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Writing is not just for November
I have successfully written the required 50,000 words to ‘pass’ NaNoWriMo for a number of years now, but have not driven that forwards and managed to write anything close to that in all the other months of all the years in between. My stories, for now there are two of them, need plot to be hashed out, characters to be better developed, scenes fixed and edited, actually a whole lot of editing. Poor Cal is not getting very far in saving, whatever it is he is going to save, from whoever it is that is putting it at risk.

Game making.
I took a step. I joined the game jam thing last January, and despite my reservations of my own abilities at least held up my small portion of the team/process etc. But did I allow this to propel me into getting more done on my own ideas? No, once more I put things off, and got distracted by other things, and it all fell by the wayside again. I like to think of myself as a creative person, but the main step for that would be to actually create something instead of just thinking about it.

Story time.
Miss 9 got the complete adventures of Sherlock Holmes for Christmas one year, and the idea was we were going to read through it. I say ‘one year’ because I can not recall how long ago it was. Yet we are only one and a bit books through the entire collection. The other book that was being read to all of them is also just sitting on the bedside, most characters’ names forgotten, with little chance of recollection of the plot. Miss 2 is getting a small dosage of book reading before the first attempts at putting her down for the night, but even that is too few and far between.

Mess.
The kids failed their ‘keep room clean, get a fish’ challenge, and once that was over the room fell into even more disarray. When all the school work came home after the school year was done it was a disaster zone. Miss 13 was asked to clean her stuff up, multiple times, and eventually she has cleaned some of it, but this has ended up with just a few boxes of unsorted items now taking up room next to her bed. It is almost as if she thinks that stuffing a whole bunch of things into boxes and shifting it to the side is the same as tidying up…
A cursory glance has counted seven similar boxes in the room with me currently, six on the balcony, and I know of at least four in our own room. We MUST get this sorted. I am declaring this one as a New Month resolution, as it WILL be done by the end of January, while everyone is here, and we all have the time.

Distractions.
There are other things that were meant to have happened, and were not got around to due to silly little things like internet, and television shows, and sleeping at stupid hours, and they too need to stop. Well, be better organized and restricted, anyhow. Set time limits, stick to them, finish other tasks before being allowed ‘game time’ etc. If it was not clear, I attempt to write this little thing of mine here on a Tuesday, please do not go back and see how many were actually a Tuesday, because I know it was not many.

I need to get out the diary for the new year. When I carried that around and actually jotted down ‘things to do’ I got more done. Yes, I did not always get everything done, and some of those things jotted down were as simple as “look up the name of that guy in that thing”, but even just having that written down meant that it did not nag at me for days because I kept forgetting it when I had the chance, and remembering it when I did not.
I will grab my two older children tomorrow morning and take them for a walk, and go through their own thoughts on their progress from last years resolutions, and what they are going to aim for, for this year fast approaching. And as I read last years attempt at this, I will remember to do it somewhere they do not have distractions in front of them.
I wonder if it would ever be the case that there was not something to aim for each year. Everything from the past year was achieved, would you sit there and say that all you had to do was keep the status quo from then on? Or would the brain keep finding new things to aim for? I imagine it would be the latter, so here is hoping I have new targets come the next time I do this.

TheFatherOfThree.