Howdy, friends! How’s the new year treating you? We’re supposed to have a massive snowstorm starting tonight, so that’s fun, she said sarcastically.
I think I told you guys this at some point, but at the end of 2021 I sat down with myself and had a heart to heart about what I was doing with my life, and I came out of that knowing that a lot of the things I’ve been working on for the last decade have been to either avoid or to justify a story I’ve been working on for literally ever. (Decades.)
Because it’s scary, to put something you’ve put a lot of time and heart into, in case it fails. Because sometimes it’s hard to separate what you create from yourself, and if something you worked really hard on does badly, you can take it as a reflection of yourself.
Anyway.
I have, traditionally, set many different goals, normally on a monthly basis. Writing goals, drawing goals, reading goals, video game goals, workout goals. We’re talking, like, twenty goals per month. But what I’ve found, recently, is that I do these other goals instead of working on the above story, because hey, I’m being productive still! But I’m also still avoiding the main thing for the same reasons.
So, for January 2023, I set just a single goal: work on my revision.
Surely putting all my focus onto my main goal would make me do it, right?
Well.
I mean, I am working on it. I really only have one more step before the hard revision part is over and the easy revision part starts. I’ve done lots of poking and even some research.
But I could also be working on it right now (in fact, this is the time I set aside to work on it today) and instead I am blogging. Early, I might add. I’m going to schedule this post and it will magically show up when it’s supposed to.
Other things I have done today that are not my revision include: reading 250 pages of (and finishing) a book, putting away the Christmas decorations, chatting with friends, reading three magazines (to completion), checking all my writing boards and RSS feeds, working out, and registering the small, mobile ones for summer camps (WHY DOES REGISTRATION OPEN NOW).
Guys. Guys. Why am I like this? Why, some days, is it so hard to just sit down and spend on hour on what I told myself was the one thing I wanted to accomplish more than anything else?
I know this is the hard part, but probably, like so many other times, when I actually sit and do it, it will be easier and take less time than my brain is trying to tell me. Procrastination is rarely worth it, and yet, here we are.
Got any tips, friends? Nothing is helped by the small, mobile ones having a ridiculous amount of days out of school this month. Surprisingly hard to think about pacing when there’s Minecraft YouTubers doing stupid things the next room over.
Anyway, I hope the month is going well, and you are reaching all your prescribed goals!