Actually not a truly bad person, just one who is currently letting things get away from them a bit. Contrary to my most solemn promises to myself I haven’t been blogging recently and there is so much that I seem to be falling behind on: book reviews, my feed reader, etc.
Social media is work. Oh, sure, it all seems fun until you realise that you are spending hours per day trying to keep up with everyone and everything. Without regular interaction with your network and chosen channels it all just dies. I tend not to use my mobile for social media (a result perhaps of being of a certain age-related social demographic, and enough said about that), so commenting and participating and posting at my PC all take time away from actual work. I’ve tried to narrow the places that I invest time in: I don’t just repost images, so Tumblr seems a bit pointless, I’ve always hated Google +, the only thing I use Facebook for is keeping up with friends in the States and the daily dose of racist stuff that my family posts. I read certain gaming sub-reddits, but the community can be pretty toxic (which applies to most game forums as well).
Bah, all of you tire me out. GET OFFA MY LAWN.
Things that I’ve done, or not done, since the new year:
- I’ve been reading a metric buttload of books and trying to review some of them
- I’m behind on leaving reviews for talented author friends. I loved your books but I’ve been bad and lazy, but that will be rectified.
- I’ve been working through a backlog of covers for all of the wonderful, patient people who were willing to wait for me to finish my two months off.
- That two months off? It was supposed to be for writing, but we had a personal/financial disaster and were thinking of other things. That pesky RL! The bad thing is, I haven’t written a lot since.
- I will start writing again.
- I started a project over the holidays of doing freehand painting, which I want to continue with after I’ve worked through the backlog.
- I was late to the party on shows such as Dexter and Breaking Bad, and am almost finished with Dexter – I’m down to the last three episodes wherein it apparently goes all to hell. /cry
- I’ve been playing a bit of Warcraft (having resubbed for a month or so), but basically am in a current state of meh about most games.
- I haven’t gone to Paris, nor learned to speak Japanese, nor created anything worldshaking.
Anyway, back to work. If you didn’t realise it, this is a pathetically obvious attempt at work avoidance, so it’s back to the salt mines. The art mines. Whatever… :)
*hugs you* Just remember that you can only do so much. How I stop myself from going crazy: prioritise. Once the main priorities are complete, go onto the rest. If that’s not able to be finished, it will have to come later. We aren’t robots!
I second your point about Google+, by the way. I just do not understand the point in it… Twitter has the people. Need to post something longer, Facebook and blogs are there. Want to reblog something, Pinterest and Tumblr are there. It just.. doesn’t serve a purpose as far as I can tell. GET OFF MY LAWN, GOOGLE! ;)
It’s energy as much as anything. I used to be able to get three times the work done as anyone around me: work fast, think fast, no wasted time. But now…I suppose it’s getting older but the day just slips away from me. Thank all the gods I’m not working in a corporate tech environment anymore, I’d be a waste of a desk. :/
I’m the same, if it makes you feel better. I’ll be at work with tonnes to do and then I have to start cleaning to prepare to close and there’s just not enough time. Everybody else seems to manage but.. hmm..
I made my New Years writing/creative resolutions like most of my blogger peeps did. I did not, however, post them and now, nearly three weeks in, I wonder if I didn’t because I knew in the back of my mind, as reasonable as they were, I wasn’t going to be able to follow through on them :-T ! It’s like as soon as I get some resolve, life explodes in my face with demands and distractions that simply can’t be ignored. I wish you were feeling a bit more on target, but I must admit it’s comforting to know I’m not the only one struggling with overwhelming desires that are presently rather underwhelming in their output. I wonder if it isn’t my own sense of perfectionism that’s to blame. It’s one of my serious flaws. To be frank another is comparing. I read a semi-serious editorial the other day at the Huffington Post about Generation Y that even though I’m at the end of the Baby-Boomer era still had some things for me. It mentioned how social media has built up unrealistic expectations in some due to the fact that because peeps are, for the most part, posting their good news, it’s easy to assume all are doing well if not better than ourselves when in reality the majority keeps the bad news on the down low. This makes for a false impression of success on their part and failure on mine. I’m not saying this is you so much as pointing out how easy it is to get down on one’s self. You are NOT a bad, bad person. You simply have an uber-cool creative gland that works overtime and we admire your grit and determination…and the fact that you are a real-life human being with real-life challenges! Here’s to all of us true humans fighting the dark forces of life to realize our lists! You’re leading the way Ravven and we’er right behind ya!
With me it has nothing to do with perfectionism – I always set fairly generic, easily-achievable goals such as “Get fit.” “Do more writing.” “Travel somewhere this year.” And these low-bar goals may as well be something like “Climb Mt. Everest” for all the success I have. *sigh*