Gray Day Procrasti-nay-tion

Is there any particular circumstances, any sort of day where you just know you’re not going to get anything done?

For me, it’s the gray day™.

I woke up yesterday morning to a damp, overcast day.  It had poured overnight and threatened to rain more most of the afternoon.

And I struggled with motivation.  All. Day. Long.

It was not a surprise to me.  I’ve realized as an adult how much my mood is tied to the weather — or, probably more accurately, the sun.

My dad has a story about me in high school, probably about eight years after we moved to the Denver area.  He says (I don’t remember this) that he was driving me to school one winter morning, and I was looking out the window and said mournfully, “I haven’t seen the sun in three days.”  And he realized then that I’d become as heliotropic (dependent on the sun for my mood) as a native.

Living in Denver, where we get 300 days of sunshine a year*, we become really accustomed to enjoying sunshine year-round.  Even in the winter, our snowstorms alternate with bright, sunny days that melt snow and make the temperature feel much warmer than it actually is.

As a young teenager, I had been in Colorado long enough — and during formative years of my childhood — that I was starting to feel that connection to the sun.  And now, after nearly four decades in the state, I have realized how entirely dependent I have become.  I have never been an early riser, but I have noticed I get up earlier in the summer fairly naturally, and just in general tend to be more motivated and engaged when the days are longer.

Of course, not every day is bright and sunny, and on overcast days like yesterday I definitely feel the energy has been sucked out of me.

Ultimately, I did get a little writing done, but only about 60 words of my novel and two-thirds of this blog post.  I’m glad I tried, but I hope today will be better!  I was worried today would be a repeat of yesterday when I woke up to another overcast sky, but thankfully by midday the sun had come out.  We’re not out of the woods yet, as we have rain forecasted for later today and, honestly, for a lot of the days coming up — but I’ll take advantage of the sunshine motivation while I can!

*Note: The “300 days of sunshine a year” claim has been theoretically debunked by defining a “sunny day” as a “mostly clear or clear day,” that is, cloud cover over 25% or less of the sky.  I thoroughly disagree with this definition, because even on days that have, say, 50% cloud cover, it still feels like a “sunny day” because of how rapidly clouds tend to move across the sky in Denver due to air currents coming off the mountains.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 22: Writing Starts NOW

Last week was a busy week, as advertised.  Between the shortened week, two trips out to the barn so my leaser’s daughter could ride, and a day of puppy sitting, there was a lot I didn’t get done.  I had expected it, but it’s still hard sometimes not to focus on everything I didn’t do.

Writing

I wrote four days out of seven, same as the previous week, which I’m pleased about.  I did not achieve my perhaps overly optimistic goal of 2,000 words per day.  I had a couple days of 400-600 words, and a couple days of 20-30 words, so while I did manage to keep up the habit (for the most part) I could stand to devote a little more time to it this week.

I also got a couple of blog posts finished, and a couple of social media posts on my author Instagram to go with them.

Decluttering and Organization

I knew I wasn’t going to have a lot of time to finish up the work on the garden, but between my busy week and the weather, I didn’t end up working on it at all.  I did, however, start some organization in the doll room, which I’m pleased about.  The toughest thing right now will be managing my impulse to abandon the garden half-finished so I can focus on the doll room.  I do hope to finish the major work on the garden this week, but it’s going to take some effort not to jump ship without finishing it.

Dolls

As expected, I didn’t have time to work on any doll projects last week.  I do need to get back to work on that this week, though, since I have the doll pop-up shop coming up at the museum in (gulp) just under three weeks.

Taxes

This category saw a surprising and dramatic increase this past week, and is probably part of the reason why I didn’t get to work on the garden.  On Saturday I started working on downloading records from PayPal, and ended up working on tax records for several hours.  It was satisfying to get a bunch of work done on that.  I still have a ways to go, but hopefully spending about four hours on it on Saturday will help to jumpstart momentum for the future.

Lessons Learned

Last week was a challenging week because it was so busy, but I think I did surprisingly well at managing it, all things considered.  This week should be much easier, thankfully, with fewer demands on me away from the house (but still a couple).  I want to take advantage of the chance to establish a good routine for working on both my novel and taxes catchup, and also hopefully use the opportunity (weather permitting) to finish up the garden.  And later in the week I hope to get going on doll projects, so that I have more dolls rehabbed in time for the pop-up shop on the 21st.

