Happy Hump Day, friends! I’m ever-so-slowly transitioning back into the world of the useful and productive, but the ascent is a steady one. For today’s ROW80 check-in, I thought I’d share a few treasures that I’ve run across in the last week or so before getting to my list of progress and goals.

  • First up, Philip Hensher’s fascinating essay on handwriting that was published in UK newspaper, The Guardian. Given my recent commitment to return to writing by hand, at least for free-writing and brainstorming, the essay is a timely one. Hensher explores the role that handwriting has played in society over the generations, muses on its displacement, and suggests some simple ways in which we can reintegrate handwriting into our lives. It’s his closing thought, however, that I find quite striking:

I’ve come to the conclusion that handwriting is good for us. It involves us in a relationship with the written word that is sensuous, immediate and individual. It opens our personality out to the world, and gives us a means of reading other people. It gives pleasure when you communicate with it. No one is ever going to recommend that we surrender the convenience and speed of electronic communications to pen and paper. Though it would make no sense to give up the clarity and authority of print which is available to anyone with a keyboard, to continue to diminish the place of the handwritten in our lives is to diminish, in a small but real way, our humanity.
 

  • Tumblr has become one of my favorite ways of wasting time entertaining myself in between projects. Some of you (especially my teaching friends) might appreciate “Office Hours Are Over,” which basically sums up my day job life. My favorite entry so far? This ah-mah-zing Tyra Banks gif that expresses EVERYTHING I feel about grading papers.
  • And speaking of gifs, please behold the most amazing thing to ever, ever happen to the internet. Excuse me while I go off and squeal in the corner.

Onto the goals…

Day Job: Erm, I mentioned that “slowly” is the operative word this week, right? That is all I can say about day job goals for the moment.

Writing: I’m almost caught up on my #OctPoWriMo goals–just 1 short. I’m also working my way through a couple of craft books–Ensouling Language by Stephen Harrod Buhner and Story Engineering by Larry Brooks. Plotting for my still-untitled NaNoWriMo novel will commence by the weekend, and I will need all the tools and resources I can get my hands on.

However, all of the journaling and brainstorming that I’ve been doing has done wonders for shedding insight on (1) why I write and (2) what I ultimately want to accomplish through my writing. Having a sense of direction has been doing wonders for my inspiration.

Exercise: Managed to walk 3 days this week, for a total of 12.5 miles. Wednesday is my day off, but I’ll resume on Thursday and Friday. I’d like to try integrating a little weight-training, but that might be too ambitious…

Social Media: Still trying to transition into sitting at my desk, in front of the computer, instead of running around and having playtime. There will hopefully be something good to report by Sunday.

Self-Care: I am learning to understand my body’s rhythm, and to accept the fact that I can’t steamroll my way through life without a little downtime.

-oOo-

And that’s my very, very modest progress for the week. 😛 Hope everyone’s doing well!

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