Crystalline -- Sunday Serenity -- ROW80 Check-In

 

Crystalline

The crystal sculpture pictured above is another of the treasures I picked up at the Highland's Festival in Kelso WA two weeks ago today.  See my Jazzed post for details of that adventure. It is still my favorite post so far this year.

It graces the top today as a symbol for both the Sunday Serenity and the ROW80 portions of this post. 

As a serenity tool it serves a bit like a mandala or any other focus aid.  But in this case it is 3D so i can hold it in my hand to explore its shape.  I can grasp the opposite columns  with index finger and thumb of each hand and spin it watching the light flicker in its facets or hang it under a lamp or in a sunny window and watch the slow light show.

Yes, yet another fidget toy.

For my goals it symbolizes the clarity I've been moving into throughout this round.  Not there yet but then it's about the process not the destination Isn't it?  I mean we have to keep the destination (goal) in focus but then the process needs to serve that goal. That is why my goals for ROW80 have always been more about the process and the elements of my daily life that support the process than about things like word count.

But when the process I set up this round was not working, I blamed and shamed myself for weeks rather than wonder if my process rules had been setting me up for failure.  Some of the rules I'd made for myself weren't even made explicit in the goals list I set up.  Many of them were based on assumptions no longer valid if they ever were.  Some were based on advice I'd gleaned from writing craft books and blogs, from self-help and motivational videos, from the way it once worked for me decades ago.

So in the last month or so I've pulled back into observer mode, watching myself as I interact with my aspirations and with my writing tools, my environment, my routines and myself.  I'm questioning assumptions.  I'm still thinking hard about it but I'm sure my goal list is going to look quite different next round.

These are some of the lessons I've learned about my process:

• Engaging with a task that requires focus is not something I can do in time increments under an hour.  It takes me twenty minutes to get focused.
• I am more productive with the first and roughest of rough draft of a scene with a pen or pencil on paper.  This is how I worked before my first typewriter at age 13 and even after I hesitated to 'waste' the ink to compose on it.  But I think it was about more than my fear of 'wasting' ink and spendy paper.  I think I was a creature of habit and I'd developed a process that worked.
• I am still as always in my memory more productive with hours long sessions at a task.  But that is not sustainable if I require it of myself every day.  So I'm taking a look at the time goals of X minutes per day.  Except for the exercise ones.  For the storyworld bible and file engagement I think I'd do better squeezing those 7 thirty minute sessions into one or two several hour sessions per week.
• I have to be willing to accept the incursion of life events that I can't or didn't predict at the time I formulated my goals post and learn to see adjustments to them as something other than failure or proof I'm not serious.  Flexibility is not a strong trait for those of us on the spectrum.  But finding the balance between accepting the necessary amount and letting things slide into chaos--that is the challenge.

I also had to give myself a bit of grace on several fronts this week as I'm in the second week of cutting back my coffee and other caffeine intake.  That process involves cutting it in half every third to fifth day while learning to accept substitutes.  This has messed up my daily routines and counterintuitively caused both long sleeps and insomnia.  I am now at the place where I need to decide if I can trust myself to maintain a single mug of moderate strength coffee without slowly increasing it again or do I need to eliminate it entirely.

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2023

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

 ROW80 Round 3 Goals:

