[oromendur]

 

Hello everyone, here I am rocking up late YET AGAIN to another challenge, to post YET ANOTHER thread which I am as likely to ignore as anything else, but whatever. Even if nobody reads this, typing it all out is a valuable exercise for me, even if all it does is provide a bit of narrative structure to the spreadsheet that actually does the tracking 

 

GUYS IT'S ALMOST NOVEMBER

 

AND I AM KIND OF PANICKING

 

BECAUSE I HAVE NO [BLEEP]ING CLUE WHAT I'M GOING TO DO FOR NANOWRIMO THIS YEAR

 

I mean, that's not really all that unusual (I often sit down on November 1st and start typing and that's the first I see of the story) but it is not usual for me to be anxious about it. I think it's probably just the unending stress of these really crazy times (and even discounting the pandemic times are unusually crazy, even in my crazy life).

 

So, anyway, I intend to ease back a little on the challenge front to give myself space for NaNo exploration this month. Last challenge was considerably more successful than my lack of updates indicated. I squeaked out passing grades every week -- which hasn't happened in quite a while, to be honest -- and I also got to go on a proper Adventure™ up at Great Western War during Week Four (an SCA event -- see this post for pictures of me in armor and a link to cool drone footage of a battle). I'm feeling okay about my trajectory right now. I don't want to lose any momentum, even if I am restructuring things a little, so I'm going to try and keep a steady state as much as I can.

 

Spoiler for the plan:

Spoiler

PAI: I will keep my PAI score over 100 every day. This is a perennial feature of my challenges. It (mostly) works to keep me from staying too inactive for too long. PAI is good. PAI is yummy. Mmm, PAI 

 

NaNo: I will write 50,000 words on a new fiction project between the 1st and the 30th of November. (If you're also crazy enough to plunge into the NaNo whirlpool and want to add me as a buddy over there, DM me for my username.)

 

Routines: My morning and evening routines have been really solid lately, but as per my usual I've been struggling with the work and home routines. I know from many years of past experience that my brain gets more than a little weird during NaNo, so this is where I'm going to ease up the most.

 

• Morning: Every morning, I will: meditate and take an HRV reading, do Julia Cameron-style morning pages, do my former teacher's Taiji form, and do 13 twisty pushups. Only change here from last challenge is the addition of a single pushup. Go me. (Taking five or six weeks to add one extra daily rep is ridiculously trivial, I know. But I started at 3 back in January, and now 13 is only slightly more difficult than those 3 were. Progress is progress, however trivial, and I'm not complaining. I'm also not motivated to try any harder, which is a different sort of problem, but we're focusing on the positives here.)
   
• Work: Every day, I will: spend time working on a non-NaNo project (this can be working on the academic non-fiction book I have coming out next spring, or plugging away at various home improvement projects, or doing maintenance/upgrades/general tweaking of my many geeky tech projects involving smart home devices or webservers or cryptocurrency or whatever), and do a French language lesson (at least one crown on Duolingo, or one half-hour Pimsleur lesson). With NaNo on the go my fiction work will be tracked outside of this routine, so I've combined two of my other work requirements from last challenge to give myself more flexibility (and fewer distractions/excuses for procrastination when I sit down at my desk to write ).
   
• Home: Every day, I will: do the daily cleaning task (the list is at the top of the spreadsheet for the curious), and spend 15 minutes decluttering or cleaning in the FlyLady zone of the week. I've moved two maintnenance-level habits from last challenge to the negative extra credit/demerit realm in order to try and reduce the cognitive burden of keeping track of everything. These habits are solid and I'm likely to do them anyway; by moving them I hope to free up some energy while retaining a tiny nudge to keep me honest. On the other hand, the zone cleaning task is fairly aspirational -- I think I managed it eight times in six weeks last challenge -- but I'm stubborn and I'm not ready to give up on it just yet. Thank goodness for extra credit...
   
