oxfordhacker

I have not been at my personal best for the past couple of weeks. My brain has been unable to focus on anything complicated, which has meant that work has been nigh impossible. Luckily, I can get away with that to an extent, but I like my job so it makes me sad. Also, most of my hobbies require more focus than I can muster, so I kind of end up with a lot of free time on my hands. Oddly, one thing that doesn't seem to be materially affected is my ability to write things, or at least a specific type of thing. I've written a diary entry every day this year, which has given me plenty of practice in just sitting down and typing whatever happens to be on my mind. The beauty of this technique in the current situation, I realise, is that it explicitly eschews planning or concentrated effort. Hence this post: an attempt to bypass my current failing, perhaps even turn it into a virtue, inspired by the start of NaBloPoMo. Look! I've got a really busy, ugly badge and everything:



I have no idea whether I'll actually manage to keep this up, but I did once before, to my continuing surprise, so you never know. Luckily (for you, certainly) I have a topic in mind other than my current problems, albeit inspired by them. After all, what else requires next to no focus or planning ability to enjoy and can be experienced from your desk at work? That's right, it's most of the internet! I spend too much time trawling it at the best of times (and this is certainly not that), and so doing, I have filtered many delicious morsels out of its murky depths. I thought it would be nice to share them with you, like a cross between a baleen whale and a mother bird. And if that metaphor hasn't put you off entirely, here is the first such offering:



We Are Become Pals is a short, illustrated story about two friends, and I thought it was rather charming. It's written by the guy who writes A Softer World and drawn by the (NSFW) lady who draws Chester 5000, so really that's three recommendations in one...

As per usual, I've been meaning to post more but not getting round to it. Unusually, I have come up with a cunning three-pronged plan to encourage me:

Motivation

What better way to motivate myself to post more frequently than to join the layabout cousin of the international phenomenon NaNoWriMo? Well, I couldn't think of one, so:

Inspiration

I've just been on Reading Week, the sort of holiday I kept trying to have as a child in spite of my family: I sat around for a week, doing nothing but chatting to friends, sleeping and reading. I didn't even go outside. It was awesome. On these holidays I always make notes on the books that I've read but don't then go on to do anything with them at all, not even keep them somewhere convenient as a reminder of what I liked and disliked. This time, I thought I could do a review a day. That's a week's worth of material right there. After that, I'll see how it's going, and either start reviewing other books I've read this year, or other things, or write something else entirely.

Concentration

I think it was bluedevi who first introduced the concept of Morning Pages to me. The concept is pretty straight-forward: spend 20 minutes or so writing something each morning. Normally, I'd be horrified by the prospect of exerting more than the bare minimum of necessary effort in the morning, but actually it fits into my new schedule surprisingly well. Now that tinyjo is a teacher, she gets up much earlier than I need to. I was just going back to sleep for an extra half an hour, but that wasn't really very restful and I'd often wake up feeling worse than before. Instead, I can just roll over, grab my phone, and start typing while she's getting ready for work. The original source for morning pages suggests that you write them long-hand, but it was written in 1992 before long-hand became obsolete.

An awful lot of bullshit has been written about the benefits of this exercise, but for me it's as simple as getting me into the habit of writing, and feeling enthusiastic about doing it. Hell, in the past week I wrote [word count] 4367 words just as part of this exercise, which is probably more than I've written in a week since school, possibly since forever. It's early days, but I'm hoping this will make it easier for me to write other stuff too. I guess we shall see...