This is my third attempt at writing a blog post today. I’ve found it really hard to a) think of a good topic and then b) write enough or write something decent on that topic. All I keep coming back to is no particular topic, just things in general. Time management, routine, priorities, to do list, all those things that I worry and think about and shouldn’t blog about.

There are only so many hours in the day and in all honesty I waste most of my time. It disappears somehow, slips away and I have no idea what I spent the day doing. That isn’t good, though I do wonder if people were honest with themselves, how many would recognise something in that admission. It’s so easy to browse a few forums, play a facebook game, watch some YouTube videos and lose a chunk of time. Easy and decidedly non productive, it’s not even all that enjoyable.

There is a ‘to do list’ page on this blog. It’s entirely Warcraft related and therefore hasn’t been looked at, or attempted in over six months. When I resub I will have new priorities in game and so the old list is redundant in every which way.

It’s time for a new list.

Priorities
The first question is what should be on such a list? I’m not playing Warcraft right now so I have zero goals there. I want to play Swtor but have no specific goals in that game and I don’t exactly have goals in Marvel Heroes. Nothing beyond a “level everything then prestige my favourites” which is a generic goal but doesn’t need anymore structure than that. I enjoy Landmark but it’s still in beta, it’s something I will play occasionally but not something I’m going to sink a lot of time into right now. That has nothing to do with wasting time as thanks to templates the time isn’t wasted, and everything to do with the fact that they are still adding a lot to the game and things are changing all the time.

Then there’s something other than games. I do watch a lot of TV for instance, though I’m not sure that could really be classified as a ‘to do’, more of a ‘this happens’ fact of life. I would like to read more, I should read more and really should make the time. That is the first real goal I’ve managed to list so far. Reading isn’t the only thing I would like to do. I would like to go to the gym again, I have some legitimate reasons for not going and a lot of excuses. Then we come to writing and all that one word means, which is a lot.

I suppose I’m taking this blog in yet another new direction in a way. It started off life as a Warcraft/Swtor blog, then went pure Warcraft for a long time. Before I made it a Warcraft/Swtor/Marvel Heroes/TV blog and branched out a little. I’ve always had occasional off topic posts, sometimes in areas I’ve now made ‘official’ and I guess I’m doing the same again. This blog will still be about something specific, I will never make it into one of those personal diary type blogs. In my opinion that type of blog can only lead to one thing – regret, as putting that sort of thing on the internet for everyone to read, it can’t end well. However, I am going to expand yet again into areas that are important to me, which is no longer just gaming.

I’ll change the header and tagline when I get the time, over the next couple of days. That’s the rebranding taken care of and now back to the list. Rome wasn’t built in a day and I do tend to get carried away a little bit. I jump on new ideas and then fall flat as I can’t sustain such a change all at once. I need to learn to be a little more modest in more goals but this is still my statement of intention.

Games
– To manage my time better both in game playtime and in splitting time between different games.

Life
– To start a reading challenge in either December or January. 52 weeks, 52 books sounds ambitious but reasonable given how fast I read, as I read super fast. However, I suppose if it was a particularly long book I could count it for two weeks, or maybe I’ll adjust the challenge when I start reading, it’s been a long time since I last sat and read a book properly.

Writing
– To take part in the 2014 NaNo challenge and have a complete first draft at the end, that is 50,000 words or more.
– To spend December writing something else, most likely Perfidy which has been put on the backburner for too long. As I’ll need some distance between writing the draft in November and revising it, and I really shouldn’t lose a month to doing nothing.
– To revise the NaNo draft in January, future schedule to be determined closer to the time.

I realise that some of those goals are a little vague, and goals are better when specific. ‘To manage my time better’ is a particularly bad goal, but in all honesty I wasn’t sure how to improve the phrasing. Games can’t and shouldn’t be my priority. However, I do still want to have time for them which means I really should try and manage my whole time schedule a lot better.

However, I hope I have learnt from past mistakes and I’m not going to go crazy. I have my statement of intention, I know what I want to do and I will try and fit it all in. I’m hopeful that rather than forcing a routine on myself which doesn’t work, and that I don’t stick to, one will naturally emerge if I stick to trying to complete my goals.

I will update with more details on various aspects in other posts. Maybe one of my posts could be a weekly review on what I have read, that will at least give me something to actually write about. Step one to achieving that goal is getting a library card, which I can apply for next Tuesday. Step one in my writing goals is to finish planning my idea for next month properly. Step one for games is to play with any free time I have after the other goals have been met, along with the regular real life chores.

Given that I just got a call to say we’re moving house, as the buyers finally made an offer we could accept, I could be being a touch ambitious here. However, we’ll see, this is a statement of intention, it’s what I would like to do and what I will aim to do. If I don’t manage it in the time scale, or if I manage less, then I will still have managed more than I otherwise would. For once that might have to be enough.