Strange dreams
I often have strange, weird dreams. So often that one of the recurring morning jokes between Thalía and I is:
Me: «I had a weird dream last night!»
Thalía: «Oh, that’s so normal.»
Thirteen
Today Thalía and I celebrate thirteen years being together. Time does fly! And yet, sometimes it seems as life has always been like this and I can’t imagine how I could ever lived without her.
Happy thirteen years, my dearest love, I love you with all my heart. And may God bless us with many more years.
Writing, and Consistency Over Perfection:
The idea is to acquire the habit of writing daily. If I miss one day, then my focus should be on not missing a second day.
[…]
My plan for 2023 is to continue writing daily. I’m aiming at consistency rather than perfection, so I rather publish every day than spend two or three days trying to make a post exceptionally good.
This is so inspiring. Ugh, I want so badly to write consistently on my blog again.
You know what, that’s it. Don’t think about it. Don’t plan for it. Just start.
Now.
That English thing, again
I had an unexpected pocket of time, so I picked one of my long-neglected items in my «Someday/Maybe» list and quickly added a new custom taxonomy to this WordPress blog in order to have Languages.
I’ve failed time after time to start a new blog in English. By «blog» I mean both the engine and the writing. Yet, call me alienated, call me whatever but there’s this part of me that thinks in English. I’m not of the idea that «English is better,» or «sounds cooler than Spanish,» it’s just that I read, write and talk in English daily (I do freelance work for English-speaking clients) and I’d like to reach this audience too.
I’m still not sure if this blog is the best place to do this, but I’m super tired of indecision and paralysis. I decided to stick to what I decided long ago and just write.
Let’s see what happens and decide later. Maybe I discover a key reason to have a separate blog. Or maybe not.
We can always setup 301s later. That’s the beauty of controlling your own platform.
A word count exercise
I stumbled upon a novelist’s blog, Chris Orcutt, and found an interesting proposition:
Book-writing is as much an endeavor of numbers as it is one of words. The consistent, daily production of a minimum number of words is the key to getting books written. For novices this minimum word count should be higher, not lower, because writing is one of those few enterprises that, paradoxically, gets tougher as you go on.
How hard is to write, say, 250 words? I’m finding it out. And I guess I cheated when I pasted that quote. Feel free to substract 59 words from my total if you feel so inclined.
I’ve just recalled WordPress’ editor has a word count a click away. The classic editor had it on the bottom. I was baffled when a reviewer complained the Alphasmart 3000’s lack of a word count feature. I’m now discovering why. It’s an adequate measure of progress. Not that your goal is to spew out as many words as possible with fillers and padding, but that you know your writing quota for the day is done.
How can I apply this to drawing? Maybe draw a number of pages per day, or fill all the blank space in a page, or a number of anatomy studies?
I’m reminded again of the defining feature of the OKRs, the measurement. You can’t improve what you don’t measure. It’s about making a goal quantifiable and binary («Did I reach 250 words? Yes or no?»).
Woo, 250 words. This is hard.