Mandaris Moore

This year, I'm doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) because my daughter is doing it as well. I want to show her that I can put my heart into something and follow through with it.

The problem is that I've gotten out of the habit of writing and it's very hard to focus on something like this when there are crazy things like the election, covid, social unrest¹, and everything else going on in this world.

Still, I'm going to continue doing the best that I can even though I'm a loooooong way from finishing this thing.

Sometimes it's hard for me sit down and get in the mindset for it.

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One other thing that I'm going is writing more in my Day One journal. I really want to keep a good streak going on but sometimes it gets a little weird.

I just wanted to write something.

I haven't written to my blog in while. I think it's partly because I've set up so many barriers in front of myself.

High expectation on my writing and just attempting to make the blog look just right.

I'm tempted to give myself a challenge of creating something for the next 30 days to get back into my writing.

I've been using streaks and the fact that I've been feeling a little lost to start journalling a little more seriously recently. Things are falling apart in little ways here and there.

It feels like my wife and I are definitely on different pages and stuck in a rut as it were.

Our home has problems with mold again.

Our youngest is having trouble walking.

And we have to face the possibility that we won't be able to move up to better housing at the end of October.

Very stressful.

One of the few things that I have control over is my time journalling and how I approach this problem.

I don't want to feel too overwhelmed.

I decided to do this for a couple of reasons.

The first:

I've grown a little tired of DropBox taking a lot of resources to sync files that haven't changed. Sometimes, I'll see my computer seemingly ground to a halt for while as DropBox tries to re-index everything. I use it on my families computer and they are already not a fan of the other little utilities that take up resources.

The second:

I want to experiment with some other tools. DropBox is still the defacto tool for sync for a lot of people. I still have it installed on my devices¹, but I see a lot of new applications that would allow me to be a lot more flexible. For example, if I place the files in a git repo, I can have more control of sharing and version history.

I like Byword for writing. It has a very simple interface that I've come to associate with writing. When I want to just sit down and let my fingers put the words in, I find myself drawn to this application.

I've tried others but I feel my brain is now weird to think that writing = byword.

The only problem is when I'm out and about and I just have my phone. I don't really have a comfortable way for me to put something like this blog post together without my laptop. I'll have to come up with something.

My children were working on school reports today. I don't know what it is but neither one of them like to work with me on stuff like that. Maybe I'm too critical and don't give them the benefit of the doubt for writing at that age.

Too often, I destroy my own writing for even small things.

Either way, I'm going to do the best to highlight the good things about it and only make suggestions on how to improve when they ask.

After all, I won't be able to help them with this later on.

I just noticed that I have a post here for almost every day thus far in May. I think I'm going to leverage that and try to have a post for every day going forward. Some days won't have anything, but will make them either before or after.

I'm hoping that this will help me get ready for NaNoWriMo this year.

If not, at least, I'll have some kind of exercise to increase my communication skills.

I like writing. I find it very relaxing and it allows me to get my thoughts together. Recently, I've gotten out of the habit of writing on a regular basis so I'm going to take this as an opportunity to start journaling again in the month of May.

I'll set a goal to start the day with a little bit of yoga followed by some writing on what I want to do with the day. Maybe some introspection as well.

If I had it my way, I'd put this all into DayOne, but it has been kind of stressful having it there where I don't have any control over when it goes away.

A thought it would be nice to have a better way of making diagrams from my phone. I’ve been lusting after OmniGraffle for years but I don’t have the money or drive to invest into unlocking the full power.

So thought I would try one of the many free apps in the store. I can’t say that I like it too much at this point as it completely deleted an item I was trying to resize. Still, you get what you pay for and I’m starting to rethink my idea of using my iPhone as a place to make something like this.

I was thinking about doing some kind of challenge for the month of April. I wasn't really able to start yesterday, but today is a great to start with something new.

Here are somethings that I'm thinking about working on

1. Writing. I want to work on my communication via writing. I think that I can be better served by focusing on making my writing better. Both with grammar and how I express ideas.
2. Web Design. Just making it look nicer would make me feel better about giving the url to people
3. Planning. Setting more time to work on things that need to be improved.