There’s quite a disconnect between my attitude at the beginning of this year and today, at the ass end of August. I started out with the goals of improving everything, being more productive, being healthier and happier. I’m not sure how my 2020 compares with everybody else’s, but in March all of that went out of the window and it’s been a challenge just to keep everything together on a normal, day-to-day basis.
The Novel.
It seems an age ago that I actually got to work on it. Chapter 12 is still waiting my attention, but then, so is everything else. Everybody and every thing around here requires my undivided attention, and that’s just not possible.
The past three weeks have been a hectic affair, juggling getting the kids back into schoolwork while doing it at home through the Connections Academy, all the while trying to find ways to house-train the puppy. Cleaning up six accidents in the same day isn’t just time consuming, it’s quite soul destroying when there’s so much needing to be done.
I’m hoping for a break on Saturday when I’ll be able to read Chapter 12 aloud, tidy it up, and get it ready for printing. If I’m super lucky, I’ll get to push on further, but if I remember rightly, normal reading speed is about 100-150 words per minute. So, depending on how quickly I read, that’s between 6-9,000 words. That doesn’t include editing and reading it again to make sure I’ve actually made it better. In a perfect world, I’ll make it to the end of Chapter 14, but I don’t currently regard this world as ‘pefect.’
The Next Novel.
I haven’t been wasting time, what little of it I get.
During our school day, as a ‘Learning Coach,’ I really need to be physically present while our youngest pushes on, partly to ensure she engages with the work correctly, but also to help explain things and put them in perspective. My own work opportunities come during the short breaks I let her have to help her focus, and occasionally when she’s doing work that’s effectively independent.
In those moments, I’m pushing on with collating the notes I’ve taken into Scrivener, more or less per my plan laid out in my last post. The main difference is that I’m not using highlighters, I’m using the pencil markings and notes I’d taken during the first reading.
There are a couple of things I’d note about how I’m organizing here. Firstly, on the left you’ll notice the books in the Research Books folder are different colors. The blue ones are completely entered, the brown ones, well, aren’t.
Secondly, I’d had all of my research in the Research folder you can see toward the bottom left. It’ll all end up back there, but for now, I’ve moved in into the manuscript area so that I can compile it up into either a pdf or an ebook which I can use to work through all of the notes and try to make sense of them all.
The Foot.
I’m now out of the Moon Boot air-cast and sporting an ankle brace, making me much more mobile, which, while not saying much, is certainly an improvement. The foot is healing up more each day, which is the best thing I can say about anything this year. At least something is getting better.
In about two weeks I’ll be back in Podiatry and, once again, I’ll be optimistically hoping that I can return to normality – no brace, no ultrasound bone growth stimulator, no more appointments.
The biggest drag is how the ideal times to use the bone stimulator are first thing in the morning and last thing at night, but that precludes getting up first because I have to sit there on the bed for twenty minutes waiting for it to finish. Once I don’t have to do that, I can start getting up early enough to get a bit of writing work done before anyone gets up, although that’ll be dependent on the puppy because I’ll be letting her out to pee first thing in the morning and I’ll need her permission or cooperation to get any work done.
The World.
Meanwhile, the world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket. Back in England, the government seems to be going around with both hands and a flashlight trying to find Boris Johnson.
Here in the US, people seem to be trying to unite the whole of America against whatever part of the country they’ve decided to cast as evil that week. I know a few people who are very concerned about things escalating past the point of no return.
I don’t know if things will get better after November, but unless the rhetoric gets ratcheted back down, I personally can’t see much potential for improvement.
Goodbye August.
I’ll be really happy if, next blog post, I can report some real progress, rather than these posts which serve more as an indicator that I’m still here and I haven’t quit yet. But, there have been 170 days of COVID at time of writing, and if that’s anything to go by – which seems to be backed up by the 105 days it’s taken my foot to still not be normal again yet – any improvements can be expected to be slow, steady, and above all, microscopic.
Anyway, stay safe everyone and have a wonderful week.
Categories: Lock Out Tag Out, My Life, Research, Scrivener, Scrivener, The Old Man, Work Update
Andrew Wellington 
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