100th ROW80 Check-In
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| A Round of Words in 80 Days Round 2 2013 The writing challenge that knows you have a life |
These check-in posts will contain any commentary I have about encounters with the goals since the previous check-in and any relevant links.
Below the commentary is my current reading list for the READ CRAFT goal.
In Round 1 this year I finished the edit for Blow Me A Candy Kiss, the short story I'm planning to use as the experiment in self publishing. This was on my original Goals when I first joined ROW80 in April 2012. It is now ready for beta readers. Anyone interested can say so in a comment or email me at the email in the sidebar. A link to an earlier draft can be found in the ROW80 Goals page linked under the spreadsheet below. I've had one beta reader so far but would really appreciate at least one more before I take the plunge with it.
Note: I broke this up into themed sections to make updating easier and as of the 97th check-in I've added a new section directly below the spreadsheet for the must recent check-ins some of which won't make sense without the context from the other sections but will make it easier for returnees to see only the latest. After a week or two I'll delete the older stuff, preserving any info significant to context in the relevant sections below which I will also continue to edit and pare so it doesn't grow like kudzu..
The Lifequake--
Self Management--
Evolution of the workstations --
Fiction Files--
Read Craft--
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July 10 -- I just spent from Saturday noon thru Tuesday about 8:30pm alone at Mom's while she was at my brother's and my sister and her son were out of town. I had thought I would devote great blocks of time to my fiction files but that first day I felt ill and my husband suggested that in the push for the schedule change I'd been under a lot of stress and I'd been neglecting rest and recreation. So I soaked up the solitude and lack of obligations and read a lot of fiction, vid and text and phone chatted extra with Ed, and researched online for fun, and fixed metadata in my calibre ebook library, and made fun stuff to eat and slept in til 7.
Today my main project has been the serious edit of the themed sections below. It has taken hours. And I know it is still way too long. I'm considering the option of moving most of it over to the static ROW80 page but that has needed serious editing itself since the end of Round 1 or before.
July 06-- It's an hour past my bedtime for my new early bird schedule so I don't have time to do any more here than update the screenshot so the sections below still need a severe pruning.
It has been a stressful couple of days. My sister left town yesterday morning leaving me on duty with Mom and we had a relaxing day but in the evening Mom got sick. Then once she was settled in bed I was unable to get right to sleep due partly to the stress of the previous several hours and partly to the neighborhood fireworks going off until nearly 11.
Then I woke at 4:30 thinking it was 5:30 and got up and went thru my routine--made tea, got meds and food, set up at workstation. I realized my mistake while in the kitchen but went ahead thinking the damage was done but before I sat down I acknowledged that I was not up to it. I had a mild sore throat and felt chilled, no appetite for the cereal and nothing on the computer called to me--not ebooks, pods, blogs, facebook, fiction files, not even games. I realized I'd gotten up too soon with less than six hours sleep. And I went back to bed and woke the next time at 7:30.
Then Mom woke at 8:30 and needed tending to and help getting ready for her weekend at my brother's and once she was ready I read aloud to her from the Mitford series until my sister-in-law arrived at 12:30. I fiddled away the next hour getting my lunch and waiting for my husband to initiate our afternoon vid chat and when that ended at 3 I fiddled around with my Calibre ebook library metadata for a couple of hours then got a shower then heated up the taco soup from the other night for my dinner and phoned my husband for our good night. It was already an hour from my bedtime when we said goodbye and I started working on this which I should have had done before lunch.
My husband in our chats today pointed out that my off day today was probably the direct result of my not having given myself time off for over a week again and reminded me that when you don't schedule in rest and recreation time it ends up happening anyway but in ways less likely to be enjoyable and more likely to be out of your control--like getting sick. I'm still not sure whether that's what is happening. It could just be fatigue.
July 03-- I was planning to do major edits to the sections below and the ROW80 GOALS page itself in time for the start of this round to streamline and condense the sections providing context below and to revamp my goals to reflect the new reality. But my computer was too busy updating to cooperate with me yesterday and today the entire Google universe from Gmail to Google Docs to Blogger was having a meltdown. From sudden signing me out 'from another location' to refusing to save, to spinning its wheels, to disappearing a dozen of my posts in the post list (tho they still existed on the blog thank God), to error messages and frozen browser and requests to 'reload page' resulting in lost data....
