Precious Time

So yesterday, around the time I had half an hour between coming home and starting the raid (2/7 Heroic, yes!) I thought to myself, it seems that I have very little time for stuff these days. I mean, all the activities that I do that take up my time are things that I want to do, but when do I actually have free time?

So I made a spreadsheet to work it out.

So the white space is time that I actually have free. I mean, the Orange parts, where I’m walking to or from work, or getting ready for bed, don’t take me the whole hour, so I have a little more time than represented. And of course some things, like LARP, roleplaying and tabletop don’t happen every week.

But it just made me think. On an full week I have 36 free spaces. And let’s be fair, being a lazy person I can spend quite a lot of those weekend spaces sleeping. I’s my one true vice.

The reason I’ve been thinking about this is that I’m currently editing my novel. Currently I am doing this with comments in the word document. But honestly? I really want to get out my highlighters, coloured pens, and start marking the paper copy I have printed out up. I just really want to feel the paper and pens in my hands. It’s almost like a craving.

However the problem with that is I need to be at home, with my folder and highlighters and pens. And from the graph above, you can see that it’s a bit of a rare thing. Admittedly, I could have done a lot more on Monday/Tuesday, but instead me and my boyfriend were playing Pokemon. He’s got Omega ruby, I’ve got Alpha Sapphire. We beat up the elite four and the champion. It was epic, but I digress.

Finding time to do things is hard. And given the past week, it is very easy for me to just flop on the sofa and then not get up again until bedtime (Being on a VLCD isn’t helping with energy levels either). What I need is a little more discipline to find the time, it’s the same thing as it was with NaNoWriMo. The work will get done when I make the time for it at home. This may mean I don’t get to read that book, or play Pokemon. But even if I can just squeeze in a half hour everyday, that’ll make a difference.

Of course it would make a big difference if I just did it on the computer, but considering I can’t have the food I’m craving at the moment, I’m in no position to deny this writing craving.

You’d think after finding the time to write a novel it would be easy to keep finding the time to continue and edit it. But apparently not. Oh well, I think I can squeeze in a hour before kickboxing today, and this weekend is looking rather clear as well. So if I can get my butt into gear, I should be able to get quite a bit done.

Empire Event 6

That about sums up the weather for the weekend.

I think the thing that I took away from this event is something that I can relate very strongly to writing. When you write a story, it’s all about conflict. You make events and circumstances and things happen to your character that make things not go their way. And things did not go my way this event.

Because I couldn’t get any time off work, I only had time to make Flapjacks for the welcoming party, which were freely given, so I had nothing to sell and thus I didn’t make any money from selling cakes, which was the first bad thing.

Second bad thing, again relating to no time off work, I got there late on Friday, but at least I made it to conclave (wizards club meeting).

The third bad thing is a little more complicated. On Saturday, Heralds (think servants/aids/butlers) of the Day Eternal (Eternals – powerful magical beings (NOT gods), each on belongs to a particular realm of magic Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Day or Night) Ylenrith were in the Hall of Worlds (special mages only clubhouse) with some challenges. Ylenrith is an Eternal of Purity, Maths and Music, so the challenges were music and maths based. Since I’m a very logical and intelligent person who loves maths, I decided to give the maths challenges a try. Five hours later, I hadn’t gotten anywhere with even the first and easiest maths puzzle, let alone the other two. Needless to say, as someone who prides themselves on being a logical and intelligent person, this really really upset me. Especially when there were so many people completing the music challenges and getting an audience with the Eternal.

I recently became a Day mage, and I’ve really wanted to meet and Eternal, and I blew my chance. I couldn’t solve the puzzles no matter how hard I tried. And I’ve even brought them home with me, and I’ve still only made a small amoutn of progress with pens, pencils and most importantly a rubber. Really, they seem to be more like exercises in guesswork than they are in logic.

And that basically got me very down for the whole day. I had plans, but I put them aside for the chance to meet and Eternal, and I failed. I failed utterly and miserably. And it was only made slightly better when I happened to bump into the same Heralds the next day and asked them if anyone had solved the maths puzzles. Apparently only two people had, and I’m not sure if that was simply one of the puzzles or all three. Either way, it was a nightmare for me.

But that’s what happens to characters, and in life. Not everything goes your way. Things get thrown in your way, and you either overcome them or you have to accept that you failed and move on. Which is really, really hard for me and I suspect I’m going to remain upset about this for a while to come yet.

I mean, the weekend wasn’t all bad. I got to have fun in the battle, and physicked some people after a ritual exploded, and I got a new job investigating the Vallorn (nature went crazy with life magic and now there are ents and insects trying to eat everything), so the weekend wasn’t all bad. And I had a lovely time sitting in one of the taverns as a little boy was being adorable and bowing to everyone.

But overall? This wasn’t my favourite weekend for Empire. I failed at something that was important to me, and that’s kind of overshadowed the whole thing. Also I am all of the aches and pains today and I feel rather ill, which isn’t really helping. That and it’s STILL raining.

Spring National 2

it’s the third and final day of the spring national and i’m not in the last game (it’s requiem, I don’t have a character) but I am sitting here having a nice time relaxing before the long journey home, which is fine.

Mage this morning was epic. the mysterium got to go on a linear to take back control of a thing that was the host’s but then the host got killed so whilst other people went and found his murderer the mysterium (turns out there are a lot of us) went and did some totally epic challenges to reclaim and take possession back of the tower.

Never mind that it was written for four mages, it was awesome and I had great fun and I got to do one of the challenges.

I feel like such a good mysterium right now. And I’ve also networkd with other Mysterium and have plans to become better in the near future 🙂

Have a lot of fun at thie national. Wish that it wasn’t monday tomorrow so I could not feel tired all week, but I think that was probably going to happen anyway.

At least the norwih games are happening next weekend, so I do not have to wait long for my next fix of roleplaying.

Day 28: Something you enjoy

Well that’s a bit broad.

Does something mean an activity, a food, a hobby, a job, a…I could go on but I won’t.

Well I enjoy roleplaying, obviously, and I enjoy writing and fantasy, but these are likes which if you have read this blog or know me at all you will know about.

Dragons is something I like, but I don’t think enjoy is the right verb to use in that context.

Something I enjoy, which isn’t obvious and not something I have mentioned before. I’ve mentioned lying in before, I am sure.

I’m pretty damn sure I’ve mentioned how much I enjoy sushi (went over the weekend for a birthday celebration, so tasty!).

Oh, I’ve got it. Sets. I enjoy sets and collecting sets of things. This isn’t to say I have an obssession with buying anything in a set, but if there is something I like, and there are others in a set then I will probably make efforts to achieve them.

This applies to all sorts of things, stationary a lot of the time (I can never just have the folder, I have to have the folder, the notebook, the pencil case and the pens), jewelery as well (I recently spent a lot of effort acquiring a bracelet to complete my set of turtle jewelry from accessorize because the bracelet had gone out of stock whilst I wasn’t looking, ebay for the win here), books and series of books (i hate missing volumes, even if you wouldn’t notice from my bookshelf) and other more subtle things like having one of every colour, which currently applies to the origami flowers on my desk (every time I see a sheet of paper in a colour I don’t have i purloin a sheet and make an origami flower for the collection).

There is just something about a matching set that gives me great inner joy. Sometimes it makes shopping expensive, but we all have our little (or large) quirks.