complete my 101 things in 1001 days list

i’m reading a book on marketing and it has exercises along the lines of converting customers.

right now my long-term conversion part of the exercise is as follows:

• dude
• what
• i don’t even know what i’ll be doing long-term

…yeah. I have discovered i am Not Good at working on the same project for too long. Somewhere around the three-month mark i reach a point where i’d rather throw the whole thing out and start over than work on it for one more day.

This is great if i have a cool project i can finish in three months, because i spend those three months (…or at least the first two…) being very excited about it and working on it constantly. It’s not so great for, say, novels, which i can write in under three months but which take so long to edit i eventually reach a state of THIS NOVEL IS RUBBISH, I SHALL START OVER. That’s, um. That’s not really a good way to finish anything.

Seriously considering figuring out a wild writing schedule which will allow me to outline, write, edit, and publish in three months. Really i need to at the very least get in the habit of editing-while-writing. I never do that during NaNoWriMo because it slows me down too much but if i’m taking three months to write a novel, i can write slower. And if i edit-while-writing the first draft may actually be decent enough to avoid the massive chunks of desperate speed-writing which make editing a horrid nightmare.

bah.

• I’ve completely let my Starfleet club membership slack, so i’ll have to restart that if i have any hope of doing any Starfleet Academy stuff. Oops.
• My current moving plans require paying off my student loans first. My current student loan budget plan looks to actually finish up six months after my 1001 days are up. Also i don’t think i’ll be moving to Philly. Maybe Chicago.
• I may not be going on an oversea volunteer trip either. Because a) money all going to student loans and b) an awful lot of those are glorified poverty-porn. So it now depends on whether i can find one where i would be really helping instead of just making myself feel good.
• I kind of killed my webcomic.
• I am practicing my bodhrán! Every day. Yay!
• Screw singing lessons, i just want to get to a good level with my speaking voice right now.
• I don’t even want an artist rep any more.
• I’m planning on getting rid of most of my dead-tree books, because i have literally reached the point where i can’t find most of them because there are too many other books burying them. (I have also come to the conclusion most of the people who complain that e-readers aren’t REAL books and REAL books are BETTER don’t actually read much. I ran out of shelf space over a year ago and started stacking stuff on the floor. Extra hard drive space handles more books in less physical space. w00t.) Anyway. So. Motivation for bookcrossing.
• Screw the Irenari cosplay, too. I have a totally different OC to cosplay. Who i still need to design anyway, but whatever.

THERE. big massive 101 update.
I think i made my last 101 list in too much of a hurry, i didn’t plan anything out and as such there’s no way i can even afford to do all of it (even without student loanstuff) and quite a bit of it i don’t actually want to do and am not going to do simply to check it off a list. I’ve been working on my next 101 list, though, and already have over 101 items, so when i actually switch over to it next year i’ll be narrowing it down to stuff i honestly want to do instead of flinging things on at random like my last one.

I’m starting to go by ‘Shashi’ more regularly.

which means i kind of want all my accounts to say ‘Shashi’ instead of ‘Sharon’.

which means i’m seriously considering restarting all my accounts which still say ‘Sharon’. Including my 43T account, because, well, the URL still says Sharon…
even though i only started this account about a year ago.

blah.

this is why i started using my real name to create accounts to begin with. ‘I am sick of having a pile of different usernames depending on what i thought was cool at the time i created an account. i’ll just start using my real name, haha, when will that ever change.’

I mean, i’ve only wanted a more gender-neutral name for the last three years. Clearly i will never actually get around to changing it.
I’m still kind of nervous i’ll get new everything set up as Shashi and then change my mind again. So i’m being extra annoying slow about this. But it’s reaching the point where it’s kind of weird to see or hear myself referenced as ‘Sharon’.
‘Change my name’ is definitely going on my next 101 list. Inclusive of both legal change and change on all accounts everywhere.

Novel: Have pretty much dropped all together. I think i need to make a contest or something for myself to force myself to edit it. I’ve tried NaNoEdMo in the past and it never really worked for me… but i’m sure i can figure something out.

Moving: Right now i’m mostly focusing on the money issue. I finally sort-of started a beaded jewelry shop on Etsy (i say ‘sort-of’ because my weekend blew up and i only got around to listing one item. and i’m still working out the whole scheduling-my-own-business-around-my-day-job thing. meh.)

Webcomic: Fell off the update wagon a bit. Funny coincidence: the next strip was to be one on Yo’s hibernation patterns. So, yeah, my comic disappears for three weeks and then comes back on a girl who can’t stay awake long enough to do anything.

Happiness Project: Well, i’m still doing stuff with it, but i’ve finished my Month of Working on it Every Day.
I finished up the very-non-calendar-month on Wednesday.
On Friday the cockatiel i’ve had since i was twelve died.
Yeah.
So.
Not very happy, that.
Especially since cockatiels are mad crazy social birds. And i have another cockatiel. And the other cockatiel spent twelve hours shrieking at the top of his lungs in search of his buddy.
I want to be all tearful and say no other bird can ever replace Neelix and Jean-Luc and i will just have to get along without him because it will be ages before i can even consider another bird. But screw that. Jean-Luc was lonely and Jean-Luc is vicious and there’s a difference between ‘total replacement’ and ‘having another gentle bird around’. So as of Saturday there is a shy, sweet, and otherwise non-vicious seven-month-old cockatiel in a cage next to Jean-Luc’s. And Jean-Luc is happy, or at least no longer shrieking from loneliness, and i am happy(ish), and Data the Cat is… well, he’s not happy, he’s actually quite jealous of all the attention baby Wesley is getting. But he’s a cat, he doesn’t do happy without at least an hour of worship to the cat-god involved. But basically everyone involved is much happier than we would be if i didn’t get another bird, so i guess it works out.