• Morning pages daily.  Average 40 minutes (ala Julia Cameron The Artist Way and Writing For Life) YES Started May 20.  Probably would not have jumped into NaNo and ROW80 without having had a month of morning pages behind me. But the very fact that I've hung on to this YES throughout the crisis' is PROOF that I am committed to the writing and still belong in ROW80.  Don't worry, I know the ROWers need no such proof.  Only my Stella.
• Storydreaming with notebook for noting ideas for characters or scenes. (ala Robert Owen Butler From Where You Dream)  30 10 minutes per day 2/7  of a yes since last Sunday  (Storydreaming itself is becoming habitual and feeling more natural but the notebook is the key to this goal as without it the storydreams go to the same place night dreams go an hour after waking.) Note: I've adjusted the goal for the duration of the round to ten minutes a day with the caveat that as long as I'm sitting with notebook and pen it counts even if I don't write anything new.
• Working on the Fruits of the Spirit (aka FOS) Storyworld Bible at least 30 10 minutes per day at least 5 days per week.  I'm sure this will expand as I get involved but I need to set a minimum for that jumpstart. YES (except it was one hour on one day.  anticipating next round goals here)   (still hoping to make this and storydreaming  my ROW80 main project for the remainder of this round as I need a substantial start on it in time to use it for Preptober and NaNo next Round.)   Note: I've adjusted the goal to 10 minutes 5 days a week or 50+ minutes on one day with the caveat that I don't need to work into the pristine spiral notebook I bought for this project yet.  The first task is to get a feel for how that notebook needs to be organized and to figure that out I will start re-reading my files with loose scratch paper or note cards at hand to note down every 'fact' I encounter as I read.  I realized one of my sticking points has to do with not being able to visualize exactly what is expected.  But I know what it means to 'read' and 'take notes'  I've been doing it with other people's stories every day for weeks and weeks.  For most of a year in fact.
• Weekly Artist Date (ala Julia Cameron)  This is about doing something to recharge your creative battery.  I'll go into more detail in one of the check-ins.  YES  More 24/7 cams discovered.  Also screensaver vids of color or image in motion.  Some with music excellent for background ambience for writing. Shamanic Drumming to storydream by.  I wasn't possible to go out in public for this this week as my caregiver had been exposed to COVID and until we know for sure that she doesn't develop it we won't know if I've been exposed.so we had to limit certain activities we had tentatively planned.  Always something right?
• A minimum of 5 minutes of physical activity daily.  Either a walk outside with my caregiver or a session on my mini-tramp, or pacing the floor between front and back door. YES (may need to look at upping the expectation soon.  this is getting too easy.)  
• I want to reengage with my blog so: Two One blog post per week besides the two check-ins. Either about encountering other people's stories via print, video or audio which can include formal reviews or about a current fiber art WIP or about one of my personal challenges: widowhood, independent living with visual impairment and autism and issues related to health and aging among them.  Not yet.  Note: I've adjusted my expectations here for the duration of the round.  I removed the theme of personal challenge from the options as it turns out that has been the theme of my check-in posts and those take a lot out of me and a third one would be overloading my readers as well as me. 

Read more...

A Notable Week -- Sunday Serenity -- ROW80 Check-In

 

Handmade Leather Notebook

The notebook pictured is one of the treasures I bought at the artisan booths at the Highland Festival I attended last Sunday.  If you missed that post, which is likely because I posted well after midnight last Sunday, you might want to check it out as it was my favorite post all Round if not all year.

I love notebooks in general but hand made notebooks can actually raise my pulse.  I am often caressing them at these artisan booths or stores that sell on consignment but this is the first time I bought one.  I just could not resist.  The dreamcatcher, butterflies and feathers all have spiritual significance for me. 

Now I just need to figure out what to use it for.  And that will be a challenge as one of the reasons I've never bought one is that I know myself so well.  I know that the more I love a notebook the harder it is for me to put a mark in it.

I chose the notebook to preside over this week's post as it so relates to the theme of my week and the theme of this week's goal triumph.  A triumph I practically stumbled into or was pushed by circumstances.  The same circumstances that prevented me from posting a check-in Wednesday.

Last Wednesday I woke up to a glitchy computer.  Every mouse click or keyboard tap took forever to respond.  I spent more time watching spinning wheels, greyed out aps, and 'not responding' or 'end task' messages than I did doing tasks.  This caused me to be late to an important Zoom which had to be conducted except for the last ten minutes via phone. 

By late afternoon, I was worn out by hours of trying to get my computer to cooperate with me and possibly a bit by sleep deprivation so by dusk I was ready for bed.  Then I woke at 2am and opened my laptop and there on the screen was a dialog box saying that my computer needed to restart to install updates and a countdown clock that had about three minutes to go. 

Of course.  Doh!

Over the next day or two I got requests from several aps for installing updates.  So multiple companies were working in the background at the same time.  No wonder there was no RAM left for me.  Stop me before I start my rant about product service personnel invading our private spaces and commandeering our products at their whim. 

