Trillian, etc

Have downloaded Trillian... am generally happy with it, although I haven't figured out a few important little things yet. Like how to get it to quit making the blip noise whenever I send a message. Or how to get it to do group chats.

I think I managed to add you to my contacts, LadySonnet.... I think. Hopefully I'll see you online soon!

Dropped by the Greenspire demo-thingy this afternoon, on the way home from Trader Joe's. It was... kind of depressing, actually. I had originally planned to go tomorrow, but now I'm thinking I won't. Not fun like a real event.

I'm hoping Derek comes online tonight... we'd been planning on getting together tomorrow, but I haven't seen him online since game was cancelled, so I'm not sure.

The less you have to do, the harder it is to get things done

I'm not working right now. I'm not in classes, either. And yet I seem hard-pressed to find time for the things I keep saying I ought to be doing. I practiced the guitar more often during the schoolyear than I have over the summer (simply pathetic, that), and have done almost no original writing.

I wrote a 50,000 word novel in the month of November last year, and yet I probably haven't written half that much during a summer where I worked, at most, 5 hours a day. This leads me to the conclusion that I need deadlines of some sort in order to work. And not just "I will work on my original writing for an hour (later downgraded to half an hour) every day." That doesn't seem to cut it.

I know what the real problem is, of course--I'm not truly satisfied with what I'm writing. I'm not excited about it. While that makes it exceedingly difficult to work on writing, I also recognize that it's no excuse. The same is true of my guitar practice--I was absolutely devoted while I was still trying to learn Greensleeves. Now that there's no song immediately upcoming in the book that I'm really excited to learn, I'm slacking off.

I trimmed my nails again tonight (my nails are a perfect indicator of how much I'm practicing the guitar--the length is in inverse proportion to the amount of interest in my practicing), and practiced. I even worked on my chords.

I am now going to write. For half an hour. Sleep be damned--if I'm ever going to get better, I need to work every day. I know, I say this all the time, but it's true, damn it. I'm not a bad writer--I just need *practice* and discipline.