Making Priorities – The Climb #351

Sunday 7^th January 2018

Today was the first time I needed to think about my priorities.
2018 is my year of priorities, it’s about ensuring that as I get busier that I focus on the important things and don’t worry so much about the minor stuff.
And today there was a hard choice to be made.
I could go to sparring today in Reading, give up 4 hours of my day and a load of petrol to fight, or I could spend those 4 hours editing. I chose to edit.
At the back of my head, I do wonder if I’m just being lazy. I wonder if I’m just taking the easy option. I know I used the fact that I’d have just half an hour to get in the door, get showered, and start food prep before people came round as part of my excuse.
But then I realised as I got messages through asking me to do more and more sword-related stuff, just how burnt out I am on it. It’s not that I want to quit, I just need a bit of a break. Every time I get a request to update a web page or provide some info I just feel my stress levels rise. Whilst I have plenty of energy for the novel editing, I just don’t have a lot of spoons when it comes to Swordfighting.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve been in a funny mood today. Maybe I have a touch of illness as people around me seem to be suffering this flu that’s going around. I’ve found myself feeling a bit frustrated and low today.
I will have tournaments later in the year when I’ll be more committed. There’s a seminar on Saturday that I paid for today, so I’m certainly not quitting, just being more selective. I’m also going training tomorrow night. And I got some decent editing work done on the novel so I’m certainly not regretting it.
The book is feeling good. Certainly there’s work to be done but it’s not feeling broken. Of course, there’s a background worry that it won’t be as good as the first book, but I always think there’s that challenge with a second book. This is where we move beyond the origin story and into the main narrative. In this book’s specific case, my worry is over the end and how it can compete with book 1’s completely insane and over the top ending. I like that I’m not trying to repeat that but at the same time, I worry that it’s lacking. I guess I’ll have to wait until I get to editing the end of the novel and see how it works.
The end result of today was that I felt glad I didn’t go sparring and used the time productively.
But I am very much aware that this needs to be the year of priorities not excuses. I can see differentiating between the two as being a real challenge this year.
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