At one point while updating the spreadsheet I accidentally deleted most of the June rows and had to recreate them from the screenshots for the old check-in posts. Ugh.
And now I'm exhausted and up against the clock big time and don't have time to read the older material below let alone edit it because the BIGGEST news I wanted to share for this check-in was what I managed to accomplish during the round hiatus: I switched my self from the life-long night owl schedule to an early bird one so that I could claim the largest block of uninterrupted, quiet and privacy for my 'brain-work' aka all writing, reading and research including blogging.
The majority of my posts over the last two weeks chronicled the experience which had many ups and downs each with a zany LOLcat to illustrate it. I was going to link a few of them here but I'm flat out of time so if Blogger will cooperate I will publish this as is and hope I can clean it up for Sunday's check-in.
THE LIFEQUAKE:
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| Ed and I April 2nd 5 minutes before leaving |
The most important fact affecting ROW80 goals is that my 5 week visit at my Mom's begun in early January has been extended indefinitely. It has been a huge disruption in itself not counting all the disruptions of life, thought and emotion behind the whys and wherefores.
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The latest in the series of aftershocks disrupted things so much I had to drop out of ROW80 check-ins for a month. I left Mom's in Longview WA April 29 to spend the next 11 days in Phoenix OR with my husband packing up the rest of our stuff and helping him prepare for vacating the house on the 15th. My sister returned here with a third van load of my stuff on May 2nd and then picked me and a forth van load up on the 10th. I spent the next two days shuffling boxes and bags and stuff around between van and house and my areas at Mom's. The four days after that I wallowed in the pain of missing Ed, loosing our house and not knowing when the next visit will be now that there are no more loads to go after and no house to call ours.
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| Merlin |
He has started to regain the weight he lost while he was sick this winter. During our last trip in early April my sister took him to the vet and the following week he had surgery to remove rotten teeth and fix his eyelids so his lashes would stop scratching his eyes. He looks oriental now. The pic is from several years ago when he was still healthy.
When I first arrived in January I had about ten hangers hanging in this closet and now there are two winter coats in there belonging to Mom and everything else is mine. My coats, sweaters, jackets and vests are hanging on hooks on the door to the room.
Since 89th check-in I've continued to unpack and tweak every area. One of my projects has been to unpack every one of the hastily packed boxes and do the sorting, organizing, cleaning, repair etc that there was no time for before stuffing things in boxes. As of June 8th I've opened every one of the boxes still unpacked to identify contents, unpacked at least a dozen, repacked with eye to keeping household items going back on the first trip after Ed is moved separate and once such a box was identified or repacked stacked it in the garage.
I sorted out several categories as I went thru boxes: crafts, Health and Beauty Aides (HABA), office supplies, electronics, cat toys/misc, paper files and loose paper, household (kitchen, towels, bedding, etc), Ed's personal belongings and books and magazines. Then I rough-sorted each of those separately identifying damaged and dirty, might need while here vs. won't, and the obvious garbage.
So I targeted that task to focus on in early June during a weekend while Mom was at my brother's. I whittled the two boxes down to one on Saturday. It took six hours just to get that far. The second box, tho smaller took another four hours on Sunday due to having eliminated most of the obvious trash on Saturday.
And that is just the first once-over rough sort--weeding out the obvious trash and grouping related things. But at least those boxes are not trip hazards and they are grouped by topic or theme so that when I tackle them one by one my attention can be focused on one category at a time instead of being split three dozen ways like it was during this rough sort.
The final week of round 2 I had the field vision test to determine how much of my peripheral vision I have left and judging from how few times I was able to click the button upon seeing a flash of light while I stared at a bright dot in the center, I've got very little. I only saw one flash near the center in my left eye. There were several on the right but I didn't think to count.
