Blog Post No. 527
Since January of 2013, I’ve written a weekly blog post on this website. (It was the tenth post overall). Ten years is a nice round number and a recognized milestone, so I’m really happy that I made it this far. Not to say I have any plans to stop, but ten years and over 500 posts seems like a lot while I look back on it. It’s kind of like that game Lemmings. There was an option to assign one of the little sprites to build a set of stairs. It started off slowly, pulling planks from a sack and laying them down on top of one another. Eventually, they would run out of material and if you were on top of things (and not looking towards the next obstacle on the map) you could select the same worker to keep building before it just walked over the edge.
I’m sure everyone has heard or read about how extensively people can acclimate to just about anything. There are people out there living with pain, stress, or other burdens that (while I’m sure it beats them down) they have just gotten used to all the things they do to mitigate their situation and move forward. Sometimes there’s no other choice and sometimes it seems easier to just put up with things the way they are than go through whatever it may take to change them. That’s an extreme example, but I’m sure we’ve all had a temporary burden hardship like a broken down car or 
Welcome to the end of 2022. As is tradition, I’ll write a nice long post looking back on the year when I get to the year-end of the blog in mid January. This post is all about looking to the future. The distant future of 2023, to be exact. Will there finally be flying cars and food in pill form? I have no idea, but I kind of hope not. I’ll settle for better healthcare and cheaper groceries. I’d also really like to finally get out of the house more and specifically start attending events again. I’ve been writing 
It’s holiday season and my family’s Christmas celebration is happening this weekend, so that’s what this post is going to be all about. But, before I dive into that, I do want to point out that I did manage to get the sixth draft of the Invasion Novel done last Friday. I even sent it out to a couple of folks who were eager do do a beta read for me. I have no idea when they’ll get back to me, but the current word count is under 120 000 words, so I suspect it’ll be some time. While I wait for that, I’ve started on another short story. I’m still shaking off the short story cobwebs, but I’m excited to be back to the format that I first fell in love with.
I sure hope I’m not going to be shooting myself in the foot (since I write my posts before their Thursday release) but if things go according to my current schedule, I should be done this draft of the Invasion Novel by tomorrow. I’m calling it the sixth draft even though I’ve been through the book more than six times. I feel like this is the sixth version of the book, though, so I’m sticking with it. While I’m optimistic that I’ll be finished, there is one potential issue that could make me a liar.
I’m closing in on the current draft of the Invasion Novel—which sounds good except for the fact that I had hoped to be done by now. There are all kinds of reasons why I’m behind, but that’s not what this post is about. This week, I’m looking into the methods I come up with to try and keep my productivity up. I’ve been coming up with different methods since high school (when I first got it into my head to be a writer). Clearly, what I came up with back then didn’t work or I wouldn’t be trying to finish my first novel many (many) years later. Oddly enough, though, the basic ideas I had back then aren’t all that dissimilar with the methods that have made the most impact over the years. 
It’s no secret that people are angry and have been for years. The culture in North America (and seemingly in other places as well) has been leaning towards an atmosphere of meanness, selfishness, pettiness, greed, and spite. This current decade has no monopoly on those feelings, but in the last few weeks I’ve been watching some television shows from my youth and I’ve noticed that, while television now is generally great, there isn’t the same emphasis on the moral message as there used to be. Plus, with so many ways to watch shows from so many services, there’s no general audience like there was in the days of network dominance.
It’s not officially winter, but it sure feels like it in my area. I know some places have already had some pretty heavy snowfall, but we just got our first light dusting last week. I was in the kitchen making something to eat and listening to music before heading off to the day job, occasionally looking out the window to watch the falling flurries and I had a strong sense of déjà vu. I thought back on a fond memory about the snow which led to others. Sometimes the snow and cold are a nuisance, but they don’t always have to be.
I’m going to try something new this week. The end of the year is just around the corner and I’d like to get my views and visits up a bit. More importantly, I’m a little low on things to write about so I decided to take three ideas that may not be enough for a whole post and see if putting them together is something. I could have stretched each one out into a full post, giving me three weeks worth of material, but would those three weeks be any good? We’ll never know since I decided to try this instead!
I didn’t intend to wait this long to write a 
Ben Van Dongen 