Tag: excuses

Bad excuses

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I have accomplished a paltry couple-hundred words or so this week.  Pitiful.  There is no excuse for my poor progress.  School has been hectic, but not unlivably so.  I have started this pesky diet, which leaves me feeling a bit weak and light headed at times (like right now) and makes it hard to concentrate.  The feeling will pass in a few days when my metabolism gets used to my lack of binges and severely reduced intake of both sugar and caffeine.  The diet is making it tough to focus today.  I’m going to try to get at least a thousand words in this weekend.

I need to brush up my all-dialog story and send it to coolstuff4writers.com (big thanks to Tracie and Jamie for their comments).  I also need to build some momentum on my brilliant brainstorm story.  And that old story I rediscovered that needs a rewrite.  Lots to do but it ain’t getting done.

Maybe displaying my goals for the weekend will help me attain them.  Here they are:

  • 1000 words minimum of new writing [1300 baby!]
  • polish and send the story to coolstuff4writers.com [done]
  • fill my wife’s garden with a load of dirt [done]
  • get the kitchen and living room clean [1 down]
  • grade my stack of long-ignored factoring tests
  • send back my mildly defective headphones [done]
  • take a hike [done, but shorter than planned]
  • set more goals for next week

So it’s not all about writing.  Knowing what’s there helps me schedule.  I’ll update Monday to let you know which goals I achieved…and which fell short.

-Oso

Long time, no me

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I was disappointed to see I got zero hits on this blog the other day.  Then I checked and saw it had been a week since my last post.  Ack!  Sorry about that, folks.  I wish I could say I’ve been too busy writing to make my blog posts, but I can’t.  My writing has been slow and in tiny fragments.  It is life that has kept me busy.  Not a good excuse for someone who calls himself a writer, but it’s true.

So what’s been going on?  A lot of teaching (not sure how much learning has occurred), a lot of time with my daughter (fun time and fussy time), some sleeping, some gardening (yuck), and…I don’t know, stuff.  There have been other things neglected, too.  I have a very old stack of tests that still isn’t graded.  My house is a wreck (I did attack some of that last night but not enough to downgrade the wreck to mess).  

On the upside, I received a package I’d been waiting for: my wireless headphones!  My daughter’s bedroom is about six feet away from the living room television, so the wife and I had to watch with a thumb on the volume.  Turn it down when people yell, guns fire, things blow up; turn it up when people are talking normally or whispering.  We often had subtitles on so we could tell what was going on.  With the headphones, we can both listen without difficulty and without worrying about waking the toddler.  The headphones are Sennheiser 120s: big, on-ear (as opposed to over-ear or in-ear) models with rechargeable batteries and a nice charging stand.  Comfortable, too.  One pair does seem to have a weak speaker for the right ear, but I often find this the case with headphones and wonder if that’s a typical thing.  Or maybe my right ear is where the problem is.  I’ll compare the two headsets again tonight.  If there is a significant difference, I may return the suspect pair…if I can.  The one giving me trouble was refurbished, so I may be stuck with it.  We’ll see. 

I’m setting a goal to put something significant on here this week.  Nothing monumental, but some sort of useful insight I have gleaned from a decade of floundering as a writer.  Check back soon.

-Oso