My whole life is connected to my Google account and one disaster there is almost as bad as having a wallet stolen. My novel has been nearly my whole life for the past few years and, while the majority of the work is backed up in pieces across multiple hard drives and my website, the most recent works could have been long gone.

I guess I don’t have too much of a point tonight, but needless to say, I’m not going to get a lot of writing done tonight. While I tell myself, if something written were lost, it was probably for the best, but I find a lot of comfort in re-reading old things and seeing how I came from Point A to B, hence the reason for this blog. I don’t like losing things, especially when I’ve done so much to safeguard them and even with files kept on a shared hard drive kept on Dropbox and backed up to my website, things can still go wrong.

I see no reason why I can’t make my goal of April 1st (I’m finally brave enough to put that in writing), but again and again and again, if I don’t make it, I’ll be all right.

I’m getting into a rhythm again and I’m finding that it helps if I do two things: 1) Just force myself to write a couple of paragraphs and 2) Just find a place a start writing from wherever I am. I wrote 1515 words tonight (he had finished Angel’s lasagna), but I wrote another 1383 in something that exists between notes and full prose for the next part I intend to write. All that’s left for me to do is just add the proper punctuation and tidy it up before I can call it real writing and I’m good to go.

What’s even better is that I’m less exhausted writing those close to 3000 words than I am when I try to complete that same word count on any other day since the latter part doesn’t feel like “work-writing,” but more like play…the way writing had been for me up until I was about 25.

Another revelation came to me this evening on my way home from first-job and it was that fan-fiction and stories such as Reruns are going to be the “play-writing” that all of my writing once comprised.

As I move closer and closer to making my second-job my only job, the more I realize that writing is, indeed, work and I’ve always been rather excellent at procrastinating at work. If I keep my procrastination focused on the same craft, however, maybe it won’t be as bad as it was when I was in college…learning whole programming languages just to avoid having to study for Biochemistry…

The new year started off with quite the bang for me and in just a couple weeks, things started to get muddied again. This week, I’m not sure if I’ve finally mastered the art of sitting still and listening to God, but I think I’ve come very close to it.

Sunday told me that I can’t keep doing what I’m doing and expect to get different results. I can’t just eat whatever I want and expect the weight to come off magically after a shower one day, so I’ve started to work out every day again; I should have been doing this since the start of the year, but that’s why it’s time to stop and listen.

Today (Wednesday) taught me that I need to have patience. I keep pushing and pushing because I want things with first-job on my time and so I keep forgetting that my path will only occur on His time. My time is not my own. I should already know this, but again, that’s why I’m to stop and listen more often that I’ve been.

It’s time to get back into my writing routine and attempt to write every day like I did last year, but unlike last year, I’ve got no stress to keep this up every single day of the year. If I have the inspiration to write a lot, I will and if I don’t…tomorrow is another day.

Tonight, I wrote 1049 words (something about him “getting sick again.”) and it’s never felt so good to write those very words again.

I read briefly about the supposed five stages of grief and I think I suffered all of them in a single day, but I think, if anything, it goes to show I’ve really made a change in my life at the start of this year.

My eye twitch has returned in full swing with this recent stress, but whenever I feel the tug at my eye, I know it’s time to take a break from what I’m doing and remember that “everything is gonna be all right.” Uncle Buddy is gone and I’ll not see him again in this life, but I have the happy memories to keep me company until we meet up again. Life is indeed short and mine grows shorter with each passing day, but at least today, I can say that I’ve honestly done something that may help someone a bit younger than myself take those first steps into a real career; in short, I’ve just helped someone. These are concepts that eleven days ago, I’d have agonized over for days and days without coming up with an answer.

No matter the situation, there is always a positive and that’s what I’ve tried to keep at the forefront of my mind through each event during this last week, which brings me to another reason my eye has been twitching so much today.

I’m a digital hoarder, of sorts, in that I keep nearly every document, e-mail, picture, whatever on some hard drive or CD/DVD/circa-95 floppy disk, etc. that I can find “just in case” I could possibly need it. When it comes to my writing, the same applies. For example, just a few weeks earlier, I’d found some old 3.5in floppies in my house and found some old stories that I’d written when I was eleven years old.

All my writing projects and all the material for my websites are housed on a single eight-year old external hard drive. Needless to say, this small device houses my many hopes and dreams as well as records of what I can honestly call accomplishments over the last decade. Nearly everything article I’d created on my site and nearly every story, fan-fiction, true fiction, non-fiction, lives on the same hard drive. Today, that hard drive stopped working.

While my heart quite literally skipped a beat this morning, I remained calm and reminded myself that anything worth anything was backed up somewhere, Damen especially. I’ve littered three PCs, two iPhones and half the Internet with one copy or another of my current novel, so even if I’d lost all of the work on the drive, Damen would still be safe (it’s also on Dropbox) and, if God, decided it was time for me to get rid of all that, then it’s for my best. A few weeks ago, I’d lost some work I’d done on Reruns and nearly panicked about it until I realized that what I’d written wasn’t very good and, since I remember the gist of what I wanted to say, I know I can write better when the time comes to really write that story.

My mind wandered back to my hard drive several times throughout the day, but I kept saying to myself that it really would be all right, and even if it was all somehow gone, data recovery services just aren’t that expensive. As I’d already known before I’d left the house this morning with the drive still malfunctioning, everything turned out to be all right; just a little glitch to give me a day of mild terror.

