Drafting: Limiting my Writing

I have no idea if this journal is helping or hurting me. On one hand, I have someone to be accountable to, even if there’s only one or two people clicking through from my facebook, or coming here of their on volition. It also makes me look at what I’m doing on a weekly basis, so I don’t get stuck in stagnation.

On the other time, it’s something else to eat up time, and I feel much guiltier about not getting done what I say I want to get done. Then because I don’t have time and am more scared to fail, I am hesitant to make any changes to my plans.

I know focus is a hard thing for me. Even when I was in college and I would work on my programming projects, I had a habit of banging out a section of code, getting it to a working place and then getting up and taking a walk around before coming back. The nice thing about getting up and walking around in a dorm room, is there’s not much to it. It’s easy to land back in my desk and then continue with the project.

Now my ‘get up and walk around’ ends up being going to a website of some variety and then I look up a half-hour (or longer) later having not gone back. Barring that is getting up and walking around my house, where I get distracted by a messy counter, a dusty TV, or something else to procrastinate with.

For the second week I feel like I worked pretty hard on my writing, and yet I still didn’t get all the way through what I said I would. I guess I could blame it on my not being good at planning how much I can get done in a week, but I also worry that I’m just not focused enough on it.

I want to get through the rest of Bluebeard and do the Headquarters section, which will drop me out in front of new content just in time for my vacation. That will give me four weeks to finish off the book by my deadline.

I think I might even try and limit my writing this week. I know that sounds a little counter productive, but I have been in a state of near constant guilt. Any time I am not writing I am feeling guilty about not writing. So let’s see:

Sunday: 2 hours + 1 for blog/facebook
Monday: .5 hours
Tuesday: 1.5 hours
Wednesday: 1 hours
Thursday: 0 hours
Friday: 1 hours
Saturday 2 hours + .5 for blog

That is: 8 hours of writing a week. And 1.5 for social media. I think that’s pretty good.