There has been a lot going on this weekend. In fact, it’s been rough here since Friday, but I’m not going to go into all that. The important things to cover here are how we have contractors on site, even as I write, getting the water lines installed for the NRCS project. I should also mention that yesterday everyone went to the aquarium, and today everyone’s gone to the mall… everyone, who isn’t me, that is.
Before I get into waffling about that, or whining about being stuck here on both days working while everyone else gets to have fun, I’d best get on with updating from my four questions from last week. This is an accountability blog, after all.
As some point, I’d hope to be accountable to people who read my books, but I digress. I’ll get back to the topic on hand.
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?
This is a good one. I’ve combed through the comments and marked everything that needs attention throughout the rework, but in the meantime I’ve been spending time tidying up some issues of contention that I hadn’t thought of, basically background and supporting information that won’t necessarily make it into the novel – most of it certainly won’t – but will tidy up some areas of the story I see as inconsistent.
The plot itself is no issue, it’s perfectly linear since, in all honesty, the main character is the world in which they all live, the interactions, relations and mechanics for things to take place in the correct setting – all could use a bit more polish. For instance, the story is set in the near future, perhaps twenty or fifty years hence, but there’s little in the story for the reader to grasp that setting as securely as I would like, so there’s some fine tuning going on there.
Once that’s done, I almost have a booklet ready to print so I can note important things about the characters and scenes, points that have fallen through the cracks, so I’ll be better able to track not just what’s important but where in the story it gets that importance from.
It’s the kind of thing I’m doing for Lock Out Tag Out out of the gate, but before I started The Old Man I knew that if I waited until I felt I was fully prepared, I wouldn’t ever start.
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?
Until Friday, yes, I was back on track and feeling that everything was going in the right direction. If you recall from above, things got rough on Friday, more specifically, Friday afternoon, and after that I wasn’t in the frame of mind to grapple with the Gratitude Journal. It’s just a hiccup, I’ll be back with it tomorrow.
The meditation is a better story. I’ve been following a daily guided meditation podcast and I’ve reached the end of it, I need a next step forward for that. My plan is to go through one more week of where I currently am, then look into other avenues to explore this fully.
Right now, I’m not in a position to say I am – or am not – getting any benefit. There’ve been a couple of times I’ve felt irritated and then just focused on my breathing for a few seconds, which has put me back in a decent frame of mind, but whether I can attribute that to the meditating is another question
3. I should have mean weekday and weekend FitBit step counts. What are they?
This is another iffy one. On Monday and again on Friday, the kids were off school, so those weren’t normal days. I did develop a plan to deal with that: ‘to hell with it.’ So I’m going with the numbers that I have. Let me finish up the math and…
Weekday Average: 8,212
Weekend Average: 8,096
So the daily target should start off at 9,000 steps. Let’s see if I can make that all seven days this coming week…
4. How about the positive reinforcement tickets? Am I still mired in the question of what would make at least half-decent instant rewards?
Well, I’m still thoroughly mired in the question of what would make decent rewards, but to be honest I’ve spend more time in the preparation for the novel rework, so I really haven’t given it much thought.
I also haven’t thought much about what new habits will need to be rewarded, but that’ll all come later. Right now my time is better spent on the novel and keeping this home running as efficiently as I can.
The NRCS Work.
This post is already rather long, so I’ll be brief.
We’re having things set up so that water is available to livestock across the property, rather than have me cart five gallons of water all over the place – which wasn’t fun, I’d like to point out, and the sheep were up close to the house the whole time.
There will be two watering tanks and two separate quick connect points where hoses can be attached to provide more mobile water.
This is what it looked like Saturday.
Work is continuing and I’ll update next week on how it all looks.
Up Next…
First let’s quickly go over next week’s interrogation questions.
1. Is all the preparation work completed and has work begun on the final edit phase?
2. Same question as last week: 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. Have I beat my daily step goal for all seven days? Am I ready to up the target, and if so, by how much?
4. How about some positive news on those reinforcement reward tickets? Also, have I given any thought to the habits I want to introduce yet?
With that, the washer and dryer have both signaled their impatience at me, and shut off, so it’s back to the grindstone here.
I hope everyone has a great week and that bad news finds somewhere it’s welcome.
Stay safe.
Categories: Farming, NRCS, Revision, Work Update
Andrew Wellington 
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