I had a bit of a freakout day today, I won’t go into all the details, but it was a thing to do with work where I realised– –ergh, actually I started writing about it but I don’t think it belongs here. Better to whinge in my journal, I think. To sum up: I’m at a bit of a dead end career wise, and I’m going to have to start thinking laterally to get out of it. I had a look at job listings online, and what a morass that is. Better to stay at the job and at least bring in some semi-regular lucre and try and make that money do something interesting. I’m trying to kick off some new habits, taking good steps forward, after coming across a reference to the “Hanada Method”, which is both super-interesting, and, depending on where you look, adopted by companies that want to sell you corporate packages and make you as efficient and productive as possible. I was basically just interested in the grid process, as well as the idea of working on many different aspects of my person in the process of working towards a goal. I’ll write more about it later, but it’s interesting, anyway. But I’m trying a few things out this week as a result, and this season I’ve decided to focus on three areas: be awake and fill the well, make lots of work, and karma. I’m at the point with my creative projects where I’ve had some downtime and I’m really keen to get going again, but for some reason it’s very hard to get back to that fluid, fluent, feeling, where you just (as my 13 year old says) lock in, and go. A couple of things help: morning pages, time blocking, and a few other things I want to explore, such as: “write everywhere”, “big spaces,” and “keep it sketchy.” I also want to get back to the blog more, so you can expect to see some more frequent posting. I’m interested in writing about my projects, process–making, rather than a lot of the “dear diary” sort of stuff I used to do in the past. I guess when I first started blogging I found it a way to be part of a new online thing, actually making friends and meeting people through the blogosphere, but it’s changed now, hasn’t it. We’re writing more than every (apparently) but it also seems harder and harder to find actual human voices online. Or non-sponsored, non-commercial, perspectives. If there’s one thing I am, it’s stubborn, and regardless of who or what might be scraping my content this is still a place that’s completely mine. That in itself is a project really. So the other main thing I’m trying to do while I approach this “open window 64 chart” is to do a progress check in, in the morning (where I think about what I want to focus on, plan my day), and then a check in, in the late afternoon (to ask, how did I go? Did I do anything? Or did I crash out and need to have a lie down?). In terms of process, I’m back to morning pages, marking things up as I go (any time I write I love or I’m interested in or write something that I might like to look into later I just put an asterisk in the margins), and taking inspiration from Peter Elbow and Tim Clare, and Lynda Barry, on using freewriting as a starting point to getting into the work. In progress are: an anthology (Incongruous Gongs vol 2), a short story (“Bitter Blood”), and a fourth draft of a novel that’s had various titles over the years, which I’m just calling Felathia right now. I might also make myself include updates for each at the bottom of each post, to keep things moving. We’ll see. Generally speaking I’m allergic to trackers, but I can see them being a useful motivating factor!