Accountability and Progress: Week 9

Last week, man... Last week was a hot mess.  It felt like everything conspired to keep me from what I was intending to work on.

Realistically, I knew about a lot of it in advance.  I had a farrier appointment for my horses, my dad had a procedure I needed to drive him to and from (and waited with him beforehand and while he was in surgery), and (on a happier note) I had a ride scheduled with a friend on Friday.

Looking back at last week's post, I guess I did expect my time during the week to be limited.  My goal was to try to focus on my cleanup and organization project, which I did get a little done on, but not as much as I had hoped!

This coming week will be a little limited too.  This afternoon I am actually writing this post from the cancer center at the hospital; my dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer, and today is his first chemo treatment, so I wanted to be here with him.  As a result, today's productivity will be limited, as I can only work on my computer and my focus will be a little iffy.  I also have a ride and potentially a quick farrier appointment (to fix a shoe that's coming off already) later in the week, but I've scheduled a lot around those things, as there is a lot I've been putting off that I want to get done this week.  We'll see how that goes.

Here's the rundown.

Doll stringing ebook: I'm glad I didn't put pressure on myself to work on this last week, as I would just have felt bad when I didn't accomplish anything.  I do have this scheduled for later this week, but on a quieter day so that it's hopefully more likely to happen.

Ruby Ransome: I've officially decided to defer this to August.  That's only a week away, but I have a feeling this week would be better spent prioritizing a few other things.

Blogging and website maintenance: Other than the weekly blog post, I didn't get much else done with my blogs and websites last week.  I probably need to start working more with affiliate links soon, but I'm not going to worry about it this coming week.  I did get some work done on social media posts and reels for promoting my doll business.

Other projects: I did have a little more work for the museum last week, such as an emergency board meeting to approve some work, and some time I spent brainstorming with another volunteer for future events.  I also did get a little work done on the cleaning and organizing, including some time I think I forgot to track in Toggl, but I still have plenty more that needs to get done, hopefully this week!

With so much going on this week, I am going to prioritize finishing the cleanup in a few high priority areas.  Once that's done, I need to do some doll repair, photography (for the doll stringing ebook), and filming (for my websites and social media), so I really need those spaces clean for that.

Hopefully the more relaxed schedule this week will make it a little easier to manage my time!

Accountability and Progress: Week 8

This week has started out like a herd of cats, which is why it's Tuesday and I'm just now writing this.

Last week I talked about how the holiday week had made productivity a little difficult, but I was still pleased with what I'd gotten done, and had big plans for the week.  And you know, my Toggl report for the week does show a pretty productive week.  Early in the week, I blogged, worked on Instagram posts for my doll business, and turned my business logo for the doll business into a watermark for photos and videos (something I'm pretty pleased with).  Later in the week, most of my time was consumed with dog sitting and prepping for a doll museum event on the weekend that I was helping with.

I'd had too much planned though, so some things got shuffled off to this week, and I've already kicked off the week by deferring much of yesterday's stuff to later in the week as well.  It's at least partly a busyness hangover from the weekend, but I'm trying to put myself back to work today so I can salvage the rest of the week.

I already know Thursday won't be super productive, as I'm taking my dad to a minor outpatient surgery in the morning and expect to be told to stay with him for at least the rest of the day.  But with any luck I can get a few important things done with the remaining two and a half days this week (the rest of today, Wednesday, and Friday).

Here's the rundown.

Doll stringing ebook: This did get deferred again, and I'm considering reevaluating my week and pushing this to next week.  Maybe I'll have more of a chance to work on it if I schedule it for early in the week.

Ruby Ransome: At this point I'm acknowledging to myself that I'm not going to succeed at Camp NaNoWriMo this July.  I'm considering deferring work on my novel to August so that I can focus right now on getting caught up on some things I need to do around the house and for my doll business.

Blogging and website maintenance: I'm pleased with the work I did on my blogs and websites, as well as my social media.  Social media especially is important for my doll business.  I'm lumping the work on my logo and watermark into this category, since it was primarily created for my social media pictures and video, and social media is more or less an extension of my websites.

Other projects: As expected, the museum event prep and the event itself took up a large chunk of my time last week as well as over the weekend.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to as much of the cleaning and organizing as I'd wanted, so for now I'm deferring my writing projects so I can focus and get this done.  It's really keeping me from moving forward on some of my most important (and income-generating) projects.

Since I'm expecting my availability to be more limited this week, it'll be important to prioritize as much as possible.  For right now I'm prioritizing my cleanup and organization project and not much else, in the hopes of finally making some much-needed progress!

Accountability and Progress: Week 7

As expected, last week was a bit of a cluster.  Between my husband being off on Monday, the holiday Tuesday, and then the mad scramble to try to make a regular week out of three days, I didn't get everything done I'd wanted.  Plus we started house/dog sitting for my husband's parents on Wednesday, so I am returning home every day to feed the cats.  To top it all off, I picked up another dog on Thursday, one who can't be left alone very easily, so either one of us had to be at my in-laws' house or we had to take the dog with us all weekend.

