A few Measly Steps a Day

I hope your phone call went well. Reminders to yourself make a lot of sense.

R - You've accomplished so much since I first met you (virtually) If you were meant to write, you will find a way. And sometimes you have to take a break - sometimes a long break - Believe me I know. And if it's not meant to be, well, that's fine too. If you were meant to write, you'll go back to it, and you'll feel inspired again, and you'll find a way to do it.

According to the news, our smoke made it's way to Seattle, hovered there for a day or two, and is now heading east across the Sacramento Valley and onward to Nevada and so forth.

I set some goals for myself earlier this month Here's where they stand:

Four tweets - 2 completed
Four letters to senators - 2 completed
Four Facebook posts
Nanowrimo 50,000 words - 15000 words completed

set up blog
four blog posts

publish Through Unfamiliar Waters The writing is finished, and I'm waiting for my designer to finish my cover art. I'm reading through it one more time, and found five mistakes in 200 pages. (For me that's really good.)

re-publish Temporary Address (this last goal probably won't happen in September) I'm working on it. It's still not very good. This is where "taking a break" comes in. I have to work on it, be frustrated, and then it feel like something is perking in the back of my brain, and then - aha! the flash of insight. At least I hope there will be flashes of insight. it's weird - I reach into my creative brain looking for that idea and it's just not there. I do know that if I don't keep writing, it will never be there.

As a friend of mine would say (R) "to the page."

D, chugging along is better than stalled. I think your strategy of stepping away is spot on, though I suspect part of you feels like it's a defeat.

The interview(s) went well. One on Wed. for getting on a roster of consultants and one on Thursday to assist a branch of the univ. library on diversity, inclusion, and equity issues. I have a proposal to get to over the weekend. A good thing.

Yesterday, a meet up of a user group I'm part of met for the first time after the original organizer stepped down. First one planned and done w/o him. Except for the event organizer having a last minute family emergency, all went well. Even down to logging on and getting a bit of the back-stage chatter of the step-in facilitators.

Today, the heaviest load is reading a couple of emails about a property transfer. I had dinner guests so only got a glimpse last night. The tone felt off, so I'm bracing for a tough day.

Fortitude, to the day. R

Sounds like a productive time, R.

I'm getting impatient for the book cover to be finished. I really can't complain since she's doing it for free. And yes, I'm grateful. I did offer to pay her - several times.

My goals (from earlier posts - remember?) - completed all my tweets. I'm now a tweetie bird champ. My nanowrimo goal - I'm halfway there at almost 25000 words. That's my progress to date. Other goals are unchanged. Okay, to the editing, and editing, and editing.

Today: send a proposal due end of work today.
Watch email for emerging news re: my client's property transfer.

Not much.

my goals:

four tweets done plus a few more. 29,000 words written, and I'm stalled.
I'm sick - don't worry it's not COVID. So I'm taking it very slow. Yesterday I spent the day lying around watching TV. Today I'll try to get some stuff done. I need antibiotics, and it's hard to contact my doctor because of the COVID. Plus my normal PC physician quit, and I haven't established a connection with the new ones.

More to come later.

Hi D., keep it slow and fully recover.
I got to thinking about what's next when this deal is finally completed? Everything was so BIG. Then I asked myself: Can't I do Easy?
Can I leave BIG and find EASY?

My heroes as a child took on Huge stuff: Amelia Earhart, Frederick Douglass, Abolitionists, and on the list ran. Big-A stuff. So I have.

Yes, I know, there's always too many Big stuff around.

I long for Small & Easy. For a while? For the rest of my life? I've seldom just drifted. It feels like everyday since the age of about 12 I've had some Intention. How about getting a PhD without a Masters Degree. Did it. Living a live mostly the way I want, whatever Parents or the State or that mysterious group Society believe. Doing it.

I like fish, don't much like feeding mosquitoes. Maybe a sign like: Big Closed until further notice! Gone to lie in a hammock and read fiction.
R

HI, R,

I've usually alternated between big and easy.

I had a scare yesterday. My daughter (doctor) called and said she was running a temperature. The obvious conclusion was COVID. Later she told me that she's probably not sick. Her temp is back to normal. She was just being super careful because of COVID. Whew! However, kids often soft=pedal their news to keep their parents from worrying. Me - I have my antibiotics and I'm doing okay.

Yesterday I got back into writing.

Enjoy the hammock and the book.

Sitting with Easy. Good company. No demands. Sketched out some of the free floating feelings I hold around 'easy.'
Having gotten higher grades through school, easy I associate with underperforming.

Who gets to decide that? I never voted. "Hey, Revu, we're taking a vote. Are you underperforming." This is the alternative way to lament I wasn't working at my full potential.

Out!
Wha?
Yes, out with you! Just Go!
I was only ...
Heard it before, rejecting it now. Go! Don't let the door slam. Oh, gimme the key. Hand it over.
But, but.
Key please ... thank you. You're leaving quietly or do I have to call Security?
Ah, all right. You'll miss me when I'm gone.
Got that right. The mental quiet will allow me to hear my own heart beating.

