Da Plan

Goals are good. Goals keep us motivated. Goals are probably going to shave off a good seven years from my natural life :)

As a proud, card-carrying member of the Distressed Guild, I like to craft unrealistic goals for myself, and then go after them all Beowulf-style* so that I can be properly dismayed and destroyed by my inability to meet said goals. I don't know when I started doing this, but I'm going to guess it had something to do with being a hall monitor once in grade school.

Sometimes, those goals are just throughout the day: I will get up at 7, I will be showered, fed, and dressed by 8, I will have three chapters edited by noon, I will--wait, when did it become night time again? I was just looking at one picture of legitimate female battle armor!

I do hope that illustrates my point. And I am trying to do less of that, because the stress that goes into making strict schedules tends to eat more time than I ever gain. That being said, I am trying to adhere to a stricter schedule for myself--time allotted after Dayjob and with a healthier amount of sleepytime and oh Lord this is boring to even type about! But it's helping me actually accomplish things, which is some good clean fun the whole family can enjoy :)

Doing creative, fantastical things is sometimes a little odd to cram into a working, real-world schedule. At least, it's not something I've perfected. Sometimes I wish I could move into a little commune full of writers and sketchers and crafters of all kinds, because then all of my neighbors would, like...get it. You know? However, lackaday, that is not the way of the world.

So, more realistic schedules, less babying of the self, less abusing of the self, and I think it's turning out okay.

All of this only really matters because I'm taking a trip in September, and I insist to myself that the work must be done before I go!

But for the first couple of weeks in September, I'll be driving towards or around or away from The House on the Rock. If you've never read Neil Gaiman's American Gods, first, shame on you, second, do it, third, The House on the Rock is a conglomeration of vaguely haunted insanity and roadside nonsense that appears in a really good book. And I'm going to explore it for a while, and also all of the things between hither and thither, because I will be driving there.

There will be much reporting when I go, and probably several photos, which I'm trying to get into a better habit of taking.

Supposedly it takes thirty days to develop a new habit. I have about ninety days to snag this one :)


*unarmed, undressed, unstable, and eventually set on fire on top of a pile of gold. You should read the book.