Writing About Writing Vol 8

     “Stick and Move.”

Every day I have been near a desktop computer for about the last 16 months, I make a point of opening my blog dashboard and looking around.  I make sure of the traffic numbers, I look at comments that might have found themselves in the Moderation Queue, I look back over previous posts and make small changes I may have missed on the way through the first time.
Most importantly, I open my drafts queue.  In it there is usually one to three posts I am actively working on, one I am purposely never posting and FIVE I can best describe as a “false start.”

     My archive goes like this:

2009 – 204 posts.  I was new and excited.
2010 – 178 posts.  I was still into what I was doing but busy in the real world.
2011 – 110 posts.  Ava showed up in July and my time was strained.
2012 – 35 posts I was slowly being dragged somewhere I wound up not liking.
2013 – 8 posts…  see above, I was actually there now.
2014 – Took a whole YEAR off and apparently started getting sick at the end of the year.
2015 – 2 posts… my heart tried to take me to the upper room, I spent most of the year dealing with that.
2016 – 19 posts.  I showed up in September to be back and STAYED
2017 - 503 posts, minus 344 days of torture under president Littlefingers.  I was FULLY back in the game and beginning to actually enjoy myself again.

So about those drafts.  “The Story” parts I-V.
I notice now that I have ALWAYS kind of planned to do this.  I can’t POSSIBLY remember what I was thinking in November of 2009 to have the goal of a 5-parter, but what it tells me that I am good with fine tuning my approach and reintroducing it instead of shit canning it.

     I might call that “stick and move.”  Comfortable with the fact that I can do this, I feel now that my early days just wasn’t the right time.  I didn’t quit though.  I went away, I DID spend time in 2012 writing a novel, I apparently spent the following 5 years growing from my situations.  I came out of it all brand new.
I think it was important to me to not come back from it all and keep trying the same shit I had been on.  Instead I showed up to the game with some new tricks.  True Story© started it back up.  Committed to losing weight after my 2014/15 and into a different situation compared to 2012/13, posting of recipes came next.  When I felt both of those were slowing down, I upped my creativity and added more and more things to assist my output.

     Everything was new.  When you feel the fight coming to you, learn its pattern and change yours accordingly.  True Story© has evolved amazingly because of this.  This requires some honesty with yourself.  Sometimes you will look at what you’ve done like “damn, I don’t know I am a fan of that.”  If you don’t like it, do something about it. 

Never mind the countdown, it will end when we are finally rid of the ass currently infesting 1600 Pennsylvania, I will end it.

It’s a metaphor, though.  With life as the fight and “stick and move” as the strategy, you strike where you can and be ready for shit to change and prepare to adapt quickly.  I think my time away taught me that.