• Evening: Every evening, I will: physically write out five things for which I'm grateful, take my supplements/brush my teeth/wash my face, do a back-pain-focused stretching session, and run the Theragun 'sleep' routine. I've swapped the to-do board task from last challenge (which really wasn't working anyway) with a gratitude journaling one (which also hasn't historically worked all that well either, but I *would* like to get better at it), and I've moved another maintenance task to the demerit column to make room for an explicit stretching requirement. I had been doing really well on the back pain front, but recently that has started to slip. Since I've failed to choose the more-effective-but-long stretching over the quick-and-easy-but-not-as-active Theragun when given an option, I'm going to require them both. It will make my evening routine longer though
   
• Extra credit: I can earn daily routine extra credit points for getting dressed by 11:00, spending at least 10 consecutive minutes outside, or getting to bed by 23:00.
   
• Reverse extra credit: I can lose a daily routine point (negative extra credit? demerit? I really need to figure out what to call this) if the bed is not made sometime during the day, or if the kitchen sink is not clean and dry or the bathroom is not tidy at bedtime.

 

Social Media: There's no sugar-coating this: I *suck* at social media. Even here on NF, where very few people know my name, I suck. I don't post, I don't react, I overthink every single word and interaction, and the whole scene just stresses me out. Ten years ago Facebook was a cool way to keep up with friends, and three years ago Instagram was kind of fun as a place to banter with my family, but now all the hateful politicized screeching (magnified to a painful degree by the fact that I'm connected to people of wildly divergent political persuasions) has really ruined the experience for me, and not even anonymous accounts following only positive things are enough to overcome my aversion to exposing myself to the noise. Unfortunately, for the abovementioned book release this coming spring, the publisher has some expectations about my social media presence that are going to be difficult to fulfill if I don't get my act together now (sigh) So, since my "Delights" challenge task just kind of devolved into the occasional food pic on Instagram before falling out of my patterns altogether, I am going to broaden the requirement to include *ANY* social media verbal interaction. Every week I will post at least three times on social media, and I will earn extra credit for more posts (up to a maximum of one per day). NF post, IG post (NF account, personal account, writing account, academic account), Facebook post (personal page or the author page the publisher made me create), maybe a resurrection of one of my long-failed Twitter accounts, or (to get REALLY aspirational) even a blog post or two on the author webpage the publisher made me create -- all of these are options. This post here will count as the first green box on this task, and then we'll see how it goes from there.

 

(If you want to follow me anywhere else, DM me for my real name -- it isn't a secret or anything, but I'd rather not have any direct searchable links between this account and the others if I can avoid it.)

 

So, that's the challenge. Long and overwritten as always, and late as usual, but it's better to have one up than not. Here we go!

 

[Manarelle]

Woo, dang, that is a fancy spreadsheet! My husband teases me about everything being on a spreadsheet, but it's just so nice and tidy, where life is not. Personal 2 cents about being late/ non-social: do what works for you. If your momentum is taking you in the direction you want, roll with it. We're here if you need/ want to vent, otherwise, we're going to be silently proud of you while you keep being you. 

[oromendur]

So November has crashed through the threshold of my life like a freight train -- and I am somehow already behind

 

But here's my [WEEK ONE UPDATE] anyway because I'm trying *really* hard to stay on top of the challenge this time.

 

The task execution in Week One suffered from a last-minute decision to use up all of the hotel nights and points I *didn't* use to go to England this year (sigh) and treat myself to a short staycation down in San Diego to celebrate my birthday. I don't regret a second of it, but it did do a number on my daily task success. Whatever. I'll do better this week.

 

Spoiler for Week One scores:

Spoiler

PAI: 6/7, 86%. So much walking. SO. MUCH. WALKING. I walked back and forth to the ferry (1.5 miles each way) three and a half times, and when you add on the shopping and the beach strolling and all the wretched stairs (the elevator near my 4th floor room wasn't operational and I couldn't be bothered to wander all the way to the other side of the hotel every time) I actually ended up with mild shin splints by the end of the weekend (which result speaks volumes about my current state of fitness, but we're all going to politely let that pass without comment).

 

NaNo: not yet!

