Mental Meanderings

A Day with the ToP

Yep that was pretty much my whole day. What was scheduled to 2 hours yesterday and 2 hours today ballooned out into spending most of the day working on "Invalid Item"  Admittedly I didn't get much of it done yesterday. I was struggling and gave up getting it done, headed to bed instead. Today I was more focused and actually managed to pull together what I hope is an interesting, educational and easy to understand article/lesson.

Of course it took about three hours today to research and write on top of the two hours research I did yesterday which is much longer than I had planned to spend. Thankfully I also realised that having ToP scheduled into my Tuesday morning doesn't make much sense since I can't actually wrap up the contest and announce winners until the afternoon.

Rearranging a schedule is all a part of the process I suppose. I also think I'll probably have to move my Daily Poetry Journal to late at night instead of the morning timeslot it's in at the moment since I struggle to be creative in the daytime. Either the chaos of my surroundings, the noise etc. or just the way my mind functions prevents me from really accomplishing much on a creative front during the day but my imagination is sparked during the evening so it gets easier from then when the kids have been fed, bathed and put to bed and the house becomes still but for the skittering of mice and the calm dozing snores from the dog asleep on the couch behind me. (I need a more effective rodent erradication device)

After finishing the article I then had to wrap up last weeks lesson which meant doing a bunch of indepth reviews. I actually enjoyed reviewing today. It's time consuming because I put a lot of effort into reviewing. At least with PPP members I know that for the most part they'll value my feedback. When reviewing randomly around the site, particularly in the newbie stack it's hard to know if a constructive critique will be well received. I hate spending thirty minutes on a review only to get a one liner response that kind of shoves it all back into my face. They happen a lot more than they should but I guess there are a lot of immature users amongst the thousands on this website.

The participants in the workshop however are actively honing the craft of poetry. They understand it's more than dumping words on a page. (At least I hope by week 15 they do.) I've watched a few of my earlier participants growing right before my eyes as they come to see and appreciate new aspects of poetry that they mightn't have wandered before and as they practice it every week over the past few months. It's amazing to see the improvement and feel some pride in hopefully, having made a difference to these talented poets.

Continuing on the PPP front I want to offer a big huge thanks to tirzahlaughs Everyone give her lots of hugs and kisses and make her blush from me. She's brave and mighty and wise. *grins* She's kindly agreed to give hosting a shot. I'm hoping she'll enjoy doing it and want to stick at it a while. She's going to host "Invalid Item"  and I'm really looking forward to learning more about poets across the ages. It's like my own personal university degree without the degree or the university or school fee's. I always wanted to do an English Lit. course and hopefully learning via the knowledge of other poets of all experience levels will be equivelent if not even better.

Meanwhile, although my hours were longer than planned I've managed to get a lot accomplished today. I feel very good about finishing up those reviews since reviewing isn't something that really factors highly on my list of priorities. The workshop of course is there and the reviews were a part of that so I guess it's a bonus. I do have a couple of hours reviewing scheduled into tomorrow morning and now I'm looking forward to that.

Alas, I didn't have an opportunity to play games at all today. I did sneak into the chat room for a short while which is where I was talking to Tirz and enticing her to the hosting position. Good thing Anyea wasn't there cause we were doing a LOT of P talk. You're glad you missed it too aren't you Anyea. Of course you probably gave up trying to get throught this blog entry, what with all the Ping I'm doing. Speaking of Ping I have to get my daily done tonight at some point.

Thankfully however the day is almost over. I'm starting to wonder how to weasel out of working on The Dating Game tonight but I know I shouldn't. It's tempting to call in sick about now and play games instead and my evil insides are saying, "Well you worked late this afternoon/evening you deserve the break." I know it's just my inner critique trying to hide from facing the demons in that book. I also know that if I listen to it today it'll be harder to ignore tomorrow, and the morrows to come. I can't put that book back on the shelf. It's time is now. Fingers crossed I can find the joy in it however so that it's not torture because if it's torture for me to work on it'll be torture for others to read.

I do however have 30 minutes right now to get my DPJ written so catcha tomorrow everyone and good writing to you all. I send you inspiration and determination toward your own goals. Have a fantastic Tuesday.