A few Measly Steps a Day

Live and in person!!!!! Wow!

Me - Yesterday - Dentist visit was VERY depressing. As in bone loss, plates, deep cleaning didn't accomplish much. loose teeth, And no it's not my dentist - it's my teeth.
Along with the dentist, I was coping with LOTS of plumbing problems. But - it was amazing, and believe it or not, I'm grateful - most of the plumbing problems showed up an hour before the plumber came, or while the plumber was here. And the fact that my only bathroom will be out of commission for a while turned out not to be a problem.

My writing - I'm dragging a bit, but I know where I want to go with the story. I'm just looking for someone to post about it. (Isolation is a dream killer.)
So today, I'll try to get a bit done. Step a little - goof off a little - step a little - etc.

Plumbing work completed. And I wrote a bit.

Well, the plumber came back, and cleaned the pipes again because everything was backing up into everything else. He stuck a camera and found tree roots all through the sewer pipes. He did the second clean for free. He wants to put a clean-out in front of the house ($1600) and he says that I won't need to actually replace the pipes for about ten years. (That's good.) Today I'm going to the dentist (don't ask re gory details) and sometime in the future, I'll be foxing the heater in my house, (Or replacing it.)
On a happy note - writing is a lot of fun.

Wishing you happy, happy, joy, joy for your projects - that goes with success, of course.

Later,
D.

The dentist session was not the horror I expected.

Hi D, I'm glad your visit was less the ordeal you imagined.

I'm getting much done, and more comes in that keeps me going. Have a question for everyone, even lurkers, how important is what I'm going to call "dwell time" to your ideal creative efforts? Some procrastinators may be using their distractions to dwell on their task till the time to due date shrinks to roughly the amount of time they'll need to get something done. But by not having a rough draft (I'm thinking of the classic college papers rushed out the night before) harm their efforts because they don't have time left to polish and recall stuff to add-in.

I'm curious because my own dwell time is shrinking at the moment. I'm needing to settle on my decisions and act faster. I miss my dwell times. But is that a sad thing?

R

My steps for the day: (3 days ago)
1. Make space in the hallway to get the vacuum cleaner through
2. Vacuum room
3. Move computer over to other side of room
4. Put all stuff on desk in a box so I can use the desk while I'm sorting through the box.

Got them done today. I asked a personal coach one time, "How do I estimate how long a job will take me"? She said, "Figure out how long you think it will take.....and then multiply that by 3". So, I'm right on track. I estimated one day and it took me 3.

I have more goals but it's too late to formulate them. I'll do it tomorrow.

As far as down time goes (I forgot the term you used) at this point in my life all I know how to do anymore is down time. From nothing to down time. Not a good pattern. The project I'm working on now is a turning point. The steps I just got done are a big part of the turn. I'm hoping it will make a difference. I know it will. It's just too long to explain. Good night, everyone. Good steppin' tomorrow.
"

Scout you're right about how long a task will take - about three times what you think it should take. Also factor in the unexpected interruptions (health, etc.) and the unexpected problems (not finding something you need, tools breaking down, project not working the way you expected, just not feeling in the mood, etc.) It's frustrating. I believe that's a big part of why scanners have trouble finishing things. They think, "It's just me," but it's also the uphill battle and the disappointment of everything not working in real life the way it does in our heads.

Me - I got a whole lot done on Thursday, almost nothing on Friday. I hope today will be productive - a productive day feels so much better than a nothing day.

Happy stepping.

D - are you a scanner? I'm a serial diver. I'm glad you brought that up. I think maybe it's why it never works for me to just do one box at a time in the closet. I have to dive in and take EVERYTHING OUT and make a giant mess. It drives me nuts but setting the goal of just one box at a time never works. I wish it did.

Good for you for having a productive Thursday.

Scout, I'm a diver too. But finishing projects is hard whoever you are. There are all the problems inside of our head that stop us, but there are also problems that the world throws out at us. Anyway, I do tend to hang on to projects and plug along. At the end of the day, we're all people.

Speaking of scanners, scanners love new things. (I hate learning how to use upgrades on the Internet.) But, I have to admit, I don't learn many new things these days. The book I'm working on now takes place in Canada in the Yukon, and I did some research on the Klondike Gold Rush, and on the First Nations tribes of the Yukon, and I loved it. I used to love learning things. It makes me think that I should spend some of my "dwell" time (Goofing off time?) just surfing the net and learning about things.

Good luck.

Hi team. I'm not sure where I'm with diver/scanner. Maybe there's another metaphor. I look at how much time I have, then I frame how much I can get done in that time. I recently coined a couple of ideas because I'm running a Liberating Structures event with a few other members on The Cull of the Wild.
The terms were Solipare (riff on solitaire) for using break time to pare something down or do a minor tedious task (sort t-shirts, say). And the other is Due the Dull (set a time to take on a yuck or dull task).