Would we tolerate it from our car dealership's mechanic?  Imagine finding your car in pieces in your garage as you rush out to head to work or school. I don't think so.  So why is it OK that once a month for several days the one device that is most integrated into our daily productivity can be made useless for hours on end?  

Ooops.  I ignored that stop sign.

So, returning to the story, I managed to get the two aps that might be irritated by a forced shutdown closed and then with a minute to go clicked 'restart now'.  Then I read for the nearly forty minutes it took to get back to my desktop.  It was what I found shortly after Chrome reloaded the twenty odd tabs that had been closed for the shutdown that put the ROW80 check-in off my radar. 

Open tabs often serve as my todo list and sometimes I don't close them when I'm done with the task so one of my habits after a restart and reloading of the closed window is to close the tabs I know I'm done with and remind myself what is urgent and to bookmark and close things that can wait.  This is how I discovered a tab I'd left as an urgent task but that had still gone off my radar weeks ago.

This was a tab to the Evernote site where I had been trying to find out how to unsubscribe from the paid version and whether the free version was still available and if not, what happens to my notes.  I'd been researching this after getting an email from them in mid August announcing that my annual payment was due on September 16th and it would be doubling.

As if that wasn't bad enough I learned by signing into my account trying to find answers that this had happened once before and I'd never known.  So I'd already been paying twice what I signed up for just before the pandemic for two years and now they were doubling it again?  No!  This is not sustainable on a fixed income.  Stop me before I go into a rant about the subscription economy and how it is creating a balkanized caste system of information haves and have nots.

But that isn't the theme of this post.  This is about me having a fire lit under me to rescue my notes in case I needed to deactivate my Evernote account in order to prevent the autopay from dinging my card on the 16th since I couldn't figure out how to stop the payment.  So at 3am I began moving my notes.

I identified three major types.  There was the web clippings that were either links alone or links with clipped portions of a page or links with notes added.  Then there were three types of text only notes: quotes, lists, writings of various lengths.  The links alone were easy.  I opened them and bookmarked them in the browser.  Links with more I found I could copy/paste to a Google Docs.  The very short text only stuff I copy/pasted to my sticky notes ap and the longer text pieces to Google Docs.

This project took most of twelve hours.  I had to stop and eat a couple times.  I had to stop and watch a screensaver for ten minutes before doing the 40 minute morning pages exercise about when my morning alarms started going off.  I had to stop briefly to get my caregiver started on her tasks.

I moved the last note just after 3pm.  There had been 120 odd.  No way that had been worth what I'd been paying. Not even what I had started out paying.  But that was because my life imploded just after I started the subscription so that I didn't use it how I'd envisioned.

I'd had big plans for it when I subscribed in 2019.  At that time I had multiple devices and was moving from room to room in Mom's house, going to appointments and spending part of every weekend with my husband.  I couldn't always have my laptop with me.  I'd just bought a Bluetooth keyboard that worked with all my devices except the laptop and thus it was finally possible for me to compose on my android devices wherever I found myself. 

I got to use Evernote as I imagined for only about three months before the pandemic which was just the beginning of the shakeups in my life.  Most of the relevant events are covered in the dwindling posts of those years.

After assuring the safety of my notes, I returned to the Evernote tab to start exploring my options once again.  The only thing like a FAQ was a Forum for asking questions and I had to register to join it.  Luckily my questions had already been asked and answered.  Yes the free version was still available and thus my notes would have still been accessible except that any very large ones could not be edited but I'd never uploaded or created anything large.  I would no longer have access via unlimited devices and my limit of data moved shrank considerably but again, I'd never needed the extra MB the way I'd been using it.  I am still unclear whether I can access via two or only one device.  Moving files between devices was one of the ways I used it.  But Google Docs works for that too.

As it turned out the majority of my notes had been via the Web Clipper browser extension and I think that will be the main way I use it going forward.  I discovered that Google Docs was a lot easier to use for the plain text as well as for text with hyperlinks and graphics. 

But if I'm going to start using Google Docs that way I'm going to have to perform a similar task with it as what I just did with Evernote.  Not a note rescue exactly unless you can call organizing files so you can find them when you need them a rescue.  I've been dropping stuff in there willy-nilly for ages.

