The whole Unfocused family, I mean. We went to Navy Pier tonight to see Willy Wonka and ride the Ferris wheel. The garages on the Pier were full, so we parked a ways off and took the bus. This ad was right across from where we were sitting:
“Do you or someone in your family experience some or all of the following: * Easily distracted * Forgetful of daily activities * Overly active * Trouble paying attention to detail”
Hmmmm.
Another long silence here at The Unfocused Life. Because, y’know, I lost my focus. My father-in-law had open heart surgery on Wednesday, and it’s been a little chaotic since with that added onto everything else that’s going on. The important thing is that he’s doing fine, out of intensive care, and charming the nurses. The latest word is that he’ll be out of the hospital in a few days, which is when the real recovery begins.
Summer Sunday Stats:
Miles run: 9.97, in 1:24:33. How does the same run vary so widely in distance every week? Bizarre. I was wrong in my post for last Sunday: my time was 1:28:04, so this was a huge improvement. The big difference is the speedwork I did on a treadmill on Thursday at the gym.
Weather: hot and muggy (welcome to Chicago in July), but it was overcast, so I didn’t have the sun beating down on me the whole way (another improvement over last week).
What was playing on my iPod: Phedippidations # 145 (Topic: Running Legend Frank Shorter), and Greatest Hits: Huey Lewis and the News. There are some great running tunes included in the Huey Lewis collection, although for me, the sentimental favorite is still Heart and Soul.
Words written in Meet the Larssons: yeah, well, it’s been a tough week.
Did you at least finish revising the short story you wrote on your Blackberry: shut up.
Time-sucking obsessive Internet search instead of writing: I’m so glad you asked. I’ve had this song going through my head nearly constantly since shortly after it hit the airwaves on WPLJ in 1984 (right before WPLJ betrayed every single one of its listeners and went Top 40, the lousy bastards). It started going through my head last night while I was trying to edit a brief, so I tried hunting it down. The song is Walk Away Renee, the 1984 cover by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. I was surprised to see the song has its own Wikipedia entry – fascinating story, none of which I knew before last night. I bought the CD from the Jukes’ website, and downloaded the original by the Left Banke from Amazon. Here’s a link to a video performance of the 1966 hit by the Left Banke:
Don’t ask me why this song has been stuck in my head for 24 years. I have no idea.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 1980s, Family, heart surgery, left banke, Running, southside johnny, walk away renee, Writing
Mrs. Unfocused got her supergenius freelance art director and designer friend, Housecat No More, to design a t-shirt for me based on one of my recent blog posts. In the post, it seems I said I was going to get this printed on a t-shirt; the Mrs. beat me to it. Here I am wearing my prize:
I have another one — same message, but the shirt is light blue (so calming!). I also got some other stuff, and very nice cards. My family is wonderful.
Today’s my birthday. I’m 39, and I have to leave off harassing Mrs. Unfocused about being the older woman.
We celebrated yesterday with cake and a visit from a college friend and his daughter, which was good fun. On Saturday, we got together with another college friend from out of town, and his wife and daughters, so it was a very collegiate weekend.
I did get my long run in yesterday. I went out late, at about 10:30, so it was already pretty hot, and again, my training fell off in the last couple of weeks, so I wasn’t terribly fast: 9.85 miles in 1:27 and change (don’t have my watch in front of me for the exact time). I’m okay with that, because at least I got it done. I should get a little more running in this week.
Birthday or not, I’ve gotta go to work.
June, quite simply, kicked my ass. Between May 28 and July 3, I spent 16 days on the road, and generally worked my keister off the rest of the time. It annoyed the kids, (Unfocused Girl, in particular), messed up my running schedule, cut my week at the beach into a weekend, and dumped extra work on the already-overburdened Mrs. Unfocused.
It also, unsurprisingly, took whatever discipline I had about my writing and put a bullet through its kneecap. How bad did it get, you ask? I scrolled back through the archives to find the post announcing I had hit 75,000 words. Here it is: Spring Sunday Stats #2, my post from May 18. That day, I added 2,200 words to my word count, and finished at 75,945.
Where am I now? This evening I wrote just over 1,000 words, and finished at 80,718. In the last eight weeks, I have managed to write a little less than 4,800 words. Before 6pm this evening, that number would have been 3,800, mostly consisting of two or three hundred word bursts typed on the train during my commute.
The travel did most of the damage. I’ve had very little downtime on these trips — there’s been a lot of sitting around in conference rooms, but very little time when I’ve been off the clock — and even on the plane traveling to and from my meetings, I’ve either been working or catching up on my sleep.
Even when I’ve been home, though, I’ve had a lot of trouble getting back into Meet the Larssons. I think writing on the train, which I’ve been doing for months, has been part of the problem. Instead of using the train time to supplement my writing at home in the evenings and on the weekends, it became my primary writing time. The problem is that my commute is too short to give me time to think about what I’m writing, or to get my head back into the characters and storyline. Without the longer blocks of time at home, my writing on the train gradually decoupled from the broader arc of the novel, and it got harder and harder to keep going.
I finally figured this out over the Fourth of July weekend. When I realized what the problem was, I started rereading the early chapters of MTL, to try and get back into the book. It worked beautifully. I have a page of notes after reading the first four chapters, knocked out 1,000 words tonight that start bringing back ideas I had for the book back when I started writing it, and have half a page of notes for the next chapter. I may keep rereading, but these early chapters may have been enough. Now I just need to recapture the discipline I had developed back in March and April, and I may yet have this first draft finished by Labor Day.
Also, you may notice that I have revised my word count goal in the meter in the sidebar from 100,000 to 125,000. I think that’s more realistic for this draft than the 100,000 I’ve been working with; there are close to 20,000 words in the first eight chapters that I expect to cut in the first revision; they contain important backstory, but I don’t think they work as part of the narrative, and clearly I’m not 80 percent finished telling the story. 125K is a good enough estimate for the first draft, and I’ll try to take it closer to 100K in the next draft.
Finally, not that my comments on your blogs are anything special, but if you’ve noticed I haven’t been commenting on your blog posts, it’s because I haven’t been commenting on (hardly) anything. I just haven’t had the time or the energy. I have been reading your blogs, though, and will try to stop lurking and start participating a little more now that my travel schedule has slowed down a bit.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Blogging, Meet the Larssons, Novel, unfocused life, word count, Work, Writing
That’s how Junior described his old man tonight. I’m gonna get it printed on a t-shirt.
And happy happy happy happy birthday to Mrs. Unfocused, to whom I have given… nothing.
Not my fault, though. Blame Steve Jobs. Three more days.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged birthday, Family, iphone, Kids, unfocused junior, unfocused life
Unfocused Junior and Unfocused Girl, ready for anything.
Finally, I note that I have not yet begun a petition drive to make slides illegal in the City of Chicago. Based on the recent track record of the City Council (thanks for the sparkler ban, by the way!), I’d probably have a better than even chance of getting an ordinance passed if I really worked at it. As it is, though, I don’t expect to change anything about the slide in our own backyard, where the Unfortunate Incident occurred. I told Unfocused Girl today that I’d appreciate it if she’d refrain from climbing up the slide for a day or two, until I get my equilibrium back, and I’ll point out to Junior (once his cast is off and he can climb up onto the playset again) that he should go down the slide on his bottom, not on foot, but other than that I don’t know what else there is to do. I could enclose it in a big plastic tube, I suppose, but that would get really unpleasant on summer days.
* This photograph is copyright 2008, all rights reserved. The remainder of the post is subject to the usual Creative Commons license (see the sidebar for details), but I don’t release the rights to pictures of my kids.
The Unfocused Life 