2013 have been a strange year for me. The biggest issue has been my complete failure in finding a way to manage my time appropriately. Work has become an ever growing presence in my life, time with my family now has to be scheduled – since the teens would only stop by for clothes and money if I didn’t. Hard for me to believe that there was a time that, while I never had tons of free time, I had at least enough to write some, read some, blog some, and still watch movies, have family time, and do whatever else struck my fancy.
(Now that I think of it, I make some sort of apology/excuse for not posting or visiting almost every time I put something up. Maybe I should just have an “I’m Sorry” tab that people can read. That way I can just link to it every time I post.)
Those days are gone. Not just work, but also things like my house, which seems to be aging worse than I am. Of course, with the house, that means I deal with its aging problems by building new things, adding new features, and generally spending more and more of my money and time trying to make it better.
The latest problem has been the rear deck, always a frightening thing to see, but of late has become a danger to us all. The new one will be up to code, and it should much larger. So yay.
But I’ve really slowed way down on my writing. I’ve probably written less in 2013 than I have since 2005 or so, back when I decided to really start dedicating myself to learning the craft. It’s depressing somewhat. But it is what it is.
So, of course, I’ve decided to try NaNoWriMo again. I think I’ve completed the challenge five or six times now. But I can’t say for sure. I don’t participate every year, and I think I did it for the first time around ’06. So we can do the math and figure out that I’ve missed a few years in there.
It makes me nervous because November promises to be a difficult month for me time-wise. But I’m starting to realize that I can’t just ‘fit’ writing into what I’m doing, I have to force it in, or I won’t do it anymore.
Really, it’s a big moment for me, realizing that.
So, I’m going all in I guess. I’ve got my genre picked out – Urban Fantasy – and my premise all set (It’s actually super awesome, maybe the best idea anyone has ever had about anything*). I've not quite got the plot figured out, which is okay, although I’ll feel much more comfortable if I can get my ending set, so I at least know where I’m going, even if I’m a bit confused on how I’m going to get there.
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*Okay, I know there are arguments to be made for some other things being as great as my novel idea. In my head, the most profound insights ever from humans go something like this:
1) The premise of my NaNo project this year
2) Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity
3) Darwin’s Origin of Species (even if you disagree with his conclusions… it’s damned amazing)
4) The Scientific Method
5) Fred Hoyle’s work on the life cycle of stars
6) Descartes ideas on the nature of the human soul (despite how ridiculously wrong he almost has to be… still a great idea).
7) Anything Tyco Brahe did, because… damn.
8) The discovery of the circulatory system.
9) The germ theory of disease.
10) Newton’s discovery of Calculus.
11) And Gravity
12) Bruno’s belief in alien worlds.
13) The many world’s aspect of quantum mechanics
14) Alfred Wallace’s theory of evolution (because he was crazy!)
15) Lamarck’s theory of evolution (because I have a bet riding on this one)
16) The standard model of quantum mechanics (pretty cool, but not AS awesome as #13)
17) My grandmother’s fried pie
18) The Copernican Principal
19) The Atari 2600
20) The first Halo game
21) The discovery of modern Fertilizer (btw Fritz Haber won the Nobel Prize for this… but he also invented modern chemical weapons… and personally led the “Gas Troops” for Germany in WWI and killed thousands (his wife committed suicide over this and thought him a monster). Four other future Nobel winners served under him – if memory serves (always dicey), he was later convicted of War Crimes. Seriously, this is where the Mad Scientist stereotype comes from).
22) The electric guitar
23) Anything Leonardo Da Vinci did (who should probably be higher, but I don’t feel like messing with the list now… just mentally insert him up there ahead of Tyco Brahe – I mean, I don’t recall Brahe making into any Assassin’s Creed Games – then again, Brahe had a pet Moose that got drunk and died after it fell down the steps at a party. So there – also, lost his nose in a duel over who was better at math, and he died because he refused to pee… so, his actual accomplishment, cataloging stars, well, you try doing it so well when you’re partying with a Moose, losing body parts and obsessively trying to hide your data from competitors).
24) Oh, Assassin’s Creed games
25) SETI
26) Playing Cards (I should totally look this up… who invented those things? Because they are amazing)
27) Kepler’s three laws (might have come a lot sooner, if Brahe weren’t so weird about sharing data – he viewed Kepler as a rival).
Were I to start over from scratch, I’d wager my list would look much differently. Whatever though, as of this moment in time, these are the greatest things that humanity ever came up with. I’d note that my Grandmother has something on this list, so, yay. She is pretty great.