In other news .. Feb's a short month long on creativity for my part. One of things I love doing is a "walk and talk" with myself. I take off on an urban trek and when the way is clear, just talk out loud to me, myself, and I. The three of us have a grand time.

The most surprising Growing Yes is working with a friend to bring co-counseling to her project. Out Of The Blue. We were talking, she asked me to just run my mind/mouth around some of her challenges with this work and I mentioned this aspect: this is stressful stuff and if the recruits could learn to co-support each other they all will make it and stay contributors all through the process.

And she came back with, OK, how do we do this?

Oy vey.

R

Hi Team, mostly positives to report. Got my slides in Monday AM, as promised, and got a "Looks good" back. This opens time. Actually muscled in a mis-interpretation of a workshop exercise into something I'm doing next week. Humble me sent a note to one of my teammates recognizing my error and appreciating his grace for letting me twist it towards my image. Could be revelatory, like jazz, or mud, like, er, mud.

So excited about all this creating it's hard to keep my head down and get some sleep. I'm enjoying it, cuz, this too shall pass.
R

Projects completed.

I didn't sign up for a program that would add another payment to me. I could have afforded it but it would have really tightened my budget. It's to better my health. But i have other goals I desire more. I'm trying to follow Dave Ramsey's philosophy on repaying debt and paying cash for things. So I'm proud i didn't get further into debt.

Hi Aviza, subscriptions are the stealth debt channels. Right now, I have internet access, cell (under $8 a month), & utilities like electricity.

I'm a big fan of freemium apps, for the free part. The app developers find out I don't convert to their chagrin. Then they try various enticements. One even had ads for a bit, dropped the ads, then last month requested a donation. I thought about it for a week or two but when I felt ready to send a contribution, the button was gone. Oh, well.

Today, call at 2 pm, bits and pieces of creative work on a couple of projects. Yuck: copied the needed files to shift through to do our business taxes due on March 15. Just seconds of work, still Check.

R

Thanks for the quote, R. The part I find most motivating is to keep the channel open even if our work isn't very good. I have no idea if my work is good or not. I really don't know. The story about Agnes de Mille not liking her choreography is an interesting story, but I'll bet there are hundreds of stories about Agnes McMurphy not liking her choreography, or Joseph McShmo not liking his acting, or Elaine Glimme not liking her writing.
Anyway. I like the quote.

Completed steps - I entered two contests.
I'm steadily working on the yuck jobs. I have quotes for central heating.
I bought a new computer. ("home" and "end" functions don't work.
And I'm writing.

At the moment, it's all good.
Me, signing off.

Happy you like the quote. Yeah, they had reached a pretty high level. If you've read Anne Truitt's memoir series you'll see she struggled with that to. At one point she was not even scraping by and looked towards getting a j-o-b and wrestled with what that would mean for being able to follow her artistic impulses.

Stuff Barbara Sher's forums were just slathered in.

Off to a dental appt (fillings) in a few minutes. Yuck 1.

When I get back need to put in daily duty on getting my biz taxes done. Yuck 2.

Tomorrow morning, this will all be in my past.

R

My next goal is to re-publish the paperback version of "Through Unfamiliar Waters." I somehow deleted it. It shouldn't be hard to do, but I'm resisting it. I'm scared that I'll have that frustrating experience of nothing working right. It shouldn't be hard. I've already done it once before. I'm not editing anything. And yet I'm putting it off. I used to think I was scared of success, but that's not what I'm scared of. I'm scared of expecting success and being disappointed.
The weather is either great or horrible depending on how you look at it. It's warm and sunny. My trees are blossoming. The worrisome part - we've had almost no rain this winter. The new weather pattern seems to be that winter rains start in late February and continue through April or May. I hope this is the case.
I think I mentioned that my heater went out. I am using my oven's broiler for heat. Climate change has helped me in this regard. We haven't had any frost this year. The outside weather dips into the 40s in the night, and my house gets down into the low 60s - not too shabby. In the past we used to have frost every day in January and February. Outside temperature used to fall into the twenties and thirties at night. No, I'm not advocating that we burn a lot of fossil fuel. The warmer temperatures and lack of rain also translate into the hot weather and fires we've had for the last five or so years.
I was able to write a lot, and now I've hit a snag. I have that vague idea of where I want to the story to go, but I'm lacking the details -the oy, vey, part of one of your posts from about a week ago.

Good luck, happy stepping, and all that jazz.

The paperback's in review. It will be in action in 72 hours. Yay!

Hi thread,
Maybe twice a week, it seems, something creative my way comes. Today, I led a session on cross-counseling for a project and one of the participants asked for my contact 411. Yesterday I had a promising call with a potential client. I have to pull together a proposal, which I've already begun to putter with.

Friday appears commitment free, ha! I'll post what I can get to.
R