I’m pushing mid September with this shifting milestone, and it’s all good. Since combing through my journals from 2006-2009, I’ve discovered more material scattered hither and yon throughout the full archive. I’ve not included analog storage like notebooks in my search, so this is not a complete Daughter of God inventory – yet. The repeated extensions required to finish the inventory demonstrate the need for a proven project organization protocol AND practice. Blogs are a pretty good way to go for making notes – if I could mirror on a local drive. For now I’m using the outliner Inspiration.
Building the inventory has been totally worth the investment of several weeks. I feel able to grasp the project in it’s entirety. I’m clear about the incredible amount of time and effort I’ve invested so far – which motivates to bring it to an auspicious conclusion. I’m saving future time by not re-exploring territory that is already covered with my footprints.
I forgot to include the real world when building the milestone timeline. To wit – I’m a social and romantic being, I’m engaged in regular physical practice, I continue the life process by eating which requires both food preparation and clean-up, my creative life is sparked by reading, watching documentaries and wandering in the wilderness, I’m planning short collaborations with key allies and I enjoy a hot bath now and then. Sustaining long term effort on Daughter of God must strike a balance with the human experience, otherwise we risk burnout. I’ve revised the timeline to include breaks between milestones. The milestones may still need to be sliced up into smaller chunks and allocated more time, but for now we’re still projecting a wrap by years end.
So the lessons for this post are – develop an organization protocol, consolidate all commentary in one location and include the real world in the plan. Another self production strategy is to set milestones that require no more than a week or two to reach. My mistake in setting the first milestone was defining a too large scope of work, rather than break the inventory into several smaller milestones – eg CORE, then marooned, then commentary. Each then could be extended by days rather than weeks. It may have worked out to take the same amount of time, but focusing on and achieving short term objectives boosts my morale and momentum.
I’m off today on a side project with Patrick that’s been active all summer – the fabrication shop.