I noticed this morning that I hit the magical 30 post mark, from the 30 posts in 30 days (in my case, really it was 30 posts in 45 days!) and wanted to do a quick round-up, along with some observations.
First up – I suck at timetables.
Actually, more accurately, I suck at working within timetables, when there is lots going on around me. In the last month I went back to Uni for a new term (my last one), I moved laptops to a much sleeker, faster, sweeter piece of kit (which leads me to a point I’m going to make later), and I finally discovered that my love for writing definitively needs fiction to keep the flames burning. And that simply reading it for now isn’t enough.
I also discovered that 30 billable hours equates to much *much* more than that, and I procrastinate too much, which lead me to another project idea for this month/next month. I discovered that I’m not in the best shape mentally, or physically, and that I really need to find and adhere to boundaries. That means less answering email on my phone when I should be chilling out, and more spending my time working on the things – all of them – that makes me happy. Journaling, despite being suggested, isn’t something I can get into any more – I had a horrible time of it when my then psych council got his hands on one of my stories and tried to commit me because it was about suicide, and jumping out the windows of my flat. I know mental health care has moved on in leaps and bounds since then, but there have been other incidents where people have used my journal against me. Next best idea is to go back to fiction :).
Specifics though
- Of the 30 posts I had planned, I’ve still got 14 drafts left. I’ve also added to that and have ideas for about another 60 blog posts – or partial posts. If I got them scheduled and farmed to the right blogs (because some of them might not belong *here* when I’m done) then I’ve got content for two blogs for a month, or several blogs for several months depending on posting schedules.
- I’m so not over my blogging apathy. I still find it difficult to interact on Livejournal, where I started to blog – I don’t know if it’s transient but it’s lasted about eight months so far and hasn’t abated any. I work a full-time job, study practically full time for Uni, write when I can, plus I’m the primary parent for a nine-year old with emotional difficulties (she’s getting MUCH better), and an eleven year old that is an amazing wee guy. And then I fit my relationships with friends, family and my fiancée into that massive mix. It’s not an easy balancing act, and gets harder in November, when I run the Nanowrimo, and in April for ScriptFrenzy. I think it’s a symptom of my life being too busy, but it could just be that I’ve outgrown how I used to blog (24 blogs, updated on a three-day schedule). It could just be that I’m burned out still – and that I need more time to myself. It could be that it’s just one of those things. The 30 day challenge brought me back to a lot of that, but there’s still a lot to be said for needing more time to fall in love with blogging all over again.
- I really don’t write enough fiction. I’m not editing at all – I’ve got this one task in my task manager that keeps getting bumped to next week to actually sit down and write Glass Block – which lead me in a very circumlocutory way to a project I want to try. More about that below though.
- Emotionally, I’m not over any of the miscarriages I’ve had in my adult life, but of all of them, this last one was the hardest. I think it’s a mix of us both being on board with the idea fully, and the traumatic way we found out I wasn’t pregnant, plus the hospital stuff afterwards, but now I’m not doing well with any of that stuff. The last one resulted in the problems we had when I moved and the referral through the Crisis team in Gloucester (who, really I can’t praise enough) to the Recovery team and my wonderful worker, whom I really *really* miss. This one seems to be worse in some ways, because I’m still feeling it all and I’m ON medication. Time will tell I suppose. December doesn’t seem that long ago, but that morning in the hospital feels even closer to me still.*
Moving on
I guess the positive in that phrase is that I actually know where I’m going and what my plan is. Well, kinda anyway.
There’s two immediate projects I want to get out of the way and through before I decide what I’m going to do with myself full-time from now on. Lots of the projects I’ve got in mind are just going to have to wait till after I’ve graduated – realistically, I don’t have time to blog in all the places I want to, but I will soon.
But the two big projects.
I want to show the impact social media has on someone’s day – so I’m going to do a Friday *with* full social media interaction, and a Friday without. The Friday *With*, I’m going to use Facebook and Twitter through my laptop – without I’m going to check in on my phone. To get to that point though, I need to rebuild my tweetdeck and reader set-up, plus update what I’m looking at because I’m pretty scattered all over the place right now.
I’m going to journal what I’m doing, and track the time using an app that I’ve long since gotten used to called ‘Rescue time’. I’ll log my full day on (and off) the computer, and post the results and some conclusions I’ve drawn at the end of it. It’s a teeny tiny project, but it’s one of those wonderful things that others can attempt to duplicate and they too can talk about what they found, so it’s going to be interesting. I’m going to stick that happy little project up on Work at home Writers, because it’s primarily about productivity.
The second is a little more hazy now. I’ve got to get the books I’ve written into Scrivener, and then move on from there, but I’m deliberately declaring Sundays ‘fiction day’. I’ll most likely have to skip a couple of them to get my dissertation finished, or when there’s a massively pressing deadline, but if I’m so reluctant to write non fiction, it’s maybe for a different reason and I want to test that 🙂 For that second, specifically, I need lots of encouragement. I am deliberately removing billable hours from my schedule, and guilt aside, I’m not sure that I’m even particularly confident in my fiction abilities any more. So if you could hop onto one of the social media areas where I talk writing, cheer me on at Writers-bookshelf or otherwise play ‘cheering squad for me’ I’d love it, I really would.
* I don’t talk about what went on – and would appreciate that people don’t pursue this one reference to it with me. I’m not interested in baring my soul about it and while I appreciate it’s an area that women really don’t talk about enough, I’d rather err on the side of not talking about it. That said, I’d rather people knew why I was prickly, than simply smack them upside the head.
Kai is a writer, author and avid reader. A mental health advocate, Ludosport athlete and coder. She’s the mother of two young adults, owned by two cats, and lives with her beloved in the Cotswolds.
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