Maintenance

I just spent the last three hours updating my "Active Robins" list on my sidebar. (I'll have to leave any work on the one in the Round Robin blog for tomorrow night.) I accidentally saved just before adding the last person, which kept me from properly counting the names being added. But I think it came to a total of five veteran Robins who became active again in recent months, and another eighteen who started participating since I last bothered to update the list. Wow! And there were at least three people listed twice before, two of whom, if I recall correctly, haven't posted a RRPC entry in the past six months. What a mess! But it's better now, and you folks finally get some well-deserved linky goodness.

Why did it take me so long to do this? The short answer is that I'm terribly lazy about stuff like that. Give me photos to edit or an entry or article to write and I'll happily slog away at it for hours. But blog housekeeping duties? Not so much. I wouldn't be at all surprised if I have blogs listed on my sidebar that haven't had a new entry in a year. I don't like taking people off my sidebar, so rather than checking things out properly I tend to let it slide. The only reason I finally faced up to it tonight, aside from the fact that it fit in with the vague idea I had for tonight's entry, is my desire to acknowledge all the wonderful Robins who have come along recently, and the early Robins who migrated out long ago, only to fly in this winter and snatch up a juicy new Challenge or two. (Yes, I know. Annoying metaphor, ain't it? I'll stop now.)

But it's got me thinking about the advantages of steady effort, and my usual failure to take advantage of them. The Round Robin blog's sidebar I try to keep up with at the time of each Challenge, and although there are some errors and omissions it's not nearly the mess that my personal list was. I should update the church's new blog every week, not every two or three weeks. I should do dishes every night, rather than wait until we're out of forks. I should start walking the dog every night, as a prelude to getting back to the gym. I should put books away as soon as I finish looking something up. I should spend ten minutes a day cleaning my desk. But I don't do any of that. Not on a regular basis, anyway. Whatever it is I'm up to tonight always seems more urgent, more rewarding and fun. Then suddenly it's time for bed, and then some.

I know I can do better than this. I got through all that homework in late 2002-early 2005 to finally get my bachelor's degree, in accounting, yet, while working full time. Before that I wrote 1100 manuscript pages of Mages of Mâvarin in something like two and a half years, all but about 30 pages of it new stuff, taking only two nights off in all that time (one to have my gall bladder out, the other on suicide watch). I lost 70 pounds once, long, long ago.


Maybe if I tackle one thing successfully, I'll get in the right mindset to make a steady effort in other areas. I've only missed on night this year on the novel, for example. That's, well, not fabulous, but it's a start, even though some nights it was only for fifteen minutes at the end of the night. I'm on page 247 of the Heirs edit. That's got to count for something. And hey! I updated the sidebar!

Okay, okay. As I head off to bed in five minutes, I'll take a moment to at least put some dishes away. And tomorrow evening, Tuffy gets a walk! Feel free to nag me if you see me online, and I haven't announced my fulfillment of this little plan on Twitter or AIM.

Karen