Goals 2019: Week 17 in Review

The worst part about being super-late doing one of these weekly review posts is that when the following week rolls around and you want to do the new post on time, it feels like you just bloody wrote one. Am I right, fellow-bloggers-who-also-do-these-kinds-of-weekly-review-posts? Damn right I am.

But you know what? I’m in a decent mood today, so I’m not going to whine and fuss or any of that nonsense. I’m just going to send you all a digital smile and a wave and throw my previous week’s review out there for the world to see so that I can lay it to sleep, head up to bed, and eat super-fattening food while watching Black Mirror.

Yeah, that’s seriously my plan, I’m not just being cute.

So let’s get on with it!

---

Goal #1: Write half a million words.

Whoops! I (unsurprisingly) went back in the wrong direction again in week 17. I’m not even going to mince words about it. I did very poorly. I wrote 1741 words, which is a far cry from the 11379 words Pacemaker.press wanted me to write. I’m definitely not impressed with myself at all, but at least I can say that I’m already beating that score for next week’s post. So yay for (future) improvement!

• Goal #1a: Write at least a quarter million fictional words.  As with the previous couple of weeks of poor word counts, the up side is that most of my meager number of words were fictional ones. Of that 1741 count above, 1071 of them were toward Nowhere to Run, my second zombie novel. I’ve definitely been having a difficult time focusing on writing for a while now, but I’ve been giving myself permission to write fiction without worrying about whether or not it’s complete trash, and that seems to be helping a bit. Hopefully it continues!

Goal #2: Read at least 50 books.

Goodreads says that I’m still on track to complete my goal for the year, although I didn’t get much read in week 17. I sat down one day and devoured Junji Ito’s Fragments of Horror, but since that’s a manga it didn’t exactly take me a ton of time to get through. That said, if you’re a fan of horror and manga, this is another interesting one from Ito! His brain…I’m telling you, it’s frightening. Extremely frightening.

Goal #3: Build my social media communities…EVERYWHERE!

I think I’m starting to get myself into a bit of a groove concerning social media. I’ve been doing a lot better lately with the channel-related accounts, and I’m slowly working the author-related accounts back into the flow as well. The key is to not waste all my time on a particular account, which is difficult since I’m a bit addicted to Twitter, but I’m getting the hang of it. Here’s hoping that continues!

For week 17:

• The YouTube channel gained 6 subscribers
• The YouTube Twitter account went up 8 followers
• The YouTube Instagram account went up 10 followers
• The Snapchat account’s score stayed the same
• The Author Twitter account stayed the same
• The Author Instagram account gained 1 follower

Well, would you look at that…no negatives! I can’t really count the SnapChat and the author Twitter as gains, but no negatives is as good as all positives! This was a pretty damn decent week for social media!

Goal #4: Play more (proper) video games. 

Video games haven’t really been on my radar much lately. I should be picking them up here and there just for the relaxation factor, but I’ve just had too much else going on. That said, I did play a bit of Just Dance and Kirby Star Allies with the little one last week, and we did have a Smash Bros afternoon one day that was plenty of fun. Someday soon, though, I’m going to have to get back into The Witness, before I forget how all the puzzles work.

Goal #5: Put more time, focus, and energy into the YouTube channel.

I FILMED A VIDEO, YOU GUYS! NO, SERIOUSLY!

Okay, it wasn’t exactly the most work I’ve ever put into the channel, and it’s a rather short vid, but it’s been so long at this point that it was a huge deal just to sit in front of the camera and pull something together. It has a lot of flaws, many of them due to the fact that I’d just kinda forgotten how things work by the time the camera was rolling, but I had a bit of fun with it, and all things considered I think it turned out pretty well. It’s not uploaded yet, but it will be soon, so keep an eye out for that post if you’re interested in checking it out.

