I forgot to do my Friday check-in last week.
Why? Because I didn’t put it on my to-do list.
Whose fault is that?
Mine.
I’ve spent the last week or so thinking quite a bit about how I stay on track—and, maybe more importantly, how I get myself back on track when something knocks me off course. Last week provided a pretty good test case because I came home from a convention with a lovely case of con crud that absolutely floored me for a couple of days.
Pretty much everything I intended to accomplish went out the window. Now that I’m sitting here thinking about it, I don’t think I wrote a single article last week.
I’m not particularly thrilled about that, but these things happen. The more important question is what I do afterward.
Getting Back on the Wagon
One of the things I’ve been working on lately is building better systems around myself instead of relying on motivation or assuming I’ll remember everything I’m supposed to do.
Case in point: this blog. I didn’t put it on the list. I forgot about it. Therefore, one of the very simple lessons from last week is that if something matters enough that I want to do it consistently, it needs to exist somewhere in the system I’ve created for myself.
This has actually lined up rather nicely with something else happening in my life.
I had a birthday.
And birthdays have a funny way of making you look around and take inventory.
Building the Person I Want to Be
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, and where I want all of this to lead.
Instead of making another collection of goals, I’ve been trying something slightly different. I created a vision of who I want to be a year from now. Then I started working backward from that person and asking what I would actually have to do to become her.
And I’ve intentionally made that vision a little lofty.
I don’t want to create a future for myself that feels comfortable from where I’m standing right now. I want something that requires me to stretch. I want to progress. I want to be better than I was yesterday.
I’ve always had a constant-learning, constant-development mindset. I have a hard time looking at something and saying, “Well, that’s good enough,” if I can see a way to make it better. Sometimes I’m sure that drives the people around me absolutely nuts, but I also think it’s one of the things that makes us interesting as human beings.
We can learn. We can adapt. We can look at who we were yesterday and deliberately decide to do something differently tomorrow.
So that’s what 42 is shaping up to be about for me.
Meanwhile, I’m Still Making Books
On the creative side of things, work continues on Tales from Twisted Ravens.
LaVon is hard at work on Issue #3, and I’m really excited about what she’s doing with this one. She’s bringing some fun colors into the story, and I gave her quite a bit of freedom when it came to designing the plants in one particular garden.
She’s been having fun with it, which makes me happy. One of my favorite parts of working with artists is giving them enough room to bring some of themselves into the world rather than dictating every tiny detail.
I’ve also been working on another creative writing project for Rippaverse. I originally intended to have it finished last week, but con crud had other plans and I didn’t have the mental equity required to sit down and do the work properly.
I finished one chapter today. Six more to go. Then I get to edit the whole thing, because apparently I enjoy giving Future Carrow problems to solve.
There are a few other projects happening behind the scenes, but unfortunately they’re firmly in the Things I Cannot Talk About Yet category. NDAs are involved. I will say that I’m particularly excited about one of them. Hopefully, if and when I’m allowed to talk about it, you’ll find it as interesting as I do.
For now, I get to be annoyingly vague.
My Introvert Is Filing a Complaint
Personal life is considerably less exciting, although I’ve been doing some work on the side over the last couple of months that requires me to be far more social than I normally am.
That means networking events. Talking to people. Meeting strangers. Going places. Being a functional and pleasant human being outside my house.
I’m used to doing that at conventions, but conventions happen periodically. This is every week.
My inner introvert has opinions.
I’m learning that there’s a considerable difference between turning the social switch on for a convention every couple of months and knowing that I need to do it again next week. Still, when something needs to be done, you do it. I’m getting better at it, and I’m figuring out how to manage my energy around it rather than pretending it doesn’t take energy in the first place.
Getting My Life Off My Phone
The other experiment I’ve been running lately is trying to disconnect more of my life from my phone.
I know I’m hardly alone in this. It seems like more and more people are realizing how strange it is that one little rectangle has somehow become our book, music player, television, newspaper, camera, calendar, entertainment system, communication device, work station and perpetual source of distraction.
So I’ve started breaking some of those things apart again.
I bought an e-reader. I picked up an MP3 player. I’m looking for ways to take things that currently require my phone and give them their own dedicated place in my life.
The goal isn’t to abandon technology. I like technology.
I just don’t necessarily want everything I do to lead me back to the same device that also contains email, social media, notifications and twenty other things competing for my attention.
I want to be able to put my phone down, walk away, and let whatever is happening on there continue happening without me until I actually decide to pick it up again.
That’s been surprisingly nice.
So, What’s Next?
I think that’s the theme I’m carrying into this next year of my life: being more deliberate.
Deliberate about what gets my attention. Deliberate about what I’m creating. Deliberate about the systems I use. Deliberate about the person I’m trying to become.
I’m also trying to accept that building those systems doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to execute them perfectly.
Sometimes I’m going to get sick.
Sometimes I’m going to miss a week.
Sometimes I’m going to forget to put the Friday check-in on my to-do list and realize several days later that I never wrote the thing.
Fine.
The system doesn’t need to guarantee that I never fall off the wagon. It needs to make it easier for me to notice when I have—and know exactly how to climb back on.
So here I am.
Back on the wagon.
And this time, the Friday check-in is going on the to-do list.