Taking Stock and Accountability

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I know traditionally we take stock at the beginning of every year. It is not yet January 1st, and I feel the need to take stock sooner. The reason for this is that I feel the march of time more so than I did when I was 27 years old. Now, I am 70 years old, and the one thing, right now, that I regret is that I haven’t published any books.

To that end, I need to take stock more than once a year, and I need to get busy on getting some books published.

I tend to see problems where none actually exist. It’s like I deliberately put bumps in the road that are going to jar my teeth once I roll over them.

I think that’s the idea of life. You’re supposed to have bumps and bruises. Maybe that’s the only way you can learn to ride a bicycle.

Without losing face.

Okay, it’s a deal I’m making with myself. I will post a list of five things that I want to do that I really want to do. Have them on my wall. Promise myself that I will look at them every day and then work on them.

I know this doesn’t have anything to do with psychic channeling, but I’m a person, just like anyone else, and I also have a lot of stuff I still want to do. I tend to get wrapped up in things and don’t know where the time flies.

However, writing is important to me. Since 2021, I’ve had a steady diet of daily writing. These are mostly personal essays from the point of view of somebody who is old and has seen a lot of life. I’ve found a number of places that I’ll put links to at the bottom of this article, where I write on a regular basis. Now, I write here too. I’m thinking of a nice blog post twice a week to be published on Sundays and Wednesdays. These will be more along the lines of what it is like to be a psychic and some channeling. Then, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I publish for Medium.com. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I publish on Substack.com. On Fridays, I publish on Facebook. I also have my journal, where I hash out private things, and my Do-Good File, where I like to begin my day with something short and upbeat. Or thoughtful. It is designed to help me start my day with a good outlook.

And, I've got my writer's website set up too. This will be the first substantial post there. So, a decision needs to be made about just how often I plan to post stuff here. Maybe once a week to start. Then, we'll see. 

Where, oh where do I fit in writing a book?

I have to remember the best diet you can ever get going is one where you add things and don’t make yourself feel deprived. If you concentrate on everything you can’t eat it’s going to be difficult. If you add things, like five minutes of stretching before you go outside for a walk, or more vegetables or whatever, you will have a better chance of losing some weight.

Maybe it is the same with writing. To keep myself accountable, about a year or so ago, I began listing a daily count of the words I wrote. I track all of the above places where I write. The thing is, I don’t write on the day I publish. I might have a day where I write four articles. Then, there might be a day where I am not feeling well, and I just take the day off to read, which is also important for a writer.

If I hold myself accountable on a daily basis with my word counts and have a generalized goal monthly of about 60,000 words, then, if I write 2,000 words a day, I’m pleased. It’s sort of like exercising my writerly muscles. Good output, both in the quality of my writing and in the quantity, too.

However, I just asked my husband what his thoughts on all of this were. He said you have to hold yourself accountable to another human being. This person cannot be a friend or your spouse. He told me this was how he was able to train and run marathons, which are 26 miles long. 26.19 miles to be exact, but yeah, 26 miles long. He broke his back in November of 1992. At the time, he had been training for a marathon. The doctors told him he would never run another marathon again. There was a chance he also might never walk again.

But my husband, Dennis, has a determination that made me fall in love with him. Nobody, absolutely nobody, tells him no about anything. Since then, he has run eight marathons. Less than 1% of the population on Earth has ever run a marathon, let alone eight of them.

He is also a writer and an historian. We both love books. He has written several of them. So, I asked his advice just now.

Accountability.

With that in mind, I will revisit a website called Shut Up and Write. They have groups around the world. The idea is that they meet periodically for the members to introduce themselves, tell what they are working on, and then write. Nobody talks while you are writing, although the meetings are held on Zoom and you can only see the tops of people’s heads as they write during the two hours of the group I’ve participated in.

I did this a few times and found it to be a nice push to write. No blank paper freeze for me. But, at the end of the meeting, they go around the group and have you say what you got done during the session and what you will be working on until the next meeting. These are real people. There are members in the group who have been there for years. These are also professional writers who have been published. There are also people who are wanna be writers, like I consider myself to be, even though I’ve got over 1,000 articles published here and there all over the internet. And five books were written but not published. Perhaps this is the push I need to hold myself accountable.

It's something to think about. Oh, and I have been an active participant in the old NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). The magic of Google. I began to look around to see if there was anybody who was doing a writing thing this November. I found WritingMonth.org and signed up. My username is paulineevanosky if you’d like to sign up and be buddies. That’s where the community part comes in. It will be a new project, which I haven’t decided on just yet. I’ll go have some breakfast and think about it.

But here’s a place writers can gather to write hard and fast. First draft stuff. Any genre. There is an “other” selection too. Where I learned about it was from a writer on Medium. That’s good enough for me. From what I've read, signing up means this will not be limited to November. I’m looking forward to it.

If you’ve got an urge to really stretch yourself as a writer, come join us.

Thanks for reading. Check out my other links on the internet below.

🌺Pauline Evanosky🌺

🌺My Links:
 The Best Stuff for Kids on YouTube
 Just Passing Through on YouTube
 Talking To Spirit on YouTube
 Pauline Evanosky on Medium
 Talking To Spirit on Substack
 Talking To Spirit — my website
 Facebook
 My Table of Contents for Medium — Updated Monthly
 My Table of Contents for Substack — Also Updated Monthly