 

Routines:

• Morning: 28/28, 100% Go me! It irritates me to no end that the morning pages, which make the whole getting-up-and-going process take just SO VERY LONG, are so damned useful But useful they are, and so I just keep reminding myself that time is an illusion and I don't have anywhere to be and what I need to do is suck it up and do it. I never regret doing it, even if sometimes they day feels like it's half over before I even sit down at my desk to start.
• Work: 8/14, 57%. I was solid on the Duolingo but really couldn't get focused on any of the projects. I blame the sunny beach vacation
• Home: 4/14, 29%. Even allowing for the fact that I wasn't home for a good chunk of the week this was terrible. I'm already doing better in Week Two though.
• Evening: 27/28, 96%. I blew off the stretching one night while I was gone, but otherwise this was pretty solid. It's a struggle every night though, because by bedtime I'm tired and I want to GO TO SLEEP but I have to slog through a 45-minute-long routine first But, again, what even is time? And if I would just start the process earlier...

Social Media: 2/3, 67%. I kind of forgot about this one (shrug) That's too bad, because there were so many pretty things to see and post about on my staycation (as opposed to the next month, in which I am likely to be a dull and grumpy NaNo hermit), but it is what it is.

With a whole bunch of extra credit (largely as a result of being outside in the big wide world for much of the week) I was able to overcome the terrible Work showing and chock up a perfectly respectable overall score of 87%. Not bad for a beginning!

 

Now Week Two has arrived with its NaNo energy. I'd like to say I'm off to the races, but...

 

Spoiler for NaNo bitching:

Spoiler

I'm really not feeling it this year (sigh). This makes me sad. Diving headfirst into the wildness of this crazy noveling challenge has been one of the things I most look forward to every fall, but here it is day two and I already hate the story and myself and everything The pandemic certainly serves as a a convenient scapegoat right now, so I'll lay the blame there, but dangitall am I *ever* going to able to trust my brain again? Ugh. Anyway. I'm going to power through regardless -- I'm a stubborn jarhead who does stupid things for no reason after all -- but it sure would be nice to find at least a spark of that creative fire I used to love so much.

 

The story is fantasy (of course), with themes of self-determination and the harmful effects of social hierarchies: a girl born into the lowest caste of a society* based on aura colors loses her position as a kitchen servant because of her increasing incidents of color distraction, and after some trials discovers she is actually not a lowly red but of "all colors and none." She has very little time to learn to master her color magic abilities in time to stop the evil machinations** of the dastardly King to force people of all castes into aura-based and magic-enforced slavery.

 

* Society is generic late-medievalish-Early-Modernish bog standard Westernish S&S fantasy with some Eastern religious elements -- boring, but all I have the energy for right now

** Machinations and magic system and world-building and actual functioning plot still yet to be determined  

Whatever. It's Week Two and I'm actually updating this thread, so that's an improvement over last time at least

 

Onward! 

[oromendur]

3 hours ago, Manarelle said:

Woo, dang, that is a fancy spreadsheet! My husband teases me about everything being on a spreadsheet, but it's just so nice and tidy, where life is not.

 

Thank you! It's the accretion of many NF challenges' worth of flailing away mindlessly looking for something that works  I am rather irrationally motivated by the act of filling in green boxes every day. It doesn't make much sense, but it does work, and green boxes are easy to count and grade. The hard part is deciding what gets a box and what doesn't...

 

3 hours ago, Manarelle said:

We're here if you need/ want to vent, otherwise, we're going to be silently proud of you while you keep being you. 

 

Thank you for this also. I try not to worry about it too much, but every time I dip a toe into the wider social media swamp it seems like I come out figuratively smelling bad and often literally feeling sick  I do think it has more to do with my lack of social skill in navigating said swamp without falling in, and it's that skill I need to develop at least to a point where I can do the things I need to do to market the book. So NF posting is a good place to start, I think -- positive safe spaces and all that. At the very least I'm going to try to be better at my weekly updates this time.

 

I really appreciate you stopping by!

