Was it All a Waste?

by Chris McGinty (According To Whim .com)

Today is the last day of the second ten-weeks of the According To Whim year. I’m not sure we did all that great of a job of things this time. Certainly not when it comes to our group goals, but I do wonder how well we did generally. Was it all a waste?

The problem is that I basically took on a second job, and my availability has suffered. I find that my days off are more crazy than a day off should be, because I have to make a huge list of things needing to be done, get up early, and get to it. I’ve written about this, so I won’t dwell on it too much.

On the flipside, Nathan and I have kept up with the blog, and we’ve done pretty well with our Saturday serial. In April, I finished my first novel, and I will be getting to the editing phase soon. My writing has been very sporadic in subject matter lately, but I still do quite a bit each night. I’ve also made a few significant steps in my organization project, which has of course made everything a mess for the time being. I’ve also written down around 200 play-test ideas for our Net Runner Virtual Expansion. I have stayed busy when I’m at work and able to work on things. I also got a few things caught up financially. A couple more weeks like this, and I might actually finish paying Nathan back what I owe him from the comic book store. He says, at the end of his shortest week for work in a while. It doesn’t mean it won’t pick up again though

Nathan has been doing well with his eBay stuff (a lead that I should follow), and we are going to some convention next weekend to sell some stuff. I know he’s made some significant progress with Season Two reworking, and is just waiting for me to have some time off that isn’t in the middle of the night, and wasn’t asked off for purposes of going to see a show, so we can work on the scenes that were either never shot or were lost to the great hard drive crash.

I’m not sure that this ten-weeks was a total waste, but it certainly felt sporadic and disconnected. My biggest mistake was that I never used my notebook once I started working crazy hours. I figured that if I just kept working at things, I didn’t have to specifically plan anything. I’m not saying that lack of planning made for a bad run for me, but that I have no clear gauge of how well I actually did. When I use the notebook, I often feel like I’m not accomplishing enough, because my daily workload is often set too high. Running without a daily plan didn’t improve my feeling of accomplishment, even when I picked a project and pushed it to its completion, so it feels like I should at least have a plan. To that end, I have already set up my notebook for the new ten-weeks, and I will be ready for it, writing my daily plan, and doing my best to follow it.

As far as group goals, depending on how my work schedule is, we’ll have to kick it up a notch this time around. Perhaps Nathan can make a shooting schedule for the remaining Season Two stuff (if he hasn’t already) and we can find the time regardless. As my crazy work weeks have gone on, I’ve had to sacrifice some sleep here and there. There’s no reason I can’t do it for Season Two.

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