What have you been procrastinating?
https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts
I have a lot of minis to paint yet for Black Rose Wars, and a whole bunch more to assemble and paint for Necromunda. Been putting them off and procrastinating for years at this point.
For most of this year I haven’t been reading many books. This is because I was helping a friend beta read their book, and I had made the choice to not read any other published novel of that particular genre so that I could avoid mixing up details or making comparisons. I wanted to keep the experience a little more contained and untainted because it’s the first time I’ve ever done anything like this, and it was honestly a lot of fun! It gave me a bunch of insight into how people will latch onto different details as they read the same material while we shared the same objective of trying to provide constructive feedback on how we felt as we read.
Well, tonight we finally finished beta reading that book and had our last meet up to discuss things. At least, for a little while. Then we’ll pick up with another one!
In the meantime, I think I can get back to reading one or two other books out of the MANY I have in my backlog, but I’ll probably be looking at things differently for a bit.
Who do I know that shares my passion or hobby, and how can we collaborate or support each other?
DayOne
I sometimes forget that my siblings are very much like myself when it comes to our interests or the things that really intrigue us. For instance, my older brother has been getting back into drawing and sketching in the last few years, and has also been dabbling with 3d printing.
So, this past weekend I had stopped back down to visit my siblings after spending time with Dad, and my brothers and I were chatting about the makeshift workshop setup in one of the garages (my brothers live next to each) as well as the little project my older brother was working on. He had designed and 3d printed some tool guides and jigs to go along with some 3d printed mounting brackets for a portable tabletop easel he was making out of an old chair or something. The discussion eventually turned back towards some of my own projects, like the life sized Charmander that I’ve been painting, and I was telling them about the predicament I’m in with completing it. (I don’t have a separate workshop space, and airbrushing leads to fumes in the basement where my little hobby desk is.) So, we looked things over in the garage, talked about environmental factors, and tried to determine if it would be feasible for me to continue the project down there. Given that it’s getting colder now, it may not be a good idea because we would need a shop heater (my younger brother’s concern was fumes igniting, which is completely valid) and there may be too much saw dust yet around that can be kicked up (my older brother said he would look at getting the space better cleaned up) but we’ll see what they can solve for in the next couple weeks, as I might still take them up on the offer around Thanksgiving.
In the meantime, I am trying to create a temporary enclosure for my hobby space so that I can prevent excessive fumes from propagating throughout the basement because I’ll still have other projects even beyond working on Charmander that will require some kind of airbrushing.
What are some ways I can seek out feedback and constructive criticism to continue growing and improving?
At least when it comes to writing, I’ve done a few things to try and get feedback.
One is this very blog! I know I don’t exactly solicit people to leave comments for feedback and constructive criticism, but I haven’t discouraged it much either.
Another that I’ve done earlier this year was a writing contest that promised two avenues for feedback: peer feedback and judges. The peer feedback was done through a private message board where we could all read each others stories and then respond in their respective threads, while the judges were tasked with providing objective feedback on how our stories were written and the things that we should look at it for future attempts.
Something that I’ve dipped my toe into so far is joining Discord servers that are focused on writing. I haven’t started socializing in them as of yet, but I have access to them so I can start building connections and such. I’ve also started to do some reading/writing group activities for others who are writing so that I can get some experience under my belt as part of a sort “book club” as an alpha reader.
Those are all the things that come to mind at this time that I’ve been doing in this regard, and you can apply similar tactics in other areas of your life depending on what it is you’re seeking feedback on.
Now, for myself, I just need to put more effort into the “social” aspect of a lot of it.
What are some activities or habits that drain my energy or motivation?
Not to be confused with Energy Vampires, those people that suck the energy and motivation out of you, but Energy Suckers are just about everything else. Unfortunately, there can be some overlap depending on how you go about handling different activities and habits.
