Losing Time

I was highly amused last night by the Sun Gazing image I’m sharing here… mostly because I hate Daylight Savings Time, but also because there seems to have been a time-sucking vortex in play this week. (For a great perspective on the ridiculousness of DST, check out the Lakotah reaction: “Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom of a blanket and have a longer blanket.”)

The first week of any month is always heavy with reporting duties and extra meetings at the day job, but this week we also had a family member hospitalized for surgery. Relatively routine as far as those things go, and the prognosis is good now that they’re home again, but there is a burden of care associated with these experiences. As with family visits, we respond with love and an investment of extra time. That doesn’t mean those minutes and hours will ever be available for pursuing our creative or personal endeavors, though. As I’ve said before, time is one of the few zero-sum games, so anytime I’m given the gift of time, I value it almost more than any other possibility. From a different perspective, all clocks are haunted by the people we invite into our lives, then.

😉

Nonetheless, I managed another 1,616 words on The Builders this week. I love that the MyBookProgress plugin celebrates every time I update my word count–whether it’s for 50 words or 500. I’m still not sure whether I’ll make it to “the end” on this story before the end of the month, but I’m dangerously close to meeting that goal. Having a tool that breaks down the pace for me so I know at a glance what’s necessary to meet my goal has been extraordinarily helpful to keeping me on track.

Because I was focused on at least moving my story ball forward in my small remaining chunks of time, there was no time for a stay-at-home date night–certainly a hospital room is not conducive to relaxation, either. There was also limited time for walking, even with the weather blessing us with an early spring. My phone shows a daily average of 1,411 steps, just barely the low end of what I find acceptable for daily movement, considering I still haven’t gotten back in the habit of carrying my phone everywhere. I will admit to a good deal of stretching and scrambling and NOPE-ing, feeling grateful I don’t have the job of feeding angry snakes, all of which might have upped my heart rate enough to also contribute to my cardiovascular goals, though.

😀

Otherwise, hubs forwarded a list of 30 things to stop doing to “yourself” from the ever-useful Evolve and Ascend blog. I think I’m mostly past these things, but it was another echo of the necessity of choosing who you spend time with carefully–and avoiding the trap of trying to explain yourself when you do.

It’s back to the trenches this week. I have 8,000 words +/- to go to finish my story. I’d love it if I could double what I managed last week. I’m starting to get more positive beta reader feedback, so am feeling the need to push for the end. While I squirrel away writing minutes, I suggest you visit the other ROW80ers to track their progress.