Nine months since I posted anything on here. Nine long, boring months. You may be asking, “If the months were so boring, why didn’t you use that time to blog more, Dustin?” My answer is this: I’ve been finding myself. Not literally, mind you. That’d be easy; there are many mirrors in my house. No, I’ve been trying to get myself and my thoughts organized into a plan of attack for my life. What does this mean?
Many of you may know that I am often plagued with awesome ideas; some I share, some I don’t. The past few months, I have been plagued to no end. From the novel I am working on, to countless other story ideas, to working to improve the Rapids, to umpteen small business ideas, the wheels of my mind have not stopped turning even for sleep. I haven’t been able to focus on any one thing, and it’s been driving me CRAZY. On top of that, I have decided not to go back to school, oddly for the same reason. All these important things I want to focus on and school has just been getting in the way. Down the road, if I feel I need to, maybe I’ll go back. But for now, why spend money when my heart isn’t in it?
So with no school and a million ideas, I’ve got to find a way to better use my time. Sleeping in until 11 on a daily basis just isn’t cutting it, no matter how much I love my sleep. I’ve got to actually work on developing these ideas and giving them some form. So starting today, I will be getting up at 8am, 5 days a week. I’ll be making breakfast, as opposed to going out, and if today’s experiment goes well, I’ll be using the Pomodoro Time-Management Technique to organize the time I don’t spend at RRPC. What is the Pomodoro, you ask? Check it out here before continuing on.
A list of tasks, 25 minutes per task; it sounds doable to me. So I’m trying it, even as I write this, to see if it helps my productivity at all. I have 16 minutes left on this “pomodoro.” Better hurry.
On January 20th, I wrote about the importance of consistent writing. I have failed to provide a good example of that. I have not stayed drunk on writing, and it has nearly destroyed me. Fortunately my drive to write is greater than that, so I still WANT to do it. I just need to act on that desire.
A day later, I shared my thoughts on personal traditions, as well as the details of my own personal tradition. My spy up Camp Creek has informed me that the leaves are in their prime right now, so if the sun comes out today, I’m taking that drive. I am taking that drive, procuring that delicious apple cider and, damn it, I WILL ENJOY IT. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity all summer, and even feared I would miss it while I was in Italy last month. Fortunately I did not, and the opportunity is now in front of me. I just took a look out the window. The sun is breaking through the fog. Perfect.
Speaking of my trip to Italy, it was fantastic. Thanks for asking. More on that later.
So now it’s come to this. This is my last post on this particular blog. I plan to continue blogging, but it will be something new, something with some real direction. And definitely something more consistent. Ideally it will be a place to share my thoughts and my writing and the thoughts and writing of others, as well as an aid in creating an online presence. That said, I am not going to begin this blog tomorrow. I want to do it right this time, so I’m going to take the time to plan it out and make it worth following. I want it to be the blog that my readers look forward to every day or so. Look for that in the coming weeks. I might even begin with a narrative of my ten-day trip to Italy. Sorry to tease, but you’ll have to wait for that story.
