It seems like it has been another year of distractions and head-hopping between all my various interests and hobbies. I had really wanted to start a weekly column here on the blog and I keep thinking I should try again, but when I start to write the essays I realize I have very little I want to say that seems original or has a point. My non-fiction writing skills have focused down to the length of a Mastodon toot or a pedantic comment on Reddit.
I also tried to start up the Better Writing Through Reading project and it kind of fell off the wayside.
My core problem is that I have too many interests. I watch too much YouTube and there are content creators who are diversifying and YouTube is strongarming content creators to create multiple channels for various subjects. It’s like we’re back in the early days of blogging before tags became common. (I say this as a person who ran four separate sites on Blogger.com back in the day to keep things separated.)
I’m even having a hard time sorting out what happened this year. The church was (and still is) is transition between rectors and I worked on the parish profile. I did complete a story of NaNoWriMo and I need to start editing it. I rejoined the Wordos writing group and have scheduled a story for critique. New stories are still kind of thin on the ground.
We went to Ashland to meet my brother and sister-in-law. We went to Nevada to spend a weekend with Mom. I don’t think we travelled much beyond that. I think we went to the beach once. Oh, and there was a trip to a getaway in northern Washington that was surprisingly pleasant except for that time I thew a shoe coming down a flight of stairs and hit the gravel pretty hard. Stephanie had to drive ten miles for medical supplies. That was a thing that happened. We spent a couple of nights in Seattle where we were upgraded to the penthouse suite for free.
We celebrated our first year in the house. It’s still a strange thing to be a homeowner. I feel the need to take care of the place and frankly I have no idea how. My father-in-law came by last week and mentioned we needed to close the vents to the crawlspace under the house. What? This is a thing? Our vents have flaps but they apparently don’t all stay up so we found a bunch of bricks. They do the trick. I’m assuming in the spring I’ll remember to remove them.
Who am I kidding? I’m setting a reminder on my calendar.
I started using Obsidian for personal, professional, and day job stuff. Actually, I think I found Obsidian last year but this year I applied it to my day job and that part of my life has become easier. I’m still working for home and not walking around enough.
Oh yeah, we bought a stationary bike for the loft and we’ve been putting it to use. We haven’t lost any weight. We did a Whole30 in March, essentially a Lenten thing for us, and the weight came right back. It’s a tough program because it seems to take all of our attention all the time and put it on food. What can we eat? What should we make? How can we pack up enough food not to starve?
I don’t think I picked up any new hobbies. Oh, wait. Well, it’s not a new hobby. I’ve always tried to sketch and I picked up a Lucy and played with it for a while. It was fun, but the table I had to work on meant leaning over uncomfortably to reach the paper. I meant to keep working with it, but then my brain flittered away to other things.
So why can’t I write essays on a regular basis? Why can’t I complete any stories? This entry seems to be exactly why I can’t. My brain jumps around from topic to topic. I’ve never had great focus to begin with most days. I want to go back to school just to have assignments again. I want more structure in my life and I’m not finding it in the working from home/playing at home/staying at home lifestyle. At least I have three floors to kick around and some very different spaces to be in.
Twenty-twenty-two was a year. I hope yours was, too.