Good News Bad News

With the gentle encouragement of my husband, I really pushed last Saturday to get writing done on my solo book. I managed to write over 6000 words in two long sessions, and I was ready to write more on Sunday and really make a dent in things. 

But I got sick. 

Again. 

It seems like every time I visit the Rec Center, I end up sick the next weekend. That interferes with my going to CrossFit, and getting into the office. So between that, and the fact that Rec can no longer guarantee me hot water for showers, I'm going to be discontinuing my visits there until further notice and do my running from home - because even if it's cold outside, I KNOW my shower has hot water ready and waiting for me when I'm done. 

So I spent all day Sunday out of commission, and then most of Monday. No fevers, so that's good, just general malaise and post-nasal drip. 

I am heartened though, by that good chunk of work last Saturday. I know I can write in big chunks like that, and it won't take too many of those long sessions to wrap up the writing portion of the book. I haven't reached out to the several people that I collected emails from this summer, though I finally did send one yesterday. 

I think one of my hesitations is that I sent emails to two folks that I met last year on the trail and never got replies, but all I can do is continue to try. I mean, I did collect more of those emails this year, so maybe my odds of getting a reply will improve - IF I send them! 

If not this weekend, then no later than next weekend, I should be done with the draft of the writing. Then it's time for Ambrose to do his read through, and I'm going to be a little more pushy on him about that. I want him to tell me where I can add more to make the scenes come alive, rather than just looking for typos and logical consistency. Then pictures and layout and before I know it, publishing. 

That's the plan!

State of the 2020 Solo Book

 I'm a bit late in writing up my solo trip this year. I've started later than this once before, and it just ends up delaying publication overall, because I use the winter break to write instead of to publish. I have started, and made some progress, but not nearly as much as I'd like. 

I know it's all about getting my butt in the chair and typing it out. And yet, somehow, I'm just not choosing that, again and again. I think part of it is that I'm pretty stressed at work. There is so much work to be done and more and more seems to pile up each day. I'm so far from being bored that I've forgotten what that feels like. 

I need to let that stress go. I need to just accept that things are going to be busy as all get out, and people are going to get impatient and think that they should be at the head of the line. I will make my assessment, do what I can in the time that I have, and go home and get my butt in the chair. 

If I can get in a good, full weekend of writing, I should be able to wrap this up before the end of the month, setting me up for a 2020 publication year if I keep the discipline of butt in chair up for the picture plates and publication tasks. 

The Little Victories - or - Not Today, Satan

The other night, I was lying down to sleep. I was all set. My night time routine had been completed, and I was ready to drift off. My mind slid through the trivia of the day and caught on an email that I'd reviewed just before the end of the work day. Caught and fastened on with a sudden, sharp spike of panic. 

See, I had read that email at the time, and sent a reassuring reply, but something was percolating through my mind. That something was the realization that if I didn't take care of a particular clean up task, I would be setting up our processing team for a WHOLE lot of work they shouldn't need to do. 

I'm not going to go into excruciating detail on what I had to do or why. That's not important. What's important is how I dealt with it. 

In the past, I might have leapt out of bed and headed to the computer to try to do damage control RIGHT NOW. Or I might have stayed in bed, but been unable to fall asleep, haunted by the error and afraid that I wouldn't remember to fix it in time when I woke up. 

Instead, I took a few minutes to embrace the panic. I asked myself how I could fix it. The first plan that came into my head was completely unworkable (editing a few hundred records one by one). The second plan would still leave some clean up to be done, but definitely reduce the immediate impact on the processors. 

So I reached over to my nightstand and pulled out the notebook a friend gave me. I flipped to the back, because I planned to tear the page out, and I wrote out my 4 step plan to fix the issue as best as I could. Then I tore the page out and went to the bathroom, where I folded it so it wrapped my Kindle. No way I'd miss that in the morning! 

Then, like a freaking miracle, I went back to bed and actually slept. 

I derailed the panic train before it could derail the sleeping train. After all, I like the sleeping train a lot better than the panic train - who doesn't? 

I had an opportunity to create a monster that would ruin my night's sleep and negatively affect me the rest of the next day. And I turned it down. Not this time, no thank you, been there, done that, threw away the t-shirt. 

I'm still not as good at falling asleep as my husband. But maybe I can learn. 

Developing Practice

 I'm not sure what I want to write about today. I've been feeling under the weather this past week; no fever, not much coughing, so I think it was just a cold, but there's always the paranoid thought of what if I caught COVID-19. My husband seemed to catch something similar, but he got over it faster than I did. Cheater! 

Even with feeling sick, I've been keeping up with picking up the guitar every day I'm home. I didn't take it out camping, because I didn't buy a case for it. I figured I wouldn't be taking it many places in the near future. Maybe I'll get a case if I want to take it camping next year. 

For now, I've been practicing chords in a bit of a random fashion. Years ago, I stole a songbook from my dad, Great Songs of the Sixties. When I tried to learn guitar on my ex's guitar, many years back, I worked pretty hard on "Eleanor Rigby" from that book. It has the advantage of not using a lot of chords, and the chords it does use aren't terribly hard for a beginner. No trying to hold down multiple strings with one finger, mostly easy reaches. I got okay at it, I think. 

Naturally, that's the first song I went back to, and the shapes of those chords are starting to seep into my fingers. If I go slow, I can almost sing and strum that one now. Still got big pauses on the C6. I'm also working on "The Sound of Silence". It is a bit harder, but I'm using some simplified versions of the listed chords to make it doable. I'm still looking at my hand to make sure the chord is right before I play it, and that slows things down a bit. 

I haven't got a routine down yet for the practice. I'm looking for one, but I haven't landed anywhere yet. Just practicing the chords that I know in my mind, trying to imprint them into my fingers, and a little bit of plucking practice for when I get up to learning Rush's "The Trees". I tend to make time for practice in the mornings before work, and in the evenings just before bed - though I did skip some nights in the last week with feeling ill, I didn't skip my mornings.