---

Hey, what do you know? It actually wasn’t such a bad week! The lack of writing definitely makes me want to flog myself a bit, but all things considered it was mostly positives for this particular post. Thank goodness for that! I’m completely over being so negative all the time, so this was a nice change of pace. XD

How was your week? Did you accomplish any goals? Make any new ones? Do anything else that made you feel awesome and accomplished? Feel free to share in the comments!

Goals 2019: Week 16 in Review

Hey everyone! So it’s time for another…

Hold up. *checks watch; checks calendar* W-what day is it?

DAMMIT TRACEY, WHAT THE HELL?!

Okay, so apparently it’s Thursday, and yeah…I’m not even sure when or how that happened. I swear, these days it feels like I’m living in some kind of wormhole where time and the passage of it mean nothing. Where am I? WHEN am I? It’s all a great, unsolvable mystery.

Moving on from the wibbly-wobbly timey-whimey stuff that’s got me all a mess, let’s just go ahead and take a look at last week’s nonsense, shall we?

---

Goal #1: Write half a million words.

I’m doing an absolutely awesome job at not turning my failures around when it comes to writing. I thought I was doing okay last week, but by the end of it I’d only managed to wrack together 3088 words of the 12905 Pacemaker.press wanted me to write. That’s pretty shit, to be perfectly blunt about it, but at least it’s better than the previous few weeks, so I’ve got that going for me. If I can keep moving forward and get a little more done per week, maybe I’ll actually manage to accomplish something.

I’m not gonna hold my breath, though.

• Goal #1a: Write at least a quarter million fictional words.  One good thing is that of those 3088 words, 1800 of them were fictional ones. Go me! I spent a little bit of time last week working on the Final Fantasy fic, and I threw a few words at Nowhere to Run, so there was that. I’m hoping to do some more work on both of those today, actually, right after I finish this post. So let’s move on so I can get this post finished!

Goal #2: Read at least 50 books.

I finally finished up Pet Sematary over the weekend, so I was able to mark that one down on Goodreads. Without getting too deep into it, it’s an awesome book, but also exceptionally depressing. I’m gonna have to move on to something a little more upbeat for the next book, I think. That said, I’ll probably read Junji Ito’s Fragments of Horror first, because clearly I have a problem.

Goal #3: Build my social media communities…EVERYWHERE!

Guys, this has been SO HARD lately! The main problem is the fact that I’ve been spending so much time working, and since I deal with customers I can’t be taking my phone out and tweeting whenever I feel like it. The weather has also been very cold and rainy, so I haven’t been able to take any cool photos for Instagram (I’m SO sick of shooting toy-on-a-solid-background pics). Result? Very little.

For week 16:

• The YouTube channel gained 2 subscribers
• The YouTube Twitter account went up 2 followers
• The YouTube Instagram account went down 3 followers
• The Snapchat account’s score stayed the same
• The Author Twitter account stayed the same
• The Author Instagram account gained 5 followers

I can’t complain too much because nothing took a nosedive or anything like that. but one of these days I’d definitely like to see another one of those “all increases” weeks.

Goal #4: Play more (proper) video games. 

There hasn’t been a lot of gaming in my life the past week-and-a-half or so. I played a bit of missy’s new Kirby game with her on the Switch, and had a few family Smash Bros battles, and I played one stage of Rush of Blood on the PSVR while my parents were visiting, but that’s pretty much it. I really need to sit down and just PLAY something some night, but every time I have the opportunity, honestly, I feel guilty because there’s plenty else I SHOULD be doing instead. I definitely have a bit of a “if I’m relaxing, I’m failing” complex.

Goal #5: Put more time, focus, and energy into the YouTube channel.

As you’ve likely become used to, there’s not much to report here this week. What I will say, however, is that the break will be coming to an end soon. I was hoping it would be today, but the rainy weather has the basement absolutely freezing, so it might be a few more days. Either way, it’s going to happen soon. I’ve got things to film, things I want to film, so it’s time to get back into it. Hey ho, let’s go!

