Guardian.

Austen fans have constantly debated what led to her early death at just 41. From Addison's disease, to the cancer Hodgkin's disease and the auto-immune disease lupus, various illnesses have been laid at her door.

Now crime novelist Lindsay Ashford has put forth reasoning to support her thesis that it was by arsenic poisoning. As she was researching her latest novel in Chawton House library, she found a sentence that Jane wrote a few months before she died: "I am considerably better now and am recovering my looks a little, which have been bad enough, black and white and every wrong colour."

"Having researched modern forensic techniques and poisons for her crime novels, Ashford immediately realised the symptoms could be ascribed to arsenic poisoning, which can cause 'raindrop' pigmentation, where patches of skin go brown or black, and other areas go white."

In Austen's time, arsenic was a compound found in a few medicines, such as Fowler's Solution, which was prescribed for the treatment of rheumatism—something Austen complained of in her letters.

We may never really know what couldn've caused Austen's death, but Ashford is having a fun time exploring it in her new novel The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen.