Monday, August 7, 2017

Sometimes Scraping By Is Good Enough

Written by Kodi Wolf at 11:38 PM

July was a rather challenging month and that's continued going in to August.

My desktop pretty much died the first week of July. Luckily, it's not what I've been using to write on, but it is what I use to update this site and keep track of bills and play games, so I had to get a new one. But my anxiety has been through the roof and setting it up is freaking me out (what if it doesn't work and I'm already past the return date, so I'll be out the money or have to pay to fix it, etc.), so it's still sitting unplugged in the living room.

I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist, so I've been doing ice, wearing a brace, and trying not to use it as much as possible.

I popped a filling right before Corene's cataract surgery on the 18th (which went perfect, by the way), but with all the follow-up appointments for that, I still haven't gotten in to see my dentist to get it fixed, so I've just been using that over-the-counter temporary filling stuff.

Then I broke my toe last Monday.

And I've been passing a kidney stone for the past few days.

Oh, and my cornea dystrophy (Salzmann's Nodular Degeneration) is getting worse, but frankly I'm terrified of the surgery for it, so I've just been bumping up the font on my screen.

And just to add insult to injury, I started my period today.

The one bright spot in all of this has been how well Corene's cataract surgery went. She's gone from 20/25 vision in her right eye with glasses to nearly 20/20 vision without glasses, which is just awesome. She'll still need to get new glasses at some point, but for now she's just been wearing readers to see small stuff.

Despite all of that, I've managed to continue to write every day, even on days when I didn't think I had it in me, but it's definitely felt like an uphill battle.

My total word count for July was 18,826, which averages out to 607 words per day. My lowest words per day was 100 and my highest was 3,393.

My goal for this month is to keep doing what I've been doing and try to maintain a daily average of 500 words. At first, I was a little behind (only averaging about 450 words per day), but I caught up today (I'm now at 506).

But yeah, for the time being, scraping by with the bare minimum feels like a major accomplishment. I mean I haven't given up and rather than let this stuff be an excuse to fail, I've modified my expectations, which isn't easy for a perfectionist. And I'm doing my best to work within those limitations that are outside my control and still achieve my goals, which is to write every day.

All things considered, I'm actually doing okay.

Now that I think about it, I did more than 100 words a day extra above and beyond my basic goal of 500 words a day, which over the course of the month was an extra 3,326 words. That's actually pretty good.

Okay, with that little pep talk, I'm going to see if I can take my mind off all this stressful stuff and go play in one of my worlds.