mistressofmuses (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mistressofmuses) wrote2019-01-15 08:10 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2019-01-15 08:10 pm
Creative pursuits limited by time.
Checking in on my feelings about the new year yesterday, I realized that I'm still struggling a lot with time management, which is frustrating, because that's kind of the common denominator in all the things I'm trying to do more of/be mindful about in the new year. I haven't written very much, either on personal stuff here or on ongoing creative projects. I am trying to cut myself a little slack, having been in Austin for several days, and starting a new position at work. Also a new schedule, so today is day 6 of 7 in a row. (Shifting to Sat/Sun in the field office and Mon-Weds at corporate. Much better than the Thurs/Fri at corporate, Sat/Sun in the field, Mon back at corporate schedule before, which was frustratingly choppy.)
Still, I'm frustrated that I waste a lot of time on silly phone games (Picross, currently), when I could be focusing on things I'd rather spend my free time doing.
So in light of that, I started a habit tracker of sorts. I guess it would have been nice to have started it right at the start of the new year, but oh well. It'll still give me that visual tracking option. Doing one is sort of inspired by (really amazing) author VE Schwab, and the pages she occasionally posts from hers. Mine is tracking different things, but hey, the illusion of organization!
It was already motivating this morning when it got me to fold my laundry with my extra fifteen minutes of time before work, haha.
Time-wasting phone games/mindless Netflix bingeing (sometimes at the same time!) is really my biggest downfall, I think. (Though I'm not tracking "negative" habits like that, at least not at this point. I want it to be positive, and a measure of what good self-care and personal things I'm choosing to do, rather than a measure of things that will make me feel bad to look at. "Wow, I haven't done this thing in a while, so I should make time!" is more motivating than "Ugh, why do I waste so much time on that crap?")
It also gave me the first thing to write in a really nice notebook that Cindy gave me when I started working with/for her. It's one of the nicer journal things I've been given, so I'm happy to have something to write in it! I don't know what else I'll use it for... I keep notebooks of daily stuff for work, but it seems a shame to use such a nice book for that, so I'll maybe make it a creative writing journal type thing. I keep one of those electronically, but maybe physically writing (as opposed to typing) will be motivating in a different fashion.
A sort of addition to the time management struggle I'm facing is that I also tend to spread myself too thin with what time there is available. While I'm not using my available time to the fullest by any stretch, there is some dismay when I look at all the things I'd *like* to do, and realize that even if I was perfectly motivated and disciplined to get down to it, I'd likely never manage to do all of it. (Read books! Play video games! Write fanfic! Write ofic! Make miniature costume pieces! Practice art! Physical 3D model painting! Write reviews of things! Watch a backlog of shows that I want to see! Do responsible adult things like keeping the apartment clean! Go do events like concerts or museums or clubs!) All crammed into about three hours of free time between getting home from work and dinner and going to bed.
I've been feeling that general blogging itch, haha, and not completely sure where to channel it. Just here with the personal day-to-day? Maybe back to horror movie reviews? I did always enjoy doing them (and was pleasantly surprised to hear someone missed them!), but I just sort of quit. It's a big time commitment, but it was fun. Though I no longer have the ready access of a cheap video rental store blocks away like when I lived in Greeley, so now I mostly just hit up Netflix, which could be either good or bad in terms of potential audience. Good because it's films that are themselves easily accessible, meaning people may be interested in seeing them and looking for reviews, and if they read a review and wanted to see it, it would be easy to do. Bad, because since everyone has easy access to these same movies, they're likely to have a lot of reviews and opinions floating around.
I've also thought about branching into book reviews, because that tends to be the thing I get flaily-excited over when I love them, but I also tend to read the same authors pretty regularly, so it'd be far more "just for fun" than trying to build a brand of any kind. I guess maybe that's sort of what Goodreads and such is for, but I've just never made an effort to use that site for much.