I am, of course, in the process of backing up the entire drive in two places, however, just in case another failure lurks down the road, but it’s today’s preparations that gives me the peace of mind for tomorrow. Just like I can prepare and be right with my God should I meet my own end sooner than I’d expect, I can prepare for everything else too.

I lost my great uncle today and while a good deal of the grief has passed, I’m still in a state of shock. This is one of the first times where I was in charge of relaying information and also was unable to escape into my writing like I do so often in times of strife.

My mother keeps telling me that this is all a part of life. All I can really think of is where is my miracle? Why doesn’t my family get to experience those miracles I read about where someone wakes after a stroke and then lives to be 100? Why don’t these things ever happen to my family?

I doubt I’ll ever get an answer to these questions, but I can’t help asking them.

I didn’t get a lot of writing done today, considering, but I’m still desperately seeking that escape that only a long session spent in a world of my own creation can allow.

I thought long and hard about how I could “Do better,” but no voice of inspiration came to that gave clear directions on how this could be accomplished, so instead, I likened “Do better” with doing better with God, i.e., let Him have true control. I know it’s only been a week into this new year, but I already feel better for doing better.

This week, I’ve not let the little things bother me and just reminded myself that God is in control, so there’s no need to worry. Troubles with first-job (and there have been some extreme troubles in just this week) can’t possibly bother me because I know God will take care of me. Slight distractions with my writing can’t bother me either because as long as I’m writing something that will help proclaim the name of God, I can’t possibly go wrong.

This new lot on life came to me, not in that sudden burst of inspiration I was expecting, but through a close look at my December 2011. In times when I’m stressed to my breaking point, my body lets me know that things are going wrong by an eye-twitch. I’d only experienced this about two years ago when I was, again, stressed to nearly my limit. My mother says that she develops the same sort of thing which is why it is so important to eliminate it’s source quickly before health problems begin. In these eight days with my resolution in place, however, the twitch has all but ceased. True, it reappeared briefly today when I thought my choir director was going to have me sing a solo without practicing first (I almost passed out in the choir stand just thinking about it), but when that passed, the moment took the twitch with it.

My track record of continuing things and completing projects over these last 27 years of life has not been so good, but I’ve got something different this time around and in place of the life-altering stress, I’ve got inner peace and the bold confidence that comes from knowing, as the old hymn goes, “I’ve got a feeling, everything is gonna be all right…”

Now, for the funny story:
I’ve got some new people to my team at first-job and one of them asked me this Thursday for the number for our call-off line. As I normally tease my folks to bring them into the fold, I was relentless as normal, but gave the number in case he needed it, as he assured me that he wouldn’t be calling off any time soon. Yesterday, after first-job, I went to GameStop to sell back a game (and get all of $0.83 for it) and while I was there, I looked up and saw this same employee. I waved when I saw him, but he looked kind of awkward at me and when I went to say hello, he nearly bolted from the store.

I didn’t think much of it until after I was leaving with Skyrim in hand (which means my time for writing will dramatically decrease unless I’m diligent this month), but then I remembered that he was supposed to be at first-job that day…and he had called in sick, yet looked perfectly healthy at GameStop. I laughed about his quick dash from the store all the way back to my car.

I’m still getting used to the idea that I’m really someone’s boss and that I’ve got a group of people who see me as My Boss Dorienne instead of just Dorienne. But, this was just really funny to me.

Last year saw a lot of burnout for me and a lot of that I’d like to avoid this year. Instead of listing all that I’d like to accomplish here only to look back and frown on what didn’t get accomplished, I’m going to make just one goal: Do better.

Sure, I’ve got a list made in other places and even a reminder for June 1, 2012 in case I lose my way, but all of those roll into the one. I can do much better than I have been doing, so my only true goal for 2012 is to do better than I did in 2011.

I was originally going to title this post “The Great Failure of 2011″ but then I realized that this blog and my efforts for this year, haven’t really ended in failure. True, I’ve lost a lot of momentum on this novel, but I’m still writing. I’ve got dozens of stories just waiting to be born and the most important part is that I haven’t given up on Damen entirely. I still imagine that the first draft can be completed before the end of the year; if it doesn’t, however, it’s not the end of the world.

For the past couple months, I’ve kept repeating the same things to myself, over and over: 27 is not 26. Age 27 feels much older than 26 did and it felt this way the day I turned 27. I’m different than I was a year ago and, while a lot of the goal still remain the same, the focus is starting to shift; some in good ways, some not so good. The main thing is that I recognize the change and know that embracing it is my only option.

I’m going to update with the rest of the unpublished posts, but I thought it best to just start over all together, rather than trying to rush everything at the end of the year. If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that I can only do so many things. It’s not really possible to write a novel, create sim objects and stories, update websites, learn Japanese, teach myself the piano, take up running, work 60+ hours a week and keep the house clean in one day and still manage to fit basic fundamentals such as eating and sleeping into the same day. Everything has its time.

I’ve already started a separate note for these stories in AwesomeNote, so there’s a huge chance they’ll get written, but in thinking about these little stories, I realized tonight that I’d better start writing more now since, at the rate I’m going, I may not live long enough to see all these stories come to light.

The rest of the day has been spent plowing through these Urkel episodes as I swim in the sea of nostalgia. Now, that I’m on the last season, I think the show got shafted since this season was miles better than its predecessor. No use in complaining now I suppose since I’d stop watching around age 11 and helped contribute to its demise. Oh well…it’s just interesting to watch these episodes and see how much they shaped my childhood, thus shaping me into the person I am today.