I am a jack of all trades and master of none. For a long time now I have started and not finish many things, I have taken many things on as hobbies and done little with all of them, basically a convoluted form of procrastination. Below is what I have been doing with my time for almost the last decade…..
- Family / Life
- Writing
- Web building / Tech / Comuters
- Gaming – World of Warcraft
- Films – (Not a hobby as such but I go to the cinema allot)
- Motorbikes
- Gym ( this needs to be done)
So as you can see I have allot taking up my time and as I have tried to do so much at once I have managed to not do any of them particularly well. Talking with a friend recently and he asked what my dream was and if the things I do get me closer to that dream. The idea being if it doesn’t get me closer to the dream I should drop it.
My dream is to write, I know that almost all writers will say this and I also know that most of them will never achieve their dream, nevertheless thais is my dream. To produce prose that people cannot wait to read, series that people bug me to write more in etc. to be able to make enough from writing that I can do that full time. (hopefully in my Fantasy & SF bookshop) so I need to take a good look at my life to see what I am going to drop and how I am going to structure my time. How will I reach this goal, and what are the milestones along the way.
The first to go is Tech/Web building, my knowledge is above basic at the moment and that is fine for now, writing is more important. The rest I need to structure, I don’t want to stop doing some of the things I enjoy as they are how I unwind, but I need to reduce the time they take and put that time into achieving my goal. So, how to do this?
Gaming – This will have to be reduced to set times or evenings, I will have to have a word with my friends to see when is the best times but I need to make this something that is easy to drop in and out of. This may mean stopping playing WoW for a while and using gaming time for games like Fortnight or COD, something I can pop onto for an hour and have fun and then come off without having to feel like I need to achieve something.
Films – I love going to the cinema but I think I need to try and have a word with my friend and confine this to one night a week unless there is an unlimited screening that I really want to see. I have brought this up before and we did settle on a night but I need to confirm this.
Motorbikes – Let’s face it, this is not going to go anywhere, but by the same token this doesn’t take up lots of my time. Sundays are likely going to be biking days. Tuesday evenings for Pitstop maybe. Again just need to be clear on what I am doing.
So what is left is writing, this as a goal needs breaking down into chunks that can be completed and then moved on. Some ideas for this would be the how-to books I have, picking one to work through at a time and doing it regularly. There is a you tube series for Brendan Sanderson that I was working through and things like this need to be featured as they progress the skills and experience. Actual writing needs to be in there too, either novel work or a good idea may be to try my hand at short story writing for a while to see if this is something that can help me build experience.
Like moat of my plans I spend too much time planning, more procrastination. We are drawing ever closer to Nano and I need to do some basic planning for the short story idea. Nothing too involved but. vague idea of what I am going to do for the story. Stephen king says don’t plan, just write, so I am going to try and do this, once I have a basic idea of where I want to go.
