Two weeks: time to regroup

I leave for RWA '12 two weeks from Tuesday, and it's time to admit I'm not going to live up to the ambitious goals I set myself four weeks ago.  I haven't stuck with my health goals, and while the writing has been coming along, it hasn't gone as quickly as I'd hoped.

Normally this is where I quietly beat myself up for failure and stop publicly admitting I had goals. But this time around I think I'll look at why I failed, and try to regroup so I can still have a productive summer.

As for the why, the health thing I've been dealing with for the past 2-3 weeks is probably the biggest culprit. I've been deliberately vague to spare you all the TMI, but suffice it to say this was clearly an annoyance rather than a scare almost from the very beginning. There were three possible treatments, and we decided to go with the simplest first. So far it's working fine, but if that changes the second simplest will probably do the trick, and the most complex/invasive is pretty much a guarantee.

But at no point was I afraid.  It just took me a couple referrals and tests to get to that simple treatment, and it added a layer of hassle to my life. It's as if that hassle layer knocked aside the most recent addition to my schedule--the time I was spending exercising and preparing and journaling my food.

I'm not happy with myself, but I think the best thing I can do is to get back to those habits now that I'm healed-for-now, in hopes that next time life kicks me up a level in Hassle, my good health habits will be more than a week or two old, and therefore not so quick to melt away. So it's back to Weight Watchers and exercise, even though I can no longer hope to drop a size by RWA.  Maybe by Emerald City Writers Conference instead.

On the writing side, the health hassle impacted me there, though not as strongly.  I've been writing fairly steadily, but my word count isn't where I expected it to be at this point.  So I've shifted my goal from finishing my draft by 7/22 and having it ready to submit by 8/12, to finished by 8/12 and submission-ready 8/26. Then I can take a week or so off and start my next manuscript right after Labor Day, just when Miss Fraser goes back to school for the fall.