ROW80 2013 Round 1: 3rd Update

Mostly an uneventful week again, though on average I'm on track with everything. I got my teaching contract renewed this week, so bring on another year of terribly written assignments and hilarious excuses for late submissions... *shudders* I still have a few weeks off, though, since I don't think classed start until late February. I also finally got my MRI done on my knee, which I've been waiting for for more than a month, and I will be seeing the surgeon again on the 8th of February. I've also been mucking around with writing playlists and I find that they are really useful in getting me into the right mood to write particular scenes, even if I wasn't really in a writing mood beforehand. Putting the playlist on my iPod when I walk waddle up to the shops helps the ideas to start percolating in my head so that when I get back to my laptop I can just get into the story.

Creative Goals

• Write at least 250 words per day: Every day except Saturday. But most days I got closer to 500 words of novel written, so I probably made up for it anyway.
• Do at least one painting or drawing per week: Another small acrylic, same size as the last one. Photo didn't come out particularly well (the centre of the flower is more subtly shaded in real life), but here it is:

• Maintain writing/art blog: No new posts, but update on coloured pencil light-fastness testing is complete, and a new review post for some soft pastels I got recently is underway.

Academic Goals

• Complete transcript and report from research assistant work: Done. New goal for this week: Complete summary of results report.
• Start preliminary reading research to try to come up with a more specific PhD topic.

Health Goals

• 10 minutes slow exercise-bike riding per day: Every day except Saturday.
• 30 minutes swimming per week: I actually went to the pool... Once. It was full to the brim of screaming kids, with not even half a lane free. This is what usually happens when I attempt to go swimming; no matter what time of the day I try going, I always seem to catch a school excursion or swimming carnival (and I generally can't go at night because of work). Not only is swimming a quarter of a lane before being jumped on/crashed into by an uncoordinated 8 year old unproductive, it just irritates the crap out of me, making the whole experience slightly less enjoyable than falling face first into a poison ivy shrub. Removing this goal.
• Go through one sheet of physio knee exercises per day: Yes.
• Only one piece of chocolate and one energy drink per week: Tripped up a bit here (slightly). While Thursdays are normally my 'sugary indulgence' day, I also had an energy drink and a chocolate on Tuesday; on top of lack of sleep due to severe pain, I was having one of those days where everyone seemed to have decided to annoy me as often as possible, so if I didn't have caffeine, people would have been hurt :)

Judgemental Dog won't let you get off lightly if you don't reach your word count:

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ROW80 2013 Round 1: 2nd Update

Two weeks in and so far I am more or less on track with my goals. I think I'm starting to come down with a sore throat though, which is frustrating because for the last two weeks I've been eating really healthy >:( Ah well, hopefully it will pass quickly. I've generally made my word count (not much on top of it, though) and I also managed to do a painting, albeit a small one, with Rex 'helping' (read: being a bloody nuisance) by sticking his nose in my paint palette. Still, he is my furry creative supervisor and I wouldn't have him any other way :)

Creative Goals

• Write at least 250 words per day: Every day except Wednesday, but most of my words were for my untitled project and not my main WiP. For some reason I'm just having trouble getting my brain into Dark and Silent Waters mode lately. Tuesday night I didn't get any sleep because my knee was particularly bad (even strong painkillers didn't help much), and just as I was drifting off, I got woken up by Rex being sick, so I had to get up and look after him. On Wednesday I could barely type my own name let alone form a coherent sentence, so I let it go lol
• Do at least one painting or drawing per week: Yep :) Just a little one, acrylic on canvas (below). I have started planning out two others though. I want to see if I can eventually become good enough to sell some miniature paintings on eBay or Etsy; postcard-sized artwork is easier for me to produce and cheaper for people to buy, so that's probably the most viable, though I'm a long way from having salable art anyway. I'm thinking of putting a magnet on the back so my nan can put it on her fridge. Hey, other kids' grandmothers hang their work on their fridge, alright? Stop judging me! :P

• Maintain writing/art blog: No new posts, but I am in the process of updating a previous one on coloured pencil light-fastness testing.

Academic Goals

• Complete transcript and report from research assistant work.

Health Goals

• 10 minutes slow exercise-bike riding per day: Did some on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. For some reason my knee has been extremely sore the last week. The sooner I can see the surgeon again, the better (though even when I find out what exactly needs to be done, I'll still need to save up for it...).
• 30 minutes swimming per week: Nope. Am considering, maybe, removing this goal. I know that swimming would be good for my knee, but actually getting to the swimming pool would be an issue as driving aggravates my knee a great deal, especially since it has been getting worse lately. Will see how I go over the next few weeks.
• Go through one sheet of physio knee exercises per day: Thursday, Friday and Saturday only. Some of the more difficult exercise sheets I am still unable to do at all as my knee just will not support my weight well enough.
• Only one piece of chocolate and one energy drink per week: Yup. So far not feeling a big difference in general well-being, though that could be partially because of my knee and subsequent lack of sleep issues. I've also not been eating any other junk or take away food, so even if I'm not feeling the effects yet, I'm sure I'll be better off in the long run (though right now I would shank a mo-fo for their Whopper burger...).

