Hello again Bookworms,
I hope all is well and everyone is snuggled safely in their favorite places as they read this. I know I am. I’m currently sitting on my bed with a king size pillow between the headboard and my back. Lapboard is comfortably resting on my legs with my IPad and keyboard on top as I type. If you read, “My Writing Road Blocks (PT 1)” then you would fully understand why I need to be in a favorite place, comfortably sitting, safely in the comfort of my apartment. My ambition to write is gone! In my realizing this I started a quest for myself to find out what is causing my ambition to wilt away in the wind, petal by petal, taking it closer to an unwillingful destination.
Which brings us to part 2 of My Writing Road Blocks series. One of the decisions I made was to cut back on watching YouTube. I had explained that I don’t have social media therefore YouTube has kind of become my social media. I thought in part 1, and still do think, that part of my problem is screen time. I do think I have improved in that area. My IPad gives me notifications on my viewing time. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, basically my IPad sends me notifications with my weekly viewing report and it tells me if I have increased or decreased my viewing time. I am happy to say that my weekly report said my viewing time was down by three hours. I was happy and proud of myself until I realized I have no recollection of those three hours not spent on YouTube. What did I do with my time? I had no answer and still have no answer. I can only assume.
I am almost done reading the book I am currently reading, and I started that book a week ago. For me that’s fast, I work a full time job where I put in extra hours from time to time. Other times I do deliveries for extra money, but that’s a side hustle so I pick and choose when I want to do deliveries and at what times. Mostly I work my full time job and come home to my family. After dinner, I shower, and go to bed. That’s where my biggest problem with YouTube is. I would lay in bed with my 12 inch IPad Pro as if it was a TV and watch show after show. I like longer content. I was never really into the short clips unless it was something that really caught my eye. I recently decided to change that. Now I will not lie, my hand reaches for my 12 inch IPad and most of the time I turn it on and go to hit the YouTube icon to open the app and only then does my subconscious say, “Aren’t you supposed to be reading?” I literally have had mental fights with myself. Seriously I did, because I wanted to watch YouTube and didn’t want to even read. Oh I fought and fought every night since my last post. I can now say that since I posted part 1 of this series the fight is getting weaker and weaker. I am still not where I would like to be on this subject but I am trying. With that being said, those three hours did not go towards reading. Yea, I increased my reading time but not by that much. I don’t think.
As far as physical writing goes… Nope, not happening. Except for this blog and my journaling. I journal but that’s not one of my writing projects. I have multiple projects that I am working on for myself. They were previously started and now I can’t seem to finish’s them but I need to finish them. I’ve been writing since a small child and never once have I ever felt like this before. I don’t think it’s writer block because I do have ideas and I write them down in my idea book for future review when looking for ideas. I have a ton of those so that’s not the issue. My question in part 1 was, is this still considered writers block? I hope not. I had writers block before but it was different, I couldn’t think of any ideas. I couldn’t come up with any ideas for a few years. So I brought a painting by numbers kit and focused on painting. I was so intense about that painting I finished it in less than a month while working 60 hours a week. I read a lot of books at that time and went on frequent book hauls that only I knew about. (That was when I worked in a hospital). A few years went by and then ideas started to come back to me. That’s when I started my idea book. So that I’ll never have to worry about ideas again. Genius, I thought! Yet here I am with a new writing problem.
Just incase you don’t know an idea book is a small notebook that you use to capture your ideas. My idea book is a 3×5 spiral hardcover notebook with 200 pages of 80gsm paper. I use colored pens to write a brief description of the idea, maybe just a title of an idea, or I write quotes that come to my head, or research for topics that I want to do. The idea book does help me stay organized with ideas that can be used in the future. If you have a hard time coming up with ideas or you have a hard time remembering your ideas use an idea notebook. That might help you. You don’t have to use it in the same way I do but use it in whatever fashion is going to work for you. The point is that it works for me and may work for you if you have the same problem.
Back to the topic at hand, although I feel I have gotten better with minimizing my YouTube and my IPad has told me my screen time is down by three hours, I personally have no record of that. Here’s the solution I came up with and I am hoping that it may help you if you are dealing with the same issue. I am going to use a small pocket notebook to record my daily reading times and the amount of time I spend on YouTube. I think that will help me to see where my time is going exactly so that I can make the proper adjustments. The idea of recording my reading and YouTube time will also help me with time management. To me that’s a win-win.
I’ll keep you posted on all this as My Writing Road Blocks Series continues. I hope this helps others that could use a little help in this area as well. Until next time Bookworms, stay safe and stay positive.
M.C. Addington 