For example, one of my favorite activities is playing Magic: The Gathering with friends. Usually this is a fun time, but every so often you just get into a bad round where nothing seems to be going right or you’re just not getting the cards you need to actually feel like you’re playing. You’re watching the person across from you draw card after card after card and just popping off on their turns while you’re stuck doing pretty much nothing. That’s one of those times where it just sucks the energy (and fun) out of you and you would rather just start a new hand or call it a night altogether. What can make it worse, in the “overlaps with Energy Vampires” area, is when you’re playing with someone else that happens to in a bad mood because THEY are in that unfortunate situation of not being able to do anything except sit on their hands, or this other person just happens to be a snarky asshole who likes to rub it in. I’ve actually stopped playing with some friends as often because they like to invite specific people that I just don’t vibe with anymore after too many nights of less-than-subtle jabs and taunts.
Similarly, this can happen with online gaming. Playing a specific game with people and when things just aren’t going quite right despite the normal challenges, it wears on you mentally. This is one of those things for why I never really played a lot of online multiplayer games back when I streamed a lot, and also something that baffles me as to why/how some people can slog through 8+ hours of their day playing a game that isn’t going to be fun. (Which is, sadly, what a lot of people do because they think it’s what they need to do if they want make it big in the streaming space.) What makes this more difficult is if you’re playing with random strangers and you again end up with, you guessed it, snarky assholes. (It’s one thing if they’re throwing shade at comedic times and also making themselves out to be the butt of jokes, but when they’re just full on harping on you alone and have absolutely zero positive attitude? That just sucks, period.)
Looking at other activities and habits, you can see the same things happen with them, and I’m sure I could go on and on about them but I won’t, or else I’ll just go on forever and seem stupidly nit picky. In the end, though, suffice to say, when something just isn’t going right and you’re struggling? That just sucks.
When I am faced with challenges or obstacles, what is my usual response?
I have a generally simple process for facing challenges, depending on some circumstances. Am I facing them by myself? Is it in a controlled environment? Things like that get considered, but the short answer for how I respond is to dissect things.
If I’m encountering the issue on my own, I try to understand the immediate or near term impacts to determine if I need to deal with the thing right away. From there I can plan an appropriate response. A similar thought process is involved if I happen to be working as part of a group/team when the challenge is encountered. The only difference I include is evaluating whether I’m in a position to “call the shots” and deal with things without the permission/involvement of the group. If I need to rely on others to face the challenge I don’t mind reaching out for help, but if I’m already part of a group then making sure that everyone is part of any and all decisions is important for facing what is front of us.
So, once I’ve determined impact and whether or not to deal with whatever the obstacle is right away (if by myself) then I look at how difficult it will be to overcome. I’ll break it down into more manageable pieces and tackle things systematically until it’s over. This will happen in a similar fashion if I’m part of a group, but I’ll make sure I’m listening to everyone else to make sure we don’t miss something and that we divvy out tasks appropriately. Once that’s all taken care of it’s just a matter of laying down a timeline for completion (if necessary, if not, I just try to knock it out right away and be done with it.)
Going back to my comment about “a controlled environment” I was thinking about whether or not there are restraints on how the obstacle must be overcome. My mind immediately goes to video games for an example of this because oftentimes what happens is there are set requirements for completion but you may not have all the information. In those cases I just look at the “confines” of the situation to see if I can understand where the boundaries are so that I’m not wasting time trying things that will have zero impact on solving the issue. In normal everyday life this might look like working within the confines of coding parameters, construction requirements, electrical and plumbing specifications, and things of that nature. What is the issue and how are we restricted in our ability to solve it?
Dissecting the challenge/obstacle/issue is the easiest way to approach them, and usually makes it easier to handle them mentally, especially when they might seem insurmountable at first glance.
Are you actively trying to learn to use AI to complement your work? Or are you trying to learn more unique skills that cannot be easily replicated by AI?
The regular daily prompt was something about a big risk that I haven’t taken yet, but since I answered that one a while back, I decided to fill in with my own. It did pop up in the back of my mind again, though, when I stumbled upon the one I added above while scouting for a new idea.
