The Plan of the Hour

In spite of, or perhaps because of the fact that I didn't organize a post today, I've been mulling about what it means to plan ahead. It's a thrilling juxtaposition that my lack of readiness is a readiness in and of itself.
So without further ado, the Word of the Day is 'PLANNING'.

Planning /'planing/ v. 1. to organize a scheme or set of ideas for action.

You want to know something I didn't plan on? I never planned on drawing pictures for this blog. In case you haven't noticed, I draw all the pictures that come above the writing here. Even when the idea is as hard to visualize as 'PLANNING' is, I wanted there to be a picture. My original plan was that every post would have a picture that I'd take from Flickr or Tumblr or Pictr or whatever website would give me legal and free images. But in my first post, I dreamed up this image of a sign at the end of the road with the word "The End" on it. I google-image searched it and found a bunch of signs that didn't look right, so finally I sketched my own.
I say sketched and not drew, because I can't actually draw. I look up images on Google and sketch the bits I like into one image. I'm like a real-world photoshop.
So I drew the thing. And then, because I am crazy about keeping the same style and theme, I continued it for the next post and now, for every article I draw something. I never planned on it, but it's now become like a tradition.
The thing is, it's a lot more difficult than I thought. I actually draw the image in pencil, then fix up mistakes with an eraser and check the lines, maybe edit with a ruler, and then I draw it again in pen. And then I colour it in (which is hard with a pen, because it means I have to 'press lightly' which isn't always easy).
Am I complaining? Well, not really. I just mean, I never planned on it, but that's where I now find myself. Thankfully it's not too hard. If it was, I'd stop. I'm actually cheating somewhat in that if I know I going to write about something, I'll draw the picture in advance.

So why am I talking about pictures? Well, like I said, I didn't plan this post.
Do you know what I planned to do today? Watch the latest James Bond movie. I've been meaning to, and that's the idea. If it's good enough, and has enough ideas, I might even talk about it in my next post. But unfortunately, it means I didn't work out today's post.
Today's post was originally going to be about the word adulterated (I have a few ideas for it). But I didn't get around to it because I wasn't in the mood. Y'see, I have a back-log. that's where the story iRobot came from, as well as the Gospel of Drunk McBeardley [which is a VERY true story, by the way], I knew I couldn't be creative every day. So on the days I am, I write down as much as I can, as many ideas as I can, and I store them for later, in the backlog.
And that's kind of the whole point of why I am writing about THIS. I want you to know the behind the scenes. The scoop. The planning behind all this. Because sometimes, it's simple things like that which cause different posts in themselves.The second post I did had the word of the day 'Dictionary'. You want to know what the original choice was? 'Water'. Yeah, water. I still might do it someday, I do have a lot of stuff to say about it [admittedly, pretentious poetic stuff. But what can you do?]. But do you know what stopped me? I couldn't draw it. It's clear for goodness' sake! So I gave up and instead drew a tatty old tome titled dictionary. And I like what I did, I enjoy that post, but I hope it illustrates how annoying these little factors can be.
Sometimes, just a mood or a poor illustration can change my plans. It's different to the way I planned things out.
Not to mention, it's frigging summer right now, and I have an air-cooled CPU for a brain. I need cool air to think clearly.

Again, don't think I'm complaining. I'm not annoyed at all. I wanted to write every day, and now I do. I'm very happy. I just didn't know this would be where it took me. And I am perfectly fine writing posts like this. Hell, I could just write gibberish here for all I need it. I want to make my fingers flow over the keyboard, I need to put my mind to the page . . . that's the point of this blog, practicing writing. So I could write nonsense. But there's a reason this is on the internet. So I feel an obligation to my (somewhat non-existent) audience. So I just want you to know, yeah, I won't always have planned everything out in advance.
And yeah, somedays I won't have a plan, and you'll have to handle this stream-of-consciousness nonsense. It's just what you get when I write every single day. It's why I said that people can submit ideas, in my first post, I know that sometimes the bucket'll run dry, or I will just be stuck between a post and a writer's block.
But at those times know, I do still have ideas in the backlog, and I do plan on giving you writing you'll really enjoy.
But, especially in this weather, I'm gonna be spent. That's why I plan on spending my day watching a movie in an air-conditioned theatre.
Because some days, you don't want to have a plan.

I hope I got my point across. Now I'm going to draw the picture for this post. Feel free to have a look. Although it's just a picture, it's based off the way I actually plan out my stories, even though the drawing is pretty hasty. And if you want let me know:
What are you planning for the holidays?

Till then, peace out.
From, The Absurd Word Nerd.