Prithee bring me windy days and butterflies And morning dews upon the grass Clover soft between my toes And high above a sunny lass Besotted by the sweetness of A change upon the day just passed With memories of winter’s breath Yet lingering, alas
Prithee bring me dreams of autumn’s long caress The sultry notes of summer nights Reds and yellows all aglow The sunny lass at last alights With warm illusion on the hill Her toils for our feast delights We long for winter’s wild chill As sashes close and fires build In slumber holding fast until The morning dew invites.
Dreams of Springtide by Erik Emrys Carl
I am not fond of the summers in Kansas. When I lived in Dodge City, summers were interminably dry and dust-coated, sweltering, ungodly highs of around 108 in August with nary a cloud in the sky. In Wichita, August highs still reach 100 degrees with intermittent rainy days and pollen so thick it qualifies as precipitate. Even the night holds the heat close like a wild animal caught in a trap.
Forgive me for waxing poetic. Suffice it to say, I am not fond of summers in Kansas.
I love the fall, however. The scents of summer drifting on a steadily cooling evening breeze as the colors change and days grow shorter. When the bugs are drawn to the decay of dying leaves as readily as tender flesh, and a cup of tea on the porch after the sun’s gone down becomes a moment of zen rather than a cry for relief. I’m looking forward to it.
Meanwhile, I am fortunate that many of my preoccupations pair well with air conditioning.
I seem to have acquired the most morbid news app EVAR on my phone. While it reports items of national interest, skewed in some fashion to an algorithm that picks articles similar to items I’ve explored on previous visits, it also focuses on local stories. I live in Wichita. It is a sizable community of more than half a million residents, but by no means a city renowned for its crime and hardship. Yet Every. Single. Morning. I am greeted with a morose notification regarding a violent crime, a shooting, a fatal accident, and so forth. I’m not sure what started this trend – I can’t even blame it on the algorithm, as I rarely click on any of these – but the past several weeks have somehow made this city feel remarkably unsafe. I’m confident that it’s an illusion – at least in contrast to business as usual – but it’s effective.
Anyway… good morning. Today is a new day, and I’ve decided to make an effort to chronicle said newness as part of a lean toward accountability. Journaling is a healthy habit I’ve found myself advising to others on numerous occasions, but I have never been able to invest in private journaling as a personal retreat. Somehow, anything completely private fails to buoy my sense of self-worth – which seems counter-intuitive, but doesn’t surprise me. While I enjoy no shortage of confidence in my abilities, the greater value of a creative effort is invariably in the sharing. As always, I will maintain a sense of openness and honesty. Authenticity in the public forum begets vulnerability, but I believe any less would be disingenuous and counter-productive.
That being said, if you’re reading this… welcome. Now to the point of today’s story.
I recently discovered a YouTube channel that presents a wealth of deep and thought-provoking content. I’ve enjoyed discussions regarding characteristics of genius, procrastination, objective reality, political marginalism, and life-hacks that help redefine your potential. This video, however, echoed a thought experiment that has guided some of my grander projects for many years.
It’s not a terribly long video. The core principle regards productivity in light of successes and failures. Setting goals may seem like an intuitive tool for success, but it effectively keeps you in a “fail state” until you achieve a goal, which can often be a minute and hollow victory inspiring an almost irrational need to set another goal ASAP. Thus starting the cycle anew. Setting a system, however, creates a pattern of behavior that generates feelings of success as the steps of the system are met, driving an overall sense of success toward the “goal.”
For example, I have around 45 to 50 thousand words left to complete Veil of Shadows, the now-tardy sequel to my debut novel. This goal has loomed larger the longer it takes to reach it, and my continued frustration at struggling through passages of the manuscript has been dispiriting, to say the least. As a goal, it keeps me a fail state. I have attempted to chop it up into more manageable chunks. Chapters. Story arcs. Even word counts. As goals, they are hit and miss, and the misses weigh more heavily than the fleeting accomplishments.
As per the advice rendered in the video, I have instead decided to create a system. I will specify an hour of the day – I’m currently working with the 9am hour, when I am often feeling well-rested, just after breakfast, and everyone else in my house remains fast asleep – to spend on the manuscript. I won’t set word count goals or anything similar; some mornings I may fly through a passage, others I may accomplish nothing (or even edit out a previous section on a follow-up read). But the pattern of successfully devoting time to it will keep me in a positive frame of mind regarding my efforts to succeed.
I mentioned that I’ve used this approach before on a macro level. Usually it’s on projects that have a hard deadline – like a promotional project or an event – thus making the goal itself irrefutable. With the freedom of that deadline, I can more easily focus on the time I spend and the steps I take to prepare for a con over the six months leading up to it. To use a random example.
But now I’m going to experiment with this same approach on a micro level. I am notoriously bad at goofing off, as it happens… I will occasionally binge a couple hours of a TV show, but I’m typically unable to engage in private entertainments when if feels like I could be doing something productive or creative (or preferably both!). So I’m going to try structuring my time. Using Google Calendar, I’m laying out an idealized schedule for my principle obligations. Here’s a look at this week:
The dark green items are hard scheduled driving, where a friend employs me to provide transportation for him. The light green are related to managing TsunamiCon and Assam Teas. For the latter, I have a lot of detail work I need to do to plan and promote the convention, and I believe that carving out specific times for it will be beneficial. For Assam, I’ve been slacking on our promotions and there are various managerial functions that need be kept up with. The dark blue items are actual game, and the lavender stretches are for schoolwork. I slot it meal time to ensure that I keep an eye on them; I like to prepare meals for myself and my wife (and my kids when they are interested in what I’m making). The yellow are medical appointments and such. That leaves the light blue entries, which are for writing, game prep, and podcast editing.
I’ve left space, of course. To relax, to record some music or read a book, watch TV, play a game, what have you. And it’s important to note that, though my rationale for this approach is to prioritize my work much like I would a full-time job, it’s entirely flexible and very experimental. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Oh, and it goes without mentioning… Comments are welcome.
