Looking back through my recent posts, I haven’t really done a lot of life blogging, as it were, so tonight feels like just as good a time as any to rectify that situation. Fair warning, I’m probably going to be jumping around a lot, but I’ll try to keep my thoughts confined within each of these handy, dandy bold headlines that you’ll find so eloquently inserted into the otherwise exceedingly verbose text below… 😉
Scott’s Thing-a-Day
I honestly don’t think that I ever got around to sharing this new project here, but a couple of months ago I started this neat, new daily blog that I really liked … but lately I haven’t really been doing it so much.
The problem I’m finding is two-fold, at least – most significantly being that when I launched the project back in February, I was in a bit of a rut and wasn’t writing much of anything at all. But now that I’m recovering from that spell, most notably by writing my humor column on a weekly basis again, the Thing-a-Day posts often feel more forced than I want them to. That, and I often struggle finding things to write about because I already put what would’ve been my Thing post for the day into some other article or blog post or whatever.
So overall I still enjoy the concept of this project … I just need to mull it around a bit with my more productive schedule to figure out what I want to do with it now. There’s definitely a lot to be said for writing a single project every single day, but I don’t like to see my other writing efforts suffer as all of my content just goes there instead of into each of them respectively…
Housework a-Plenty
So I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’ve got twins coming this fall, and in turn there are roughly a billion things that need to get done around this house in preparation for their inevitable arrival, which I’ve been told repeatedly is going to happen whether I’m ready for them to come or not! 😯
I currently have a list of 31 items in length, divided by room, of tasks that need to be completed, ranging everywhere from painting Christopher’s new room and then re-painting the nursery to finally hanging the TV in our bedroom, cleaning up a bunch of junk out in the garage, and just all sorts of stuff. This past weekend I was actually able to scratch a few off the list and it felt pretty good, but the thing is just so demanding and sadly almost none of them are quick, 5-10 minute tasks … I know that it’s something that I really need to stay on top of all summer long if I want to actually knock it all out by the time we get to October.
Creativity Brewin’
With writing resuming on what is arguably probably my favorite work to date (my humor column), my mind is also a’bubbling with all sorts of other related and semi-related creative projects that I’m now itching to get underway. Most notably … a new book.
Or two, or three… 😕
I’m not going to give spoilers on what any of them might be simply because all three of them have been ideas that I’ve been kicking around for a while, and admittedly probably too long. The last couple of years creatively have sort of been focused in another direction, as evidenced by the release date on my latest book being 2012 – a year that was, in fact, several years ago. Needless to say, I’m kind of disoriented on what I’m supposed to be working on creatively right now at this point in my life, so dare I say that it’s time to try something a little different.
Plus, low and behold I think that it’s surprisingly reasonable for me to actually finish all three of these works this year, so why not spend the next six months pivoting in another direction and try something new? It’s not like I’m getting any younger here… 😛
Welcome to Life, Speed Limit: 1 BILLION mph
…because despite my best attempts to slow down life to a rate more becoming of someone who’s quickly slipping away into dementia, it seems that life has no intentions of letting up – see references to twins and general creative flusterment. Life is a highway and as much as I wouldn’t mind just pulling over and grabbing a few quick hours of rest before pushing on towards Toledo, ride it all night long, we must, nevertheless.
It’s gotten to the point where lately I’m happy just to live life a single week at a time – if you want to ask me about anything that spans beyond the upcoming weekend, good luck with that because about 4-5 days’ worth of mental stuffs is about all that my mind can handle at this particular juncture! Just ask my wife how many times a week I confirm her work schedule for the rest of the week … no doubt she’s looking forward to going out of work early on short term disability simply to reduce the number of times she has to hear that question from me alone…
I’m somewhat nervous to ask just how long it’s going to be like this, although in the back of my mind I’ve attributed a bunch of it merely to the anticipation associated with welcoming more mouths to feed into the human race. Then it will be a different kind of chaos, but at least I’ve dealt with that kind of chaos before … there will just be more of it.
As for right now, I guess in a way it also somewhat forces me to focus more on the present. I worry about this week’s humor column, I try to work on two or three key tasks for my day job. And I more or less shoot to keep everybody fed seven days a week and properly bathed more days than not! Anything else beyond that, be it a half hour spent lounging in the pool or a few extra posts written that were unexpected, is very much icing on that particular week’s cake!
Recommended Reading…
In closing, I thought I’d share this rather creatively inspiring blog post that I came across just today via Amazon’s monthly newsletter for KDP authors – it rings along the vein of the new books that I talked about writing this year, and it’s pretty true advice even despite the last four paragraphs I just wrote about challenges!
I want to expand more on this idea of writing because you want to write as opposed to for financial or career goals because I think there’s something to be said in that realm that really resonates with where I’m sort of stuck right now about not really knowing what to write, yet still feeling like I need to write something. Especially as one gets later in their profession and the writer dream job seems to be slowly but steadily floating away, it’s easy to get lost in the scramble like I think I have lately and as a result spend all sorts of good time worrying about not making it instead of actually putting that time down on paper and making something out of it … even if it’s not necessarily what you thought it might look like 10-15 years ago when you first decided that being a writer has without a doubt got to be the best job ever! 😉
Fin
But for now, I think I’ve journaled here enough. I’ll try to do this a little more often this summer, both because I want to see that word count inch closer to 1,000,000 there in the sidebar, and also just because I think it’s a fun thing to do.
Writing. Blogging. Whatever.
See you next time! 😀