Have you ever felt like the world was just against you? Like you were being punished for something you never even realized you did, or like someone took a vicious dislike to you and cast some kind of particularly nasty curse?
I hate to sound like I’m whining, but damn if I haven’t been having just the worst bloody time lately. I won’t go into a bunch of details because, frankly, you guys don’t want to hear about it, but between working really stupid hours, our Roomba breaking down, our car breaking down, and a bunch of bills that we simply can’t afford…yeah, I haven’t been in the cheeriest of moods recently.
I’m trying not to let it all get to me. I’m trying to hold my head high and just keep pressing forward. But I feel exhausted, like I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep since 2016, so please bear with me if I get a little cranky during this post.
Goal #1: Write half a million words.
The week started off so well. Then, to be perfectly frank about it, I started working some new hours. On the one hand this is a good thing, because it’s more hours than I was working before, which obviously means more money (that I desperately need). On the other hand, those hours have been incredibly crap ones. I’ve been working noon to 8 in the evening. That means, basically, that I get up in the morning, get the kid off to school, have enough time to shower, eat, etc, and then I’m pretty much going to work. Then, when I get off in the evening, it’s already nighttime, and although I don’t go immediately to bed or anything, it’s a dark, tiring time of the day and nothing gets done. As much as I keep trying to convince myself that today is the day I manage to get this shift to work for me, I’m just too tired at night to pull anything off, and there’s just too much adulting to do first thing in the morning before the shift starts. Thus, the only writing I got done last week was before this new shift began, plus a tiny bit during a couple of my lunch hours. The result is 5503 words. I wouldn’t consider that too bad except for the fact that my Pacemaker.press account wanted me to write 13,198 words, so I’m nearly 60% behind for the week. Blarg.
- Goal #1a: Write at least a quarter million fictional words. Of the words I did manage to write, they were almost all for blog posts and TraceysBasement.com posts. I only wrote 1322 fictional words, all of them toward my Final Fantasy fan-fiction. That said, at least I nearly have something worth uploading as an exclusive for my BuyMeaCoffee page. Keep an eye out for it!
Goal #2: Read at least 50 books.
Oh man, no, just….just no. Okay, I did manage to get through the first Sailor Moon manga, but I don’t exactly consider that an enormous achievement given that it’s all dialog and there’s probably fewer words in the entire book that most prose books have in their first chapter. But, I suppose, at least it’s something. I did try to get a bit more reading done last week, but with how tired I’ve been from everything else, every time I try to read I seem to start drifting off. Someone hook some caffeine directly to my veins, will ya?
Goal #3: Build my social media communities…EVERYWHERE!
I’m cutting my losses when it comes to week 4 and anything relating to social media. Honestly, looking at the numbers below, it’s not like it was an absolutely horrible week or anything; I’m just washing my hands of it all because it was not a good week for me actually being social. Again I have to refer to the hours I’ve been working. Because of the weird shift my social time has been mostly first thing in the morning, which is not my best time when it comes to being clever, or creative, or anything even remotely close to, well, social. Twitter hasn’t been too bad, but Instagram has been a struggle, and both author accounts have honestly been suffering because what little energy I have been able to find has been going directly to the channel accounts.
- The YouTube channel went up 9 subscribers
- The YouTube Twitter account dropped 1 follower
- The YouTube Instagram account stayed the exact same
- The Snapchat account’s score raised by 16 points
- The Author Twitter account gained 2 followers
- The Author Instagram account went up 2 followers
Goal #4: Play more (proper) video games.
HA. If you’ve made it this far in this post you can probably take a wild guess as to where this one is heading. I did play a tiny bit of Legend of Zelda (the original!) on the Switch last night. And I played a little bit more Shadow of the Colossus at the very beginning of the week. And that’s it. Again, I just couldn’t find the time, and whenever I tried to play anything I had the same effect as when trying to read: I’d be drifting off while sitting there with the controller. It just wasn’t in the stars.
Where’s that caffeine I ordered?
Goal #5: Put more time, focus, and energy into the YouTube channel.
I can report that, earlier in the week, we managed to edit and publish both vids we’d recorded on the Batman ’66 statues from Diamond Select. And thank goodness for that, because we didn’t manage to get a single damn thing filmed since those. Again, I just can’t do enough to explain how horrid this shift is. In the evenings when I get home I’m too exhausted to film, and in the mornings there just isn’t enough time once you factor in the things I have to do. Something is going to have to change somewhere along the line, but I have no idea what or how. All I know is that, as I write this with the final half-hour I have before I have to leave for work, I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
Okay, the post wasn’t as cranky as I was expecting, but it was still pretty whiny, so if you made it this far I’d like to thank you and give you a big ol’ digital hug. I’m not sure what I’m going to do to try to rectify all these issues that are plaguing me, but here’s hoping that next week isn’t quite so glum. Fingers crossed!
What are your goals for 2019? Do you have anything specific you’re hoping to accomplish? Any carryovers from 2018? Feel free to share in the comments!
Tracey Tobin 