Tuesday 25th April 2017

It’s only the second day of the week and already I feel tired.  Today has been another insanely busy day.
I’ve done something to my lower back.  It started a few weeks ago but it continues to play up.  I’ve taken great care with it especially at the gym and thought it was getting better.  And then I bent down to pick something up today and felt it twitch again.  I even crouched down to pick up the item so I can’t blame bad posture.  As a result, it’s hurting me now and I’ve been advised to see a physio.
The day job wasn’t too bad today.  It’s still eating up my day.  My time management feels all over the place as I realised that my day is just so busy that I don’t have travel time available.  I’m trying to care less about it, but there’s part of me that’s a perfectionist and somehow wants to magic an extra hour out of the day.
A work colleague was on an all-hands call today.  I usually miss those.  I rarely have time for them with my usual daily workload.  But I listened in as his headset wasn’t working.  They did this bit where they had some roving reporter in a retail store talking about customer service.  It was a bit over-the-top to be honest, but it amused me greatly when they identified a customer and spoke with him only for him (very politely) to talk about the customer service nightmare he was having.  For some reason the audio stream went dead for a few seconds.  It amused me greatly.
I had a good email discussion with an author friend today.  We discussed a lot of the SFF drama of late and the worrying impact this has on authors.  I know I shouldn’t read comments but given that the events that have happened today have surrounded people I know, either viewed as a perpetrator or victim, I’ve been unable to ignore it.  You just can’t move without someone jumping on someone’s case and I find myself getting to the stage where my usual tolerance and wish for understanding is quickly running out.  I can see it getting to a stage where I just ignore some people and even back in the days when Marvel used to get people to dogpile on me back in the Action-Figure days, I always engaged.
But I only have so much mental energy for this stuff and so I think I’m going to start blocking and deleting people going forwards, and that seriously disappoints me, as I don’t think this does anything to solve the problem.  I just get so twitchy when I see the assumptions people make to create an argument.  I usually end up wanting to scream, “Do you not know how to deconstruct a sentence?” or make sarcastic comments like “verbs and adjectives can sometimes give you an indication of tone”.  But I know that’s not helpful and neither of those statements would have helped me with today’s spats.
On the plus side, I pointed out to a few authors that I published my 93rd daily blog today.  Given that most are over 1000 words, and this is on top of all the novel writing I’ve been doing that’s not bad going.  It made me feel good about my productivity, even if I’ve still not got the draft of the second novel done.  Non-fiction uses different muscles than fiction so I doubt the presence of The Climb makes much difference to my fiction word count.
I’m starting to get very aware that my trip to Canada is only a few weeks away.  I have some things I need to buy once I get paid but I realised that I probably need to unlock my phone.  Usually I take an old unlocked iPhone with me and buy a PAYG sim out there.  I might be doing something different this year but I still want to be able to use a US sim if I need to.  And so I went into the phone shop to get it unlocked and got directed to their website.  At least they told me how to get my IMEA number without removing my case.
I need to start to think about booking parking and hire of my US MiFi device.  I’ve also got to book my hotel in Canada.  Suddenly there seems so much to do.  The problem is that, as they say out in the Mid-West, this isn’t my first rodeo and so a lot of gear I would ordinarily buy I already have.  Yet still I worry that I’ve forgotten some vital element of this trip and I’m starting to panic.
The first year I went storm chasing, I told no-one, and for the 4 months before I gathered kit in secret and worked on my leg health to ensure that it would be OK with sitting in a van for 10 days.
This will be my 4th year and my first year chasing as a ‘pro’.   My leg health is good and I think I have all the kit I need.   I’ve been excited about it since it was discussed last year but now it’s starting to feel real.  I can’t wait… although I probably could do with starting a list of actions I need to complete.
I did some work on the School of the Sword website tonight.  Somehow it’s been over 10 days since I last updated it and I really don’t know how that’s happened.  There was so many pictures to edit and articles to post, it took up a lot of my evening.  At least having two screens I could watch Youtube whilst I worked.
I managed to get some more work done on this chapter.  This one definitely needs a solid rewrite.  It’s all over the place and needs tightening up.  I’m usually pretty solid with my endings so having something that feels a bit dodgy this close to the end makes me feel a little uneasy.  Being so tired isn’t helping.
But, as I’ve constantly reminded myself when writing this tonight, I can always rewrite it.
One good thing I was able to do was link it back to a much earlier scene by using a previous location and tertiary character.  That element feels good and feels like the novel is tying itself together but this chapter just seems like a collection of scenes rather than a proper chapter and I need to do something to bring them all together and give a more consistent narrative.
We’ve got a bank holiday weekend so I’m hoping that I can put in some serious writing time and get the draft done.  Even if I don’t it looks like I should have it done before I go chasing next month.  And, as I keep needing to remind myself, this draft is to put me ahead.  Still feels like it’s taken forever, though, but that’s the day job for you though.
If you want to follow more of my journey, then be sure to check me on my social channels.  Likewise, if you’d like me to expand on any point mentioned above, please say so in the comments.

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