Meanwhile I hope no one will quibble with me for giving myself a big YES for working with my FOS storyworld notes this week even though it was all done in a single day rather than spread out over the week.  Because the majority of those notes were related in one way or another to my storyworld project from reading notes, character or plot ideas, quotes, research, musings on theme, and even a very rough draft of a potential scene that I completely forgot existed.  Sigh.

Actually I'm thinking I need to rethink that goal for next round.  I was trying to train myself to have a daily or semi-daily habit but that doesn't take into account one of my autism related superpowers: to hyperfocus on one task for many hours.

That goal of 30 minutes five times a week also flies in the face of one of my autism challenges: the fact that changing channels in my mind takes twenty minutes.  Thus for a thirty minute task I'm lucky if I'm on task and productive for the last ten of it and then I'm irritated if I'm forced to quit and change focus again. 

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2023

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

 ROW80 Round 3 Goals:

• Morning pages daily.  Average 40 minutes (ala Julia Cameron The Artist Way and Writing For Life) YES Started May 20.  Probably would not have jumped into NaNo and ROW80 without having had a month of morning pages behind me. But the very fact that I've hung on to this YES throughout the crisis' is PROOF that I am committed to the writing and still belong in ROW80.  Don't worry, I know the ROWers need no such prrof.  Only my Stella.
• Storydreaming with notebook for noting ideas for characters or scenes. (ala Robert Owen Butler From Where You Dream)  30 10 minutes per day 2/7  of a yes since last Sunday  (The notebook is the key to this goal as without it the storydreams go to the same place night dreams go an hour after waking.) Note: I've adjusted the goal for the duration of the round to ten minutes a day with the caveat that as long as I'm sitting with notebook and pen it counts even if I don't write anything new.
• Working on the Fruits of the Spirit (aka FOS) Storyworld Bible at least 30 10 minutes per day at least 5 days per week.  I'm sure this will expand as I get involved but I need to set a minimum for that jumpstart. BIG YES (with the caveat that it was all in one day.  see above)   (still hoping to make this and storydreaming  my ROW80 main project for the remainder of this round as I need a substantial start on it in time to use it for Preptober and NaNo next Round.)   Note: I've adjusted the goal to 10 minutes 5 days a week with the caveat that I don't need to work into the pristine spiral notebook I bought for this project yet.  The first task is to get a feel for how that notebook needs to be organized and to figure that out I will start re-reading my files with loose scratch paper or note cards at hand to note down every 'fact' I encounter as I read: names, dates, descriptions, titles of books and chapters and stories, character quirks, symbolism associated with a character...etc.  It occurred to me that my resistance to this task was at least partially related to not wanting to make a mess in that pretty notebook.  So now I have permission to make a mess with scratch pads and note cards.  Let's see if that makes any difference.  Also there is a trick I'm playing on myself here.  I almost never do a thing for only ten minutes but if I think I must do 30 minutes I balk at starting thinking of all the ways I'm likely to get interrupted or not fulfill my expectations in some unexpected way.  I realized this has to do with not being able to visualize exactly what is expected.  But I know what it means to 'read' and 'take notes'  I've been doing it with other people's stories every day for weeks and weeks.  For most of a year in fact.
• Weekly Artist Date (ala Julia Cameron)  This is about doing something to recharge your creative battery.  I'll go into more detail in one of the check-ins.  A big YES  More 24/7 cams discovered.  Also screensaver vids of color or image in motion.  Some with music excellent for background ambience for writing. 
• A minimum of 5 minutes of physical activity daily.  Either a walk outside with my caregiver or a session on my mini-tramp, or pacing the floor between front and back door. YES (may need to look at upping the expectation soon.  this is getting too easy.)  
• I want to reengage with my blog so: Two One blog post per week besides the two check-ins. Either about encountering other people's stories via print, video or audio which can include formal reviews or about a current fiber art WIP or about one of my personal challenges: widowhood, independent living with visual impairment and autism and issues related to health and aging among them.  Not yet.  Note: I've adjusted my expectations here for the duration of the round.  I removed the theme of personal challenge from the options as it turns out that has been the theme of my check-in posts and those take a lot out of me and a third one would be overloading my readers as well as me.  The main reason I've not posted extra is the same reason I missed the Wednesday check-in: The note rescue caper.  Plus I'm still super busy chasing library book due dates and trying to finish books before the next set of holds comes back my way.  I sometimes feel like I'm chasing my own ponytail around the 440 track. Boy do I miss the days when I could read 100 pages an hour or better.