With that in mind, writing starts NOW!

RIP NaNoWriMo

Two months after announcing that NaNoWriMo would be shutting down due to funding issues, the site is down.  If you hadn’t yet saved your participation data, it appears that window is closed… assuming the site doesn’t resurrect itself, but that seems unlikely given the announcement at the end of March.

I don’t know exactly when the site went down, but it’s been sometime since last week, as I believe the last time I checked it was almost exactly a week ago.

I wrote last year about word count trackers to use as alternatives for NaNoWriMo.  I tried all of them during November, and settled on TrackBear as a clear favorite.  One of the advantages had been the ability to download your writing stats from the NaNoWriMo site, but of course that’s no longer a consideration.  Even so, I highly recommend TrackBear.  The only thing I think it’s missing is a progress widget.

NaNoWriMo may be officially gone, but the spirit of the challenge will persevere.  There are many of us who plan to maintain the local communities and even pursue the original challenge of writing a 50,000-word novel in November (or, really, any month — some communities are changing it to a month that makes more sense for them).

The Denver region intends to keep the original spirit of NaNoWriMo alive for our local participants.  We had already established a year-round write-in and, once the scandal broke last year, we started taking our region in a more independent, unaffiliated direction.  It turns out it’s a good thing we already started that process, as we’re fully on our own now!  We’ll see in the coming months what, exactly, the future of the Denver NaNoWriMo region will look like.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 21: Revisiting My Goals

I knew last week would be rough, since I was working early mornings and long days both Monday and Tuesday.  I had intended Wednesday as a recovery day — since I know I need a chance to recover after something like that — but Wednesday ended up so full, between riding, barn chores, and haircuts, that I didn’t feel like it was much of a recovery day at all.  So I ended up taking Thursday as a recovery day, and I legitimately didn’t get much done on Thursday (by design).

Despite the challenges of the week, it wasn’t a bad week for my goals.

Writing

Last week saw a lot of writing.  I achieved my goal of a weekly blog post and Instagram post, of course, but I also wrote a piece for the doll museum’s newsletter, and I also worked on my novel four days out of the week’s seven.  Currently I have a three-day streak that I’m planning on extending to four days tonight, and hopefully keep going throughout the week.  Some of those days didn’t see a high word count, but over the weekend I had one day where I wrote nearly 2,000 words.  I also came to a realization that — but more about that later.

Decluttering and Organization

Once again, the only “decluttering” projects I accomplished this past week were in the garden.  We’re working on revamping the small flower bed, and I still need to finish cleaning up some of the detritus from years of disuse that are crammed into a corner of the patio.  That being said, lately I’ve been itching to work on the doll room, so I don’t think it’ll be long before I transition to working on that.

Dolls

Sadly, another week has gone by without any work on the dolls.  I do have that pop-up shop in four weeks, however, so I will need to get to work on them soon.  I don’t think it’ll be this week, since I’ll be pretty busy again this week, but next week I will need to start working on dolls again.

Taxes

I got back to work on sorting emails for taxes catchup, which I’m pleased about.  Hopefully I can keep that up.

Lessons Learned

On Saturday I started looking at the tentative writing, revising, and publishing schedule that I’d laid out months ago when I was making plans for when I want to self-publish.  I realized that after the paralysis that has plagued me for most of this year, I’m getting dangerously off-schedule.  I think I can still get back on track, but I’ll need to get my butt in gear if I’m going to still make the original schedule work.

With this in mind, I’m going to ramp up my writing expectations, even if that means backing off some of my other goals.  To finish my current novel’s first draft, I will need to write about 2,000 words a day — which normally would be a little bit of a challenge but doable; it’s just lately that writing that much a day (or writing every day, period) has become near impossible.

Saturday I nearly achieved that 2,000 words, but Sunday and yesterday I fell way short.  I will have to work hard at this if I want to get back on track and get this novel finished on time.

