Living in Massachusetts, I've always had a tendency to think of April as Spring. Then, pretty much every year, as if I haven't discovered this each and every other year that I've experienced an April, I discover that April isn't really anywhere near as warm and nice as I seem to imagine it may turn out to be each year.
It's kind of like getting a head cold and "discovering" yet again how miserable a cold actually is - but then once we start feeling better again we tend to forget (yet again) until the next head cold happens
Anyway, April is still nice in its own way. It certainly beats the few months prior to it. It's just that April is kind of like the "mental version" of being "good on paper" (and better on "mental paper" than it most often is).
BUT, as I continue to get over Winter (Winter does tend to be something I have to "get over", even if it was a good Winter), and eleven or so days into April, I'm finding the weather particularly conducive to staying in and addressing the many matters of my giant mess of different types of writing (whether online, offline, just in my computer, or in one or another kind of limbo that can happen when stuff that's been online somewhere either is or isn't on another site after its first site closed down.
I'm getting there. Some of the stuff I don't have to worry about because it's no particular emergency. In the meantime I keep writing stuff but not putting in online. Then, too, I sometimes get so sick of the overhaul project but too tired to write something new (that isn't just foolishness), I'll go to my old stand-by, HubPages "Answers" section to see if I can get some ideas for writing. (I've already got plenty of other ideas but am not in the mood to either start and/or finish them because - again - they aren't just foolishness. They're subjects that I want to deal with more seriously.)
So, I'll go looking for something less challenging to write about on HubPages "Answers" section. Sometimes there's an idea for a future article. Sometimes it's just a good way to waste some time being "fed" ideas for things to write about when one is bored and/or tired and/or in a lazy mood.
It's not that I get anything in particular about writing the answers. The one thing is can be good for, however, is breaking a cycle of "writer's block" (even when it's more overload than block). The trouble is that sometimes I'll run into an idea for an article, start the article, and actually almost complete it. Then I run out of steam. I do tend to push my steam limits.
So, last night (or yesterday - I forget now) I started writing an article, decided I'd turn it into
an even "bigger and better" article. The last time I looked at the word count on it it had 3900 words. Bigger is not always better, of course; ;but if one is going to leave the 3900 words one generally must also write another few hundred words to explain the length of it.
Of course, another few hundred words can mean one thing leads to another. THEN, once the thing is that far into progress, why not just turn it a "little more comprehensive" and call it "an actual article with substance".
The bad thing, a few thousand words into something like that, is that even though one has been pushing one's limits of steam a few too many words or hours, one really should not allow oneself to sleep unless/until the thing is complete (or at least the writing part of it, since images are a whole other thing). Then, however, in creeps the thoughts about how a 4000-word anything really doesn't belong on the Internet.
Let's just say there's a reason people say, "Let me sleep on it". I, on the other hand, should sleep on nothing. I should just keep writing until the thing is done, or else I should delete a couple of thousand words and just call it "done". BUT, by the time I'm 4000 words in I've already started to run out of steam. So even though I try to keep going it gets to point where the words (and mind, in many ways) just shut down for the night.
I need to figure a new system for this free-time writing stuff because a definite pattern is that I go for a few thousands words and stop, generally, a few hundred words before completing the thing.
In any case, I woke up today after sleeping on the thing I started yesterday, saw that it's there (no surprise) just as it was when I left it, and realized that the 4000 words (plus whatever else I did yesterday, whether that was writing or something else) had made me too tired to deal with the thing today at all.
What that meant, of course, was that I was too tired and lazy to do anything but go kill some time on HubPages "Answers" section (yet again), using it in the hopes of spurring on new ideas about new articles/Hubs, discovering (yet again) that even though I got no new ideas for articles, I found some minor entertainment value in trying to come up a few answers, and then (yet again) deciding it was stupid of me to be wasting my time writing answers, but (yet again) reminding myself that wasting time writing is better than wasting time doing nothing.
At this point (or I should say "at that point") I decide to do the sensible thing of my limiting my time-wasting. After all, a reasonable amount of sort-of-productive-ish (but enjoyable-ish) time-wasting can have some redeeming value. Too much: Even I, with plenty of free time these days, cannot justify or make peace with.
So here I am, on this blog, with that 4000-word article sitting, incomplete, on my account (with a bunch of other incomplete articles) and leaving me with the ever present question (these days, and in view of HP's changed emphasize/standards) of whether I should even finish the thing, drastically chop it down, or (as they say) what. It doesn't matter, I suppose. It's no big emergency.
Between the stuff (much of it completed, some almost completed) in my computer and the stuff sitting in one account or another (like the HP account), I feel like what I have out there online at this oint kind of looks like a case of "my other car is a Mercedes" ) (if you're familiar with that bumper sticker that people put on old, run down, cars).
In the meantime, I continue to crank out the foolishness (or one kind or another) when I'm too tired to do much else, but also crank out the "real" stuff that hasn't, may never, seen the light of day (or should I say, "light of screen").
It's all fine. It's April. I'll have a new system by May. As with the ever-changing Internet-writing climate and landscape (which, in itself continues to be a matter of transition and overhaul for anyone who has spent any time doing any online stuff), the transition from "on-mental-paper" Spring to "real" Spring, with little variation, is completed by May (Massachusetts weather or not).
As for the 4000-word thing that waits for my return.... maybe tomorrow. I needed to rest (and waste time) today. Having a system-for-operating (not to be confused with "operating system") is not for April.
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