The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them).

After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all.

Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here).

MY CHECK-IN

What am I working on this week?

My twin goals for this week are:

• Writing something on my PhD exegisis every day–I’ve fallen off the wagon with the events of the last two weeks, but this week I get to reaffirm my commitment to the project and get it moving once more.
• Work on the Exile (Keith Murphy 1) re-release and clear at least three chapters. 

It’s the first time in a while that I haven’t set myself any first draft goals, but it’s going to be a complex week for getting stuff done. There’s a funeral to go to, a packed weekend next weekend, and I’m in the phase where habits get to be reset and re-affirmed rather than being tools to rely upon. 

What’s inspiring me this week?

The biggest bang-for-my back inspiration this week has been Craig Mod’s latest Roden Explorer newsletter, in which he devotes approximately 4,000 words to the idea of publishing, appholes, and dopamine-driven entertainments. It’s the kind of topic that’s deep inside my wheelhouse to start with, but it came loaded with enough links to other resources that have got my brain sparking that it’s a highly inspiration-rich ground zero document.

What action do I need to take?

Less an action I need to take, and more an action I need to maintain: keeping my desk clear. I let a whole lot of clutter rise up in my workspace over the last few months, which culminated in the classic I’ve-spilled-coffee-on-my-laptop moment that tends to arrive when there’s nowhere to put the cup.

This was a prompt to get the desk cleared last week, but it will be ridiculously easy to fall back into the clutter mode, so I’m challenging myself to develop two habits: starting each day with a desk clear, and ending each work session by returning the tools (books referenced, notebooks worked in) back to their default state.

Ideally, I’d like to be hitting next Sunday with the desk in much the same state as it is now–a clean, ready-to-use surface where work can spread across as necessary, ready to adapt when I switch between computers and notebooks in order to get work done.