---

So that’s it, short and sweet. And you know what? There’s no sense in dragging this post out when I could be doing other things, so let’s just go ahead and end it now, okay? Okay. Thanks! ❤

How was your week? Did you accomplish any goals? Make any new ones? Do anything else that made you feel awesome and accomplished? Feel free to share in the comments!

Goals 2019: Week 15 in Review

If there was a god of productivity and accomplishment, I’d be praying in supplication to it right now, begging for forgiveness. Forgive me, Mother (I see such a god as being feminine in nature), for I have sinned. I have sinned HARDCORE.

“Say three Hail Gaimans and pledge a donation to the Office of Letters and Light.”

Yes, of course, your holy greatness.

…

Okay, clearly I’ve completely lost my mind. But you never know…maybe that will turn out to be a good thing. Maybe I could use a little insanity to give me some motivation, however psychotic. In fact, psychotic might be perfect for my zombie WIP. A writer has to have a little bit of psychotic in her to write about gory, animalistic murder.

Where was I? I believe my brain may have left my head and is moving on a tangential path as far away from me as it can get.

THE POINT, dear readers, is that, despite my claims that April was going to be “my month”, I’ve been doing very little to actually make that happen. There are numerous reasons and excuses I could give, some of them understandable, some of them not so much, but in the end it really all comes down to putting in the effort. Which I haven’t been doing.

Forgive me, Mother, for I have sinned. It’s been less than a week since my last confession. Here we go:

---

Goal #1: Write half a million words.

Worst. Week. EVAH!

In week 15 I wrote a grand total of 1586 words, about half of them my week-in-review post from last week, and the other half a blog post that I decided not to share for personal reasons. That was it. That. Was. IT.

My Pacemaker.press account wanted me to write 12,025, so that makes it an even bigger failure than it seems at first. I wrote approximately 13% of what I was supposed to. Can you imagine making a 13% on a test on which you’re allowed to answer the questions however you damn-well please? Because that’s pretty  much what I did last week. I bombed a Answer-However-You-Want test. Bombed it BAD.

• Goal #1a: Write at least a quarter million fictional words.  And to make matters even worse, absolutely zero percent of those words were fictional ones. ZERO fiction. I wrote NO fiction for an entire week. Just send me to Novelist Hell right now!

Goal #2: Read at least 50 books.

I’m still working my way through Pet Sematary, which I forgot to bring to work a couple of days in a row and thus got behind on. I’m about halfway through it now, and I’m starting to tense up for the really bad stuff that’s about to happen. The book has been creepy up to this point, but soon it’s going to go absolutely MISERABLE. In a way I’m a bit sad that I know (in general) what’s going to happen because of having seen the movie ages ago. The events to come would have been an astounding shocker otherwise. But hey, I’m enjoying it anyway, so that’s what matters!

Goodreads is still telling me that I’ll stay the course if I read a book a week, but I might plow through a manga or two this week just to make sure that I stay ahead of the curve. I’ve been wanting to read the Junji Ito one Jason got me for Christmas anyway.

Goal #3: Build my social media communities…EVERYWHERE!

This stuff is ALL over the place, let me tell you. For the most part I think I’ve been doing okay with the social media stuff, posting pics, Tweeting away, that kind of thing… Yet everything seems to be bouncing. It feels like I’ve been hovering around the same numbers for months now because they’ll go up…then back down…then back up…and so on. It’s driving me foolish, to be honest.

For week 15:

• The YouTube channel gained 4 subscribers
• The YouTube Twitter account went down 1 followers
• The YouTube Instagram account went up 15 followers
• The Snapchat account’s score went up by 2 points
• The Author Twitter account lost 2 followers
• The Author Instagram account lost 3 followers

Those aren’t awful numbers (except that, of course, negative ones always suck), so I’ll leave it at that for now, but I’m really hoping to see a more positive result next week if I can stick with everything and not go silent at all.

