Well, I have to admit that my efforts to get my life back on track post-vacation have been something other than a 100% success story. Some parts seem to be working out as planned, others… shall we say, ‘not so much.’
It’s certainly not a complete failure, but I don’t like to measure where I am in terms of how far I am from the bottom.
That aside, how about I submit myself to my interrogations from one week ago. Bring it on!
1. Have I completed the comment phase? Have I achieved anything else that I should mention?
Yes and yes. The comments are all done, they added almost 24,000 comment-only words to the count. Now the tasks are to run through them to comb out all the suggestions that apply to the whole of the text, or at least to the entire next part of the revision process, then start incorporating all the suggestions working through the manuscript again.
One last time.
That’s going to include a whole new Prologue, because the current one is garbage. There have been a few times I’ve completely read a book that began so poorly, but a very few. I need to raise the bar on that one.
As for the ‘anything else I should mention,’ I’ll get to that in a minute.
2. Am I back at least where I was with the mindfulness meditation and gratitude journal?
Sort of.
Getting back into the meditation thing hasn’t been a problem, but the gratitude journal has proven a little more bumpy. I haven’t been resistant, just forgetful and I’ve missed two of the three days I planned on doing that.
3. Do I at least have a baseline for nominal activity levels for a couple of normal weeks?
I thought I’d have enough data by now. I’ve been running the FitBit and gotten two whole weeks worth of counts, not including the Disney vacation.
The trouble is that half of that data was on days when I was actively preparing for the trip, when I got phenomenal step counts. Those aren’t typical days, so it makes no sense to include them, which means I don’t have enough data yet to establish a typical step count pattern.
Next week, regardless of whether the data are statistically sufficient, I’m just going to establish weekday and weekend mean counts, and go from there. I’ll use those as targets and start incrementing them as weeks go by.
4. Do I have more details on the positive reinforcement rewards plan yet?
My memory must be failing, because I was under the impression that I’d committed to actually having a viable system ready to go today.
Not quite yet, but the issue is quite entertaining…
I have, in a Word document, tables of tickets that will have either motivational phrases – I’m coming up with them myself, so just how motivational they’ll be is open to question – and rewards on a 10:1 ratio. For the 252 tickets that I’ll be putting in my little coffee can, 25 will be ‘instant’ rewards.
So far, I’ve got four:
- Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee
- Starbucks White Chocolate Mocha
- Fun Size Twix
- Get a Take-Out (meaning any fast-food) Burger
Pretty crap showing, I think.
I need to keep working on it and making notes of the ideas I have during the week.
What About That Other Achievement?
I haven’t mentioned it before, and I’ll only mention it here, but the additional reading I’ve been doing as preliminary research for Lock Out Tag Out has been One Long Night by Andrea Pitzer. I’m not going to do a summary of it here, not just because I’m embarrassed not to have written up my Infamy notes yet, but more because the subject matter gives away too much. It’d be too much of a spoiler.
So this is the only place I’ll mention it.
I will say this about the book: it’s a sobering read.
Planning Ahead.
I’m hoping to get through all my comments and suggestions in the next six weeks, which means, given the current size of the manuscript as about 76,000 words, I’ll need to clear 2,500 words each day on a Monday – Friday basis.
Let’s see if I can manage that.
If I can, then some time in early April, I should be in a position to go to Beta. I still need to develop a plan for that.
I’m seriously itching to get on with Lock Out Tag Out, but at the moment I can only spare about an hour each weekday, although I have been sneaking more stolen time in whenever possible.
If I had more time to spare, I’d write blog posts about other things too, which would put my philosophies into stark relief and, perhaps, generate more interest. Things like Brexit, climate change, politics and social issues.
Still, this is primarily an accountability blog and, provided I make sure I have some progress to report each week, I’m going to be happy, although it’s actually embarrassing to think I’ve been working on this one novel since November of 2017…
Up Next…
Since I’m at a bit of a nexus for the revision process, it’s not easy to guess exactly where I’m going to be next week, but here are four marks for me to hit before then.
1. The plan is to have the comments combed through and make a start reworking the actual manuscript. Have I started the rework? If not, what preparatory work has kept me from it?
2. Am I back on the rails for the meditation and gratitude journal? If so, what do I see as being the next step forward?
3. I should have mean weekday and weekend FitBit step counts. What are they?
4. How about the positive reinforcement tickets? Am I still mired in the question of what would make at least half-decent instant rewards?
With that, I need to go figure out what I can cook for dinner tonight. Everything’s frozen.
Enjoy your week everyone, stay safe.
Categories: Accountability, Lock Out Tag Out, Revision, The Old Man, Work Update
Andrew Wellington 
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