Hard Deadlines – The Climb #953

Saturday 2nd October 2021

As expected, today was a bit of a lazy day. I got some words done but it was about the same as I did yesterday where most of the day was taken up with editing.

I’ve somehow given myself a bit of eye strain. I say ‘somehow’ but I think we all know how I did it. Didn’t stop me reading though. Most of this afternoon was spent curled up on the Support Bubble Sofa dipping in and out of comics.

In my great Marvel Mega Read I’m now up to House of M. I’ve read the core story before but it’s enjoyable reading the associated series as well this time. I got through the equivalent of a couple of trades. In my head, I somehow think I can blast through 60 comics in an evening… which of course, I can’t. I tend to dip in and out of my mega read so this could either take me months to get through or I’ll have it done by the end of the week.

I also tried to play some games today. I’ve been playing Marvel Avengers because it turned up on Gamespass and I’m thoroughly enjoying the campaign. I know people say it gets a bit grindy but I’m playing it for the story rather than gamerscore.

I also tried to play New World but couldn’t because the game has such ridiculous queue times. Even on the server I’m on, which at the time was pretty good, queues have gone up to the thousands. I’ll leave it another week and then try. I suspect the game is one of those where it gets quite grindy once you get past level 20, but I’d like to level so I have a max level character if something interesting comes along. I’m always playing catch up.

I’m also planning a proper return to Warcraft at some point. I’ve checked in with my characters but not really played it. It would be back to get back to raiding on Sundays.

And I also checked out Fortnite. This season XP seems really hard, and I’m not enjoying it for that reason. I don’t want to get behind as I suspect it’s going to be a nightmare to catch up so I’m setting myself a goal of 10 levels a week. We’ll see….

Because I realised something today. Thinking back over the last week I came to the conclusion that I work well with deadlines. It’s always a panic. I always stress. But things seem to get the focus they need and get done. When I don’t have a hard deadline, things still get done, there’s less stress… but they seem to take longer. I think, behind this all, is that the panic of an impending deadline makes me decide faster. I make a choice, go with it and live with it. My writing speed isn’t necessarily faster, but I seem to make decisions outside of the writing quicker.

I don’t have all the answers yet. I have the data on my writing speed but at the moment that seems to be in conflict with my experience of the last week.

And the big question I ask myself is, do I really want the stress? Is it better to take an extra week and up the quality or get it done and move onto the next thing. There’s a happy medium somewhere and it might depend on the project but it’s something I’m very much going to think about over the next few days.