Goal #4: Play more (proper) video games. 

My gaming has been a little sporadic of late. I played a bit of the TellTale Game of Thrones game yesterday while waiting for the new season to launch. And I finished The Room 3, which was awesome. The Witness went on the back-burner though, and Borderlands 2 is still on hold because I haven’t been in the mood to deal with my Vita freezing up.

Sometime this week I hope to get back into the Witness, and maybe I’ll look into what’s up with Borderlands 2 as well. But I also want to actually put some of my spare time into writing this week, so we’ll just have to see what happens.

Goal #5: Put more time, focus, and energy into the YouTube channel.

You know what? I’m just going to refuse to comment on this one this week. It will come. Eventually. I promise.

---

A slightly shorter post this week because, as you can see, I don’t really have anything good to report. And to be blunt, I’m trying to be more upbeat and positive, so there’s no sense dwelling on a shitty week. Right? Right. Thus ends the confession. Smile upon me this week, my goddess!

How was your week? Did you accomplish any goals? Make any new ones? Do anything else that made you feel awesome and accomplished? Feel free to share in the comments!

Goals 2019: Week 14 in Review

*wanders into the blog, bleary-eyed and a bit confused*

*wipes eyes with the backs of her hands*

W-what….what day is it? What week is it? Hell, what bloody year is it?

Okay, maybe I’m being a bit dramatic, but damned if my brain doesn’t feel like a big ol’ pile of mush these days, exemplified by how late this post is. Lately it’s felt like all I do is work (I’m on my second 6-day week this month so far), and because of the weird hours that change day-to-day I’m constantly tired. To explain further: on Monday I worked 12 noon until 8 pm, on Tuesday I worked 8 am to 4 pm, Wednesday was 10 am to 6 pm, Thursday was 12 am to 8 pm, today it’s 11 am to 7 pm, and Saturday I’m working 9 am to 5 pm. Being that they’re all regular 8-hour shifts you wouldn’t think that would be so bad, but trust me…having your schedule jump around like that really screws with your system. My body is desperately craving some kind of regularity.

Also, mix that with the fact that I haven’t been sleeping well – for some reason I keep waking up with a throat so dry I end up hacking my lungs up for a bit before I can fall back to sleep – and it’s quite amazing I can even function.

Oh, oh, PLUS, I can’t have caffeine. Because of my stupid blood pressure. So, yeah. FML.

I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this little intro-rant, but I promise it’s not all doom and gloom.

It’s only partially doom and gloom.

---

Goal #1: Write half a million words.

There’s no point in even trying to sugar-coat this one. I can’t believe I bollocks’ed up week 14 so bad. Pacemaker.press was being nice to me. It gave me several super-easy days that should have been a breeze. It only wanted me to write 8435 words for the whole week. But instead of writing when I had moments of free time, I curled up on the couch or in bed and focused my burning eyes on a book or a video game. In fact, there have been periods of 2-3 days at a time when I haven’t even touched my laptop. Today, as a matter of fact, is the first time I’ve opened it since I had it set up to play the hockey game on Saturday night.

The result of my refusal to do anything that actually requires the use of my frontal cortex means that I wrote a whopping total of 2226 words. And a large chunk of that was my update post for the week 13. -_-

• Goal #1a: Write at least a quarter million fictional words.  I did manage to write a few fictional words throughout the week, despite shunning my laptop so badly. I’ve been taking a notebook to work and scribbling possible scenes for my kid’s chapter book idea whenever I have a chance. It wasn’t much, but that accounted for 682 of the week’s words, which isn’t horrible for being handwritten whenever work is slow.

Goal #2: Read at least 50 books.

