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  Many of them were based on assumptions no longer valid if they ever were.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.