R

Hi, R
I know you have a doctorate, so no one's going to accuse you of underachieving. The question I'd ask is, "What needs to be done now - big or easy?" And "What do you need - a challenge or a break?"
Me - My daughter's COVID test came back negative. Yay!
Me - I'm just plugging away. I've hit a good part in writing. That means I'm enjoying it and I'm being productive. Come to think of it, that's both big and easy. I'm savoring it. This doesn't happen all that often.

Continuing ...
These accusations come from inside. Drilled in and hooking my competitive side. So, here's a test. I want to copy out several ¶s from Kenko's Essays in Idleness. I confused the title to mean Essays ON Idleness. Lazy reading.

What would be the easiest way to do this?

1. Find it already on line. Translation in the current copyright period. No luck.
2. Type it out directly, edit, proof. Not sure how long that would take, maybe 20 minutes.
3. Scan it with text converting (optical character recognition, OCR) software. The scanner is put away and takes a total of 10 minutes to set-up and put back. Still need to proof it.
4. Voice to text using Otter. This would need proofing and edits.
5. Buy a used copy and mail the whole book. Takes days and money.
6. Don't bother. Do something else.

The last couple are a joke. The voice transcription gets old fast due to the approximate guesses the programs makes which need to be carefully double checked.
OCR gets close to the hassles of working with the transcription.
Which leaves typing it out directly.
What would be the easiest way to do that? I think reading it through for a couple of days before getting to the work itself. Just looking at it w/o reading a couple of time. Imagining my happiness when I am finished.
Oh, I could push it through FIVRR or Upwork, or Mechanical Turk and offer $$ to someone to transcribe it if they have a copy around.
R

hi, R.

Big vs Easy. IMHO - They're both valid. Without Easy, your brain explodes. Without Big, your brain shrinks. What I'm hearing - and I could be completely wrong - and if I'm wrong, please just ignore me - you want to take a break from Big and your conscience/mother/father/whatever is yelling at you.
What do you want to do????? Feel free to use me as a sounding board. That's what we've been doing for each other for the last ?????? years.

Me - I have a great name for my blog. What does my life mean.blogspot.com
That's what most of us struggle with so much of the time. That's what I'm asking myself now. When I wrote Temporary Address, I thought it was good. I really did. When I went back to it, I was embarrassed that other people had read it. And I'm wondering about the sequel Through Unfamiliar Waters. I'm not sure that it's any good either. I think that the writing is good, but I'm not sure about the plot.
A few days ago, I read a tweet from our pres, the fecal sample. And it shot my blood pressure up about twenty points. My husband and my friend wanted to talk politics and complain about the stool sample. As a result my blood pressure shot up another twenty points. And I haven't been able to sleep well for about a week because I'd wake up with the blood pounding in my ears.
What my writing is about: I'm writing stories. My characters are fictional. And in the stories, current events happen. The point of the stories is to expose the lies that are said, but in a way that brainwashed people can absorb. I think that's our only hope. They're not horrible people, and they're not completely wrong.
I believe that to do the best job running the USA, we need both sides working together conservative and liberal. We can take care of the environment and preserve the economy. Science and faith can coexist. And so on. And we need honesty. That's why I've been writing. And I think the conservative end has gone off the deep end and only wants to rule, destroy and win. In case it's not clear, I'm on the liberal end of the spectrum.
Last night, I slept well, and today I woke feeling peaceful.
So I guess I'll write for a little while longer. I know I won't make a big difference. I probably won't make a difference at all. But I won't make a difference playing solitaire either.

I hope this peace lasts me the rest of my life.

A weird post, but this is the only place I can think of to express it.

Good wishes to you.

Good blog name, D. What meaning we create is up to us. Doesn't quite fit well but there it is. I think when people who had drifted suddenly catch meaning due to a life event like escaping danger or the birth of their child, the shift in feeling startles them. I fear this happened to my dad who, at about 30 yr old finding himself a new father, left the drift style and focused on something to do professionally. Methinks he took parenting a bit too seriously.
I'm watching this Big Thinking in myself as outsized goals are a driver for the type of mania I used to suffer. Interestingly enough, I use the I Ching for life coaching. Of course, my most recent hexagram spoke to this question. I got Hex. 46: Ascend step by step. At one point it said this: This reminds me of the Dalia Lama before his crowning. As a boy, he once was outside with his tutors being asked questions about the Dharma. His mentors posed a question he didn't know the answer to. So he just sat. They asked another question. Didn't know that either. So they all sat in silence some more. It got cooler and someone asked if he'd like to move the session indoors. He said yes and they all moved inside. When they had reassembled he looked up at them and said, "That's the type of question I like."
R

Well, uhm. That was a distracting half-year since last post.
On the plus side, no one that I've talked with personally has fallen to the plague, though friends of friends have.
Anxiety symptoms that I hadn't had for years returned -- as load of (insert cartoon punctuation cursing here) exceeded what I had gotten up to handling.
Got help, both profesional (and web meeting rather than office visit), some med changes, -- and encouragement from partner and friends, and managed to do some constructive stuff.

