Friend at work sent me this article on cubicles in the workplace.

As a sad little Dilbert clone, I took some small comfort in the fact that the original inventer of the cubicle didn’t mean to make our lives hell…

I’m finally back at it, at least a little. I picked up my novel and started reading it again. I think there’s a story worth fixing in there somewhere. In a way, my procrastination might’ve worked in my favor. Early this month I was working on ‘world building’ and a creation myth for this world. And now that I have this myth in the back of my mind I can see where these characters tie into it.

Anyway, baby steps. But baby steps are better than no steps, right?

So things have really been slipping lately… no writing, hardly any reading, and let’s not talk about eating healthy or exercise! I sat down to catch up on the Sunday papers and realized the stack went back to December 4th!

I need to find a way to balance these activities with work and the need to blow off steam. I’ve just been toggling between work and steam blowing for quite some time now.

Anyway I just added a book to my Amazon Wishlist. It’s called Elsewhere and its a children’s book about a girl who is killed in a hit and run accident. The titular Elsewhere is the afterlife, and in it, she lives her life backwards.

That struck me as a reasonable reincarnation theory… you live your life, die and hit the afterlife at whatever age you were when you died, then age backwards in the afterlife until you reach zero, when you get born again to do it all over again. I like the symmetry! When you’re in the afterlife it doesn’t seem like the afterlife…it seems normal. Maybe you’d have theologians talking about the BeforeLife. 🙂

I had to work late tonight and so got a late start on the evening. I didn’t read any of my novel, which I’d hoped to do.

I did work a bit more on the creation myth, but my heart wasn’t really in it.

Not to mention my eyes are tearing like mad making it very hard to see. I have something stuck in there and haven’t been able to get it out all day. Yes, excuses, excuses…

Last day of winter vacation for me. It’ll be a bit of a challenge fitting writing time in during the work week.

Today I started reading my NaNovel, as per the instructions in No Plot, No Problem. No red pen in hand. Just reading it to see if its worth salvaging or if it just gets to die a quiet death. So far I think there’s potential there.

And I started writing the creation mythology for the world the NaNovel takes place in, which is kind of fun. I get to create gods and devils and so forth!

So today is January 1st. Time for New Year’s Resolutions, fresh starts, and all that jazz.

I’ve been a real slug through all of December and I’m feeling guilty as hell, but maybe that guilt can motivate me now. I mean to write a lot this year. And to help give me incentive I’ve decided to keep a journal of what I’ve gotten done. I was going to start a new blog for it or something, but I update dragonchasers so infrequently these days that I figured I could do it here by just setting up a new category, which I have done. This is the first post tagged with it.

So what did I accomplish on Day 1 of the year, from a writer’s perspective? Well, for one I printed out The Fading Groves, which is the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo. Second, I joined NaNoWriYe which as you might guess stands for National Novel Writing Year. It isn’t nearly as slick as NaNoWriMo, but some of the friends I made during WriMo have gone there and I went to throw my lot in with them. I’ve chosen the 250 thousand word tier. OK, they chose it and I followed along. 🙂
Third, I dug out No Plot, No Problem to refresh myself on the steps to take with your NaNovel once its rested a bit. Mine’s rested quite long enough. And lastly, I started to document the world that Groves takes place in. Need to get a concrete list of characters, countries, expletives, gods and goddesses and all kinds of good stuff.

New Year’s Resolutions:
To write at least 5 days every week (and preferably 7)
To be more active in OFF-SFF and do at least one critique/week.
To read more. In particular writing books, but books in general.

So that’s about it for now. Today was kind of a ‘setting up’ day since New Year’s really crept up on me.

Tomorrow the work starts.

Amusing (yet painful) Joystiq article for us over-30 gamers.

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Last night I took a few minutes before bed to read through two issues of The New York Times Book Review section. As is more or less my custom, I circled volumes that sounded interesting and added them to my Amazon Wish List.

Think about that. At least one book, and often two or three, added to the list every week. And every week I finished reading… about 1/10th of a book.

It was so depressing that I turned on the TV. Well, really I had to turn on the TV. You see, my DVR is at 89% full. I needed to watch some stuff so that I could delete it to make room for more stuff. Then I realized I hadn’t checked the Tivo (DVR #2) lately. Ach! It was filling up as well.

It was all too much, so I headed out for a walk, grabbing my iPod on the way. No sense in wasting the downtime when I could catch up on some of my podcasts. I’m weeks behind on Slacker Astronomy and The Secrets. And I really want to give Unquiet Desperation a chance. But first I had episodes of The Dragon Page Cover-to-Cover, Wingin’ it and Slice of Sci-Fi to listen to.

*sigh*

So I was just in the kitchen at work getting a soda from the machine. On one of the break tables is a box of donuts, empty except for a small crust. As I leave I notice there’s a trail of donut crumbs. I follow it, wondering who the pig is. I turn a corner and the crumb trail stops…and there’s a pair of fingernail clippers on the floor.

Explain, please?