Time Strategies (One of Many Reasons I Love Spreadsheets)

 

Screenshot of a checklist I made earlier this year

The articles I read for this assignment were 11 ways unsuccessful people mismanage their time, How to Beat Procrastination and How Checklists Train Your Brain To Be More Productive And Goal-Oriented.

I found "11 ways unsuccessful people mismanage their time" notably lacking in solutions to a decent chunk of the problems they bring up. In all honesty, the very set-up of the article seems kind of demeaning, where it seems to be saying "if you do one or more of these, you're probably not successful". Regardless of what their intent may have been, they came across as being on their high horse.

On the other hand, "How to Beat Procrastination" was far more useful. I found their idea of finding the first step and then tying it to a reward to be a really solid idea. I also liked their idea of using the weight of inaction to increase the motivation to do the task. I hadn't seen that idea tossed around before, and I quite like it. While it may not help for all tasks, it can definitely be good for tasks that have a more balanced mix of pros and cons. 

"How Checklists Train Your Brain To Be More Productive And Goal-Oriented" didn't really teach me anything I didn't know, since I've actually used checklists to help motivate myself and stay on track for a long time, but it did give me the idea to look into maybe trying to use Trello for certain projects or long term sets of tasks I might have, since it allows for an easy way to map things out and keep the checklists flexible. 

I'd seen it used for game road-maps numerous times, but had never thought about trying to use it for myself. I think it could potentially be a good idea for keeping myself on track and focused while worldbuilding for my story universes, but it might also be a workable idea to set one up for my semester, since I could have checklists for individual days and overall checklists for larger spans of time or bigger projects. I'm not super familiar with the particulars of how Trello works, but I do have a decent idea of the kinds of things that can be done with it, so I think it'll be fun to experiment with it.

In the past I tended to use Google Sheets for checklists (one of them is pictured above), and I would include a section for a title for the task, a true due date for the task, an intended due date for the task and a section for any notes I might need. I found those were the key aspects of information I would need to be able to get a snapshot of my workload at a glance. 

I then also set up the check-boxes with conditional formatting to turn the row green and apply strike-through when the box was checked, and I have to say it's very much satisfying to work your way down it, slowly turning all of those rows of red to green (I unchecked the two boxes at the bottom so you could see what it looks like when the conditional formatting isn't enabled due to the box being unchecked). 

So I definitely know that checklists work for me, and I'm curious to give Trello a try to see if that might work even better for me than my Google Sheets ones do, at least for larger scale usage. Trello might be a bit overkill for a more short-term or simple checklists, but for much larger scales, I think Trello might offer a much better overview of my workload. Regardless, I'm looking forward to finding out!

Technology

 

Image of sorted tools sourced from Pikist

I picked the image above because that's honestly what it felt like upon discovering bookmark folders. It had never really occurred to me that there was a solution for having a lot of bookmarks other than removing some. So honestly I can already mark that as one of the perks of having taken this course: the knowledge of the ability to actually sort my bookmarks.

Assignments

 

Photo of a white tiger sourced from Pxfuel

Image Reasoning: I was recently working on the abilities of one of my characters who was created from a white tiger, and so a white tiger came to mind when I wanted to pick out an image. 

I'm excited to see how the class shapes up once it gets going, since looking over the assignments, it seems like it's going to be quite interesting. And the extra-credit assignments look fun, I think I'd like to try my hand at the Wikipedia Trails, Microfiction and the Check-In & Connect assignments at some point, since they all seem fun and interesting. And to be frankly honest, I do Wikipedia delves anyways as part of my research when I do worldbuilding. 

Growth Mindset

 

Source: Laura Gibbs' blog post

I hadn't heard of the growth mindset directly before, but I suppose I somehow ended up with one anyway. I feel I'm pretty heavily on the growth-mindset side of the spectrum, given how I tend to approach problems and obstacles. When I fail, I adapt and try again. 

One of the places that mindset is probably most apparent for me is in my approach to playing games, which is one of my favorite pastimes. When I lose or fail, I change up my play-style and tactics to try to adapt to the situation, and I'd say it's probably my greatest strength in gaming: being flexible.

And my academics are another place it becomes apparent. My classes in my Junior year of high school were easy and boring to me, and so I took a risk and decided to take on a massive challenge by completing both semesters of my Senior year in tandem with the final semester of my Junior year. It was a daunting challenge, but one I overcame, and which allowed me to graduate a year early and begin attending OU an entire year earlier than I would have otherwise.

