Slugging Away

Last night I didn't have to pull overtime, and so got home at a more reasonable hour than I have been. Not that I didn't turn off People's Court to get work done.

I didn't use a timer, but rather listened to the last half-hour of PC while I painted. Ooh, so close to getting that painting of Obi and Bran done! I feel certain it'll get done today, with maybe some final changes (there are ALWAYS final changes!) Saturday morning. Unless the rain does something silly like cut the electricity so I don't have good light to paint by.

Got my exercise in last night, if not this morning. I shall concentrate next week on starting the habit of exercising when I get up. I dunno... is before or after breakfast better? I've read that exercise in the morning has something like three times the normal beneficial effect, so I really need to start doing that.

Only went on the computer long enough to send myself a cover mockup for Applesauce and Moonbeams. Dr. Wayne Dyer says that the more you can do to visualize a goal, the better. He puts fake covers on books to motivate himself to complete his wips. For Applesauce I'm hoping to get an agent and/or publisher interested. I'll make a cover for Nothing Personal either tonight or tomorrow...

Because next week is VACATION!!! Absolute priority will be to finish Nothing Personal's first draft, which I've been working on in bits and pieces for... well... an embarrassingly long time. This was supposed to have been my "fast" book. My mistake was that I didn't think through character motivations and failings enough.

Along with the wip (but at lesser priority) will be to work in the yard. I want to prepare it for the patio that (positive thinking!) will be going in the last part of June. I WILL be using a timer for that. (The yard work. I don't care what kind of motivation the cement guys will be using other than my check.) And I'll also be timing the writing, as I can concentrate/write better if I know I only have so many minutes to go before I have to break for something else.

I'll also be cleaning up the studio, which will involve one of my least favorite activities: cutting mats. I have a professional mat cutter and it doesn't help all that much. When I went to UNC-CH, one of the VERY few decent art instructors I had was Marvin Saltzman, a guy who'd take a double-edged blade and HAND cut mats. One cut per fresh side. The cuts were PERFECT. The angle was EXACT. It was amazing.

Me, I use my mat cutter and am not pleased with the results. It's probably because I don't use it enough.

But I'll be timing that activity as well, as well as adding a LOT of relaxation stuff in there. (Do I count reading all the non-fiction books I've bought for the Kindle as "relaxation"? It's all very deep: scientific near-death studies, the Bataan Death March, The Rise and Fall of Alexandria, The Narcissism Epidemic, etc.) Guess I'll take one and break it up into 15- or 30-minute segments.

Like I need to do with that Netflix movie that's been sitting on my entertainment center for [insert curse word here].

To work! To success!