It's never safe to slack off around Judgemental Dog.

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ROW80 2013 Round 1: 1st Update

This week was fairly uneventful in terms of progress; I managed to stay just ahead in some areas and fall just behind in others. I would have liked to make more progress, but it was a bit of a trying week, so I'm happy with what I did. The dog crashed into me while trying to escape from the vacuum cleaner, so that screwed my knee up a bit (more than it already was), and it seems like my car has decided that this is the year it will go to the great big garage in the sky. It likes to stall when the petrol kicks over to gas, though I have managed to device a series of tapping revs that seems to (barely) prevent it from doing so. I did get a delivery of art supplies from America on Friday, so that made the week a bit better :)

Anyway, goal progress so far:

Creative Goals

• Write at least 250 words per day: Most days I have doubled this for Dark and Silent Waters, and have generally managed as many words on my other untitled project as well.
• Do at least one painting or drawing per week: Nope :( All of our kitchen furniture was moved into the lounge room while we had new lino put down, and since the lounge room is the only place I have room to spread out my art supplies at the best of times, I had nowhere to paint.
• Maintain writing/art blog: One post done, another in progress.

Academic Goals

• NA.

Health Goals

• 10 minutes slow exercise-bike riding per day: Monday and Tuesday only; my Dad moved the exercise bike out of the kitchen while we were getting new floors done, and when I went to the garage to use it, he'd piled heaps of other crap on top of it.
• 30 minutes swimming per week: Nope :( That will earn me a nip from Judgemental Dog...
• Go through one sheet of physio knee exercises per day: Every day except Friday and Saturday (knee was too sore/unstable).
• Only one piece of chocolate and one energy drink per week: On track so far.

So, no actual drawing this week, but to make up for it, here's a photo of my furry art studio supervisor examining my new art supplies (judgementally, of course):

The house is more or less back to normal now, so this week I should actually be able to get some proper drawing done. Though Tuesday is out, since I'll be going in to uni for a meeting with one of my PhD supervisors. Need to try to ask a few questions about my scholarship etc, since the amount of time I'll need off following knee surgery could complicate things.

Judgemental Dog wants everyone to succeed this round:

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ROW80 2013 Round 1: Goals and Grievances

Here I am, slinking back into ROW80 with my tail between my legs. Yep. I crashed and burned in Round 4 last year, and I bombed out of NaNoWriMo with only around 11,000 words. I managed to juggle all my academic goals but by the time I did that, I often found myself with no creative energy; as a result, I'd stare at my sketchbook or blank screen on my computer and accomplish nothing but feeling guilty over my lack of progress.

The main problem, however, was my knee. About a month after I'd injured it in the bus/truck accident - it was just starting to get better - I returned to work and was ambling around in my department, minding my own business, when some woman's psychotic kid crashed into my knee full force and caused it to dislocate again. After another two weeks off, I returned to work again, but I am on modified duties and can only work limited hours. I also have to wear a knee brace and I need a walking stick to get around, as my knee still gives out on me at times and cannot be trusted to reliably bear my weight. As someone who used to do karate (I was training for my 2nd Dan Black Belt when I had to quit because of my knee in 2007) and used to be fairly fit in general, this is incredibly frustrating. You don't realise how much you take basic things like the ability to run for granted until you can't do them anymore. I can't even take Rex for a walk.

I have seen a surgeon already, and though I have to wait until I have an MRI at the end of January before I can go back and get a better idea of the costs/procedure etc required, it looks like I am going to require fairly significant surgery on both knees (the right one will be first as it is in much worse condition). Basically, my bones are out of alignment, which means the back of my kneecaps have been wearing the wrong way, my kneecaps are too small and my ligaments are too loose, so there's pretty much nothing to hold everything in place. The surgeon estimates I'll be looking at a recovery time of six months, so organising that around my uni commitments will be fun...

I will be starting my PhD this year and I was lucky enough to qualify for a scholarship, which will be a huge help; however, since both academics I've chosen as my supervisors are on leave for semester one, I probably won't be starting until June. I know I must be crazy to be taking on full-time research - it will cut into my writing and painting time even more - but what is life without some craziness :)

So... Goals.

