Many Distractions

One of many distractions

Late this afternoon, I finally returned home from the writers’ reunion I left for on Friday morning. I took more than a few side trips to get there. What should have been a little over a two-hour drive, took me five and a half, not to mention that I was an hour late leaving. I didn’t make quite as many stops coming home today, mostly the four-hour visit at my daughter’s house, but that was more important than anything else anyway.

Starting in 2010, I attended the Green Lake Writers’ Conference almost every year, until it came to an end a few years ago due to cost and decreased numbers of attendees. Earlier this year two of the women who had been quite involved in it decided to have a reunion of sorts. A day for anyone who was interested to return to Green Lake and renew those friendships as well as share writing tips and offer support.

I had a good time and hope that we do it again.

My weekly goals maybe suffered because of the time away, but it’s hard to measure some of the other more important stuff.

If you remember, green highlight is goal met, yellow highlight is goal worked on and red lettering is failure.

   1)    Write 1,000 words a week on my Work In Progress. I don’t know that this is even worth noting, but I only wrote an actual 33 words this week. I did a little bit of revising, though, after adding three complete chapters in the last few weeks and having to deal with the later chapter I had already written. So, I’m not going to beat myself up.

   2)    Post three times to my other blog, The Dino Chronicles. Posted three times. 
   3)    Continue tweaking my book proposal for “The Truth Beyond the River”. I still haven’t looked at it.  

   4)    Homelife. I’ve washed nine of the fourteen windows in our house so far. Might be a few weeks before I get back to them.

   5)    Bonus. The writers’ reunion I mentioned above gave me a lot of time to rethink my whole writing thing. Still not quite sure where I’m going to go with it, but the number one thing is to stop stressing about it and stop beating myself up about past mistakes and current inactivity. Maybe I’ll write something down in the next few weeks – like, my game plan or business plan. Or, I know – GOALS! Long-term ones. Just bouncing around ideas in my head.

Day at a Time, Window at a Time

Here we are, already in the last month of summer. For those of you who survived the horrendous winter of 2018-2019, you know what it means to appreciate summer. And you fear what the weather will be like in another six months.

But we must take it a day at a time and be thankful for what balmy days we have left.

The first of July, I dedicated myself to three super easy and attainable goals for the rest of the year. I’m starting to feel pretty wimpy about that and feeling the need to push myself at least a little bit, as well as document that I do other things besides work the day job and sleep. With that said, I’ve done a tad of adding and tweaking.  

Here is my revised list of goals to achieve by the end of September. I’ve added some beloved color as well. If you remember last year, green highlight is goal met, yellow highlight is goal worked on and red lettering is failure.

   1)    Write 1,000 words a week on my Work In Progress. I wrote 977 words on my novel. Wow, should I add a random thirteen more words? Or just say, yup, goal met? I guess the green tells you my decision on that. Of course, I did write all those words for my blog, too, so I really did go well over 1,000.

   2)    Post three times to my other blog, The Dino Chronicle. Posted three times.  

   3)    Continue tweaking my book proposal for “The Truth Beyond the River”. I still haven’t looked at it.

   4)    Homelife. I’m working on getting all of the windows washed in my house. I’ve done four out of fourteen so far. In addition to the windows being washed, half the screens need to be replaced. It’s a long story, but we have had cat issues for ten months. Our remaining cat has decided to come and go as he pleases which means busting in and out of any of our screens he chooses. We’ve come up with a temporary solution to his misbehavior which is so redneck I don’t think I can share it with the world. In the meantime, Hubby is hard at work replacing screens in five of our windows. Should I start a list of goals for him as well?

I’m looking at that list, asking myself, why did you announce remarkable additions to your list, when you added one teeny weeny little thing? Because I am not going to jump into that overachiever hole again. Plus I have a busy week coming up again (I know, you’ve heard that before).

But really, we are short-handed at work this week, so I’ll put in even longer, more stressful hours than usual. Then Friday morning I am heading to a writers’ retreat. I’m pretty excited about that – hoping to get lots of writing done and become imbued with lots of inspiration.  

How about you? Finding inspiration in all the right places? Adding to your list of goals? Already dreading winter?