Sure, sometimes those things are severely-charred zombies from the beginnings of some sci-fi Apocalypse, but just work with me on this one. It’s been a hectic day, and spending two hours in my car on the way home. The slightly snowy Pittsburgh roads weren’t the issues so much as the other drivers, but that’s another topic for another time.

My most-recent laptop, now my second-most-recent laptop, has been missing its R and – keys for some time. It boots up slowly. When it goes to sleep, it slips into a coma only reversible by rebooting. The hinge is now popping apart. It’s lasted me for five-ish good years of me fumbling my way through writing, being dropped, and near-misses with various drink spillage. Last night, I bought an HP Spectre x360, which I would name HP FancyPants if I didn’t already like it so much. The process of transferring everything over will begin soon, and with that I will hopefully return to writing more regularly.

Speaking of writing: I am presently reading Big Magic. If you’ve never done so and you are set on living a creative life, or a more creative life, or you’re just in need of something to read, I would strongly recommend it. It’s wonderful. One of my takeaways from it already–one that I will need to work very hard on it to actually make it happen–is being creative to live a creative life. One of my biggest focus points is that I would like to write for a living. It eats me up to the point I don’t get anything done, or the thing I get done is berating myself like a champ for not being more like my peers. I also excel at looking at published, established, well-known authors and pine over how I’d like to be in that spotlight. None of this is beneficial, and that is a statement I didn’t just stumble over. I think I just needed a push in the right direction. I’ll still strive for publication, but I think a lot of this means focusing more on writing, on editing, and finally on actually finding homes for my writing. Less on the desire to get to a nebulous end-goal that, really, I may never reach. I enjoy writing. I need to stop spoiling it for myself.

Lastly, my Goals notebook has been dormant. It’s been a busy, hectic few days. I’m giving myself the week off, then resurrecting that from its ashes, too.

What all have you folks been resurrecting? Hopefully none of the aforementioned charred zombies.