Trying Out Some Things

I’m a social writer. I don’t so much need to be chatting with fellow writers (though that can be nice too) but I like writing in public places. Panera used to work very well for me, but the energy in my local shops hasn’t been quite right. Oddly, I’ve had some very profitable days in Applebee’s restaurants. And lately… the Bourse Food Hall in Philadelphia.

It’s all part of an attempt to reconnect with what I loved about writing (while getting my …stuff together). I’ve joined and participated now in a few local writing group events, and I think it’s working. I certainly feel more productive than I have in a while. Perhaps this is just a flow period in the cycle of tides, but for the moment, I intend to ride the wave some.

Given my lack of physical balance, this is the closest I’ll ever get to surfing. Or even paddle boarding….

Beauty in shards cred: Eden Mabee

It occurred to me yesterday during my time at the Bourse that a big issue I’m having, beyond the multitude of open projects I have going, is disconnection. Not just in an interpersonal sense, but in my general affairs. I have several notebooks, several computers, several cameras… stuff scattered pretty much everywhere. It used to be manageable, a way of sorting things in its own way However tidbits kept escaping the borders of their space and invading the space of others… I might use a cell phone camera instead of dragging along the Canon for a day’s outing, or I might write some story ideas down in my freewriting journal instead of adding them into a story file (especially when I’m out)…. I got careless. I didn’t sort all my files when I needed to upgrade a computer and made copies on our server as backups.

So, following my recognition on Sunday that this is not and should not be a growth year (or at least a growth round) for me, I’m continuing the deeper dive into things. It also means a review of my goals that I began this ROWnd with. Had December gone more according to plan… well, who knows? It didn’t. The change is still useful.

So… updated goals:

• Continue to freewrite daily; aim for at least three pages or 20 minutes BICHOP
• Maintain the ROW80 blog and update pages and info as I can
• Spend an hour daily, five days a week, sorting computer files (photos, notes, etc.)
• Spend an hour daily typing in notebooks, five days a week
• Reading… focus on reducing the “presently reading” list by finishing the library books (the hold up here is that several are non-fiction for research purposes, and those can be slow going when I’m taking copious notes or cross referencing details)
• Update name blog and test it for “digestibility“
• Learn the ins and outs of the Fediverse (Mastodon, Diaspora, etc.)
• Maintain a weekly sabbath, a day where I do not NEED to do anything at least
  

I’d like to have the blogs finished by the end of this ROWnd. The others will be ongoing. I’m not super keen on adding yet another set of social media worlds to maintain, yet I understand the drive to back away from the main players such as Twitter, FB, Google, etc., more for others than myself. And I know that by at least visiting these places on occasion it’s possible to reach fellow creatives (and old friends like former fellow ROWer Mike Young).

Plans? I’m Supposed To Have Plans?

Well, I guess I should since I’m working on the ROW80 challenge once again. (Yes, this is my goal post.)

I confess, I’m not quite feeling the energy I thought I might have this ROWnd the way I did when I agreed to help reboot the challenge again. What a difference a month can make….

Then again the whole time around the holidays has pretty much always been emotionally off for me. Possibly from having a seasonal birthday… possibly the general lack of daylight and already being a bit of a bookworm. I don’t know. I only know that it has become harder as I get older and I have lost certain precious people in my life. Friends who were as close as family, family…

Still, life goes on. And any one of those beloved people I miss so would close to box my ears (likely more than close) if I didn’t find joy and new experiences to look forward to. And one of the things that never hesitates to bring joy to my world is to write and create art.

