February 3, 2005

The best-laid plans of mice and men….

My recent illnesses have reminded me of my childhood allergy to dust mites, and suggested that my allergy has perhaps not dissipated with the passage of time. So, I decided to buy a dehumidifier.

According to WalMart.com, Wal-Mart sells half a dozen brands of dehumidifier. After work, I stopped by my nearest Wal-Mart and spent half an hour wandering its aisles. They didn’t have any. None at all. The two employees I asked waved me in different directions, completely uninterested in helping me actually find what I was looking for.

I got home to a snow-covered walkway. Actually, the snowfall itself was gorgeous; big, fat flakes drifting down from the sky and covering just enough of the ground to return the countryside to postcard prettiness, without covering the roads. But that meant I had to clear the snow from the sidewalk (our association tells us to clear sidewalks within twelve hours of a snowfall).

So, once I’d cleared the walkway, it was already 8:00 and I was tired. Didn’t get much done today as a result. I basically just watched the MST3K episode “Red Zone Cuba” and munched on store-bought chocolate chip cookies.

But even this was good; I need a break now and then.

VOTE! On the right. It’s a poll, and it’s just over there. No, on the right.

‘Twas a good day, overall. I kept a time journal at work, which kept me productive, and I managed to do almost everything on my to-do list (the only thing I’ve failed to do is practice Japanese, and that’s because I can’t find my Japanese book).

In particular, I finally finished proofing that novel. Boy, that was a big job. It was a pretty good book, too; it just required a lot of concentration. I couldn’t just read; I had to concentrate on every word.

So I decided that, once I was done proofing, I’d return to drawing. I’d like to get some practice a couple of times a week. Nothing special. Once I get used to it, I’d even like to post something every week. Not necessarily a comic; that’d be too much. Maybe just a few panels of a comic every week. I could always make something like tailsteak.tk.

As I mentioned in another entry recently, I’ve realized that I don’t do well with daily tasks. They get repetitive. I can do some of them, like writing these journal entries, but only the ones I find deeply, personally enjoyable. Other tasks just don’t give me the same immediate satisfaction.

For example, I tasked myself with writing a bit of fiction every night, and have utterly failed at that for days. But part of that is because of my frustration with writing only a little bit of fiction at a time. It takes a little time to get into the flow of writing, and when I’m writing only a little bit, I can never get into the flow.

So, I think I’ll write a few times a week, and draw a few times a week. And hopefully I’ll be able to keep that up.

I mean, wouldn’t it be cool if I could maintain a bunch of skills and projects all at once? Imagine if, in any given week, I made real progress on short stories and animations and comics and software development and home renovations and learning another language.

And now, more VR story.

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