[oromendur]

Monday? Monday. Right. Monday. Happy Monday, everyone 

 

Wait, if it's Monday, that means -- assuming I'm going to meet my goal of updating my challenge thread on time for once -- that I need to type out a [WEEK TWO UPDATE]. Here goes!

 

I was home all week, so I didn't have the adventuring excuse from the previous week, but somehow I ended up about the same (shrug).

 

Spoiler for scores:

Spoiler

PAI: 7/7, 100%. A challenge or three ago I rescued my old elliptical machine from the spiders and bird's nests and installed it right outside my bedroom door, with a shiny new cover to keep it from deteriorating in the sun. I actually used it this week to keep the numbers up! Go me!

 

NaNo: 8784/11,669 words in 4/7 par days, which averages out to 66%. It was a slow start, but I'm finally getting a bit more invested in the character and beginning to pick up some plot steam. My deficit is ugly though: 4552 as of this morning, before counting today's (yet to be written) words. I need to improve my consistency here if I'm going to make it to 50K on time without too much pain and suffering.

 

Routines:

• Morning: 28/28, 100%. I was tempted a couple of times to blow off the morning pages, but I reminded myself that time is an illusion anyway and I didn't
• Work: 12/14, 86%. I did Duolingo every day, and I mostly poked at crypto projects. I need to shift back to my nonfiction book this week though.
• Home: 9/14, 64%. This number looks awful (quelle surprise ) but it's a little deceptive because I DID MY DAILY TASK EVERY DAY FOR SEVEN DAYS STRAIGHT and I think that's only happened one other time since I started tracking things this way. Yay me! I have also made the executive decision to keep the cleaning zone the same for the third week running. Yes, yes, I know the idea is to rotate the zones each week so the entire home gets at least a lick of attention once a month -- but I'm sure that the truly horrific state of my office is contributing to my NaNo struggles, and I managed zero cleaning sessions in Week One and only two in Week Two. Since I'm not likely to do anything if I don't get to color in the green box, and since I'm almost guaranteed not to do anything elsewhere in the house when the office is the worst cleaning open loop sucking my will to live, I'm going to keep working in here. If I somehow manage to get the office reasonably clean early in the week, I hereby give myself permission to earn the rest of the week's zone cleaning points anywhere I like. (Heh. Heh heh. Clean my office? Me? I'm funny...)
• Evening: 27/28, 96%. I blew off the stretching on Saturday night because it was already two o'clock in the morning when I finally went to bed and it was cold and I was grumpy and I just didn't wanna. Otherwise this routine was solid.

 

Social Media: 2/3, 67%. A personal Instagram post about my staycation and the Week One update were all I managed. It's annoying that I find this so difficult (sigh) This will count as post number one for Week Three, and I almost always make a November 10th FB post, so I really only need to find one more opportunity sometime this week. Is it really that hard to snap a pic of a muffin or something? Ugh.

With some nice extra credit slipping in there, and no demerits, I ended up at a still-perfectly-respectable 88%. All things considered, I'll take it!

 

Week Three needs to be all NaNo all the time to whittle away at that deficit, so I'm going to stop typing non-NaNo words and get to work

 

Hope everyone else is having a good challenge! 

[Ann of Owlshire]

Late to the party, but catching up and cheering you on! (I’m not doing a challenge this cycle, or NaNo. I decided I had enough going on.)

 

One of the things I like about gamedev and my current role is that I have no requirement to promote myself or have a “social media presence.”  It might help for job hunting later, but… meh. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. I do want to use my IG for things like Owlshire photos and crafty stuff, but… meh. Even that feels like too much work/Internet exposure sometimes.

 

I hope NaNo is picking up for you. ❤️ and regarding SCA I’m not doing a great job at being involved on this side of the pond, but I live 20 minutes from Raglan Castle where Drachenwald (European branch of the SCA) does its annual big event so, if you ever come by in August… 

[AverageFish]

Greetings from a fellow parsimonious poster! I feel like if I have a challenge on here, in the back of my mind I know it's there and I should be working towards it even if I don't post anything about it. Do what works for you!