Unfortunately, this week is going to be a busy one: The friend I ride with is out of town, but her daughter leases from me one day a week too, so I’m taking her out to the barn to ride twice this week.  We rode together today and plan to ride again on Friday.  Combined with my day of puppy sitting tomorrow, that only leaves one day during the week to work on anything at home.  And the weekend will be busy, too, so I’m not going to have a lot of time for my goals.

With that in mind, I’m going to prioritize writing above all else.  If working on my novel is all I get done this week, that’s fine.  But if I have the time, I also want to work in the garden a little, mostly because I have a torn-up flower bed that needs to get righted and two plants that need to go into the ground ASAP.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 20: Growing Habits

Despite my concern that I’d end up with a productivity hangover, last week turned out to be relatively busy and productive.  I struggle not to be too hard on myself, though, because while I did get a lot done, I tend to overschedule myself and then feel bad for not being able to accomplish all of it.  But honestly, last week I did good.

Writing

I made a decent comeback in my goal to write most days.  I worked on my novel four out of seven days last week, maintaining a six-day streak.  I only let it slide when I was working a lot on other projects over the weekend.  I also posted once to my author Insta.

To review (because this was months ago and probably forgotten by now), my goals for 2025 were to write at least 80% of the days and to post to my author IG at least once a week.  I’ve struggled with the near-daily writing goal, unfortunately, and am currently sitting at only 42%.  I’ve had more success with posting to IG once a week, but I’d like to actually expand that and do more.

Decluttering and Organization

I worked a lot on the patio and garden this past weekend.  We’re currently working on the smaller flower bed, with the goal of getting everything planted within the next couple weeks.  This is the flower bed that’s right next to the patio, which we’ve been cleaning up and setting it up to be a space we can use.  I intend to use the garden as a backdrop for doll photos, and to sit out on the patio to work sometimes.

Once the patio and small flower bed are done, I want to focus on organizing my sale stuff and getting ready for the next sale, a small sale at the museum in about a month.  After that, my next priority is to clean up and organize my doll spaces, including organizing the projects I currently have in progress so that I can get back to working on them.

Dolls

I didn’t work on any dolls last week, but I did work a lot on planning for the museum’s Fall Show in early September.  Like last year, I’ve scheduled a couple of doll programs and a workshop.  It was a lot of work at the last minute, but I’m pleased with the programming!

On Thursday I also toured the hotel that is hosting our Fall Show along with several other people from the committee, and returned on Friday to get pictures for the Fall Show packet.  The pictures turned out great!

And I suppose also on the subject of pictures, I took some time around midweek to get some good doll pictures.  I was feeling in a bit of a slump at that time of the week, so it was good to get pictures and feel like I was doing something productive, even if it was something fun.

Taxes

I didn’t get anything done on this last week, but plan to get caught up this week

Lessons Learned

I went through a slump midweek last week and was very hard on myself for not getting enough done, so it’s kind of a surprise to look back and see how productive and busy the week actually was.  It’s a reminder that 1) a sluggish day does not mean I’m unproductive the rest of the time, and 2) I’m too hard on myself with my expectations.  I know these things, but it’s good to remind myself of them occasionally to balance out how hard I am on myself.

This week is going to be a rough one.  I am working long days outside of the house today and tomorrow, and while it’s the kind of job that gives me plenty of time to work on other things, it’s also mentally fatiguing to be up early and “always on” for so much of the day two days in a row.  So I’m planning Wednesday as a recovery day, and I’ll get to work on other things starting on Thursday.  This does mean I have fewer days available for things that require me to be at home (organizing, working on dolls, etc.).  I know this and yet the challenge will be remembering that and not being hard on myself when I inevitably don’t get as much of those things done this week!

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 19: Taking Shape

Last week started out on the strugglebus, as I mentioned when I didn't even publish my weekly post until Wednesday.  The weekend was extremely productive, though, as we got a lot done on the patio.  We're creating a space that I'm hoping to be able to use for work and relaxation, and I'm pretty pleased.

Next up will be inside projects.  There's a lot more to do there!

Writing

I'm trying to fight my way back to a daily writing habit, but it's not coming easily — which is frustrating, because I maintained a regular writing habit for the majority of last year.  But this is a different year, obviously, with very different struggles.