Read more...

Jazzed -- Sunday Serenity -- ROW80 Check-in

Celtica Nova & The Wicked Tinkers: "The Atholl Highlanders" 

I went to the Highlander Festival in Kelso, Washington this afternoon and sat through three sets of the Wicked Tinkers.  I'm in love. 

With the drumming!!!

I'm so jazzed.  It took me hours to wind down before I could be calm enough to put this post together even though I'd been planning it in my head all day.

The video I embedded was from someone else's  audience experience somewhere else.  My ten second attempt was crappy in several ways and not worth uploading.  Most of what I found on YouTube was either bad amateur video with jumpy image and poor sound or, if more professionally produced, from 6-9 years ago.  Good sound and image but not even close to the ambience of my experience so I went with the Celtic Nova offering.  It has good steady image and tolerable sound and from only five months ago and thus a very good display of the energy of my experience in the performer-audience interaction.

After one set my caregiver, Laura and I, had our picture taken with the band with my cell.  It was only tolerable quality but better than nothing.  I can't believe I did that.  I've never done that.  But I haven't been to that many events and when I was I didn't have someone like Laura with me to ask me if I'd like to have my picture taken with the band and the be bold enough to make it happen. 

This was the only pic from today that Laura took for me that turned out well enough to post and it shows only three members and there were at least four and possibly five.  It was hard for me to count them as neither they nor the audience between me and them stayed still long enough for me to keep track of them as I counted.

One time they all came down into the audience and wandered among us playing.  Imagine having one of those knee-kicked kilts a foot from your knees and the drum knocking on your eardrums. 

Oh my!  A memory indelible.  Even with my eyes and ears.

And the drum so close I could have reached out and touched it.  I could have swooned.

For the drums guys.  For the drums.

I'm serious.  I'm coocoo for drums.  Drums were my first choice of band instrument when I was offered the choice at age eleven but both my parents and the band teacher nixed it.  My parents because "You can't plays hymns on the drums."  The band teacher because, "Girls don't play drums."

So glad both premises have been proven balderdash.  Please oh please don't take our girls back to the 1960s!!!!

Between the sets, Laura and I wandered the artisan booths and I handled a lot of very interesting, well-crafted art in many categories.  Jewelry, crystal and other rock, leather, fiber art and more.  A lot of it on the Celtic theme, of course.  I'm going to dole out pictures of the treasures I brought home over several posts.  It would take me another hour to do the photo shoot and prep the pics and then yet another hour to write about each item and besides this Sunday Serenity and ROW80 focus is on the Wicked Tinker experience.

So what do you think ROWers, does this qualify as an artist date ala Julia Cameron even tho it wasn't just me and my muse?

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2023

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

 ROW80 Round 3 Goals:

• Morning pages daily.  Average 40 minutes (ala Julia Cameron The Artist Way and Writing For Life) YES Started May 20.  Probably would not have jumped into NaNo and ROW80 without having had a month of morning pages behind me. But the very fact that I've hung on to this YES throughout the crisis' is PROOF that I am committed to the writing and still belong in ROW80.  Don't worry, I know the ROWers need no such prrof.  Only my Stella.
• Storydreaming with notebook for noting ideas for characters or scenes. (ala Robert Owen Butler From Where You Dream)  30 10 minutes per day 4/7  of a yes since last Sunday  (The notebook is the key to this goal as without it the storydreams go to the same place night dreams go an hour after waking.) Note: I've adjusted the goal for the duration of the round to ten minutes a day with the caveat that as long as I'm sitting with notebook and pen it counts even if I don't write anything new.
• Working on the Fruits of the Spirit (aka FOS) Storyworld Bible at least 30 10 minutes per day at least 5 days per week.  I'm sure this will expand as I get involved but I need to set a minimum for that jumpstart. 2/5 of a yes   (still hoping to make this and storydreaming  my ROW80 main project for the remainder of this round as I need a substantial start on it in time to use it for Preptober and NaNo next Round.)  This week the life that got in the way is a crochet project for a birthday on Tuesday.  Note: I've adjusted the goal to 10 minutes 5 days a week with the caveat that I don't need to work into the pristine spiral notebook I bought for this project yet.  The first task is to get a feel for how that notebook needs to be organized and to figure that out I will start re-reading my files with loose scratch paper or note cards at hand to note down every 'fact' I encounter as I read: names, dates, descriptions, titles of books and chapters and stories, character quirks, symbolism associated with a character...etc.  It occurred to me that my resistance to this task was at least partially related to not wanting to make a mess in that pretty notebook.  So now I have permission to make a mess with scratch pads and note cards.  Let's see if that makes any difference.  Also there is a trick I'm playing on myself here.  I almost never do a thing for only ten minutes but if I think I must do 30 minutes I balk at starting thinking of all the ways I'm likely to get interrupted or not fulfill my expectations in some unexpected way.  I realized this has to do with not being able to visualize exactly what is expected.  But I know what it means to 'read' and 'take notes'  I've been doing it with other people's stories every day for weeks and weeks.  For most of a year in fact.
• Weekly Artist Date (ala Julia Cameron)  This is about doing something to recharge your creative battery.  I'll go into more detail in one of the check-ins.  A big YES  More 24/7 cams discovered.  Also screensaver vids of color or image in motion.  Some with music excellent for background ambience for writing.  More walks to the gazebo and back with my caregiver and at least one where we sat reading there for an hour where I could look up from my book and see birds or neighbors walking dogs or neighbors having interactions with each other on their porches or the breeze in the leaves which is better than screen savers.
• A minimum of 5 minutes of physical activity daily.  Either a walk outside with my caregiver or a session on my mini-tramp, or pacing the floor between front and back door. YES (may need to look at upping the expectation soon.  this is getting too easy.)  
• I want to reengage with my blog so: Two One blog post per week besides the two check-ins. Either about encountering other people's stories via print, video or audio which can include formal reviews or about a current fiber art WIP or about one of my personal challenges: widowhood, independent living with visual impairment and autism and issues related to health and aging among them.  Not yet.  Note: I've adjusted my expectations here for the duration of the round.  I removed the theme of personal challenge from the options as it turns out that has been the theme of my check-in posts and those take a lot out of me and a third one would be overloading my readers as well as me.  The main reason I've not posted extra is the same reason I missed the Wednesday check-in: I'm super busy chasing library book due dates and trying to finish books before the next set of holds comes back my way.  I sometimes feel like I'm chasing my own ponytail around the 440 track.  Last Wednesday I was still trying to finish the over 800 page Sun House by David James Duncan even tho it was going to be a fail.  I closed in on 70% by the time Libby took it from me but I still needed 13 more hours for that last 30%.  Boy do I miss the days when I could read 100 pages an hour or better.

Read more...

Jelling -- Sunday Serenity --ROW80 Check-in

Live Jelly Cam -- Monterey Bay Aquarium 7am-7pm Pacific
If it's black when you tune in just back it up

 
I've decided to revive one of my old memes, Sunday Serenity, making it the focus of the Sunday post with the check-in like a footnote with little to no essay above the goals section.  Last Wednesday I spent 7 hours on my check-in post and I can't sustain two posts a week like that and then complain I can't get any writing done.

I'm not sorry I wrote that essay.  It was a story I needed to tell.  It was therapeutic and necessary for me even if nobody ever reads it. But if it is wearing me out trying to do that every check-in, I'm sure it is wearing my readers out.  So I'm backing off to one or less of such essays in a week.  And from now on if it is not ready to post after three hours I'll save the essay part as draft and post something fun and writing related above the goals section.  Even on Wednesday.

Well, Sunday Serenity will not always be writing related.  This video is only tangentially so as I have found it useful several times since I discovered it Thursday to reboot my brain, to change my focus from one task to another and most useful for writing was when I overslept and didn't have time to do my morning pages before a scheduled Zoom and I used five minutes of watching the jelly fish to put me back in my dreaming mind.  It essentially erased an hour's worth of encounters with language so I could do morning pages as if I'd just woken up.

