Building in Procrastination

Heya, friends! I hope everyone enjoyed Across Worlds with You! (And if you missed it, all nine parts are now available in the freebies section!) Here we are, mid-February, about a month and a half into the year (which is a little crazy if you think about it). Last month I talked about why I thought everyone tends to be so productive at the beginning of January as well as my goals for the year, which including adding in side goals in reading, art, and video games and whether or not I thought that was going to be a bad idea. And now that we’re six weeks in, I’m going to say–I think they were a good idea. I can’t always concentrate on my big project. I’m not sure anyone is actually capable of 100% focus on their main project at all times. I’m tired from work, or I only have ten minutes before I need to go do something, or my brain is just fried in general. What I found last year was that when I hit these times I tended toward binging YouTube or playing hours of Minesweeper or something along those lines, which was frustrating because I was not doing what I wanted to be doing and also wasn’t enjoying my time doing whatever it was I was doing instead. So what I’ve found with the addition of the side goals is that instead of defaulting to the dumbest thing possible when I can’t work up motivation,…

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Progress Starts with Writing It Down

It’s been a good bit more than six months since my last Organizational Freakout. (Listed and linked in this, the previous post.) This time, however, I’m not starting a new system. Nope. Not this time. This time, I am reporting that a system I already started, expanding what was my bullet journal with elements of Control Journal (Flylady) and Getting Things Done (GTD) into what I now call my Flight Manual. Because I’m gonna freaking FLY, y’all. I am! Ahem. Yes, I know, you’ve heard it before. But this time I didn’t announce my attempting a new system because I have tried and tried and tried before, and failed and failed and failed again (though a little better each time!) This time, though, it’s still working. I am so excited by that fact, you have no idea. One thing that’s making it work, this time, is that I’m actually looking at it. A lot! I have a look at my goals every morning, rotating through the week, and then on Saturday I review the week and Sundays I look forward at what’s coming. So each morning as I do my 750words, I may not ONLY ramble about the goal of the day, but I definitely do some rambling on it. Turns out that “oh, I should do something about that sometime” is a lot less useful than “okay, first step is this, I will do that on this day, and the next step is this and I will schedule that for this…

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They Say Most People Give Up on Their Resolutions by Jan 19

Which would be funny, really, since I was talking about my yearly theme on the 14th. But hey, my year of education continues apace. At least for the first month. I finished both my writing book and my sketch journaling class. I did my two prompts just to write. (I also put out a nonfiction book and wrote the midpoint reversal and dark moment on a scifi horror novella I’m working on.) So! Month 2! Doing okay. This month I’m taking a figure drawing class (though not, like, one where I sit and draw naked people somewhere. More cartoon-like, like anime or Don Bluth-style wise). It’s going fine, though my shortcomings as an artist are really coming out. But hey! This is why we practice. I’ve done the first of my prompts and have picked the Pinterest pins for the next one. I haven’t started my writing book. Whoops. I did pick one out–Fixing Your Plot & Story Structure Problems by Janice Hardy–but I’ve got library books out and you know how THAT goes. (If you don’t, I’ve got to read them before they’re due or I shall lose them, because they’re newer books and other people have holds.) (We went to the library yesterday and I sat in the car to avoid the temptation.) (I have a nonfiction book called What to Eat When that I read about in National Geographic, and a YA scifi novel called The Light at the Bottom of the World.) But all in all,…

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Trigeminal Neuralgia: One-Year Update

Well, actually, it’s 11 months, as my 1-year anniversary of my diagnosis is July 17th, but “One-Year Update” sounded better than “Eleven-Month Update.” So, for the most part, I’ve been doing really well. I had an interesting moment while reading an article on one of those list websites. The title caught my eye: The Top 10 Most Horrible Medical Conditions Known to Man or something like that. Guess what #10 was? TRIGEMINAL NEURALGIA. I’m like, “No kidding.” They don’t call it the “suicide disease” for nothing. I am not 100% pain-free, which is okay. Going from 100% excruciating pain while conscious to about 95% pain free while conscious is a BIG, huge improvement. Times I still have pain: when it’s going to rain (this is eerie — I can predict when storms are coming before the weather people), if any kind of wind or breeze touches my face (so fans are bad), when the water hits my face in the shower, and about an hour to an hour and a half before the next dose of my pill. Times I’ve used a loopy pill in the past month: zero. Six months? Maybe once or twice. Compare that to almost every day. Things I enjoy now that I’m not in so much pain anymore: photography. Writing. Sunlight (used to be a trigger). Camping (although the campfires can trigger pain still). Stress is just stress now, not stress+pain. That’s a good thing. The medication does wonders. It is really a life changer. I’ve had…

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