Back in April, I wrote this about building a new creative writing habit:

What's different this time? I don't know. I have an intention and I'd like to follow through on it. This is not one of my strengths as a serial enthusiast. But, nonetheless, I want to try.

So, yeah: I tried and I kept it up for a while. It wasn't on a strictly daily basis, but I wrote more story-like words over two months than I have in literal decades. But, I couldn't make it stick as a habit.

I mean, this shouldn't be a huge surprise to anyone who knows me. But, every now and then, I convince myself that I can brute force my way through ADHD via sheer willpower. I blame all the self-help books I've read since I was a pre-teen.

Anyway, other interests scrabbled at my brain that whole time. When I finally let go of the focus, I did a bunch of other things that weren't writing stories:

• Fixed a Commodore Amiga 1080 monitor that had fallen off a shelf.
• Revived a Macintosh Classic
• Got a sudden urge to try live streaming chiptunes and tinkering again
• Livestreamed myself learning more about surface-mount soldering
• Built a BlueSCSI for the recently-revived Mac Classic
• Played with serial cable adapters for the Mac Classic, have yet to get one working.
• Bought a RaSCSI kit for my Mac Classic, but haven't built it yet.
• Played with a Raspberry Pi camera and ESP-32 cameras
• Considered a livestream of typing in code listings from "Program along with Joey Ramone"
• Tidied up the basement computer lab in anticipation of shenanigans.
• Started a dry-run of a basement livestream but never went live.
• Spent some weekends feeling bad that I wasn't doing any livestreams.
• Rode my bike for about 150 miles, albeit not all at once.
• Cooked a bunch, mainly brunch, sometimes dinner.
• Replaced light fixtures around the house, replaced locks on doors.
• Glared at schematics for my Atari Tempest in hopes to get back to repairing that thing.
• Got shot up with the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster.
• Abruptly fell down a rabbit hole reviving my old gamedev hobby coding
• Spent a week messing around with flocking, steering, and bouncing boids

And, of course, I've had a relatively new job during all of the above and I didn't wander off. Folks consider not wandering off to be important for sustaining a livelihood. So, that's an achievement at least.

Also, I regularly hang out with my wife and our critters. That's an important way to spend my time.

I write all this to remind myself that I did interesting stuff, even if I couldn't arbitrarily command my brain to stick to writing.

Anyway, how was your summer?