Yet another part of me has considered trying to join in with the "writeblr" community on tumblr, sharing writing advice, references, WIP things, motivation, etc., but I have such limited ability to work from a computer that it's kind of a big undertaking to do the initial set-up of attractive themes and menus and such. At the same time, that can be at least one avenue for marketing your own writing, and if I ever actually make it to a point where I want to publish (likely self-publish, let's be real) it can be a way to have people interested in your work. Fanfiction is a bit easier with hosting like AO3 and fandom-specific communities, but original works are hard to market. (And I am Bad at marketing myself.)
Way back years ago when I started on DW I joined up with some writing communities, but most of those seem to have gone away, and I rejoined just in time to discover that one of my favorites is shuttering at the end of the month. (For reasons I totally understand! Committing to modding a community when your real life is busy is a super hard undertaking, and I respect wanting to close a community on a good note rather than let it just die a sad death by neglect.) Not too many people seemed to have any suggestions of alternatives though, so I'm not sure where to go from there. There seem to be comms devoted to individual fandoms that are relatively active, but I work on a mix of fanfic and original projects, and WIP support, especially for original works, seems thin. That was one of my favorite things about the group that's shuttering, because it was dedicated to whatever projects you wanted it to be. Original? Fanfic? Nonfic? Short stories? Art or crafting? Anything goes!
I also suppose that if I'm so desperate for a writing community I could start one here on DW, haha. But I know how bad I am at keeping up with things, and recognize the irony of even considering it in a post mainly about difficulties of too many things and not enough time. It's a thought, though.
On the personal side, I do need to share pictures and posts about my time in Austin! It was a ton of fun and a very cool city to be in. Also nice to spend a lot of time with my sibling. And I got to meet up with Tracy, as hoped!
I need to reintroduce myself to how to post images, so I can do a proper vacation post, haha.
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I don't know how easy it is to post photos here. All my gifs are either on websites or ones I have saved on photobucket and I link them in. Same with any other pic I've used, which is usually saved in photobucket and linked in. Like LJ, they're limited on space, so I'm not sure what their policies are on photo posting.
I've thought about starting a tarot/rune community here like the one I had at LJ but actually keep it serious. That was the first thing that the Russian pornbots took over in LJ. Maybe even do the dream interpretation thing with it. I post a lot of dreams to my DW, so I wouldn't want to post them twice, but it would be fun to have dream interpretation discussion.
I think a lot of comms here probably started to close down when everyone flocked to Tumblr. Tumblr was such an easy format, but it isn't a good format for community.
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I have most of my photos posted to google photos, so I should be able to link from there, it's just having to remember what sizing works the best and how I need to mark them in my albums there so that they're viewable and all that.
Dream interpretation would be fun! I've remembered more of my dreams lately than I have in a while, but it always goes in phases for me. Some are pretty easy to figure out, while some are just... lol, what does that mean?
I think you're right that a lot of communities kind of dried up when tumblr became the Place To Be, but it's just never been conducive to that type of communication and community.
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That's cool you have your photos somewhere. Does Google have a pretty good-sized space to store photos and an easy way to link to them? I might have to eventually start spreading out what I have. I used to pay for Photobucket, and if it seems like they'll give me a good deal, I'll do it again. I cleared out a lot of stuff in my Photobucket so that my Geek Girl photos can be stored there, my icons for DW (though I'm just uploading them right now -- though then begins the changing around of icons all the time, something I need to do right now), and all my animated gifs that I use here and other places.
I'm still toying with the idea of a tarot/rune/divination/dream interpretation community, but I'll have to see what happens.
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Google photos gives you 15 gigs of free storage, though it's likely you could pay for more, though I haven't actually looked to see. (It ties to a gmail address, so you could also create additional gmail accounts and get 15 gigs on each of them, I imagine.)
I haven't played around with linking things yet, though I hope it's fairly intuitive... the organization has been, even when I've had to do it on a slow connection or on my phone. I have it set to automatically upload images from my phone (which I'm EXTREMELY glad I did; when my previous phone took a dive and I couldn't afford to repair it, I didn't lose much in the way of photos!)
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I'll check out Google. That might be a good idea because I do have other emails set up for different functions. That might be an option besides Photobucket.