Halloween has come and gone. Christmas is sneaking steadily toward us. And it is currently November, the National Novel Writing Month, also known as the month during which Tracey laughs, cries, loves herself, hates herself, eats way too much junk food, drinks way too much tea, and wonders why she can never seem to force herself to write this much during the other eleven months of the year.
But that’s nonsense for another post. Right now we’re talking about week 44 of 2018, also known as the week of Halloween preparation, execution, and post-holiday discount shopping. Also also known as the week during which I do a lot but accomplish little.
Mind you, this particular year the week was not as mind-blowingly unproductive as in previous years, so this isn’t going to be an “oh my god I did nothing!” post, but I guess what I’m saying is: don’t expect TOO much. ^_~
Plan #1: Focus more on Writing.
I did my absolute best to find the time and energy to work on my writing during week 44, and honestly, I don’t think I did half bad!
- Goal #1: Write half a million words throughout the year. Obviously, because of the aforementioned several-days-of-Halloween-events I didn’t get as much done as I could have, but I still managed to squeeze in a lot more writing than I have in previous years, so I’m actually fairly impressed with myself. I wrote 1766 blog words, and 5073 fiction words (mostly toward NaNoWriMo, once the 1st had rolled around), for a week’s total of 6839. That’s my best week since the huge week 40, which is pretty awesome since I generally crumble like an overbaked cookie during those few days leading up to and away from Halloween. Go me!
Those numbers bring the year’s total up to 219,799, and my daily average back up a bit to 714. Yay for moving upward again!
- Goal #2: Sell more books. I’ll be honest: I haven’t even really been looking at my numbers the past week or so. I know (because I checked today) that there hasn’t been much movement, aside from a few pages read on Kindle Unlimited, but I just haven’t had the time or energy required to self-promote. I’m going to be moving back into the promotion in the coming weeks though, what with the holidays approaching. Buy the reader in your life an awesome book! You know you wanna!
- Goal #3: Complete and publish The Other World: Book Two. The manuscript is still with my beta-readers, peeps! You can’t judge me on this one! It’s out of my hands! Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Plan #2: Focus more on YouTube.
YouTube takes a bit of a reasonable backseat during those few days of Halloween, since the holiday is rather largely celebrated in the Tobin household. So just keep that in mind, yes?
- Goal #1: Film more often. We did two videos during week 44, both of which were directly related to Halloween. Jason did a countdown list of movies that we watch every year during the season, and we did our yard haunt video, which is just an extra bit of fun to add to the actual day of Halloween. Both were fun videos that were obviously time sensitive, so I’m happy that we were able to get them done and up. It would have been nice if we’d been able to cram in a couple more, but as mentioned, Halloween is kinda huge for us, so our focus was very simply placed elsewhere for most of the week.
- Goal #2: Put more focus into, and have more fun with, the social media aspect. Social media continues to plod on forward without much issue. I completed the October challenge I created for the channel Instagram, which was tons of fun. I totally flaked out on the last few days of the author-account Instagram challenges, but there was simply too much to do and I was running ideas for those last few days worth of pictures. I also may have been flaking out on Twitter a bit the past few days, but that’s mostly because I spent so much time driving all over hell’s creation while we searched for discounted Halloween decorations, followed by the complete and utter crashing of my system once we finally returned home each day. Mama needs rest and a reboot!
#3: Focus more on myself.
I’m not even going to joke; the week of Halloween is not a time during which I’m likely to find a few moments to myself. There’s too much preparation, family stuff, shopping, running around, deconstruction, and so on and so forth. So, yeah, I love it, but it’s also a period of time during which I basically lose any capability to have two minutes to myself.
- Goal #1: Take time daily to read/watch/play. Aside from our nightly horror movies and Halloween-night specials, I don’t know if I really did any of this stuff during week 44. I was too damn busy!
No! Wait! You know what? I read some more of Carrie. A little bit. So there’s that. I’m still trying to finish it (come the hell on, Tracey, it’s not even that long of a book…), but I did manage to read a bit of it through the holiday. I didn’t play bugger all though, and I didn’t watch anything that wasn’t a predetermined family-viewing date. I really have to find some time soon to sit the hell down BY MYSELF and catch up on Supernatural and Doctor Who. If anything is bound to relax me, that’s it.
- Goal #2: Stay active, but don’t obsess. And here we are, down at the last goal, the one that usually comes with the most excuses…but not this week! Staying active is absolutely not a problem during Halloween week. You know why? Because I basically NEVER STOP MOVING. Since our weather tends to be rainy and/or windy near-constantly throughout October, Jason and I do 90% of our Halloween decorating on Halloween morning. We run around like chickens with our heads cut off getting everything ready, then we each take shifts walking our daughter all throughout town, then after she’s in bed we go out and deconstruct the decorations, because if we didn’t half of it would blow away, get ruined, or get stolen. Then, the next day, we run around shopping, looking for discount goodies, and because the stores are stubborn and like to try to drag the good deals out until as long as possible, we end up doing the same thing for two or three more days in a row. In other words, I basically didn’t stop moving for a good 4-5 days straight. And I have the sore back, near-broken neck, and callused feet to prove it. Also, my Fitbit has been like, “Woooooah, bitch, calm down! What the hell is happening?” So, HA.
In case you hadn’t put two and two together yet: I LOVE Halloween, but it’s also one of the most physically painful and exhausting few days of the year for me. So I’m genuinely quite impressed that I managed to get anything accomplished in week 44, and now I’m going to go crawl into bed with a pile of Halloween chocolate (parent tax FTW!) and try to forget that Christmas is going to be peeking around the corner before I know it.
How was your week? Were you able to accomplish anything? Do anything fun? Make any progress toward your own goals? Feel free to share!
Tracey Tobin 