Though I won't be starting my own studies until mid year, I will most likely be teaching in first semester, which begins in early March. This means that, though the last month of Round 1 will be focused more on academic goals, it will still give me nearly two months before that of just working on my creative goals. I also want to add in some health-related goals. My main desire, though, is to get back to writing regularly. As so often happens, I have fallen out of the habit of doing a small amount of writing every day and have somehow ended up doing a few days with intense word counts (2-3,000) and then going several days or even a week without writing a single word.

Creative Goals

• Write at least 250 words per day (possibly drop this to twice a week once uni starts). The first 250 words must be on Dark and Silent Waters; anything after that can either be on DASW or on my brain poo project (a term coined by one of my writing course friends, "brain poo" essentially refers to doing a 'conscious dump' of ideas, forsaking attempts at elegance in favour of just getting the ideas out of your head and onto paper/screen).
• Do at least one painting or drawing per week. It can be any medium, just as long as I make some sort of artwork. It will most likely be acrylic, watercolour or pastel, since those seem to be what take my fancy at the moment; my coloured pencil collection lies largely abandoned.
• Maintain writing/art blog. I've done a few book reviews and a few art supply reviews, and though I've been updating some of the art supply comparisons, the blog is kind of idle. I already have some posts lined up for more art supply reviews/comparisons, but I want to be more active with my posting.

Academic Goals

• To be determined, but for Round 1 will basically just entail keeping up with class preparation and assignment marking etc., as well as PhD preparation work (maybe).

Health Goals

• 10 minutes slow exercise-bike riding per day, to try to restore cardio fitness.
• 30 minutes swimming per week (twice a week if my knee can take it).
• Go through one sheet of physio knee exercises per day. I have become lax with this recently because of the pain in my knee, but I really need to start trying to at least strengthen the muscles around my knees again, as the stronger it is before I have surgery, the faster (hopefully) I will heal.
• Only one piece of chocolate and one energy drink per week. Being the sugarholic that I am, this will be the hardest, but I look at it this way; it will save me money on energy drinks and chocolate and hopefully on dental bills as well, giving me more to spend on art supplies life expenses.

So there we have it. I will probably update only once a week, unless anything out of the ordinary happens.

And, of course, Judgemental Dog will be beside me every step of the way (especially when there's food involved).

See other ROW80ers' goals here.

ROW80 Round 8: 3rd Update

Surprisingly enough, I have actually been quite productive this week. Really, it is surprising, because a) I've still been in a lot of pain with my knee injury, b) I bought a new book to read and c) I bought a new Nintendo DS game (I wasn't going to because I didn't want to distract myself and I thought I should save my money for knee-related expenses, but they had it on sale at work and I got some extra work from uni so I had to buy it :D). Any of these things on their own would usually be enough to have me procrastinating til the cows come home (MOOOOOO!), but somehow I'm managed to ration both my reading and game-playing time and mark just under two thirds of the assignments that were submitted last week. I am hoping to get all of them finished by Friday night, as that is when all the assignments for my other subject are due, so I'll have to get started on those ones next :) And, after my two classes on Friday, the semester is over, so I'll have a lot more free time, which I am sorely looking forward to.

Also, I somehow got myself nominated for a Teaching Excellence Award, which was pretty cool and definitely helped make a crappy week less crappy. I most likely won't win since I'm sure there are other academics out there who are more experienced and/or have more nominations than me, but it is a nice confidence boost. Even though I don't have much chance of actually winning, I'm still going to fill in the application (there are a bunch of forms to fill out) just on the off chance it was a slow year for nominations, because the award money could help me pay for knee specialist consultations/MRIs/surgery etc.

On the writing front; I didn't write anything today because I was marking, but I did get in a few hundred words on my main work in progress on Monday and Tuesday night. It sucks that I am unable to go to my normal part time job because of my knee, but I suppose it does give me a little extra time for writing (on the whole, I'd rather be able to walk without the use of a cane and earn money, though). One of my sidelined WiPs (a steampunk fantasy) has also been rattling around in my head again lately, seemingly vying for my attention to be my NaNoWriMo project. At this stage I'm still planning to work on Dark and Silent Waters for NaNo, but I may still dabble in the steampunk one if my muse takes me in that direction. Provided I have finished my first lot of marking, I am going to set aside Saturday as a creative day, where I will do nothing but draw, paint and/or work on my novel (either actually writing it or fixing up the outline, both need doing).