 

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2023

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

 ROW80 Round 3 Goals:

• Morning pages daily.  Average 40 minutes (ala Julia Cameron The Artist Way and Writing For Life) YES Started May 20.  Probably would not have jumped into NaNo and ROW80 without having had a month of morning pages behind me. But the very fact that I've hung on to this YES throughout the crisis' is PROOF that I am committed to the writing and still belong in ROW80
• Storydreaming with notebook for noting ideas for characters or scenes. (ala Robert Owen Butler From Where You Dream)  30 10 minutes per day 2/3 of a yes since Thursday  (The notebook is the key to this goal as without it the storydreams go to the same place night dreams go an hour after waking.) Note: I've adjusted the goal for the duration of the round to ten minutes a day with the caveat that as long as I'm sitting with notebook and pen it counts even if I don't write anything new.
• Working on the Fruits of the Spirit (aka FOS) Storyworld Bible at least 30 10 minutes per day at least 5 days per week.  I'm sure this will expand as I get involved but I need to set a minimum for that jumpstart. NOT yet   (still hoping to make this and storydreaming  my ROW80 main project for the remainder of this round as I need a substantial start on it in time to use it for Preptober and NaNo next Round.)  This week the life that got in the way is a crochet project for a birthday on Tuesday.  Note: I've adjusted the goal to 10 minutes 5 days a week with the caveat that I don't need to work into the pristine spiral notebook I bought for this project yet.  The first task is to get a feel for how that notebook needs to be organized and to figure that out I will start re-reading my files with loose scratch paper or note cards at hand to note down every 'fact' I encounter as I read: names, dates, descriptions, titles of books and chapters and stories, character quirks, symbolism associated with a character...etc.  It occurred to me that my resistance to this task was at least partially related to not wanting to make a mess in that pretty notebook.  So now I have permission to make a mess with scratch pads and note cards.  Let's see if that makes any difference.  Also there is a trick I'm playing on myself here.  I almost never do a thing for only ten minutes but if I think I must do 30 minutes I balk at starting thinking of all the ways I'm likely to get interrupted or not fulfill my expectations in some unexpected way.  I realized this has to do with not being able to visualize exactly what is expected.  But I know what it means to 'read' and 'take notes'  I've been doing it with other people's stories every day for weeks and weeks.  For most of a year in fact.
• Weekly Artist Date (ala Julia Cameron)  This is about doing something to recharge your creative battery.  I'll go into more detail in one of the check-ins.  A big YES  More 24/7 cams discovered.  Also screensaver vids of color or image in motion.  Some with music excellent for background ambience for writing.  There was also a walk to the gazebo and back with my caregiver on Friday during which I met two of my neighbors.  Finally.  After two years.  And my adjustment of Cameron's Artist Date rules makes that count for me.  But the BIG one happened Saturday while I was home alone.  I'm usually tied to my unit by fear of stepping more than three steps beyond reach of my front door without an escort.  But months of practice with my caregiver I finally found the courage to push my boundaries.  I walked out to the bench at the end of my front walk and sat in the sun crocheting for nearly an hour.  One of the ladies I met Friday stopped by for a chat.  That was huge.  I can't stress that enough.  Just about two months ago I was almost ready to try that and then on one of my escorted walks I took that fall that upended more than my body for the next several weeks.  My confidence took the biggest hit.
• A minimum of 5 minutes of physical activity daily.  Either a walk outside with my caregiver or a session on my mini-tramp, or pacing the floor between front and back door. YES (may need to look at upping the expectation soon.  this is getting too easy.)  
• I want to reengage with my blog so: Two One blog post per week besides the two check-ins. Either about encountering other people's stories via print, video or audio which can include formal reviews or about a current fiber art WIP or about one of my personal challenges: widowhood, independent living with visual impairment and autism and issues related to health and aging among them.  Not yet.  Note: I've adjusted my expectations here for the duration of the round.  I removed the theme of personal challenge from the options as it turns out that has been the theme of my check-in posts and those take a lot out of me and a third one would be overloading my readers as well as me.  

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