So y’all may be wondering how I’m doing with my writing goals and my semi-life-reboot. Well, I don’t mind telling you that I’m having some trouble meeting my goals. Just after my reboot post, I slid into a depressive cycle, as people with Bipolar Type 2 are wont to do, and things just kind of… stopped. For a month or so. About three weeks ago, I figured I’d had enough of that, and finally took myself to see my psychiatrist, and she upped the dosage of one of my medications. I’m seeing results of that now, so hopefully I can get back on track.

So let’s take a look at these two sets of goals.

Writing Goals:

1. “Death Pact” to write a short story each month. Well, if I were on track, I’d have four stories completed by now. Instead, I have… none. I have, however, made significant progress on “Flash Drive”, a story I wrote last year in four parts. I also finished the first draft of a new short story called “Mechanism”, a fantasy story with some sci-fi elements. Once I get “Flash Drive” finished and mailed out to my mailing list, I’ll start revising “Mechanism”. I also will be revising “Teh K1ng in Y3110w”, a Lovecraftian pastiche that I wrote a few years ago. And “Burying Uncle Albert” needs some love as well.
2. Publish paperback version of The Winds of Patwin County. No progress on this one. I haven’t even looked into what it would take. I have several friends who’ve published paperback versions of their novels, so I have plenty of resources. I just haven’t felt up to it.
3. Publish Tales from Patwin County. This is a collection of stories I’ve written that take place in the same county. No progress here.
4. Finish first draft of Padma. Or, at least, the first draft of part one. This one isn’t going to happen by the deadline I’ve set for myself, but at least I’ve made pretty significant progress in outlining it.
5. Write and publish some non-fiction. No progress here.
6. Sell more fiction. I submitted one story, and got a rejection within twelve hours. I plan on submitting more, of course.

Life Reboot

I added a lot of “Be’s” to my life a couple of months ago, and some of them I have managed to pull off and some of them I have not. That post basically outlined what might be called my “Personal Mission Statement”, though I sort of loathe that particular phrase.

I decided the other day, though, that if I was to have a “Personal Mission Statement” of any type, I wanted to be able to express it in one Tweet: that is to say, in less than 140 characters. So here it is:

Be kind. Be curious.

And that’s it. The rest is gloss. I mean, I intend to be healthy, creative, joyful, and so on, but these are hard to maintain when I’m in a depressive spiral. Kindness and curiosity are also hard to maintain, but they’re two traits that I can make use of to get out of my own head when I’m depressed, and that’s important.

Anyway. That’s my second Accountability Post. I’ll post more as the year goes on.