Goodreads tells me that I’m more-or-less on pace with this one. It says that if I read a book a week, I’ll hit my goal. With that in mind I should probably be working on some smaller books, buuuuuuuut….nope. After finishing The Shining I felt an almost compulsive need to dive right into Pet Sematary. And while it’s going to take me a little while to get through it, I’m definitely enjoying it so far. Unlike with The Shining, the creepy stuff in Pet Sematary starts to happen fairly early in the book, and I’m hooked. Of course, I know the bulk of what’s going to happen, so there’s no shock-factor, but the writing is awesome and I’m looking forward to being emotionally destroyed in the near future.

Goal #3: Build my social media communities…EVERYWHERE!

My brain can’t put together the logic behind these numbers and what they’ve been doing recently. Things that I expect to go up are going down, and vice versa, and it’s so confusing to me.

• The YouTube channel gained 29 subscribers
• The YouTube Twitter account went up 1 follower
• The YouTube Instagram account went down 8 followers
• The Snapchat account’s score went up by 6 points
• The Author Twitter account stayed the same
• The Author Instagram account lost 3 followers

Look at those numbers. The YouTube channel, for example: why did that get such a jump upwards when we’ve done bugger all on it in ages, while the Instagram account – which I’ve been posting to as often as I can come up with ideas for pics – has gone down for the second week in a row. My poor, exhausted brain can’t piece the logic together.

The long and short of it is that it wasn’t a bad week, aside from both Instagram accounts being jerks, which is hysterically annoying since both Instagram accounts are where I’ve been focusing most of my (lack of) energy lately.

Goal #4: Play more (proper) video games. 

I have a confession to make: I’ve been playing mobile games again.

But, BUT!…those games have been The Room, The Room 2, and The Room 3. And if you know those games you’ll definitely forgive me. They’re amazingly well-done puzzle games in the vein of things like Myst and The Witness, and they’re beautiful and intelligent and awesome. I’m currently working my way through the extras in 3 to try to unlock the extra three endings, and it’s a real mind-f*ck since you can’t get hints for that stuff.

Concerning “proper” games though, Borderlands 2 is temporarily on hold, as the bloody thing keeps freezing up whenever I visit a certain part of the map (which I need to go to for a main-game mission). We’ve also been continuing on with Mario Party, trying to unlock all the characters, and have had the occasional Smash Bros day, so there’s that as well.

Goal #5: Put more time, focus, and energy into the YouTube channel.

I feel like I should maybe just set this goal aside until further notice. Don’t worry: we have no intention of permanently quitting the channel or anything like that, but it’s been basically impossible to gather the required time and energy to get anything filmed, between my terrible schedule and other regular-life issues. We are hoping to get back into it soon, but it definitely depends on a number of factors, so I’m not making any promises. Fingers crossed, though!

---

 

So, basically…week 14 was mostly a wash. A bit of reading and gaming, a very small amount of writing, and that was pretty much it. I’d like to be able to say that week 15 is going to be better, but as I’m already more than halfway through it I can already let you know that that’s not going to be the case. But hey, on the positive side of things, it looks like it’s a gorgeous day outside, so maybe things will start to turn around a bit! You never know!

How was your week? Did you accomplish any goals? Make any new ones? Do anything else that made you feel awesome and accomplished? Feel free to share in the comments!

Goals 2019: Week 13 in Review

Guess what you guys?! I had an amazing week! I wrote all the words, played all the games, read all the books, filmed all the videos, and gained a million subscribers! And guess what else?!

April Fools!

Yeah, okay, I didn’t exactly play that one for realism, did I?

In all seriousness though, the week was an absolute loss on pretty much all fronts. But today is a new month, and it also happens to be my birthday month, so here’s what we’re going to do: I’m going to get this post out of the way, confess to all my past failings, and then I’m going to go into April with my head held high, ready to GET SOME SHIT DONE. How does that sound? It sounds pretty good to me. So let’s get this thing said and done, shall we?

---

Goal #1: Write half a million words.

Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha…oh man…if anyone were actually monitoring my Pacemaker.press account they’d probably tell me to just give it up already. Last week was, I believe, my worst week of the year so far, and I don’t even really have any excuses. I wrote two blog posts, and that was it, for a grand total of 1182 words. My Pacemaker.press wanted me to write 13685. Little bit of a discrepancy there, eh?

And as I said, I simply have no excuses. I just didn’t write. That’s not to say that I had a ton of time to do so (I worked a 6-day week last week), but even when I did have some time, I just…didn’t. I couldn’t be bothered. At all. I tried once or twice, but whenever I did I just had this completely blank head that refused to put forth even a tiny bit of effort.

Lucky for me, Pacemaker.press saw my absolute shit week and decided to take pity on me by offering me a relatively easy week for the first one of April. So I vow now that next week will be better. I VOW, dammit!

• Goal #1a: Write at least a quarter million fictional words.  You likely noticed the part above where I mentioned that I wrote “two blog posts”. Yeah. That was it, so…no fictional words this week. Two failures for the price of one!

Goal #2: Read at least 50 books.

Sweet mother of puppies, am I STILL reading The Shining? Yes. Yes I am. I swear, this book is like some kind of temporal anomaly. It really doesn’t seem THAT long, and I’m enjoying it so it’s not like I’m nursing it or anything, and yet somehow it’s been taking me FOREVER to get through it! I’m almost done now, with only about fifty pages left, but damn. I’ll be happy to be able to move on to something else (preferably something shorter).

Goal #3: Build my social media communities…EVERYWHERE!

Oooh, now, see…here we have some EPIC failure happening. I knew I’d gone a little quiet on social media this past week, but I didn’t realize it had been as bad as it was until I looked at the numbers:

• The YouTube channel lost 19 subscribers
• The YouTube Twitter account went down 8 followers
• The YouTube Instagram account went down 6 followers
• The Snapchat account’s score stayed the same
• The Author Twitter account lost 4 followers
• The Author Instagram account gained 17 followers

Look at that! Just look at it! That is some truly astounding failure right there. The Author Instagram took a lovely little jump that makes me happy, but literally everything else plummeted. That’s wicked depressing, but there’s really nothing to be done but move forward, right? Right. Here’s to lots of new followers in April!

Goal #4: Play more (proper) video games. 

Ohhhhhkay. So, this is where most of my free time went last week. At least I can say I succeeded at this one goal, right? Ha ha ha ha ha…ha…ha…

*ahem*

Anyway, I played a fair bit of Mario Party and Smash Bros with Jason and Adrianna this past week. Additionally, I started playing The Witness, which quickly turned into a family venture as all three of us stared at puzzles with our jaws slack, wondering how we could be so bloody stupid, and then feeling like geniuses when the solution finally presented itself. That game is REALLY good at that, let me tell you. It seems so simple one second, and completely impossible the next. Definitely a brainteaser, but an excellent one.

I’ve also started a new run of Borderlands 2 on my Vita. The newly released info on Borderlands 3 really  made me want to play it again, so I started a run with the ZerO character, who is a long-range fighter. That’s perfect for me because I love sniping, especially on the Vita, which allows you to aim using the motion controls. Plus, the game is just super cathartic. I love making bad guy’s heads explode in a spray of blood. Does that make me a sociopath?

Goal #5: Put more time, focus, and energy into the YouTube channel.

I’m not going to get into this one, other than to say that NOTHING happened last week, but the drought is going to end soon. I’m going to film in April, even if the videos are crap. It’s time to get moving forward again.

…just as soon as the basement stops being cold as a witch’s…you know. 😛

---

So there, that’s it. March is over with, week 13 is over with, and my post of pathetic, inexcusable failure is over with. Now it’s time to wipe my hands of all this self-pity and self-defeat, and move into April with a fresh slate. Let’s DO THIS THING, people!

How was your week? Did you accomplish any goals? Make any new ones? Do anything else that made you feel awesome and accomplished? Feel free to share in the comments!