I knew it was getting bad but I don't think I REALLY knew how bad and I'm more than a bit flustered. I think I was able to be sanguine about it as long as it hadn't started threatening what I love to do--read, write, fiber arts and watch movies. But my left eye is already nearly useless for most of that, needing size 20 font and then having to decipher words syllable by syllable. I close it when I'm doing close work and let my right eye have at it which can still read size 12 font and take in about 5 letters at a time which slows me but doesn't stop me. But who knows how much longer before my right eye goes the same way?
I helped my Mom switch her winter wardrobe for summer in her drawers and closet recently and was given a serious object lesson in what I'm in for. The time is coming when I won't be able to identify by sight alone items of clothing I've owned and loved for decades.
I think I've been in denial because I've never really put much effort into picturing my life after the vision is gone or all but gone. For the last thirty years it's been about the bruises and the fear of falling or getting run down by a car or cyclist or tripping over a small child and injuring it. Now it is starting to register that I will eventually be finding my way around with my fingers and cane.
And what will become of the messes in my fiction files? I'd rather delete them all then let anyone see them in the condition they are in...
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| Reading and crafting corner |
The pic to the left is new for 90th check-in, reflecting the latest tweaks. One of which was switching out the office chair that was there for the exercise ball. The office chair is now where the exercise ball was--at one of the workstations in the other room which are discussed in the next section. The empty shelf is reserved for library books which I hope to be acquiring again soon.
One of her concerns about leaving me there for a whole week was the tenuous nature of my ability to stay on my med schedule, sleep schedule and food and water intake schedule without outside monitoring. That is one of the repercussions of an unmanaged mood-disorder.
She had a heart-to-heart with Ed about it in my presence and they elicited solemn promises from me and helped me work out how I might keep on track even on those days when Ed had to work. The timer coupled with the ritual of writing a todo list every morning was the solution and I stuck to it through the first weekend back at Mom's. I still maintain the med timer and a sleep schedule (tho different now) but I let the todo list drop away during the week I wallowed and have not returned to it.
The week before I left the med nurse had added Ritalin to my day meds to address the issue that makes it so hard for me to maintain the healthy sleep schedule. The fear that all those 24 to 48 hours and more awake were a symptom of bi-polar has been
The Ritalin was a failure and my sister and husband concurred. It did help turn my brain on and give me energy earlier in the day but it also brought back the anxiety that the BP med Metropolol had removed and left me with lower tolerance for frustration, high irritability and a tendency to meltdown.
I saw the med nurse again May 28th. She increased the Trazadone to 300mg and added Adderall to address the morning mush brain and low energy. And that seemed to work well so on June 2nd she added a second 10mg tab for the afternoon.
In late May I went in for a fasting blood draw to check the levels of things related to energy and fatigue like thyroid, adrenals, blood sugars, vitamin B and D, and etc This was something that I asked for when I saw the other nurse who is managing my care. Big step for me--self advocating, being the one to suggest a course of action. If I was dealing with a doctor instead of a nurse practitioner I might not have had the courage. Tho my sister who is officially my advocate might have anyway. She is bold she is.
Well the results of the blood draw show everything but cholesterol and triglyceride levels are normal and they called to tell me they'd called in a prescription for a Statin drug. Did not consult with me. Did not tell me the numbers. Just essentially ordered me like a child. I won't have it. I have a history of atypical reactions to drugs and from what I've read on the side effects of the statins I'm not going near them. Not unless the problem is severe enough to warrant hospitalizing me so they can monitor my reaction. And what of the careful work the med nurse has been doing with my mood meds? Making it a point to add or subtract only one thing at a time and careful to note possible interactions between them. Did they consult her before adding this? I doubt it.
Why am I so afraid of the statins? The side effects include muscle weakness and fatigue which I already have issues with. And more severe side effects can include damage to the muscles or damage to the liver. I'm willing to work hard via the diet and exercise route and I believe that responsible medicine would promote that over drugs and that a care provider who respected you would consult with you and not just issue orders from on high.
One of the things happening to me as the depression lifts is that I'm starting to crave autonomy. And when the assistant called to inform me about the prescription I found myself saying OK and Yes aloud while inside I was screaming No No NO. Like a child who is compliant on the outside but feeling rage or helplessness on the inside. And as soon as the call was over I said the No out loud. And started researching the drugs alternatives and the diet alternatives online immediately.
