Hello and welcome
to By the Pine. I am Wodewose; poet, philosopher, pretentious loser, nature
enthusiast. This is my own attempt to get out of the house and start doing
something semi-productive again. Playing videogames and watching Netflix is
fine, but when it became routine to spend almost a quarter of my day doing
nothing else I felt it was high time to re-evaluate my priorities. It's not
exactly the healthiest of lifestyles. Anywho, I had to get out of my room and
back into the habit of writing (Have to put that English degree to use
somehow). So now I sit in a coffee shop and write. I’m just one MacBook away
from being that guy. Before you know it I’ll be
wearing a scarf and skinny jeans while adjusting my black rimmed glasses with
condescension. Welcome to By the Pine, an ongoing effort to get out and get
better.
My intention for By the Pine is to produce a post once a week about anything
related to the outdoors and to document the planning and preparation for a
backpacking trip I want to take sometime this October. To accomplish this I've
set for myself a few lofty goals:
- By the end of March I need to have a better job. The two part time jobs I
have right now are doing their best to kill me. Spam and ramen can only keep you alive for so long before you start to die inside. My bowels aren't giving me any thanks either. Second and third shift hours suck pretty
hard and it’s really begun to eat away at me. Having waking hours from 1:00 pm
to 6:00 am tends to turn you
into a soulless husk cut into
other aspects of your life.
- I need to start writing on a schedule again at least five days a week. I know
that if I don't take this seriously I'll just fall back into Netflix mode. I
also want to be writing around 750 edited words a week. That is a bit subjective, but I really want to try and stick to that. I
eventually want do more, but considering my current schedule this seems entirely
reasonable. Creative writing may happen sometimes, but I doubt any of that will
end up here.
- As I said before, I want to plan and execute a backpacking trip for sometime
this fall. Ideally, the trip would be in October to avoid crowds, give me time
to plan properly, and mostly just because I love autumn. I have an idea of
where I want to go and for how long, but I already have a few other ideas if
for some reason the first option falls through. I want to be able to go
somewhere outside of Ohio. Not that there’s anything wrong with Ohio, it’s just
well, you know, Ohio. We don’t have that much going on.
- Criticism. I've never really been the best at handling criticism. Part of me
right now is screaming “IF I DON’T POST IT THEY WON’T KNOW HOW DUMB I AM!” It
would take me a week to get into the right mindset to read critiques from my
professors and peers (verbal criticism I’m strangely okay with). Okay, maybe it
wasn't that bad, but at times it felt like it. I'm hoping that by opening
myself to the deluge of critics that is the internet I can break down that
mental barrier. I have to develop that thick skin sooner or later and since
sooner has long since passed, later will have to do. Please, don’t be a major
douche canoe.
- I want to have most posts planned in advance and get a good backlog going.
This will help get me into the routine and stay on track. It should also allow
me to do adequate quality control and editing. Should.
Now that I've bored you enough with my own shortcomings, I'll see you next week
where I'll go into more detail about my preparation for my backpacking trip.
Until then here's a quote one of my roommates put on our whiteboard:
"Rejection just means you're pushing
the upper limits of what's possible. Unfortunately, some people have
extraordinarily low upper limits."
- Anonymous
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