I think Judgemental Dog approves (sort of) of my game-playing and book-reading:

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ROW80 Round 8: 2nd Update

This week has been a bit of a wreck... Literally. On my way to uni on Monday, my train was delayed because of an accident on the line, and the replacement bus I was on got hit by a truck, resulting in a concussion and dislocated knee for me (it wasn't a hard impact, but it was enough to jolt the bus and make me lose my footing, dislocating my knee as I tried to stop myself falling and then hitting my head as I fell anyway :(  ) I still managed to get to my class, though, as well as taking my class on Tuesday morning, but by the time I got home I was in so much pain that I had to take some of my strongest painkillers, which made me kind of fuzzy-headed and reduced my mental capacity to that of a brain-damaged goldfish. Plus the concussion meant that the slightest little thing reduced me to state of incoherent rage and despair, so I thought it best to just step away from the computer lol To be fair, I've had a problem with that knee for a good ten years - this is probably the 7th time I've dislocated it since the original karate injury - and it's got so weak and unstable that someone just has to fart next to it and that will blow it out of alignment, but I was hoping to be able to put off going to the specialist for another few months...

I spent most of yesterday and this morning alternating between staring vacantly at my screen and catching up on various admin tasks for uni, though I did squeeze in an hour or so of writing yesterday and half an hour this morning, which produced about 700 words and 300 words respectively, so at least I've made the weekly limit I'd set for myself. Rex keeps nudging his leash and then standing beside me and staring at me with guilt lasers in his eyes, but unfortunately the goal of walking him twice weekly will be on hold for a while; even with my walking stick, I'm not capable of much more than an awkward, shuffling power-waddle, so I wouldn't be able to keep up with an impatient German Shepherd :) The rest of today will be spent formatting a sample exam for students, and after that, it will all just be a blur of assignment marking.

And there's a new Nintendo DS game out today that I really want (Pokemon Black 2) and because I'll be spending money on physio, I won't be able to buy it for ages >:( I know I probably won't have time to play it anyway, but still... Bugger #firstworldproblems haha

Judgemental Dog seems to have let the power go to his head:

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ROW80 Round 8: 1st Update

Well, it's been a hectic first week of this ROW80 round. It feels like I spent most of the time either at uni or marking uni assignments. Luckily there are only two weeks left of semester, so even though I'll have assignments to mark, I won't have classes, which will free up some time (and energy). After I'd finished marking assignments, I ended up on YouTube (the great procrastination tool of the Internet) and, as usual, found myself watching music videos that bore no relation to whatever I'd gone there for originally. One of those videos was this one:

Yes, I know it's full of 90s pop-music terri-bad (though that black sequined outfit is equal parts bizarre and epic), but strangely enough it got me thinking about my novel (normally I'd feel that gothic/symphonic metal matches the plot better, but apparently my brain has other ideas). Leaving aside the video's laughably awful 'plot' (eg. I'm pretty sure the life support machine would work better if it was actually attached to the dude in some way haha), the characters almost echo the three key players in Dark and Silent Waters; we have the bat-shit insane evil lady/ruler of death who is determined to steal the soul of an innocent man, with his life depending on the strength and determination of the woman who loves him. I also like the 'monologue' from the Death character, which sounds like something the antagonist of DASW would say, if she were in the habit of bursting into 90s pop songs.

In other news, Rex is still on his medication for his bowel disease, but he seems to be responding pretty well, his dose has been lowered to three times a week instead of once daily. He is his normal happy, bouncy self, even if he's starting to slow down a bit with age, and we're hoping that this round of medication will knock his disease out entirely, though more realistically - as the vet says - we'll probably have to keep him on a low dose for the rest of his life.

Anyway, goal progress so far:

• Write 500 words on Wednesdays and Thursdays: Didn't write on Wednesday or Thursday because I was marking assignments and I had to do preparation work for my Friday classes. My old man deciding to renovate the kitchen (and being as noisy and disruptive about it as humanly possible) has delayed me a bit, as it is impossible to concentrate with him hammering and pulling things apart and swearing every five minutes. (update: managed to write about 300 words today, better than nothing)
• Come up with PhD idea: Sort of. Have been discussing it with lecturer and have been throwing a few concepts around, but still haven't really settled on one. Really need to sort this out quickly. Have started putting together a vague document for my research proposal.
• Do 1 painting/drawing each week: No artwork done, but I have done another colour chart for some new pastels I got, which will be used in a review on my other blog.
• Keep up to date with assignment marking: Yep :) Have marked all submitted assignments to date. This week my students are all doing presentations, which means less preparation work, but both subjects have large assignments due at the end of this week and next week, so after that I will be snowed under with marking.
• Keep up to date with research assistant duties: So far yes, though admittedly there hasn't been that much to do at this stage.
• Walk Rex twice a week: He got a walk on Wednesday but not on Thursday; my knee injuries were playing up and I thought that being dragged along by an impatient German Shepherd probably wouldn't help :D

Judgemental Dog lays on the guilt trip:

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