Up Time is Over -- ROW80

Up Time: 78:09:00:17

Per my stated intent in Sunday's check-in I got the overdue update and restart accomplished in time for today's check-in.

The state of my desktop as revealed in the screenshot for last check-in plus the sluggishness of the computer due to having so much open at once on top of being deprived of updates and restarts really cramped my productivity on all fronts.

But in order to get that restart done I skipped sleep last night altogether which is also a poor choice for encouraging productivity.  It wasn't intentional.  Especially since I knew I was to be on duty with Mom from noon to midnight.

I had finally got all the aps and tabs closed about 6:00 am and was imagining a quick update and restart and then off to bed for 4 or 5 hours before time to make Mom's lunch. Instead the updates were still downloading when Mom got up at 7:30 and I helped get her breakfast and when I got back it was still at only 4%.  I was beginning to wonder if something had gone wrong and it was just spinning its wheels.

But I'd fixed my 'breakfast' too and so I called up the browser and watched Malcolm in the Middle while I ate and waited.  Still at 4%.  It was around then I got the idea for this post and started doing what prep I could without the picture that I wouldn't get until just before the restart.  By 9 it was finally in the teens% and by 10 it was heading into the 50s where it got stuck for another hour.  It finished downloading about 11:30 and then started the installs which took nearly an hour.

I grabbed the screenshot and started the restart just before heading in to fix Mom's lunch.  Once I served her tray I came back to check and found it on the desktop but asking for more updates which took another hour to download and install including another restart.  During which time I was having lunch with Mom, reading to her and then cleaning up the kitchen with occasional darts into the office to see if I needed to click a button or type a password.

It was 3 in the afternoon before I was safely back up on the desktop for good.  Then I discovered that my Bluetooth speakers would not connect to anything but the system sounds and it took me at least an hour to figure that one out.  By then I had about an hour before time to go figure out what's for dinner and fix it.

And you wonder why I keep putting off the restarts.

There was a lot of personal-life drama going on in the interstices of that day.  It's nothing new just another refrain of the same old song.  One that I sang here two years ago this coming week.  But its a song that, like bindweed, tends to strangle all competing songs.

I wonder sometimes whether there is some magical ratio of personal drama to storytelling drama for writers such that when the mix is ideal the ability to produce excellent stories is optimal but when the ratio is skewed so there is either too much personal drama and it's choking the life out of the stories or not enough personal drama and there are never any storyseeds to be planted in the first place.

Because I've learned in the last two years that whenever I'm steeped in the personal dramas I'm telling myself that story from five dozen angles 24/7.  How could there be room for anything else?

I'm pretty sure that has played a role in the sparsity of new word-count and completed edits in the last two years.  Maybe several before that.

My Round 1 intentions: seek to regain my joy/Joy in writing and to prepare the soil for its blooming with these time investment goals:

• Storydreaming 15min Daily (I never lost this one since instating it in my first round in 2012.  A ROW80 win!) 100%
• Read/Study Craft 15min Daily 50% (reading blog posts on topic)
• Move/Breathe/Meditate 15min Daily 50%
• Personal Journaling 15min Daily 0%  [this should be added before next check-in.  it was the needed restart making me reluctant to open another ap, file or tab before the restart.]
• Read Fiction 30min Daily 100%
• Social network activities 30min Daily (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) 50% 

Current Joy Meter: under 50%  That is up from a dip into the teens last weekend.  Mood has been volatile.  I'm starting to practice mindfulness for brief minutes several times a day.  Either its helping or this is just another normal fluctuation of the mood cycle.  But I've not had a meltdown in over a week..