[Elastigirl]

Great job on week 2!

[Manarelle]

How were weeks 3 and 4? Spreadsheet looks like you're keeping steady, how are you feeling about it all? 

[oromendur]

Well, to absolutely no one's surprise, this turned out to be another classic @oromendur "challenge thread? What challenge thread?" challenge (sigh) Anyway. Here's the roundup:

 

Week 3: PAI 6/7, NaNo 7/7, M 28/28, W 10/14, H 4/14, E 24/28, Social 2/3, overall score 84%

Week 4: PAI 7/7, NaNo 7/7, M 28/28, W 11/14, H 3/14, E 28/28, Social 0/3, overall score 78%

Week 5: PAI 4/7, NaNo 4/7, M 25/28, W 10/14, H 2/14, E 19/28, Social 0/3, overall score 54%

 

You would think on looking at those numbers that I held reasonably steady in Weeks Three and Four and then everything went off the rails in Week Five. You would be right.

 

NaNo absolutely KICKED MY ASS this year. I had to run really hot to finish on time, hotter than is honestly safe anymore, and a great number of important things got ignored in the process. The car needing a new radiator and timing belt two days before and packing for and departing on a six-week trip* that began with a ten-hour drive on 28 Nov did NOT help I even earned my first demerits since I came up with that negative-extra-credit-for-maintenance-habits idea a few challenges ago.

 

But -- it's over. Despite trying my best to screw it up, I still managed to finish my fourteenth NaNoWriMo novel on November 30th (technically after this challenge ended but what even is time?), I held onto most of the other habits (no, not the cleaning, we're just not going to talk about the cleaning) much longer than I would have done had I not had the spreadsheet going, and even if I still can't stick with a challenge thread to save my life I'm doing better than I would be if I didn't have the challenge running. So I'm not going to complain.

 

Onward...

 

*Details of the trip will be forthcoming in my holiday challenge thread, which I SWEAR I am going to get up tomorrow. 

[oromendur]

On 11/11/2021 at 5:26 AM, Ann of Owlshire said:

Late to the party, but catching up and cheering you on!

 

You are certainly no later than my response 

 

On 11/11/2021 at 5:26 AM, Ann of Owlshire said:

I hope NaNo is picking up for you. ❤️

 

Thanks for the good wishes. It was very painful this year but I got it done. This one is definitely going to need a good six months of distance before I look at it again though because I hate the very thought of it right now.

 

On 11/11/2021 at 5:26 AM, Ann of Owlshire said:

regarding SCA I’m not doing a great job at being involved on this side of the pond, but I live 20 minutes from Raglan Castle where Drachenwald (European branch of the SCA) does its annual big event so, if you ever come by in August… 

 

<blink> <blink>

 

So, uh, whatcha doin' in August?? 

[oromendur]

On 11/11/2021 at 7:56 AM, AverageFish said:

Greetings from a fellow parsimonious poster! I feel like if I have a challenge on here, in the back of my mind I know it's there and I should be working towards it even if I don't post anything about it.

 

Yes, absolutely. I always feel a little bad when I see how everyone else is posting and liking and commenting regularly and I'm generally wondering "how has it been three weeks already?" but even if I don't update things, having the challenge going is SO helpful. So -- parsimonious posters unite?  

 

On 11/11/2021 at 8:43 AM, Elastigirl said:

Great job on week 2!

 

Thank you! It was definitely the high water mark of the challenge -- everything kind of went downhill from there 

 

On 11/21/2021 at 4:56 PM, Manarelle said:

How were weeks 3 and 4? Spreadsheet looks like you're keeping steady, how are you feeling about it all? 

 

Well, I'm feeling pretty good about them, actually. That Week Five tho...

 

Thanks everybody! Sorry I took so long to respond. See you all over at the big holiday party!

[AverageFish]

On 12/3/2021 at 11:32 PM, oromendur said:

 

 So -- parsimonious posters unite?  

 

We could have an accountability group! But no one would ever post in it......