I was able to address this with my counselor June 17th and she informed my nurse practitioner. His nurse called to inform me that he is willing to work with me on alternatives.
In the past when a doctor has treated me autocratically or not listened to my fears or concerns I would just not go back. I would stop complying. I did it once before when a doctor put me on a BP med that turned my muscles into sugar taffy and would not consider trying a new med because it was working to lower the BP. So my BP went untreated for several more years until I tried to have dental work done and they found it too high at 220/120.
My sister is not going to let me get away with that tactic this time plus it would interfere with my main goal of saving my marriage and being able to live with my husband again which requires having my mood stabilized which means I must continue working with the med nurse supervising that which means I have to stay in the good graces of this clinic. I'd just as soon keep the focus on the mood issue for now as that is making it possible for me to make the healthy choices in other areas like diet and exercise and sleep and I believe all of that could go a long way toward making drugs unnecessary.
June 4th, I was hooked up to a heart monitor for a 48 hour recording of my heart rhythm. This I'm told was in response to my complaints of dizziness and near fainting nearly two months ago. I did not get the impression that was being taken seriously before so I suspect it was after the cholesterol results that he decided to order this. The results were normal.
I've not discussed the metrics of my weight loss campaign here but I was delighted to find my weight down two more pounds since last week and to have dropped another inch off my belly in the last month. That is approximately 25lb and 3.5 inches since New Year's. The size 18 pants that I just started wearing in April are already loose and Merlin actually pants me the
Meanwhile there have been enough improvements in my ability to function that I've been able to commit to making and serving lunch for me and Mom every day and load the dishwasher after dinner.
Yeah. It was once that bad!
On June 3rd, I researched online for hours looking for time tracking software and/or calendar software so that I can start keeping track of how my time gets spent, what my mood is, med, food and water intake and sleep. I want to develop a record of the useful information to look for patterns in cause and effect and to look for the payoffs for unhealthy habits so I can design alternative behaviors that are healthy but preserve the payoff as described by Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit which I read last spring.
After making myself dizzy with the choices I finally decided to give Outlook another chance. I already have it on my netbook and have just avoided it because my first few encounters with it were so intimidating. It seems to have a steep learning curve and to have way more functions than I need. Plus it's fonts for menus and dialog boxes are so tiny.
Meanwhile I'm trying to learn patience with myself and flexibility. One of the new skills I'm honing is the ability to analyse what is working and what isn't and then apply a likely fix and observe what does and doesn't result. I'm trying to keep a vision of what success looks like in my head so that I'm always aiming for it.
June 15 -- A recent post is relevant: Lazy Daze why am I still planted like a turnip on the mini-tramp after four days and unable to put action where my mouth is on any of my stated goals and priorities?
In response to my Lazy Daze post my husband commented in his email that he believed that I was experiencing a mini-burnout after having pushed too hard on too many fronts for too many days in a row, allowing myself little recreation. And a second point he made was that he believed I had too many high priorities and several of them were in conflict which I was possibly unconscious of.
Then our next video chat he proceeded to use his skill-set as a supervisor and experience with time-management on the job to show me how to triage my stated goals. He also had me estimate the amount of time I thought certain tasks needed. And then he walked me through what that looked like in terms of the number of hours available in a day, a week, a month. He itemized everything--even how many minutes per day the average person spends answering Mother Nature's Call (8 times per day for the bladder alone for an average of 5 minutes per visit). Who knew?
Right off he subtracted the 8 for sleep and another 3 for meal prep and eating. Then there was my household and family responsibilities--another two minimum on days with no extras. Then there were my appointments with healthcare and social services which included prep time and transportation time.
For the triage he laid it out there that anything touching on my health or safety was non-negotiable. This included sleep, med schedule, food schedule, exercise, all those appointments, and recreation--which last I had been denying myself until I ended up planted like a turnip on the mini-tramp.
So I'm in the middle of reassessing everything in light of the insights he led me to.
June 19-July 3 -- the reassessment after the triage talk with Ed, led me to a radical decision which nearly half my posts since have been tracking:
An Experiment in Time -- in which I announce that I'm going to defy my life long identity as a night owl and attempt to switch my hours to early bird as I think I've identified a larger block of time that can be counted on for more privacy, quiet and limited interruption.