So last week, I wrote my weekly blog post and posted to my author IG — the bare minimum of my goals for the year — but I did not work on my novel at all until this weekend.  I wrote about 200 words on Saturday and worked on a little research last night.  That makes two days in a row, and I'm hoping to extend that streak out into this week as well.

Decluttering and Organization

This is where my week shone — not because I organized anything inside (unfortunately) but because I got so much work done on the patio.  All of our orders arrived, so we spent the weekend putting together furniture and storage bins and shelving.  I think I mentioned that I feel I need to get this done first, even though there are more important projects inside, because otherwise I'll lose my window.  Granted, the "window" is more about planting than putting together patio furniture, but I've been thinking of it as a whole unit.  I hope to get said planting done in the next couple of weekends, and to be able to start using the space this week.

Dolls

No progress here last week.  I do have at least one project that has to happen this week by necessity, and I'd like to get back into working on dolls on a weekly, if not daily, basis.  The museum and I have scheduled a doll sale for June 21, where another vendor and I will have a couple of tables of space to sell at alongside the museum's gift shop, so I need to start getting ready for that.

Taxes

I still need to call PayPal about my issues getting my transaction history, but that ended up on hold all last week.  I've set aside some time tomorrow to do it.  I'm also hoping to get back to sorting through emails this week.

Lessons Learned

Last week was an odd week that started out less-than-productive, but ramped up in the last few days.  I know why, too: The arrival of our orders got me excited about working on the patio, and I rode that excitement through the rest of the weekend.  It's probably going to carry over into the next couple days, too, as I still have a patio umbrella to put together, patio lights to hang, and a flower bed to prep for new plants.

There's also the possibility that the productivity of the week before impacted the first few days of last week.  I do tend to get what I've always called "productivity hangovers," which is where a period of extreme productivity or busyness tends to throw me into a period of paralysis, where I have a difficult time mustering the momentum and motivation to get anything done.

I'm a little worried that the busy, productive weekend I just had will have the same effect, but it may be delayed until later next week.  Right now I have a few more things to do on the patio today, plus I have a lot of busyness scheduled this week and early next week.  Perhaps I'll schedule a "recovery" day next week, and see if that helps me to get back to work post-recovery.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 18: Recovery, Interrupted

I started this post on Monday and now somehow it's Wednesday, if that gives you any idea of how this week is going.  I'm not even sure where the time has all gone!

Last week was, in short, chaos.  Coming off of an entire weekend of babysitting, I had two days of dog sitting for a different family, a day to ride, and then — on what was supposed to be my day to rest and recover -- my kitchen sink backed up and started leaking, and I spent Thursday and Friday dealing with that.

Somehow, despite all of this, the week looks very productive on paper.

Writing

I accomplished the bare minimum (my goal of one post) on social media.  I didn't work on my novel, except for jotting down an idea I had for a different novel, so I need to work on that this week.  But I did write a lot, with my politics newsletter going out near-daily (I took a couple days off over the weekend).

Decluttering and Organization

I worked on organizing the inventory I've accumulated (ordering before the de minimus exemption on small orders from China went away) for future doll shows and events.  This weekend we also did a lot of work in the garden and on the patio, cleaning up everything and starting to get it ready for this year.  I want to be able to write and take pictures out there this year.

Dolls

Working on doll projects is probably the only goal I did not make progress on this week, unless you count working on inventory.  Which... I suppose if I'm going to make this into a business, that probably does count.  After all, businesses often have a dedicated person to do purchasing for their stores.  So let's consider this one achieved for last week, too.

Taxes

I still need to catch up since filing the extension and I don't want to leave it all until the last minute, but I did work on it a little this week.  I need to get back to the email organization, but currently I'm working on getting all of my transaction records from PayPal.

Lessons Learned

It's funny how being under pressure sometimes makes me more productive.  It would seem like this might be my answer to everything, but unfortunately, it's not sustainable since I often develop what I affectionately call a "productivity hangover" afterward.

This week is already shaping up to be less productive than last week, but that's okay.  I've decided I'll just take it as it comes.  It's nice to be able to slow down a little this week, in any case.

We'll see what being able to slow down a little did to my goals when next week rolls around.