Friday, December 09, 2011

There are a couple types of books you read in your life.  The books you read because you want to, and the books you read because you have to, or think you have to.  I put that last bit into the latter group because there's more pressure on you to read them than desire.  It's not that they're not good books - some of the best books I've read were because I had to.  It's just that one type of reading is for fun and the other type of reading is more work.

Case in point - the first time I read The Fellowship of the Ring, was because my best friend at the time was reading it.  I stopped reading during the Council of Elrond for an entire month because it seemed a lot like work.  After I got through the series though, and coincidentally started playing a role-playing game more or less based on the books, I not only liked the book, but I counted that chapter as among the best.

So it is with movies.  I watch movies on my own that I like or that interest me.  I watch many more because I think I should, either to catch references or because others have talked about them.  Even though they are hardly building trailers or even working at a pizza place, I consider these movies work, because I have to watch them.  Can you become OCD about media?  I don't know.  These things certainly become somewhat destructive at times.

Anyway, I had an unfortunate accident where my DVR deleted a Republican presidential primary debate because it was too full, so I have been attacking that DVR with a vengeance for the last several days.  Of course, as space becomes available, I've been recording more things.  If this was a show on A&E, I'd be some kind of digital hoarder, possibly tying into my theory of OCD.  Ah well, it's a theory I can't prove or test and such speculation is pointless.  I'll do it anyway because I'm like that though.

In any case, I also got my Blu-ray player.  I have some research things to spend time on as well as all of the movies that have piled up in the past years.  Oh yeah, the other part about calling it work - I normally don't sit and watch television for very long.  Unless there is some kind of constraint, either time or other people sitting there threatening me, I will take four or more hours to watch a two hour movie.  As a matter of fact, I've paused Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows right now.  Although, I think I had a pretty good reason.

So, anyway, for a while now, the plan has been to work as hard as I can until the end of the year trying to get done what I can get done and push the rest back another year.  Things I cannot possibly finish before then have taken a backseat to things I might finish.  For me anyway, measurable progress is more motivating than long hours.  Writing is being worked on, but at a far lesser pace than might otherwise be.

- Jim

Sunday, December 04, 2011

I think I've said this a thousand times, but with all the time in the world, you'd think I'd find the time to post here more often.  You would, of course, be wrong.  Silly rabbit.

I have all sorts of projects going around.  Some are important, some are much less so.  If one could be a hoarder of such things, then I could possibly have my own television show.  I'd have to find someone to cry though.  Reality shows have lots of crying.  Anyway, one of the things I'm working on is putting all the stuff I had to remove from my last computer because of space issues, back on to my computer.  No, I don't have a space issue yet, but it is inevitable.  If you thought my regular to-do list was long, the stuff banging around inside my computer is far worse.  There's games, books, documents, movies, television shows, documentaries, writing, and so on.  Even without an internet connect, with no way to leave, and no contact with the outside world, I estimate it would take me ten years at least to get through it all.  So... yeah, not going to happen.

But I try.  So here I am.  I've already transferred almost a hundred DVDs and a few CDs worth of stuff.  Some of this stuff is pretty old.  I figure I probably have a hundred more or so, but taking the time to count would just be more time.  I try not to sit here while the stuff is transferring and do nothing, but it means that I don't get much done in whatever else I'm working on either.  A DVD is five minutes at best of transfer time, which means I get just a couple minutes of work done before I have to take a break.  "Work" being a very loose term indeed.

The end of the year is coming up.  It's an arbitrary deadline, but it's a deadline nonetheless.  Reality is setting in about what I can and cannot accomplish.  It's not pretty.  Still, I hope that what I do before the end of the year helps to avoid the several months that typically happens at the beginning of new years where I catch up with all the stuff I was working on before I can work on this year's stuff.  In a way, that's a lost cause.  Everything I've failed to finish goes onto the next year - I rarely really give up on something entirely. 

The writing is progressing.  I'm not going to publish word counts any more because they're just not a metric worth measuring.  I can scam the system and just write crap if I really want to, and to be honest, even stuff that seems worthwhile today, typically isn't tomorrow.  I've thrown out a lot of ideas over the years.  The books are moving forward, but slowly.  Even when I work hard, the work is hardly moving.  Or that's the way it sometimes seems.

Anyway, the disc is done, so I've got to get going for the next one.  G'luck,

- Jim