A Bedtime Story -- a tale of my foiled attempts to switch hours so far. it is always one thing or another.
There's No Pleasing Her -- in which I bemoan my inability to be consistent
That Explains It -- ah, it wan't simple failure on my part it was actual illness
Night Owl Dreams On Early Bird Wings -- Maybe it's going to work...
So That's Where It Went -- Evidence of progress and some glitches
Making It Dance -- More progress and high hopes and a glimpse of the new structure to my days
To Sleep Perchance -- Major glitches and self berating with a nod to Shakespeare
From Topsy-Turvey to Groovy -- In which I finally, after another coaching chat with Ed, stop self-sabotaging myself and reach what looks like a sustainable schedule
Every one of those were illustrated by a LOLcat that I captioned. My fav I think was Maiking It Dance but the aha moment came in From Topsy-Turvey to Groovy.
Every one of those were illustrated by a LOLcat that I captioned. My fav I think was Maiking It Dance but the aha moment came in From Topsy-Turvey to Groovy.
Ultimately the goal is to use the pre-lunch hours for brain work--reading, writing, blogging, research, netbook maintenance, daydreaming story world and such but during that whole time I was lenient with myself on what I chose to do with the hours between waking and lunch. I daydreamed a lot only some of which was storyworld. I read a lot of fiction. Tho I did get READ CRAFT in every day if only for the minimum 15 min. And FREEWRITE tho only because I started counting my morning emails to Ed. I also played spider and free cell and fixed metadata in my calibre ebook library which soothes me much the same way as playing solitaire.
But I have only rarely gotten posted before lunch which short-changes the tasks slated for the afternoon hours and usually exercise and personal hygiene are the two taking the biggest hit along with frequent late lay downs. And I've rarely touched my fiction files with other than my imagination. I think the new schedule is settled out enough now it is time to start requiring more of myself.
One of the fallouts from the stabilized sleep schedule has been an increase in those intense, creative, colorful and story-like dreams that have often contributed what I call the storyseeds for my fiction. This augers well for the future work with my fiction files--both editing and new writing. And is a sign the depression is lifting.
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| 2nd Workstation and Indoor Workout Space |
The time best suited was the hours immediately after Mom heads to bed. The space was trickier. But the best bet was somewhere in the room that had once been Mom's office and had become a storage room. So I rearranged some boxes and created a desk in a cubby behind the stairwell. I was even able to set up the mini-tramp in there. Tho I had to walk across it to get to my desk, I liked having it there until I fell twice inside a week.
After a third incident--a close call--my sister set the tramp on end. But as I feared it seldom got set down for use after that. I kept wanting to find the time and energy to rearrange the stuff again to make room for the tramp and a path to my desk. That became one of the goals as I worked to make room for the stuff coming in from the van the first week of April.
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| Reference Books |
The reference books are now on that cabinet above the tramp. The 1999 World Book set and the Britannica Great Books set I bought from the library in 2005. And writing related misc.
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| Cubby desk May 25 |
On May 25th, I moved the office chair I'd been using beside the bed in Mom's room in here and the exercise ball in there. It is a tight fit but I'm test driving it as I work on this post and I am sensing a shift in consciousness. It feels like a place to get work done at now. I'm more focused on the task at hand. I'm shifting about less. I haven't had to get up to get something that isn't at hand. But a crick in my neck indicates one minor tweak might be needed--raising the desk about two inches. But now I have to be sitting right there to have the netbook on the board that slides out from under the cubby desk so when I'm done I can't just walk away but have to move it over to the stand-up station. It has been a productive writing station tho.
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| The Desk |
I sometimes get so frustrated by all the tweaking. It seems I spend more time fiddling with the workstations than I do actually working at them. I hope I can shift the balance soon.
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| standing desk May 21 |
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| Looks more like a nest |
For the two weeks after returning from Phoenix (May 11-24) this was my primary writing and Internet surfing station. I also crocheted while watching videos and sometimes read either ebooks or treebooks. The tramp in this pic is now my own brought from home.