First, I’d like to mention that I have already dabbled with AI a bit for different reasons, but I haven’t made the leap to trying to use it for my own benefit. I’ve learned a smidge about how they work, and how they’re being used in different industries, but shelved the idea of leaning on them when what I saw was giving me an icky feeling (at the time).
One of the things I did was mess around with ChatGPT a little to try and see what kinds of information it had access to from Dungeons and Dragons so that I could try to possibly use it as a little Assistant DM (should I ever actually get a group together and play). This was early on in my research for trying to understand the hype, learning a bit about Large Language Models, and I kind of liked how things were turning out. It could pull up all kinds of information on short notice and offer explanations (to the best of its ability) on how certain things worked or where the information was sourced so that I might look into it myself to confirm.
After tinkering with it for a bit I got the idea to see what kinds of ideas it could string together to help me from a creative writing aspect. Then I got cold feet. I put that idea aside for a bit, and went on my way. Not long thereafter was when I stumbled upon an issue that was springing up in the indie-publishing world for fiction authors. Apparently, the market, especially on Kindle, had been getting flooded with stories. What tipped me off were comments and posts on different social media sites and on reddit that all mentioned how they felt similar, and were poorly constructed and almost rushed. People started putting two and two together, and realized that it had to be AI-related. This gave me some serious pause. Several months went by and I saw someone comment about how people were being caught and screened for trying to submit AI built manuscripts to traditional publishers, which caused these reviewers and some editors to start including phrasing concerning these kinds of manuscripts. So, while I didn’t get my hopes up to begin with, it did severely stifle the idea of using AI for creative writing purposes.
At least, until someone pointed out (it was probably Brandon Sanderson, since I listen to a lot of his podcasts and such) that it’s still up to the writer (me) to actually sift through the AI responses and craft things. I don’t HAVE to use exactly what is generated. Which just took me back to my original idea for the D&D stuff. I can use it for ideas, maybe throw in a more developed prompt to see what gets churned out, and then further customize everything (or even throw things out entirely!) So, I may circle back around to trialing it at a later date if I feel like I’m getting stuck. For now, though, I’m still running on my own brain.
One other area I dabbled with AI, actually very recently, was with coding/scripting for work. I didn’t actually use my work device or any sort of sensitive data, so as to avoid risks, but I was stuck trying to figure out a way to make something work in Microsoft Power BI for some reporting I work on. I wanted to try converting DAX scripting into M code to see if it might help improve processing data from a massively customized date table I had constructed. So, I plugged in the idea to a different AI service via my phone, and tried to work with what was given back. Sadly, I couldn’t make it do what I wanted, so it was a bust. I’ve not looked toward AI for work purposes since then, and doubtful I will again since I really should be developing that knowledge and skill set on my own and not relying on AI to do it for me (or else why bother having me do the work at all?)
At this point, all things considered, I still haven’t messed with AI as much as some people, and I don’t know how soon I’ll get back to dabbling with it for creative writing purposes or as a sort of Assistant DM, but I know I’m definitely not intending to use it for work again any time soon.
What goals did you set for yourself this year? What goals do you have for the next few years and beyond?
Today’s prompt is another amalgamation I created from ones I saw on Sage and Bloom from their post on personal growth and self-improvement.
After I read a couple of similar prompts around goals, I did a little introspection and looking back over the year to see what I’ve accomplished versus what I had planned for. A couple of my goals I won’t reveal specifics but I will give an idea of progress.
Starting a year ago, on about October 15th, I had put up a couple of goals for myself with a target completion date of my 36th birthday in late March. One goal was focused on physical fitness (and I failed spectacularly) while the other was on writing. On the physical fitness side, I was planning to do one of two things at least 4 times a week: go to the gym to work out, or do body weight/resistance bands at home. I think the total count targeted was supposed to be around 120 and I made it maybe a quarter of the time. The writing goal was a little more straightforward. Write every day and hit something like 160 posts for the blog. (If you’ve been following along for the last year, you know that I absolutely CRUSHED that goal!)