Despite the challenges, I'm pretty happy with what I got done last week.  It hasn't been mentioned before in my weekly blog posts, but one of the items languishing on my to-do list has been revamping my logo for my doll business, Against Doll Odds.  I wanted to finish working on the logo so that I could redesign my business cards and create some other printed materials.  I worked on that for a long time, and while I'm not ready to place my orders yet, I have finished designs for new business cards, hang tags for dolls I work on, and stickers.

Here is the rest of the rundown for last week, and my goals for the coming week:

Doll stringing ebook: As expected, with the short week I didn't get anything done on this last week.  I had mentioned last week how this kept getting shifted back, week after week, so I was going to try to do it earlier in the week this week. It is currently scheduled for Wednesday, which isn't as early as I'd originally planned, but can't be helped.

Ruby Ransome: I was planning on restarting work on Ruby Ransome last week for Camp NaNoWriMo, but with all the busyness Monday and Tuesday, and the chaos of the rest of the week, it didn't happen.  I'm hoping to get started this week, even if I don't get as much done as I had planned this month.

New novel idea: I'm going to drop this off the list as I'm setting it aside for now.  I'll pick it back up once the draft for Ruby is finished.

Blogging and website maintenance: I did schedule blogging time on my calendar last week, but most of it got pushed aside when the shortened week got too busy too fast.  This is when I'm really glad for this exercise of blogging about my goals and progress every week, though, because writing this post reminded me that I wanted to work on some new posts with affiliate links.  I'm scheduling a little blogging on my calendar to work on that.

Other projects: With the holiday week and the house/dog sitting, I didn't get much time to work on cleaning and organizing this past week.  This needs to be a priority this week because it is interfering with my ability to take pictures and work on dolls, so I currently have it scheduled for today (though today is quickly slipping away from me).  Hopefully once I get it all clean and organized, I can keep it that way, too.

Other projects also include some doll work, filming, and also prepping for an event at the Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls and Toys this weekend (I'm on the museum board and often volunteer to help put together events).  So I know that will take up some of my time as well, during the week as well as on the weekend.  I also need to get to work on selling things, as I've been talking about for a few weeks now; I know I don't have time this week, so I'm going to tentatively schedule it for next week.

Funny how being an adult means that I'm weirdly pleased I have a full week ahead of me to work on all of this, instead of a partial week interrupted by a holiday.  I do have a lot I want to accomplish, so hopefully I can get a fair bit of it done!

Accountability and Progress: Week 6

So much happened this last week that it feels like more than a week has passed since my last weekly blog post.  It's a good thing, as last week was a pretty productive week, but it was also obscenely busy, right through the weekend.  Today is a bit of a reprieve, but then the rest of this week is going to be busy as well.

Before the madness begins, here's a quick rundown of what I accomplished from last week and what I'm planning for this week:

Doll stringing ebook: I am noticing that this is getting shifted back, week after week.  I do need to work on it, as I want to get the ebook finished and back up for sale.  Unfortunately this week is going to be extra difficult so I don't think I'll be able to work on it until next week.  I'm scheduling some time for it earlier in the week, rather than putting it last as I have been every week.

Ruby Ransome: Last week didn't go as planned, and I didn't get to work on this after all.  I plan to start tonight, since this is now Camp NaNoWriMo and I want to take this month's challenge more seriously.

New novel idea: Still keeping this on the list for later.  I thought of an idea last night for a future Ruby series installment, too, so I need to sketch that out a little as well.

Blogging and website maintenance: This is the area where I feel like I made the most progress in the past week, and my Toggl report confirms my suspicions.  I worked a lot on my websites and blogs in the past week.  On Monday when I was procrastinating doing something else (ha), I reapplied to the Amazon Affiliate program, and spent some time changing my ad notices on all my websites, creating new posts, and going back through old posts and updating old links.  I worked on it a little throughout the week, too, and as a result was more prolific on my blogs than I have been in a while.  It was a good feeling, as I have missed blogging on the daily, plus there is the potential for this to bring in some additional income.

In the coming week I intend to work on it some more.  There are a few other posts and pages that I need to write or finish adding affiliate links to, plus I have some new post ideas that I'd like to spend some time on.  This brings up an interesting observation, though: I rarely schedule blogging time on my calendar.  I need to start doing that.

Other projects: Last week I made cleaning and organizing my doll spaces a priority for the week, and I actually did get a lot done.  I didn't get some other things done that had to come after the cleaning and organizing, but that's okay.  I still have more to do, and with the lack of time this coming week, I'm uncertain how much time I'll have to spend on it.  But I'll try to work on it as much as possible, since photographing and selling depends a lot these spaces being clean and organized well enough to use.

