Thursday 31 March 2016

Stumbling Block

Forgive me, I'm a little bit out of sorts at the moment. To begin with, I'm getting over a bout of gastroenteritis, and after Easter I got a burn in my mouth which gives me a persistent headache which flares up whenever I eat or drink, and is only ever relieved with painkillers. Also, I've recently begin volunteering at a café as part of my jobsearch efforts, but at first there was a huge administrative error with the Job Service Provider I was assigned to. On my first day of work, they labelled me as absent despite me working the full time because of the truancy of another person whose name is similar to mine. So, my service provider attempted to put me back, but they assigned me to the same address with a different job description; it was only through discussion with both my service provider and the centre that I was finally given placement where I truly wanted to be - working in that cute, little café. So you see, I'm not quite on-balance yet, I've yet to maintain lock-step with either my mind or my timetable. The Word of the Day is: 'RHYTHM'
Rhythm /'rithəm/ n. 1. Movement in a (regular) pattern of time, especially with beat, accent, etc. 2. a. A pattern of regular or irregular pulses caused in music or speech by the occurrence of strong and weak beats. b. A particular form of this: duple rhythm; triple rhythm. 3. Art The proper relation of parts to each other and to an artistic whole. 4. A pattern of regularity in hanging elements or conditions: The rhythm of the seasons.

See, I'm just trying to find my rhythm, I want to get into a cycle whereby I can sleep, wake, work, write, eat, socialize & repeat, all without losing momentum. But, I'm not there yet. Perhaps it's just a cruel irony that this is happening in March, a month whose name is a homonym for walking in a regular, measured and deliberate manner . . .
But, part of the reason that it's so hard for me to find that balance is because my work and writing schedule has taken a major shake-up. For those of you that have been paying close attention -especially if you're on a desktop, as the mobile view often hides formatting on the side- you will have noticed that I have altered the "Follow Me" section of this blog. If my settings are just right . . .

you'll see what I'm talking about right over here →

If not, maybe you're on a mobile device, or you've adjusted the size of your window or you have different browser settings. But the point is, I have a couple of fun links around this blog. There's links straight to Duke Forever, an archive, a translator and some links to the right in my "Follow Me" section lead to my Tumblr and Google+ pages. But recently, I also added one for YouTube.
If it's not clear already, I'm considering making some stuff for YouTube. I have a lot of ideas, and I've been searching around for ways to accomplish this with the least hassle and the greatest quality. But, as with my work schedule, I'm still a little unsteady on my feet. See, I still want to keep this blog up and running, so I've been doing some planning to keep all my plates spinning and make sure that nothing - least of all this blog - smashes to pieces on the ground.

See, my plan is to alter my online presence so as to have a three-headed approach to my content. The first will be my primary YouTube channel, KelniusTV, on that channel I plan on creating serialized fiction. I will give no further details than that, and I can't say that any of it is currently up and running, but I have some projects already completed.
The second will be my secondary channel, Critical Eye View, which I have set up for the purposes of critique, review and analysis on a wide array of topics, particularly stories, culture and religion. This one is currently undergoing the greatest amount of pre-production, as the format I am seeking to employ will be the easiest to create content for.
Finally, this very blog, Absurd Word Nerd. I don't plan on changing this blog very much, except that I may have to maintain a "piecemeal" approach to blogging, I don't think I'll return to my "1 post every 3 days" structure, but hopefully I'll be at more than one a month in the coming weeks. However one thing I see myself doing different is adding a feature to this blog of "behind the scenes". I already do that to a degree, but even in the pre-production side of things, I've seen and discovered things in the filming, production and development of these channels which I wouldn't mind talking about in greater detail. Oh, and I may even be more inclined to share a video or two on this blog; videos which are not freely available on my YouTube channels.

So, that's what I'm up to. Of course, I'm still a little dizzy from all this flip-flopping and changing schedule, and trying to get used to the new state of affairs, so (at time of writing, at least) none of this preparation I've been doing has resulted in any video content, so don't get ahead of yourself or ahead of me. But, I'm working on it.

Oh, and one other thing . . . Duke Forever. I've come to realize that this project of mine was overly ambitious. See, to me, Duke provided an opportunity to flourish my writing arts in a new genre, and to explore writing opportunity without pressure, whilst also forcing myself to try harder.
Yet, with all these new projects, Duke Forever could not survive . . . not in its original plans, anyway. However, that is not to declare the story over - oh no, I still plan on continuing Duke Forever! But, I've changed around my planning schedule, effectively cutting my work in half. I've shortened the length of each planned volume, and I've adjusted story-archs and plotlines, re-arranging chapters and folding them into future volumes to better allow for succinct writing.
Don't get me wrong, I am not short-changing my readers, a lot of the planning I had done for Duke Forever was preliminary and overly ambitious, and I am confident that my current outline for the story will not only be easier to write, but also easier to read.

In conclusion, things are shaking up around here, and I apologize if it seems like I am just over-promising and under-delivering. But, before I go, let me just say that I made myself a promise this year. I didn't like that there were such large gaps in my archive last year and while I knew that I would be posting few and far between, as I wrote about, I promised that I would write at least once every month. Now, while today is the last day of the month, I still managed to keep that promise to myself.
And I consider that a promise to you. Yes, it may be last minute; yes, I may push myself harder than I should and yes, maybe I could have planned it all better.

But, I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I will still do what I have to do to get it done . . .