Sit-ups: 45 at a time, 150+ in sets. w00t me.
Screnzy: failed.
Comic: still going.
Happiness Project: also still going.
Bonsai: not dead yet.
Novel: have been ignoring.
Moving: am seriously considering finding a cheap-as-possible hotel to live in until apartments are sorted. City i end up in to be determined by city with cheapest inhabitable rooms.

Novel: Still hate editing. Still need to do it. Bah.
I’m way behind where i want to be; i think i need to stop and figure out a better way to go about this.

Moving: I’m working on starting up a handmade jewellery business, which doesn’t seem very moving-related but if it works, it’s a job i’ll have regardless of where i live. I don’t expect full living-in-a-big-city income but anything helps.

Webcomic:Officially started. But i’m not marking it done until i reach twelve consecutive updates.

Two hundred sit-ups: Took the initial test on Sunday and reached an embarrassingly low twenty sit-ups. (I used to be able to do two hundred… bah.)

Researching adoption: Yup, still depressing.
In real-life adoption stories, a woman recently sent her adopted son back to Moscow with little more than a note explaining she didn’t want him any more. I could spend a long time ranting about this (as my mum, who has already been on the receiving end of quite a bit of ranting, can testify) but i really have nothing to say which isn’t already covered on multiple blogs by people who understand more about the situation than me.
In fictional adoption, i’m currently reading a train-wreck of a book which includes the cheerfully ludicrous line, ‘It’s not so hard to choose an adoptive family.’ (Lest anyone think the line is taken out of context, it’s said by a guy who is helping a rape victim choose a family for her son. Said birth mother clearly would prefer an open adoption, but in Badlyresearchedfictionland only closed adoptions exist. She’ll never see her kid, or meet his parents, or have anything to go on in making her choice but a few pages of dossier. It shouldn’t take a month of researching to realize there is nothing ‘not so hard’ about this situation.)

insert snarky cranky shura comment here

Semi-random update on all my semi-random goals:

Novel!: it has Been Re-Outlined. If i’d written it properly i’d have already had a sense of what order everything happened in but hell, it was NaNoWriMo. There’s parts where i destroyed countries just to add words.
Next step is to go through and redesign the characters. Some are horribly, horribly unrealistic. Granted, the unrealistic ones are mainly minor characters, but they still need to get whipped into shape.

Tarot: I understand almost all the cards now (and the ones i don’t know i can guess fairly well), and know several spreads for reading purposes. Sweet. I learned in kind of an odd way so i’ll probably do a big long rambling 43things how-i-did-it style post at some point, once i have all the cards down.
I haven’t done any readings for anyone else yet (unless you count novel characters. They get tons of readings) – but i’d kind of like to read another real person at some point. I don’t think i’d ever want to be a professional reader but it’s definitely going to be a different experience. Certainly can’t do anyone in my strict Protestant family. Not without first giving big long explanations as to Why This Is Not Evil.

Yoga: I started up again on Saturday, with the YOGAmazing podcast. Saturday i just went with the longest episode dowloaded, figuring i’d work on it for twenty minutes and see how far i got. Erm, except the longest episode turned out to be a weight-loss one, ie ‘aerobics which happens to use yoga poses’, and my has-not-done-yoga-in-six-months body couldn’t keep up. The Yoga for Geeks episode is much more my speed :P And because it’s designed to be done at a desk anyway, i can actually watch it without having to set up some contorted system of balancing my iPod on a chair and craning my neck to be see whether i should be in down-dog or up-dog.

Dyeing hair blue: It’s… erm… turquoise. Dammit. And actually a really nice shade of turquoise, but not what i wanted.
Maybe, when my hair is back to its natural colour, i’ll try to dye it dark blue. Previous attempts turned out black but i have light blue hair dye now, so… maybe?
If that doesn’t work i’ll have to go to a stylist and have it Professionally Done.

Non-art-geeks may not already know about this, but every year around this time the major colour companies declare a ‘colour of the year’ (ie, Pantone has declared 2010 to be a Turquoise year.)

Of course, experts can’t even discuss straight data without arguments cropping up over interpretation of said data. Experts announcing a colour naturally ends with all the colour nerds playing with entirely different colours.

Can the leading color authorities really forecast a color trend anyway? I mean, if you’re the most influential voice in a field and you forecast something… You’re not really forecasting, you’re telling people what they want. We don’t think people want to be told what they want. We want you to tell us what you want.
Announcing a single color to represent the entire year is a lot like announcing a single song to represent the entire year. Yes, there will be a clear top grossing or breakout song of 2010, but that song can’t really speak for every person. Nor can a single color. BUT, every person can speak for their own color of 2010… and that’s what we want you to do.
- COLOURlovers

I love it. Yellow’s not my favourite colour, but it matches my plans for the upcoming year so perfectly. Blue is too mellow, pink is too gentle, hot pinks and reds are just all wrong. Yellow is ‘i have the energy to edit this novel’. Yellow is ‘i can do anything and what i don’t know how to do, i can learn’. Yellow is flying-wild enthusiasm and excitement. Yellow is so totally my 2010.

And the person who originally named this particular shade on COLOURlovers called it ‘As a Kid’. It really doesn’t get any more perfect than that.

I’ve now finished #82 on my list, ‘reboot my long-neglected 43 Things account’, though by ‘reboot’ i technically mean ‘completely delete and start over’, which turned out to be much easier than cleaning out the old one.
Now i just need to use it frequently… i’m hoping to actually interact with some other people here, since otherwise there’s really no point in having a list on 43 Things instead of having it just on my blog. I have a tendency to be a wee bit on the anti-social side, but it’s not like i’m throwing a massive 43 People Party. It shouldn’t be that socially difficult to cheer people on and comment on blog posts and whatnot.