The week promises to make finding enough time pretty difficult, between the holiday tomorrow, house sitting for my husband's parents starting Wednesday, and dog sitting for another family starting Thursday.  Hopefully I'll be able to carve out some time to accomplish at least the most important things.  I think my priorities this week will be cleaning/organizing, blog/website work, and of course, working on my novel for Camp NaNoWriMo.

Surface Go 3 Update and Review

Please note that this post contains affiliate links.  As an Amazon Affiliate, I earn commissions from sales made through these links.

A couple of months ago, I posted about a last-minute decision to get a Surface Go 3 as a second computer.  I had a few different reasons for the purchase, the biggest one being that I was going on a trip and didn't feel comfortable taking my regular laptop (my lifeline, basically) on the trip with me.  So I got a mini computer, basically, that I could load all the important stuff onto, and just took that.

I posted a review of the Surface Go 3 after the trip, but I'd only been using the laptop for a short time at that point, so I wanted to post about it again now that I'm more familiar with it.

As it turned out, buying the Surface Go was a really good decision that I've been very happy with.  As its name suggests, it has been a perfect "go computer" that I can take with me while leaving my important work machine at home.  It's not as powerful and has nowhere near as much storage, and I had to leave "S mode" to install non-Windows apps (like Scrivener and Plottr).  But I keep most of my work in the cloud to switch easily between the two computers anyway, and breaking it out of S mode doesn't seem to have harmed it any.

One of the things I like best about it is that I don't always feel like I have to carry it in a laptop bag or backpack.  I got a really nice drop-proof case for it, basically an Otter Box for a Surface, so I just carry it with me by itself.

I wasn't sure I would use it much once I got home for a trip, though I liked the idea of having a backup computer.  As a writer, I've always found that computers tend to die at the worst times, and my main computer is admittedly getting older.  It's nearly three years old now!  So having a backup is a good idea.

But more importantly, I've been able to take the little Surface places I wouldn't want to take my regular laptop, and with an ease I wouldn't normally have.  It's easy to carry with me, and I don't worry about losing everything should the computer be damaged or lost or stolen.  I can tuck it beneath the seat in the car instead of carrying it with me everywhere, and no one knows it is there.  It makes it easy to take it with me when I want to work somewhere else: in the car, at a restaurant, or even just in bed.

It's not good for my main laptop to be plugged in all the time, so I need to start using it unplugged more often.  But I am very much enjoying the flexibility of the little Surface Go, and I love the security of having a backup machine!

Camp NaNoWriMo Looms

A couple days ago I got a reminder that Camp NaNoWriMo is coming up.  As if I could forget!  As I've mentioned in my weekly accountability and progress posts, I've been trying to get going on my novel again so I would be ready for Camp NaNo.

Ready or not, though, here it comes!  Camp starts on Saturday, July 1st... ironically, the day we'll be at Fan Expo in Denver.  At the Expo this year, we have both a community table for the Denver region of NaNoWriMo, and a panel on Saturday that will provide an overview of writing a novel during National Novel Writing Month.

It's hard to believe it's already less than a week away from the Fan Expo and the start of NaNoWriMo.  I had planned on using June to help me get a jump on my goal of finishing the draft by the end of July, but now it's looking like I probably won't have it finished until a little later this summer.  I think I'm probably a good two months from finishing the draft, and then I'll still need to do at least one more round of revisions.

I haven't done a full 50,000 word challenge in the summer since they started letting you pick your own goal for Camp, and I'm not sure I want to put that much pressure on myself.  I've always found it's a little hard to write 50,000 words in the summer months, probably partly because there's more going on in the summer, but also partly because I don't have all the write-ins and other events to help carry me through.  But I'm contemplating setting at least a similar goal for the month of July, just because I want to get as far as possible in the draft before month's end.

We'll see.  I'm hoping that as I get back to work on the novel this week, I'll get a feel for how much I can write a day if I'm confining my writing to just an hour or two, probably at the end of the day.  I don't think I can spare as much time as I would normally devote to it during November.

What about you?  Do you participate in Camp NaNo?  What's your goal for the month?

Advertising Update

A little while back I was kicked off the Amazon Affiliate program for not making the required three sales in the first 180 days from my application.  I later found out I did make one sale, though, so I decided to make a plan and try again.

This has been on my to-do list and mentioned in my weekly accountability and progress posts, but I kept putting it off.  Yesterday as I was procrastinating on other things, I decided to do something about that affiliate program, so I reapplied and started updating links on my blogs.

I probably have some more links to update, but more importantly, I have a plan for staying in the program this time.

I've updated all my advertising notices on my websites to acknowledge that I'm now advertising with Amazon Affiliate links again, and replaced some of the links and notices in my blog posts.

I promise not to make any intrusive product posts, and please know that any recommendations are real.  I'm just hoping to make a little money on the recommendations I would share anyway!