Then worked on census. I had done the 2010 census in Los Angeles. Went out in one week of good weather, and then Extreme Heat and Extreme Smoke, and dragged through doing less than I had hoped -- but got some stuff done. I'm pleased that I made the effort, and I will also be very relieved when it's over. any day now.

Washington state was up to 99.7% complete earlier this week. So, while we have the bonus days of enumerating through October 5th, not much action likely locally. My body is collecting I.O.U.'s.

And the census director is energetically taking advantage of the bonss days. People are being flown in from around the country to the dozen states that have the lowest completion rate. These are almost entirely southern, republican ones. I expect the incoming horde of enumerators will especially work on the areas the local government would be most pleased to see undercounted.

My mother had her 90th birthday in August. Visting is out, but regular cheering phone calls are in.


My Nanowrimo efforts had crashed in November 2016, as had a lot of creative work. A daily goal for this month is to do the nanoprep for October so that if we have good enough news in November I'll be good to go. (And I should be cheered by that deliberately hopeful effort to be more constructive on the Must do stuff.) For today -- what's left of it -- my Nanoprep steps will be to reply to local group about virtual write-ins, and to read some of the Nanowrimo emails I've been not getting around to.

To be continued, aiming for tomorrow rather than next year.

Lyndon
Typingpractice on Nanowrimo

Hi, True,

It's good to hear from you. How do you like the new Nanowrimo format? I'm getting used to it now, but it threw me some curves at first.

R and I are still here and still stepping. R, I like your post. "A smaller sacrifice, or a more modest goal, or being less severe with yourself can work fine, as long as your dedication is honest." It's the only way we get anywhere.

Me. I'm impatient. My proofs didn't come yesterday. Note - these are the proofs of "Through Unfamiliar Waters," the book I've been working on forever. And I'm still working on rewriting the prequel. it's better, but I don't think it will ever be good. I'll have to settle for a more modest goal. I want so badly to say that "Through Unfamiliar Waters" is available on Amazon, and I can't because it isn't.
Onward to the rewrite. Good luck and good wishes to all of us.

Oh good, moderator approved my post. I'm new here! -- and haven't built up a track record of being reasonable.

I haven't dug into Nanowrimo enough to have a firm opinion. this should change.

Census turned into a "But wait! There's more!" Continuing through October 31, which will give a much better count. And be better for my finances. It should be less grueling going forward, as Washington works on the last 2 or 3 per thousand locations that didn't get enumerated yet -- and is doing more quality control stuff that it had had to triage.

I got a second visit to local Nanowrimo group's forum, and here. Doing things consistently two days in a row! Who knows where this will lead?

to be continued

Hello True, good to get a bit of catchup. I didn't get anything from the census this round. Is that concerning? Should I 'reach out' in any way to find out if there was a miss? In WA (Seattle) and would like to see that number 99.44 percent, like the soap brand.

BIG WIN WooHOO Alert: the siding project is done. At about 12:14 yesterday afternoon the stucco painters departed the building after applying the second coat of paint in our new color on the patios of 6 units. Began to look into redoing the siding in 2011. Offered to be part of a committee, and when people dropped off, carried on alone (with the help of my partner, the current board president). Not rehashing more, just noting its finished.

Relief. Celebration. Feeling the weight lift away. Will composed the Award and Obit ¶¶ in a day or two.

Sticking to sleeping late and letting the strains float away in dreamtime for the time being.

Yay, for the siding, R I remember the siding issue popping up many years ago.

Please add a period after "R" to the post above.

Impossible - difficult - done. No, I'm not done editing the prequel, but it's moving from impossible to difficult.
I had an epiphany, a breakthrough, courtesy of the conservative press. Allow me to explain. There's a trick the newspapers use to slant their reporting. A smiling person is someone you tend to trust. When we humans - and this is true of almost all humans - relax our faces, we look bad. Some of us look so bad, we're downright scary. Newspapers use this. They get a clip of someone with their face relaxed, and then they use that picture; and the readers automatically mistrust that person. Yesterday, they did that to Rachel Maddow. I can use this. It's the perfect transition between Johanna getting dumped and Johanna taking up journalism.
This solves three problems in one fell swoop.
To the page.

Yes, D., it's been a haul. Found Barbara Sher's Refuse to Choose! in a free little library today. I just picked up snippets on her site as people shared through the years.

With this lump of relatively quiet, it's time to look to what I'm not going to be doing.

I'm not ever going to sleep in one of those tube room hotels in Tokyo.
I'll never spend a night in a submarine.
I'll never sky dive.
I'll never raft down the Mississippi to get to New Orleans to try to free my wife from the slave traders.
I'll never carry Esmeralda into Notre Dame and yell "Sanctuary."
Heck, I'll probably never get to yell "Sanctuary" anywhere. Is anything considered a sacred protected place?
I will not move to Santa Cruz and take their six month organic farming course.
I'll likely never see my hometown again. No real reason to go back.
My best drug-using years are behind me, and I didn't abuse them at all well.
I'll never kiss Jane Fonda.

R.