It’s an unusually full-on rainy day in Edmonton (this summer has been full of those) and I’m sat at my dining room table while everyone, including my visiting parents, scurry about doing things while I look at both the drop dappled window and my office door wondering what on earth I can do that’s productive.
See, the last week has been almost a complete write off. All plans destroyed when my computer started to fall apart. It’s a sad tale of a Pandora’s box, which began with a Windows Update that revealed some glaring faults in my backup setup – I had put my mirrored drive pools 1)using Windows’ Storage Spaces which I’ll talk about more in an article sometime in the future on a USB3 hub which, as I learned, was a no-no. This slowed down my boot times and also caused problems with the Storage Spaces themselves. It was at this point that two of my backup drives died. I decided to take this opportunity to reconfigure my entire backup system and reinstall Windows from scratch. But reinstalling Windows and all my software, creating new backup drives and taking time to visit with my parents who had flown in from Toronto took the entire week. Everything was looking good – until my monitors kept powering down. So off to Memory Express it went to be looked after.
Needless to say, no writing was done.
I am still in a state of purgatory with the novel as I need focused time for about a month to get the second edits underway, and the story I wrote I’m still not happy with, but I will pass onto The Wife once the summer has died down. Not to say that I haven’t been thinking about the novel or new stories: this occupies every down moment I have.
I’ve been reading some great American novels in my attempt to catch up on some American classics: I thoroughly enjoyed The Post Office by Bukowski and I am now reading both In the Garden of Good and Evil as well as American Pastoral, loving the former and appreciating (but not devouring) the latter.
I can safely say that I have learned one valuable thing this summer with regards to my writing: I need the routine and solitude of the School Year and next summer, instead of worrying how little I’ve written, I will accept the downtime for what it is: a vacation and fit in what I can, when I can, instead fretting that my calendar and task list has not been followed. This way I can focus on my growing kids and making sure they have a memorable summer (which I think they did this year).
But with no writing computer and only left with this underpower Android tablet and miniscule, carpal-tunnel straining bluetooth keyboard, I will be reducing the amount of time I spend writing this week so that I can concentrate on the last week of visiting with my parents.
Next week will be a new week, with (hopefully) a working computer. And then the week after back into the routine, back to writing, back to the novel.
References
| 1. | ↑ | using Windows’ Storage Spaces which I’ll talk about more in an article sometime in the future |