An Introduction to a Future Writing Professor

Photo of a white fox, sourced from Pexels

Hi there, I'm CJ. I grew up in Southern California before moving to Yukon, Oklahoma three years ago. Some things I enjoy include eating food, watching anime, playing games with friends and reading. I love white, black and grays a little too much, and I basically love all caniforms. (That's a suborder of taxonomy that includes all dogs, wolves, foxes and bears!)

I'm a Professional Writing major, which is a bit like a Creative Writing degree, but we focus on genre fiction instead of literary fiction, and we also have a deeper focus on learning how to be successful with our work.

Writing stories is my greatest passion, and that's part of why my goal is to become a writing professor. Aside from my love of writing stories, I also really enjoy teaching, so I want to teach in order to have a solid income doing something I really enjoy while still having the time to write my stories. I don't think I could ask for a better future than that.

I love fantasy, so all of my story worlds are fantasy ones, but I also like bringing other influences into my work. I often have magical technology present in my settings, and I typically bring action, romance and comedic elements into the stories I write. My stories are all heavily character driven, with sizable ensemble main casts, and a bunch of character arcs that all intertwine as the overall narrative progresses.

I have worked on six distinct story universes thus far, each with their own set of characters, arcs, magic systems and worldbuilding. Though, of those six, I have currently shelved three of them for the time being. But, for the others, one is basically finished, one is mostly complete, and the other is currently in very active development. I'll actually be working on writing the first book of the mostly complete one this semester for one of my courses, which is both intimidating and exciting. It's a world made up of floating islands surrounded by a sea of magical mists, and the story follows a small team of new recruits as they embark on a journey to try to turn the tide of a war that threatens the continued survival of their entire race.

Storybook Favorites

Image of a grizzly bear sourced from Pixabay

Medved: The Bear Officer

This one caught my eye immediately because of its title. How could I just pass up a story about a bear officer? I was also curious to see how "bear" the character was going to be. The characters introduced in the first story were all anthropomorphic bears, which was interesting in and of itself. But in particular, I found the inclusion of a Kodiak bear quite interesting, since I hadn't heard of that before. I had actually researched bears recently to assist in a story project I'm working on, where I have a set of three sisters with bear traits, so I actually got some potential inspiration for the worldbuilding of that world from this story, albeit indirectly. (And for anyone curious, Kodiak bears are a subspecies of brown bear, so they're a lot like grizzly bears, except much bigger, being similar in size to polar bears!)

Battle of Camlann card art from the game Fate/Grand Order, which was used as the banner for The Fall of Britain

 The Fall of Britain

The name of this one caught my eye, since I was curious about what the context behind it was. And the other thing that grabbed my eye about it was the banner image, which was from the multimedia series, Fate, which I am at least somewhat familiar with, hence being able to recognize it. The usage of that image actually had to do with the simple fact that the Fate series stars a lot of the same mythological stories that the author of this blog was working with, which revolved around King Arthur and Mordred. While I may not personally have a close attachment to Arthurian lore, one of my close friends is working on a world heavily inspired by Arthurian lore, with a variant of Mordred as the main antagonist of his series, so I was familiar with the story through that, and thus found it rather interesting.

A spooky graveyard similar to the one used for the opening page of Tales of Gothic Creatures, sourced from Pikist

Tales of Gothic Creatures

Firstly, I absolutely adore Gothic anything: clothes, monsters, architecture, fonts, you name it. So this one was a must-click for me. And I also really liked the way the main page of the site was set up, and how the story was framed. The main page shows a picture of a foggy graveyard, with a hyperlink set up on the phrase "Enter the Graveyard..." It set up a very nice tone for the whole storybook, which was very nice. I'd love to do something like that for mine if I come up with something along those lines that works for my particular storybook. And then I also loved that they framed the different segments of the story under the context that each of these stories was the one told by one of the teenagers camping in the woods. A really cool and fun little detail that adds some nice flavor to the overall story and ties them all together nicely despite each story having a different subject matter.

Those were my storybook favorites, and a little bit of what made each of them interesting to me. I'm very much looking forward to coming up with my own storybook as we move on with this course!

My Favorite Place: A View of the Rain

 

In all honesty, I don't really have a favorite place. I don't really feel a strong attachment to any one place in the world. I like my home, but that's because it's where all my things are. I'd probably be just as happy someplace else, really.

So when I had to answer this question, the only thing that came to mind was the rain. Because no matter where I am, I find comfort in the rain. Others may love sunny days, but to me, there is no kind of day more perfect than a rainy one, particularly when viewed through a window.

So I suppose my answer to what my favorite place is, is someplace comfortable with a view of the rain. It's not one definite geographical location, instead it's an experience that can occur almost anywhere.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Start of a New Adventure

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