Words & Pictures | Halifax, Canada
Almost there!
Next week, I’m going to do a complete end-of-year report on this reboot, looking at what did and didn’t work over the past few months, and what it means for the future.
For now, I’m just going to do a quick update on how I’ve been doing this week.
… well, that was a month, wasn’t it?
Leaving aside NaNoWriMo for now (since I’ve been talking about it all month, and I’ll be talking about it even more on Friday; but if you do want a recap: the story has been fighting me, but I made it through), it… wasn’t too bad.
Not great, obviously. I didn’t get to work on a lot of things that I’d hoped to spend time on in November, like the next round of revisions on The Black Sun. Or photography.
But last month, I said that my mission for November was to sit down and think about what I really want to accomplish, in both writing and photography. Everything else aside, if I did that - or if I made significant progress with that - the month would be a good one.
Just a quick update this week, because… I kind of forgot that I was supposed to post this today, and my brain is fried from trying to meet my NaNoWriMo targets.
I fell into a bit of a trap this week. It’s a familiar one for me, one I seem to stumble into every time I want to make a big change, whether it’s with writing, or photography, or getting organized, or (this time) setting goals.
I start to think that other people have the answers, and that if I just read enough books or articles or blog posts, I’ll eventually stumble onto the right one, the one that brings everything into focus.
It never happens.
I suppose it was inevitable, and I’m not at all surprised it’s happening now, when the days are getting noticeably colder and shorter, and it feels like winter - and the end of the year - is just around the corner.
The doubts are starting to creep in.
Last week was kind of a bust. I made no progress at all.
But I am making up for it this week, and I feel like all of the things I’ve been working on are falling into place. I’ll get to the specifics in a minute, but in general, the last few days have been really good.
So I’m starting to feel like it’s time to make some changes to this little reboot of mine.
Every month, I share the articles and sites that I found most interesting. Here's what caught my attention in October.
It’s been two months since I did a general update on how all my creative projects are going, so I’ve got a lot of ground to cover today. And since this day is already shaping up to be kind of awful (they’re rebuilding the balcony below mine, which means noisy generators and sawing through concrete, I’ve got my first serious cold of the season and so my attention span is pretty much nonexistent, and they’re going to be testing the fire alarms at some point today, and that’s always a joy), I’m going to try to make it quick.
When I did my last update, back in August, I was… going through some stuff.
This week, I’ve been thinking about my big goals.
Not the big things I’m trying to accomplish right now, or even my one-year goals (though there has been some of that), but the big goals. The things that stretch out over five or ten years. And I’m starting to realize that I don’t really know what those goals are. Or… it’s kind of hard to describe. I can picture exactly what I want my life to look like in that time, what I want it to feel like, but beyond that, it’s a bit of a blur. It makes actually planning for that future difficult, if not impossible. I'm limited to taking steps that feel like they're going in the right direction, without really knowing what the finish line looks like.
I’ve been kind of obsessed with todo lists this week.
I know. Try to contain your excitement.
Really, though, it’s a bit of a dilemma for me. For a long time, my go-to bio on social media included the phrase 'list-maker,' right after 'writer' and 'photographer.' I love a good todo list.
But I have no idea how to make one work for me.