According to the Measure of Thy Desire -- ROW80/Camp NaNo

dat is a big bad wuntz

In yesterday's post I shared a classic poem that had given me the insight that defeat is not always, if ever, something to be despondent over or even unwelcome because there is always a lesson to be learned from it and sometimes that lesson may be trying to show you that you are striving for the wrong thing. 

In the last check-in I'd settled on the insight that maybe all that unraveling needed by my WIPs was showing me that loving the process was just as important if not more so than the finished product.  Combining those two insights led me to remember how much I love wordplay of all kinds and how it would often prime the pump and thinking along those lines I remembered how much I used to love to make LOLcats; especially those that touched on the themes of reading and writing and fiber art which I used to illustrate my posts with.  I started avoiding the site where i made them after loosing our Merlin. 

So I headed over to explore thinking I might try to create a new one for this post but then I found this one in the collection of my past efforts whose theme resonated with the themes from the last several posts so well I didn't think I could do any better in the time I have tonight. 

Tying it all together: Defeats must not defeat you nor be feared or perceived as punishment as often they are reminders to reassess our expectations in light of a change in our resources maybe with an eye to adjust our goals, motives and investment. 

But sometimes it can be a matter of changing how we name all of these elements which is related to how we perceive them.  Sometimes the goals we delineate are not in sync with our actual desire. 

Desire will always be boss even when it is not a conscious desire.  Which could explain some of those defeats as desire takes off on tangents committing sabotage of well laid plans.  If that desire is of the ego then it is not likely to serve either the Work or the Self and the Self must assert its ownership of Desire in full consciousness and rename the goals in that light.  Naming is the power of ownership as every toddler learns.

I haven't quite worked it all out yet how all this relates to my own dilemma but I have an inkling that it has to do with the subtitle of my blog: Story is my joy.

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2020

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

Camp NaNoWriMo July 2020

2020 Round 3 ROW80 and July Camp NaNo goals check-in:

* Sleep 7.5 hours Daily Minimum --  Satisfactory effort

* Move/Breathe/Meditate 15 min Daily minimum  -- Satisfactory effort

* Storydreaming with note-taking tools at hand. 15 min Daily Minimum -- This is a technique I learned from Robert Olen Butler in the book From Where You Dream. -- Unsatisfactory

* Read Fiction 30 min Daily Average --  Above and beyond

* Read/Study Craft 15 min Daily Average --  Above and beyond

* Social network activities 30 min Daily Minimum (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) -- something I've a strong resistance to.  --  Satisfactory effort

* 30 min Daily minimum engagement with a scavenger hunt though all my creative writing files including Joystory looking for better than shitty first draft scenes, sections, stories, poems and essays and edit, organize and make hard copies. --  Satisfactory

* To prep for self-pub: Gather all my poems into a single Scrivener file. Minimum one poem per day until all accounted for.  Adding new ones encouraged. --   Satisfactory

* Personal Journaling 45 min or 1000 words whichever come first Daily Minimum -- This is the heart of the writing challenge.  The preceding provides the structure and the nutrients that nurtures and honors the work which I've learned over time must exist to ensure that this becomes more than just dabbling.  --  Unsatisfactory

For an explanation and links to backstory see the ROW80/Camp NaNo Goals post.