Sacha Groves

 Yes, it's that time of the decade again. A post on my personal blog! Let's see, where were we? What do you want to know? I'm still in France taking care of my 95-year-old grandmother, although she's now 97 so I guess I've been here two years now! I'm still dabbling with a bit of an online business while I try to figure out what I really want to do in life. Write, obviously. Play games, obviously. Help others, obviously. What isn't obvious is how to make money doing any of that. While I don't care about money, and I'm financially stable right now thanks to the old grandma keeping me fed while I'm keeping her company, but the long-ingrained idea that I should be out there hustling and bringing in the phat bucks still niggles at me. To be fair, it's not the money. It's the being useful to others that I'm craving. I'm not looking for work, per se. I'm looking to be of service. I'm still hell-bent on never working in an aircon...

The wisdom of the wider writing community is this: to be a writer, one has to write. It's true. You need to write something, anything every day. It's the only way to get into a routine, to make it a habit. It's the only way to practise your craft. You have to do it every day, and you'll get better at it every day. But what of days like today? You have a couple of writing projects with a few hundred or a few thousand words written but you just can't face adding a chapter to any of them. The previous chapter you wrote on one of them took the story so far away from your outline that you're struggling to figure out how to continue the story. The tangent is good enough that you don't want to scrap it and take another pass at the chapter in the hope it plays nice and sticks to the plot, but perhaps that's what needs to happen. It might double the length of the story to try and get it back on track and it's supposed to be a fucking short novel to begin wi...

I took option 4.

With a pen and paper. Like I'm rocking the goddamned middle ages. So, I'm home sick. It happens a lot now. Hayfever gives me sinus problems. Sinus problems give me headaches. Headaches plus general depression mean I stay home and take sick leave (not that I should, I still get shit loads of work done. Plenty of my coworkers "work from home" rather than take sick leave, but I'm too ethical for that - sigh, that's a rant for another time). But, really what happens is I start think about the future and what my goals are and yet another midlife crisis is formed. It's not an original first world problem, but I really hate the 9-5 grind. I would much rather work for myself or at least less. Of course, I have a mortgage to pay, so it's never as easy as all the self help, "go do what you love" articles that show up daily on Medium seem to make out. (and to add to the "rant later" list, you only ever read the articles from the people w...

1) This blog. No, really. sachagroves.com is up for renewal and I came here to see what, if anything, I was doing with it. 2) That I was using it as a progress diary. Doesn't even sound like me! But what a great idea! 3) The Cull. It's the first story idea on my list of story ideas, but I haven't even looked at that list for yonks. I had forgotten the idea and had forgotten I had started to write the fucking thing!  I reinstalled Scrivener just to open the file back up to read it. Crap, complete crap. BUT, there's some promise there and, zarquon if I could just get back into writing. I enjoy it so. 4) I want to write. Be a writer. Do those thing. Do ALL the things. 5) No seriously, I had forgotten it all. I think there may be something wrong with my brain. So, the question is: Do I use this newly (re)discovered progress blog to try and springboard into a writing habit again? That really is a question. The question. Capital THE and all that. It's worth some...

1) Other work got in the road of WHS. Might try to do an hour tomorrow, despite Friday being a day of rest from set goals. 2) Xbox fitnessed. 3) Wrote 400 words of The Cull before realising I was writing a giant hole for myself that was completely unnecessary. Will fix it next week. 4) See ya Monday.

1) Did WHS work. 2) Worked out. Dance Centralled. 3) Wrote 700 words on The Cull. It's already going places I didn't intend. But that's the wonder and beauty of writing.

1) Finished off one of the WHS courses. Sent for marking. Win. 2) Exercised. Xbox fitness working today. Win 3) Wrote 500 words of The Cull. Fucking massive win.

1) Didn't do WHS, stayed home due to hayfever (or whatever it is that has plagued me for 18 years) 2) Couldn't do Xbox Fitness due to an Azure error. Did Dance Central instead. 3) Monday night is cooking night, so having trouble finding the time to write. Or it could be procrastination. Might have to rejig things to get writing in on Saturday, maybe? It's hard to see myself doing that. 4) Nothing to report on any of the other blogs.

1) Failed to do my WHS work 2) Worked out, 20 minutes of Dance Central. Actually broke a sweat, so it's an option when I tire of the Xbox fitness routines. 3) Did more work on The Cull. Need to come up with some character names.

1) I've decided to make this blog the dry chronicle of daily success and failure. 2) The ramblings will continue at  Sleeping Not Thinking 3) Worked out 4) Bought Scrivener for PC. 5) Started project for short story: The Cull 6) Copied notes about The Cull into project. 7) Updated Sleeping Not Thinking 8) Updated this blog. 9) Allowed myself to feel smug.

What will I use this for?