Returning to Normal, whatever that is

I had a much better week this week. Trying to spend more time relaxing and taking deep breaths. Also, any time spent outside, in my yard or anywhere else for that matter, is time spent well.

Here’s what I had hoped to do this week and what I actually got done. Highlight in green for each item accomplished, yellow for those at least attempted, and red lettering for an item which did not happen.

            1) Blog three times on my other blog, “The Dino Chronicles.”  Done.

2) Blog here once. Done.

3) Write in my Coronavirus Chronicle five days. Wrote three days for 962 words.   

4) Spend an hour (and only one hour!) working on my family tree. Done. It may have been more than an hour, but I didn’t totally get sucked into it.  

5) Finish the spring yard work. Let’s spell this out:

a) clean up the last of the tree stumps. Did the best I could. All that dirt, sawdust, and mulch is impossible to beat into submission.  

b) finish putting up the raised garden beds. Done.

c) plant the garden. Done.  

d) put up the pop-up camper and clean it for camping. Nope. The weather was too iffy for rain.  

6) Send thinking-of-you cards to three people. Done, even though it’s a stretch, because two were actually thinking-of-you cards and one was a very belated Mother’s Day card to my mother-in-law.

7) Drive out to my mom’s land to check on it. No, forgot again.

8) Put flowers on my sister’s grave.  Yup, first thing this morning.

9) So, my novel, “The Truth Beyond the River”. It is set just after the fourth of July in 1974, so it dawned on me that I should release it around the first of July. So, that’s my new goal. I’m going to stick to it.

a.  Skim through it one more time. I re-read the first chapter, and that’s all the further I got. I’m kinda stumped on it (see next week’s goals).

b.  Work on the cover. I did hear from my friend, the artist. She read the manuscript and really liked it. She’s hoping to get on the cover artwork soon but didn’t give me a timeline.  

c.  Finalize the thank you section. Nope, didn’t look at it.  

d.  Work on the whole formatting thing. Nope, didn’t look at it.

e.  Think about what else I need to work on for its release. Thought about it, like, when I couldn’t sleep at night. Does that count?

I think I have gotten my head back in a better place as far as my goals, so I am going back to my four categories. See how returning to that system works for me.

WRITING     

1) Continue updates on “How Chris is Coping with Corona” three times a week. From what they are saying at my clinic, the goal is to be done with the pandemic by the end of June. Not quite sure how they can predict that at this point, but my goal then is to wrap up my journaling by then too.

2) Post three times to “The Dino Chronicles.”

3) Post here once.

REACHING

1)              Write a blog post about the idea behind my novella “To Find Justice”. 

2)              My novel, “The Truth Beyond the River”.

a.     For starters, I am still having stress over the accuracy of the very first scene. Being as it is the very first scene, if it’s not exactly right, I’m afraid I’ll lose readers right off the bat. The scene is a skirmish during the Viet Nam War, so if anyone has fought in one of those, let me know, and I’ll send you that chapter and see if you find what I think might be inaccurate. Otherwise, I did send it to my son who has a plethora of connections and knows someone who knows someone.

b.     Work on the front cover. I will keep checking in with my friend who is an artist.  

c.      Work on the back cover. I think I know what I want to say there, just have to put it together.

d.     Finalize the thank you section.

e.     Update my biography.

f.       Get headshot pictures for the back cover. Yikes! I gotta get a professional haircut, somehow, before that. For the last three months, I’ve been trimming the front, top, and sides myself, which is making it start to look like a modified mullet. Yea, I know, yikes, right?

g.     Format it for both e-version and paper version.

h.     Think about marketing for its release. (Seems like a long list.)

READING

1)              Read six other blogs and comment on three of them.

2)              Start reading Beth Camp’s latest novel, “The Seventh Tapestry.” Can’t make promises on how far I will get on it until I’ve read a little of it. I am a slow reader, so I don’t know exactly how slow I will be until I get a feel for something.  

REMAINING

1)              Work on my family tree two days. 

2)              Send out three thinking-of-you cards. A month ago, I wrote up a list of 21 people I wanted to send cards to; I have 11 left.

3)        Camping

a) put up the pop-up camper.

b) clean out the camper.

c) fix the refrigerator in it.

d) take it for a ride so Hubby can practice backing it up.

  

I’m rereading this post and trying not to lose it over my lack of consistent formatting. Just so you know – I would never leave an article that inconsistent on something that I actually published for sale. And I’ll make sure I don’t have this big a mess next week. Ahh, another goal!

Hope that you are doing well, staying healthy and busy, just not too busy. Have a great start to summer and start to return to normal. 

Garden ready to plant and then with the tomato plants in.