The last week has been — to my mind — extremely productive. Unfortunately, that also means that the time I’ve spent here has been diverted to other passions. There are a limited number of hours in a day; not to mention, a life. I’ve started to realize that WordPress might be referred to as Social Media (where the user is the product), and so I’ve been pulling off of it a bit recently, in favor of my own projects and needs.

I have still been writing a lot. Some of this is through self-directed study, and some of this is just in different places: electronic and not. I’ve restarted writing for at least 15 minutes per day (I can produce about one A5 page per 15 minutes), which is good. I’ve also found that writing by hand, in private, is much more…it’s freeing, you know. I don’t have to worry about whether my content is appropriate to share with the world, or what consequences could arise from putting my thoughts into writing.

I’ve been working through the book, Creating a Life Worth Living, by Carol Lloyd — I’m about to start with Chapter 5. This book is essentially for creative types who wish to live lives centered around/honoring their creativity, and still live well. I had stalled for a number of weeks on two of the activities at the end of Chapter 2, then was amazed when it only took me 25 minutes to complete them…

I’ve finished reading Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are, by Daniel Nettle. I’m kind of sad it didn’t go on. Potential/”the dream” being more alluring than fulfillment/”the realization”, is a pattern with me: was it nicer when I had the rest of the book to look forward to? (Now that I think of it, that pattern has gone back at least to high school. In real life.) That’s very important to recognize, because it means that unless I do something about it, there is at least one inbuilt reason to stall.

I also finished Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain — which was recommended to me a very long time ago. I had lost interest in it, until I got to the point in Nettle where I realized I have a personality profile common to artists. This is the same personality profile that Cain seems to be talking about under the term, “Introversion,” at least if you check the back of the book where she gives notes on her use of the term.

Quiet is not really the most helpful book, however — at least, not in my life situation. It is important for historical reasons (it was one of the first recent books that got people talking about the value of introversion, was signal-boosted by Oprah, and is referenced both in Nettle, and in Me, Myself and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being, by Brian R. Little).

There are still a lot of other things I have to deal with…though not all of them are pressing, right now. I’ve gotten to the point where I now know that I can dream up more projects than I will ever have time to complete. This means that at some point, I’m going to have to select which ones I’d prefer to do, over others.

And now that I see what I’ve just written, I can see that it looks pretty classically like it’s coming from a “Generator”-type place (Lloyd refers to “Generators” as people who are good at creating lots of new projects…but not necessarily motivated to complete them [granted that it’s pretty normal to be more than one “type”]). I do have some follow-through, but I’d like to work more on actualization of the dreams, as versus spend a lot more time, dreaming.

I do recognize at this moment, that I am working on actualizing myself.

Otherwise; well, there have been some other things going on. I’ve been able to start using a new text-editor. I’m really not sure how I like it, so far. It’s great for writing, well, text (!) — which in turn is excellent for pure writing — but not as great where it comes to comic scripting. It’s kind of like the format of this blog: it works very well if one’s text is the key attracting factor — but if we’re working with images? Where the images might be more important to communication than the words are?

Yes, that’s different.

I’m still not totally sure whether the next project I’ve laid out in front of myself, will be better written as a literary novel with accompanying concept art, or as a scripted comic. The first is definitely further within my own comfort zone, but the second is alluring — and may reach a wider audience. Either one of them would help me develop my art skills, and practice my writing skills.

The major issue that I can see is that the project as it is now, contains “mature” content, and thus may be more likely to draw controversy if it’s illustrated — and thus seen as a, “children’s,” medium. (Granted that both the definition of “mature” and “children’s” are culturally dependent, from a subculture I don’t share, and don’t really make sense, anyway.) But, then, you don’t always base your decisions on fear of reprisal — especially if it’s going to come, regardless.

And, to be honest, a lot of this may get shaken out far before I can say any of the drafts are presentable. I won’t know until I engage the process, first.

Yeah, that sounds good! Maybe I’ll try and dive into this project (without an outline? Again without an outline)? I know outlines help, I’m just not incredibly motivated to take the time out to make them.

It’s either this, or work on my daily free-write, or start reading Chapter 5 of Lloyd…