I am generally quite organized and able to accomplish a lot of things.
A lot.
Right now, that isn’t possible. It has nothing to do with being disciplined or more focused. I literally don’t have the time or the brain space/capacity to do more than I currently am.
As my husband will tell you, I tend to be hard on myself, and to see the world as the glass half empty, focusing only on the things that I haven’t accomplished as opposed to the things that I have checked off my list.
Right now, though, focusing on the list of things I haven’t done is deadly. I literally can’t look at that because I’ll be so overwhelmed.
Instead, one of the things that this time has taught me is how to celebrate the little things. I have to do that. It’s the only way I’m going to stay sane at this point.
This is all part of managing expectations. I cannot reasonably expect as much of myself right now as I normally do. I can only do a few things for myself any one day. The rest of the time, I am focused on another person who’s pretty dependent on me for everything.
This last week, I celebrated the fact that I managed to carve out five minutes to write one day.
Five minutes.
That was it.
That was all I could manage that day. That amount of time by myself, with enough energy and enough brain capacity to focus on my art.
And even though it was merely five minutes, I felt as though it was a major victory. I’ve been trying to write every day. It isn’t easy. Carving out any time is good.
I’ve been going through the existing novel. I had 15K on it, and have been spending the last couple of weeks going through everything that I’d already written, doing major cleanup in some areas, enough that I gained another five hundred words.
Now, though, I’ve reached the end of what I’ve written. I need to start moving forward again.
My normal word count is 3000 words per day.
That seems like a fantasy right now. Not just a dream, but an impossible magic-land delusion.
So I need to manage the expectations I have for myself and my writing.
I recently remembered a friend of mine talking about her writing process. She is an award-winning children’s author. Her daily writing goal was two sentences per day. Sure, most days she wrote more. But as long as she did at least two sentences, she was good.
That is now my new goal. Two sentences of fiction as many days as I can. Some days (like today) it isn’t going to be possible. (Then again, I am writing a complete essay today, which is a lot more than just two sentences.)
Other goals? I’m walking 10K+ steps every day, taking care of my niece’s dog. This is a really good thing, even though some days I’m pretty tired.
I’m mostly eating well. There are absolutely times when I’m not. Plus, I’m eating too much. But I’m trying to manage my expectations. To tell myself that it’s okay that I’m off my diet. For most of my meals, I am eating the right things. And that has to be good enough.
I’m getting as much sleep as possible. There was one morning when I turned off my alarm and slept in, getting a full eight hours. It was heavenly! The rest of the time, I’m making due on about six hours per night. This means that sometimes, when I’m by myself, it’s okay if I just take a nap and not write.
I only have a couple of more weeks of this. Then I’m going home for a while. Living my life. Before coming back here and helping out again.
This year I’ve set my writing goals pretty low. Come July, I’ll do an assessment and see if those goals are even achievable, or if I need to throw out all word count goals for the year.
Managing my expectations, so I won’t be sad and disappointed by what I do manage to accomplish.
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