#ROW80 - Round Number Next Goals Post

What round are we on now? 2012, Round 3? That sounds about right. This'll be my fourth round as a ROWer. Ah, how words fly...

I've been pretty consistent as far as my goals go from round to round. They work for me. Here's a quick recap of what I usually do:

• Lesson Learned - I want to learn something every week. Could be craft. Could be marketing. Could be about myself. My theory is that when you're learning, you're progressing... even if you're failing a smaller goal. If you learn from it, it's not time wasted.
• WIP Progress - When I have a WIP, I want to progress it. Generally, I set a "page count" per day. Word counts bug me, personally. I want dialog (sparser words) to be equally weighted with prose (more words). Why? I like dialog better in my books than large chucks of narration. A page limit encourages me to use the much faster-moving dialog. It's a personal thing. I still track words, but my goal is pages. Similarly if I hit editing (though I usually phrase it as a number of chapters there).
• Blogging - To me, blogging is both a community building activity as well as writing practice. I have three active blogs. This one, a gaming blog, and a personal blog. Generally, I try to do three posts a week on both this and the gaming blog, checking in monthly on the personal blog. I may cut back on my gaming posts since I've not been playing a lot lately, but for now I think I'm going to leave this up as a stretch goal. It's tough to come up with topics when you're not playing as much, but challenges are good.
• Reading - I added a fourth goal last time. It started out as a goal to "not" read. I was reading rather than finishing my last project, and I needed to focus. After I finished the project, I joined a group read and had a blast. I'm going to try to look for something like that again. It's a great way for an introvert like me to meet new people. If nothing else, I'll knock out 2-3 books per round. That's at least two, but no more than three. I could read all day, every day... but I need to apply the lessons in those books to my own projects.

That's the gist for me. You'll probably notice one big, fat absent goal that a lot of others put in there. I'm partially ashamed to mention it. A lot of folks have the "I will visit x people" goal. I suppose I could make such a goal, but I have very strict commenting rules for myself. I identify very strongly with functional introverts. That is to say, I'm the type of person that loves 1-on-1 deep conversation about a topic, but flails at a party when people are just making chit-chat. I'm awful at chit-chat. 

Chit-chat is probably a good thing, as people like to feel acknowledged, even if you're not solving world hunger. A lot of times (not always), the "visit x people" goal turns into chit chat. The thought of it makes me squirm. Not if you do it. No. But of the incredible pressure I feel to have to come up with something sufficiently interesting. Don't ask me why. I consider it a bit of a dysfunction. This is an extrovert's world.

So I don't force myself to "rack up" the visits. Instead, I just make an effort to lurk. That is, I often read a bunch of the entries but say nothing. The traffic looks nice, and I'm no good at forcing myself to say something. I think fellow ROWers could agree, though, that when I do say something... I try my best to make it memorable, thoughtful, or constructive. It's great to have people to cheer you on, and for that, chit chat works well. I'm just a terrible cheerleader, so instead... I want to connect. But you can't force connections. They're organic, they just happen.

That's a rather long side-musing on visits, eh? I'm not sure if I'm explaining how I feel clearly enough. I don't want someone to read this and think... wow, what a jerk. I like stopping by and saying nice things. Who doesn't like that? Please don't think I'm down on chit chat... I just feel awkward at it. And instead of letting awkwardness rule me and hiding forever in my corner... I allow myself to only comment when inspiration strikes. It's a compromise of sorts.

Is that completely bonkers?

Rock on to you "visit x" folks! If you read this, add one more each to pick up my lazy-slack. :-) I'll be over here, lurking as usual.

That's all for now, see you in the Round!