project status report

Hello internet! I’ve fallen so far behind on things I wanted to post and do - I kind of made a deal with myself that I would stop talking about all the stuff I haven’t done and just DO IT, but it was stressing me out. Apparently keeping a complaint vent open is IMPORTANT or there will be a complaint explosion that will take out a city block AND a country mile. So the way I see it, it’s my duty as a sometime citizen of crazy-town to vent the reactor core! or you know, consequences.

So here’s my keeping myself honest project post of THE TRUTH, mostly unvarnished. (I never hear about the varnished truth or the lacquered truth, but have heard the liquored truth. If I had a Truth Detective on retainer, I’d get him on the case.)

project status report:

bookcase project: The new bookcases are in place and mostly arranged. It’s the mostly part that bothers me here - why not spend the couple of hours it would take to finish this project? good question. I’m very pleased with how the project went so far, so why not be REALLY PLEASED and finish it? It’s like I exist to irritate myself.

quilt I started at the end of last year: I have been working on this! Again, a couple of hours would probably get the top finished, and for me that’s the hard part. Once the top is as big as I want it, the rest of it is more or less not a problem because the decision making is done.

blog book reviews/movie reviews: I used to talk about books, movies and tv a lot more here and I miss it. I got burned out when I tried to talk about EVERY SINGLE book I’d read in a year so I quit, but now I’m having a hard time easing into a middle ground. Same thing with movies (although I never talked about every movie) - but I think it would be fun to make a record of it all, even if it’s just a weekly list. Not everything has to have it’s own review or mini-review - I know this! I just need to figure out how to relay this information to that part of my brain. (see above, re: existing to irritate myself.)

NaNo 2009: Yes! I completed another year. And by completed I mean I reached 50k words on the last day, then dropped it like something heavy. As I keep doing this (4 times now), I do think I’ve learned a lot - this one was closer in tone to what I was attempting than any of my previous efforts, which is progress. This project/process brought home that it's good for me to dive right in and get to work, but I also need some time to think about what it is I want to do. Some decisions can be made on the fly, but not all. The deadline is key for me getting any work done at all - this urgency is something I need to be able to generate within myself but haven't quite figured out how. (so annoying!) I also need to develop my outlining skills or at least figure out a way to pair my mostly intuitive story instincts with a way to keep things moving forward. Short targets, or something. Which brings me to…

Script Frenzy 2010: I had ZERO plans to do this. I was encouraging Maggie to do it and she said “you should do it too!” and since I was just saying that I needed external deadlines because otherwise I transform, transformer style, into Endless Excuseatron, I said OKAY! Woo! I’m glad I did, even though I have no idea what I’m doing and it’s hard and makes me a little nauseated when I realize how much I don’t know what I’m doing and, and, and. I could go on and on. I’m really uncomfortable and embarrassed (who am I to try this?) and in a general state of low-level panic. But weirdly enough, this is all good - I don’t push out of my comfort zone often enough, and this is… if my comfort zone was the sun, this project is one of those cold little rocks out by pluto. BUT (I’m saying “but” a lot) I can already tell that this is going to help me with my outlining problem. So, I give a queasy right on to this project. I think the NaNo people maybe need to make a Poetry writing month for their next endeavor. Yeah!

ANYWAY. Confession is good for the soul or something like that. Just writing this out I can see I have a problem finishing things. Most likely for the typical boring reason that if it’s done everyone can see that it sucks, whereas if it’s in process I can just say “shut up! it’s not done.” Or, as is my usual practice, I never tell anyone what I’m doing so I don’t even have to say “shut up! it’s not done.” ha ha ha! Oh, man. Onward!