In comes… goals

To be honest, with so many things a bit cockeyed right now, I’m setting some less than creative goals right now. Goals that should help me with my creative endeavors however:

• Spend a half hour every 2 days working on my Photoshop lessons so I can better edit the mass of photos I’ve taken over time
• Rejoin a writing bloghop (likely WeWriWa since I really like the community already)
• Setup and schedule ROW80 website posts at least a week ahead of time (done!)
• Take out pencil and paper and draw something every day for at least a half hour. Post an image once a week
• Write… of course. The ROW80 has always been a writing challenge first of all. So I will be spend an hour (not necessarily at once) minimum each day at my writing, devoting at least 1 page to journaling/freewriting and at minimum my Five Sentences.
• and lastly, make a point to get up and move at regular intervals (every 20 to 30 minutes) with a walk of at least 15 minutes every day

There… I think those are all achievable and fit the definition of S.M.A.R.T. goals but they are also useful for my personal growth (as noted in Round 4 Goals Post in 2017). There are of course a lot of other things I want to get done (there is another trip to England to plan, a full redesign of my main blog/website to get done, books to finish, etc.), but many of those are not as easy to measure.

The Holy Highborn

As usual these days, another late post.  Life once again got …odd (mostly internet connectivity and access issues), here we are again on Thursday evening finalizing things.  Plan for next week…  start the post on Tuesday, so it can be finished on the correct day!

That said, I’ve had a pretty awesome week of progress.  Lots of words, some serious cleaning…  generally “good stuff”.

A thought on cleaning…  being a bit of a packrat is more than just laziness or  overwhelmed and busy (though those last two definitely are involved these days).  As I’ve tried to clean out years of accumulated … stuff (stuff I bought, sure I would use it; stuff given to me… because; stuff that was here when we moved in), I’ve found it really hard to get rid of these things—even to give them away (though that does tend to be easier than just tossing them).

An example of this…  The other day I decided it was time to trim my archive of writing magazines.  I have issues of Writer’s Digest, The Writer, and even the Romance Writers Report backlogged for years (some from the 1980s), and since a lot of the articles are either repeats or dreadfully behind the present market needs, I figured I’d clear the lot of them.

I got rid of ten (well, I haven’t yet…  they are in the “to go” pile by the door).

I really could not bring myself to get rid of more than that in one attempt.  The guilt was almost nauseating.  Like “why did I save these so long if I didn’t plan to use them again?”, “what about the hidden gems I missed!”, and the ever frequent (applied to magazines I’d never finished and started at all)… “I don’t have the right to toss these.”

Yeah…

Ten magazines from around a hundred or more…  I had been slowly weeding them, but this was my first attempt at a mass exodus.  Guess I have a little ways to go before I can just ditch the whole box.

Does anyone want some old writing magazines?  😉

We’re once again in Marche/Promenade from the Swan Series with Valichii as he tries to understand what is making his campmates so unsettled this morning.

I included six (sort of) paragraphs today, five for what should have been the 1+4 yesterday and one partial sentence from last week’s entry to offer some extra context.

…it wasn’t likely that the lordlings sponsoring this campaign would let them leave before they had a chance for jousts and sport.

No matter what the holy highborn wanted to think, their mages’ skills gave them no guarantee of victory. Just as because the forces had had success pushing back the frontier into the desert the past few years, it didn’t mean they’d won the war. To Val’s mind, it meant they all needed to be more careful; the lordlings seemed to think it meant reason to parade and fest all the longer.

He’d slept so late this morn on account of their fool carousing. Though, at least, he’d not been hauled out of his rolls to settle the spat between Hirisii’s entourage and the Harnii-Semis as several of his tent-mates had. They’d been allowed to miss first muster this morning as consolation, but given the dogs and the horns, none of them had been sleeping much when he’d stepped out for his morning toilet.

“Me neither. Anyone know who started the story?”

“First I heard it was from old Elsn.” Sibon snorted, nearly covering the table in front of him with crumbs. “Said he had a vision of the battle to end all battles and that we should prepare our souls for Her Mercy.”

“Elsn’s been saying that nonsense for longer than I’ve held the Oath.” Val scoffed.

If you enjoyed that, we have more to enjoy at the WIPpet linky  written by our other awesome members. Gratitude as always to Emily, Wrayburn for graciously maintaining the bloghop