But on May 24 I decided it was not working. I'd gravitated to sitting on the mini-tramp that first weekend because there was so much upheaval everywhere else. But that had unwanted repercussions--I stopped working out because the tramp was always piled with cushions and for some reason I can't pin down my productivity dropped both on and off the computer. Maybe that is partly due to not working out. But it might also be because the setup was more conducive to daydreaming, watching videos or surfing than serious work. The clue is in the caption I gave the pic: Looks more like a nest.
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| Bradley |
Once he knocked my netbook off the desk. I had an extreme moment of panic before I got it picked up and checked over.
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| Merlin nesting with me |
But for over a week after Merlin got paroled I hung out on the tramp again so he could hang out with me.
FICTION FILES:
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My Brain on Story
see moar kittehs |
Now for Camp NaNoWriMo in July...
I've joined the rebels and created my own goals
--Work on cleaning up the files of the more than dozen NaNo and JuNo novels already existing
--write character rambles for at least 30 of the dozens of characters from existing or planned stories whose voices still elude me -- min 500wds ea
--write 14 book reviews for backlog of finished ARCs -- average 500wds ea.
and that's 22K not 50K
READ CRAFT:
Currently Reading
Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton
Write Good or Die! edited by Scott Nicholson (a collection of essays by inde authors. many of them self-published)
The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler
What Matters in Jane Austen? by John Muller Net Galley a NF that purports to answer many puzzles in the Austen novels. Since this discusses writing and techniques of fiction
Trust the Process: An Artist's Guide to Letting Go by Shaun McNiff In late February I lifted the strikethru I put on this the week I left home in January as I brought it back with me on the 22nd.
Jung and the Tarot: An Archetypal Journey by Sallie Nichols Since I'm reading this for an understanding of character type and the language of symbol understood by our unconscious as well as research for a character who is a Tarot reader
13 Ways of Looking at a Novel by Jane Smiley This was one of the 24 items I checked out of the Longview library on my sister's card last January and has been the one I've spent the most time with ever since. Friday's post was a quote post for this one.
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. Found this while spelunking the stacks looking for the Smiley book. Who knew. Dick was a mystic. I've only read one of his novels and a few short stories but now I've got to try to find and read everything!
Mystery and Manners by Flannery O'Connor This is a reread for me and has had significant impact on the development of my storyworld in the early months of its inception. My Friday post was about my current encounter with it after checking it out of the Longview library again for the first time in over a decade.
The Right to Write by Julia Cameron. Also a Longview library book.
The Fiction Writer's Handbook by Shelly Lowenkopf Review for blog tour Haven't finished it yet tho so it will remain in the list.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Erotic Romance by Alison Kent. Found on my shelves while packing books. I won this in a drawing during the Sweating for Sven writing challenge in 2007. It made me blush and I kept it hidden in the recesses of my bookshelves but I think I've gotten over that. Tho I admit it is hard to pull it out and read in it now that I'm back at Mom's. But since Valentine's Week all my new story ideas have been for romances. Not my usual thing. But hey, you gotta take what the muse sends or she'll stop sending. Setting aside the erotica aspects, this book is full of good story structure advice as well as romance genre specific advice. I'm exploring the idea of writing a love story. Hmmm. Not sure who that is that just said that.
Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular by Rust Hills onetime fiction editor at Esquire. A tiny little paperback published in the mid 70s. I pulled this off my own shelf a couple days ago as just the right size to prop the netbook keyboard at a better angle but then I pulled it out to read while waiting on my computer to finish updates and a restart as all the ebooks were unavailable and it was the only book I could reach without getting up. Lazy me. But it hasn't gone back under the keyboard yet. I keep picking it up whenever the netbook is too busy to mind me.
Recently Read:
A Cheap and Easy Guide to Self-publishing eBooks by Tom Hua read this online
Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Leher
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg Just finished this last fall and wrote an overview of it for that check-in along with my musings on how to apply what I learned.. This is where I've been getting the most help with learning how to recognize a habit, determine if it is desirable and if so maximize it but if not change it.
1 tell me a story:
Wow -- a lot of information, but I like how you keep track of your progress. And yes, you must schedule in rest time. Wishing you much success this round with your goals.
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