I’ve used RescueTime to track my computer and phone usage for a few years now, and it continues to be a surprisingly underrated tool in my kit. Today they sent in my year in review for 2020, showing me how I spent my screen time throughout last year, and it was really interesting to note some of the ways the data is different to previous years. Case in point, the little egg-splat they produce that visually represents your time by month and category. I’m used to these being an irregular shape, but the April-through-May bulge is one of those aberrations that tells me just how different 2020 was to a regular year. There’s a massive blow-out in “general utilities” time, which proves to be the endless hours spent learning to use Zoon and teaching online when the university closed the campus. It’s accompanied by a bulge in my purple “research” hours, which is basically how RescueTime logs “hours spent reading

I spent the dying days of 2020 making lists of habits I’d like to establish (or, in most cases, re-establish in the wake of 2020’s unpredictable daily routines). Stuff like I’d like to start blogging everyday, and maybe turn the blog into a monthly zine or chapbook’s worth of content or post a free short story to every month or release 52 chapbooks over the course of the year. All of them fell victim to my inability to pull the trigger on a year-long commitment, and thus risk the body-blows to my ego. Because they were all ego projects, to some extent or another. Attempts to stay in contact with my self-perception as someone who writes as my plans for 2021 looked increasingly focused on editorial tasks. 365 days is a daunting timespan, just as 100,000 words is a daunting amount of words to write if you’ve never written a novel. There’s always the danger that ambition outstrips ability, that

It’s New Year’s Day here in Brisbane. January 1st, 2021. The hell year of 2020 is in the rear view, and the coming year is shiny and new and only a little splattered by the ongoing shit it inherited from the previous 365 days. I woke up this morning, wrote three pages, then spent an hour walking around the neighbourhood to check out the damage New Year’s wrought. Here, in my neck of the woods, it’s mostly roadside vomiting and evidence of some kind of car accident at the intersection near my house. More than I expected, as we seemed to be taking things quietly last night, but nowhere near the New Year’s record. Once home, I made a coffee and fired up a fresh logbook for the year. I picked up the logbook habit from Austin Kleon, who advocates for the practice on his blog and in his book Steal Like An Artist. The process is basically what it