Tracking those two goals was easy. I have a small whiteboard in my room where I marked out a grid space for the calendar month and a space above it for reminders and tracking totals. In the grid space I would use a red mark to indicate the fitness activity for the day (just a simple check mark to say I did it) and green for the writing. Then, at the end of each month (or beginning of the new month if I forgot to do it before bed) I would tally up the marks and add them to the running total in the reminder space above. Easy stuff! It felt good to add the marks, but the writing goal was so much easier to manage because I was literally able to do that anywhere at any time because I was using my cellphone and posting from work during breaks or downtime between meetings.
Anyways, those two goals were meant to be short term ones that would help me build a habit and routine. The writing one has worked out great! I went from aiming for less than six months to just keeping up that momentum for over a year now. (I’ll have to go back to the drawing board and do some reflecting on that fitness goal.)
I did have a couple of other writing goals that I put together earlier in the year, and even made a checklist on my phone as a reminder of some “six month strategy” goals but I haven’t made as much progress on them as I would like. One was just a reminder of doing my daily writing prompts, the other two were other writing projects which, although I HAVE worked on, I’m still just in planning and world building. Technically speaking, I still have time in my “six months” but not a lot at this point. Those will likely roll over into the new year.
So, current goals from the past year? Daily writing: crushed. Fitness, writing projects: needs a lot of work.
Goals for the future? Well, I’ve mentioned before in various ways that I struggle with setting goals and sticking with them when they’re focused on myself and I’m only accountable to myself. So, while I might have goals I’d LIKE to achieve in the next 2-5 or 5-10 years, actually getting them across the finish line is a different story. A simple list of those goals is getting some novels written and published, owning my own home, being debt free (outside of the house, most likely) and being self-sustained financially on my writing. Will all that happen? Well, only time will tell.
Looking back at the year so far (we still have about two and a half months to go) I’d say I stand a fair chance at actually accomplishing what I want. I just need to make some changes.
Since it seems like today’s daily writing prompt is another repeat, I’ll go into something else I was thinking about recently.
Today should be, I believe, the 362nd day in a row that I’ll have posted something to the blog. Given that I’m closing in on a 1-year streak, I decided to look into some stats. How many words have I written? How many posts? How does it compare to writing a full length novel in the same time frame?
Well, WordPress collects some of these things, but not in the way that I needed. So I decided to do some extra leg work today and check the word counts of all of my posts since October 16th, 2023 when I first started down this path of trying to write every single day. I’ll also be incorporating some numbers for last November’s NaNoWriMo, as proof of effort.
According to my calculations (I used Excel to help track all of this):
That’s all I think I’m going to share, which is basically everything I was concerned with at this time (although, I totally did consider making some graphs.)
The key takeaway I want to point out, for myself as well as others who might be thinking of writing a full length novel (or two or three) is that even if you can only get down 300 words per day during some spare time, if you write every single day then you can definitely make it in a year and have the potential wiggle room for editing to bring total word count down to a reasonable level. Aim for that 100,000 word mark at just a few hundred words per day and you’re golden.
Good luck out there fellow writers!
At the core of it, the main reason I blog hasn’t changed, but how I use it is different.
I blog because I want to write, and this is an easy way to share what I write in a manner that I control while leaving myself open for comments/critiques.
Originally, I had started it because I wanted to share my writing, but I was trying to take outside inspiration through custom requested writing prompts from when I was streaming on Twitch. Unfortunately, I let that fall to the wayside because it was taking a lot of effort out of me to stream, write, work, and have my usual downtime gaming sessions. (I very much still have that list, so I can refer back to it when I need something.) I might go back and pick at those requests someday soon.
Now, I’m writing on my blog using the daily writing prompts as a way to push me towards consistency, which was another issue I had with the original method of streaming/writing. If I can maintain the consistency, and more or less retrain my brain to focus on/prioritize writing then I can make significant progress toward my larger writing goals.
The blog has been very helpful in all of these endeavors because it has allowed me to stretch myself in different ways. Exploring different ideas, trying different styles, and reading others blogs for perspective.
The Dragon's Grove 