Day: July 5, 2025

I get why I struggle in Arizona.

I’m lost here. There is no real routine or community or locations to moor myself to outside of the home. It happens in seasons–Football/track. I am moored to the schedule, but that isn’t a life. I don’t know that I have enough daily routines year round to consider AZ a life. Some of that I can work on myself. I can spend an hour in the pool each day, for example, but to what end? This isn’t the beautiful beaches of Spain or the forest wandering trails of Victoria, BC. Nah, this is AZ where everything is static and the metronome of my life cycles between whether my kid is on the PS5 or watching the TV.

I want more. Here.

I need to be the person to figure out how to do that, because I am primarily now the one who is least happy with the existence. When the Lady Talis asks me what I want to do, I want to have a list prepared of options both in and out of town. Home or about town. Indoors or out. I want to feel a sense of belonging and routine that I don’t and I want to make it happen over the stretch of the summer to fall season.

Challenge accepted.

I kicked some butt. It wasn’t a sweep, but it counts for a win. I reduced to two full screen displays with one hosting the story itself and the second the notes I need to reference to make this epic revision/rewrite. I managed to finish a chapter. It wasn’t two. It wasn’t one I started today. It was progress. 67K in the bag. Likely 25 K till this thing is all over. It is building nicely and I have a solid chunk of new material that needs to be created to form a good ending. I am debating what that last chunk will include, but I won’t say here. Go buy the dang book!

What I am learning from this process is that perfection is never going to be achieved in a 6 month window. Books are, for whatever reason, meant to be pushed out in 6. I have yet to master that process. I recognize the math of the thing–667 words a day gets you a 120K draft if you work about every day. It does not sound that hard on the surface. Try doing it. I’ve stalled out more than a few days as of late. That is just accounting for the draft. I’m in the revision stage, which is another mathematical conundrum I’ve yet to unravel.

I do think I can get better at this–make a professional life of it as the plan originally was. I have a 10K project on the shelf due in September–a 20 day draft if I do 500 a day. I’m pretty sure I can grind that out in my sleep, given the familiarity with the material on it, and the journalistic nature of that specific project. We’ll see how it plays out once this one is put to bed.

Long way to go before I get there.

Some Thoughts:

1. Minecrafting is killing my eyes. I gotta slow down or figure out what is going on there.