I have been pushing myself mercilessly for over two weeks now. I think it’s pretty obvious by my lack of posting and commenting (and, forgive me, reading- both blogs and books) that I’ve actually been working, and not procrastinating and calling it work.

I’ve had the odd break here and there: a visit with my friends T&C, who are also my editors at TitleTrakk (though we mostly talked business, because T is a magazine writer, and C is a novelist, and I’m sorta in between. Plus we all run websites, and, well, you get the idea). Also an evening at the in-laws, twice hubby decided that rooms needed rearranging, and so on.

But the projects I’ve been working on are coming to an end. I now have 52 Squidoo lenses, all of which have been updated within the past two weeks. I need to build a few more to give myself a cushion, but I think I’ll qualify as a Giant Squid by the end of the week (we’ll see if they agree).

My medusa site, while likely to never actually be finished given the rate of new product being released, has over 450 live pages, most of which are indexed. I think. I’m getting search hits and even had a sale, so I’m just guessing here.

I have a few more large projects in the offing: a site based on the My Town Monday idea (I totally blame you Travis, if that site takes up all my time), more affiliate sites, and, actually, I plan to do NaNoWriMo this year. More on that later.

Here’s the thing. I don’t believe that I have EVER focused for so long one one (or, technically, two) projects at a time. With Squidoo, it was having a deadline imposed on me. I can’t force myself to stick to my own deadlines, so having one thrust upon me was key. With my medusa site, I expected it to be a one or two day project, but it just kept growing, and growing, and growing….

But I stuck to it. Usually I don’t. Usually, at some point when I realize that the project is bigger than I planned, and the reward so small or unlikely, I just up and quit. Usually intending to go back and finish it later, which I never do.

As these projects have been winding down, I’ve been thinking about my next big project. At first, it was considering taking a break before NaNoWriMo. And then it was thinking of building up a series of articles for the MTM type site. But then I realized that I already have a big project. A really big project. A project that I love but have been ignoring since these projects started.

My novel. Why am I pushing it off to focus on other projects? Is it for the reasons I stated? The deadline, and the unexpected sizes of the projects? Is it the fear of failure? Or is it just because I don’t know how to buckle down and work?

As I thought about it, I’ve decided that it’s because I’ve never made myself work before. Schoolwork was always pointless to me, and I test well. I bluffed my way through reports, and I always just winged it at my jobs- taking orders, not initiative.

So now that I’ve completed these humongous tasks, will I be able to apply it to the rest of my life? Will I suddenly have a clean home? A happy husband who’s fed healthy food and given lots of attention? A finished novel? All three would be nice, but I’ll settle for the novel (sorry hubs).

I guess only time will tell, but if you don’t see me around, assume the best.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 7:40 pm and is filed under personal, personal blocks, progress, updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.