Category Archives: Preoccupied

Be It Resolved: Goal-setting for Success

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It’s that time of year again.

I have an almost flawless adult record of realized New Year’s Resolutions.  In the past, I have successfully achieved…

  • The Great Weight Loss (which continues to be maintained) of 2000
  • The Commitment to More Diverse Cooking of 2010
  • The Re-Introduction to Reading and the Pledge to More Emotional Expressiveness somewhere in between the above-mentioned two, and
  • 2012’s Experiment Into Internet Dating (which I hated, but that’s a whole other blog post) to cap it all off.

I’m not much of a lover of Christmas, but New Year’s is my favourite holiday of the year.  I love new beginnings – love the intrinsic metrics they provide for making life changes – because, like anyone else, when it comes to my life and myself as a person, there’s always room for improvement.

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My Brain Has Gone on Vacation for Christmas (The Rest of Me Tagged Along As Well)

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It’s been a long year.

I don’t know about any of you, but my poor brain gets a lot of use over the course of a year.  I’m always thinking about something.  This past year, I expended much brain power on the following:

  • Performing the seemingly endless progression of tasks at work (and not only on work time, I might add)
  • Trying to anticipate what other tasks were on the horizon to adjust and accommodate my various schedules
  • Devising more efficient ways to execute my tasks and maximize my time
  • Remaining mindful of my physical surroundings and planning against potential dangers to my person (as any paranoid-type person would)
  • Keeping track of people around me – where they are located in proximity to me so we don’t get in each others’ way – and also how my words and behaviours are affecting and being received by them to prevent my coming off like too much of a left-brained drone or introverted recluse
  • Rehearsing in my mind almost everything I say before I say it in that same left-brained, introverted way of mine, constantly measuring my words and tone to give as little – or as much – offense as the situation calls for
  • Paying attention to local and world events through various forms of media

Writing.

Thinking about writing.

My brain is always in high gear, speeding from one thought to another, passing by past concerns, gaining ground on up and coming ones.  That is hard enough.

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“Leave Out All the Rest” (or, How Linkin Park reminded me that readers often read different things into writing than writers actually wrote)

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So, finally, this week, the long-awaited Linkin Park concert occurred in Vancouver.

I’ll answer two questions right off the bat: 1) Yes, it was awesome, and 2) no, it won’t be the last concert I ever go to.

I was quite surprised, however, by the set list the band selected to play.  Not because they played songs I didn’t know or like (I know and like almost all of Linkin Park’s songs, so that’s never a concern).  Rather, it was because their set all at once caused me to perceive the band in a different way than I’d previously done all the years I’ve been a fan, since 2000.

Which, in turn, recalled me to the fact that what a music-lover/reader/viewer takes away from a song/novel/movie/TV show/etc. might be wildly different from the intended message of the artist that produced it.

At times, I was quite stridently reminded of this fact.

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On the Edge of Something Wonderful

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I make a point of recording certain milestones while at work on my novel-in-progress.

I do so to track when I reach certain parts of the novel, both to measure the consistency of my output and for reminiscence.  I also do it to encourage further progress and the achievement of additional milestones.

The specific milestones I’ve chosen to observe are as follows:

  • Page 50 of the novel
  • Page 100 of the novel
  • Every page that is a multiple of 100
  • The approximate midpoint of the novel
  • The end of every chapter

Currently in my novel, I’m about five words away from rolling over onto page 100.  I’m also about half a page away from the end of a chapter.  One might suppose I’m feverishly working away on achieving two milestones within such a short space of each other.

But I’m not.

Instead, I’m rather preoccupied with another pursuit.

Once I finish with this one, I’ll gladly return to writing.  In the meantime, though, I find myself on the edge of something else that’s wonderful.

——————–

Related post: No Better Place (for Writing)

Don’t forget you can make a telephone call with your mobile!

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A rare, mid-week post from me. I have contributed to the blog 5 Things to Do Today, which is a blog that encourages us to break out of our mold and try new things (five of them, everyday). Check it out.

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A rare, mid-week post from me. I have contributed to the blog 5 Things to Do Today, which is a blog that encourages us to break out of our mold and try new things (five of them, everyday). Check it out.

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“Don’t steal my armrest! Quit wrecking my night vision!” (or, Why I Might Have to Stop Going to Concerts)

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I am a music lover.

As I mentioned for one of the seven things about me when I was nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award, music is both the filing cabin and the encyclopedia of my mind.  It helps me make sense of my life through my tendency to categorize and understand my various experiences according to specific lyrics or sounds.

Music is also intrinsically tied into my writing life, for I can’t write well without it, and it likewise inspires my daydreams, my imagination, my stories.

My love of music was one of my largest motivators for finally giving up on shared living last year and getting a place on my own, for I couldn’t play my stereo at 6:30am since my roommates didn’t get up that early.

My love of music also resulted in a 30km-journey to the suburbs by public transit to buy a pair of high-end second-hand Harman/Kardon speakers.  I hate public transit.  I’m not wild about the suburbs either.  But I believe that true enjoyment of music is obtained, not through earbuds, but when it’s played aloud and you can feel it in your solar plexus and the soles of your feet.

Hence, my love of concerts.

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There were no “Likes” in 2006… (Versatile Blogger Award)

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Blogging has changed since the last time I did it during the dark ages of the internet in 2006.

Today we have the integrated blog stats that WordPress so thoughtfully provides us all, informing me at a glance how many clicks I’ve received per day and what the clickers were clicking on and where the clickers came from, both geographically and via the internet.

We have “Likes”, which on all but the most popular blogs have replaced the standard comments of yesteryear.  There were no such thing as Likes in 2006.  If you liked something someone wrote, you would tell them by leaving a comment and let them know what exactly you liked about it.

(Not that I’m at all complaining: the world is a much busier place than it was in 2006, and comments take time to compose while Likes are quick and dirty.  I’m grateful to know at all when stuff I write resonates with people.)

We also now have blog subscribers, which I love love love, both having them and to be one.  There was nothing more annoying back in 2006 than to have to constantly check your favourite blogs for updates, especially for writers who posted multiple times a day.

And yet, despite all these innovations for tracking one’s visitors, I still have no idea who is reading my blog, and perhaps more importantly, how they’re doing so.

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In (Sorta) Support of Fan Fiction – finale

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(Continued from Part 1, Part 2 – The Good, Part 3 – The Bad, and Part 4 – The Ugly)

Conclusion

Love it or hate it, fan fiction is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

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In (Sorta) Support of Fan Fiction, pt. 3

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(Continued from Part 1 and Part 2 – The Good)

The Bad

We all know that feeling (and, no, the Enterprise smells just fine).

I began this examination of fan fiction in response to two online articles I stumbled across on the subject on the same day: one from Time and the other found here at Flavorwire.com.  I felt inclined to throw in a bit of support for fan fiction given that I started out in my youth as a fanfic writer – something I believe has helped me develop into the writer of original fiction that I am today.

In my first two posts, I reminisced about fun times spent writing in fandoms with friends, and also looked more closely at why writing fanfic can be educational for developing writers, yet why one shouldn’t assume that all fanfic writers are developing writers.

My goal for this series of posts, however, in the same vein as both of the aforementioned online articles, is to be balanced.  So, having already covered the good of fan fiction, we now come to the bad.

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