The 10K Writathon from Hell

So I decided to give a 10,000 word writathon a go. Except this time, I would go at it unprepared. Not completely unprepared, I knew what I would be writing, but that's literally it.

Warning - ramble mode is included in this posting, due the nature of the unprepared and unorganized day like zomg.

This is how my morning started: First, I had a hard time getting up. The bed was too comfortable, I was too lazy, and I wasn't ready for the day. Just my entire mindset this morning was different from the other 10,000 word challenge.

I made my coffee late, had breakfast late, and decided I would count the words from the outlines as part of my wordcount... and I'd allow myself to work on more than one story. I figured it would help me out a bit, at least in the whole idea of getting words down on a page kind of thing. Obviously my drive was a little bit down.

Another thing about this 10k writathon today... I didn't really tell many people about it. What does this mean? I don't have my support group. I'm keeping it a bit on the Down-Low. Why? To show how much having that support group means for such a challenge.

Also, I'm only progress updating every once in awhile, rather than every hour. And furthermore, I'm only going to be posting that progress once or twice on each social media site.

Luckily for me, my boyfriend knows about my 10K challenge and is super supportive, which will help me a lot to just know that he knows and respects my writing stuff.

Speaking of my boyfriend, another reason this is the 10K from hell is because tonight is "date night" which is where I make him an awesome dinner and we eat with candlelight and shnazz. The reason this is difficult is because that cuts on my time, especially because we also have to go grocery shopping. Hopefully the food that will be picked won't have to be puppy guarded. ^^"

Other reasons today is difficult (and I'm totally counting my blog post as part of my word count >.>) include: Not having any snack food nearby (we have some chips in the kitchen, but that's it), not having my lemon water made (which would've been part of my 10k writing preparations), and not having outlines for the things I was writing.

So I actually decided to think of what to make for lunch early because y'know, procrastination. (Which again makes me hella glad I'm counting this blog post towards my word count.)

Yes, that's right, I didn't even plan lunch. Just like I didn't plan breakfast. I made toaster strudel, by the way. Good stuff. Promise.

872 words at 11:47am

So after a lunch of rice-a-roni that went over time limit (as usual) I decided it would be a good idea to go on a jog. Maybe the fresh air would help my brain out, hm?

Well, I still got distracted but I made a lot of writing progress, believe it or not.

3320 as of 5:41pm

Went out to eat for date night and shopping. Dizzy, tired, headache, exhausted. If I even make it to 5,000 words tonight I will count the day as a success. Today really is the 10k from hell. At least I'll have a good night's sleep tonight, I hope.

It's now 9pm. I'm not even going to count what I completed. Bed time. Lol.

Never do an unplanned 10k writathon. I'll probably do an actual planned 10k towards the end of the month.
-Alexandria
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Ultra-Awesome-Self-Homeschooling-Like-Thingamajig Day Six

Monday Schedule:

• Gym
• Cleanup
• Psychology
• Foundations of Math
• Italian pt.1
• Lunch
• Italian pt. 2
• Art pt. 1
• Reading pt. 1
• Writing
• Reading pt. 2
• Art pt. 2

Day Six: September 8th, 2014

You may have noticed, but I'm only counting days where I actually do workstuff. It's always nice to keep a running tally of such things.

For gym today all I did was my Cemetery Road route. This is a slightly bigger route than normal, hence why doing other things... isn't a thing.

Psychology was quite the learning experience. You see, I was planning on getting both the prologue and chapter one done today of the book. That's reading AND notetaking. I assumed because I read quickly, I should be able to finish all of the about 50 pages.

Oh no. No. Not at all. Note-taking is both a science and an art. I got the art of note-taking down... it's the science I haven't figured out. So I plan on going back to the psych later and trying a new method. For future reference the "read and take notes as you go" plan is what I was doing.

Foundations of math is amusingly becoming one of my favorite classes. It's amusing because I stink at math, or I think so anyways. It's awesome because I am actually making progress and have been the required work pretty much every day it's required. It's brilliant, really.

I actually finished Early Math and am pretty far into 3rd grade math already. Forth grade is coming on a little bit slower but that's because I'm doing multiplication and fractions and such now. Woo!

I hope to get all forth grade skills practiced by Wednesday at the absolute latest, I'll probably get them all practiced tomorrow though.

At 11:30 I began Italian which involved story brainstorming. I brainstormed setting ideas and chose one, then I brainstormed plot ideas and chose one. I was thinking of sharing what the book will be about, but what's the fun in that? Actually, I might post the "query" here next week.

Somewhere around there I had lunch and then procrastinated for a good while before realizing I had to do my art class. I did try, I honestly did. I took notes on types of art, but, you see, it's so subjective. I'll probably have to re-do it later because I am unsatisfied with the information the site gave me.

Reading I spent choosing a new book. I then realized I could do my psychology book. Some may feel it's a cop-out but I'll only do that when I'm running late. Like I'll probably do tomorrow. And Wednesday.

Writing was spent outlining the story I have in my back log that will be the next story I get to publish. It will be a murder mystery style thing. It's already written, I just have to re-write and edit it. To do this, I'm outlining the key parts. Then I'll rewrite the entire thing from scratch and add details to the story from the rough draft depending on how it sounds.

As for reading part two... it was pretty much taken down for the day due to factors such as not knowing what to do next. This will hopefully be fixed tomorrow.

Art part two was spent taking pictures. Pictures will be shown on deviantart tomorrow.
-Alexandria
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Ultra-Awesome-Self-Homeschooling-Like-Thingamajig Day Five

Saturday Schedule:

• Gym
• Cleanup Break
• History
• Foundations of Math
• Italian
• Reading
• Lunch/Break
• Art
• Analysis and Next Week's Schedule Creation

Day Five: September 6th, 2014

Gym started out awesome with some brief yoga and then both Darrel and I went outside and played frisbee! Great start to the day and made me excited for how the rest of the day would turn out.

History today involved watching four videos on khanacademy and writing synopsi for them!

The videos were:

1. Assassination of Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip
2. The Great War Begins
3. Blockades, U-Boats, and Sinking of the Lusitania
4. Zimmermann Telegram

After History came Foundations which goes well pretty much most of the time. I'm very close to finishing up early math. I started today at 87% and made it to 94%!

Italian on Saturdays tends to involve writing sentences with the week's vocabulary. I wrote a couple phrases but focused on completed the stuff from yesterday which included researching the history on infoplease.

I skipped reading. I really need to stop skipping reading.

I also skipped art. I really need to stop skipping art.

As for my personal analysis of each thing - I'm on track for Math doing an hour a day. Gym could be going better, but it's a matter of getting up and doing it, except for the course part which I'm behind on. Psychology is what I'd call on track, for just starting out. History is also exactly on track. Italian is about a week behind because of a couple miscalculations and issues based on there being no good free online course. But this is okay, because I've already worked on giving it a new sort of "schedule" based on my old spanish work. Art I'm (obviously) behind in. Reading literally has no way for me to measure how on or off track I am, but I haven't done anything so I think it's safe to assume I'm behind. 

No School Tomorrow Due to "No Work Day" (because I earned enough stars)

-Alexandria
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Ultra-Awesome-Self-Homeschooling-Like-Thingamajig Day Four

Friday Schedule:

• Gym
• Cleanup Break
• Psychology
• Foundations of Math
• Lunch/Break
• Italian
• Reading
• Art

Day Four: September 5th, 2014

I've been doing well so far. I've had some bumps as you can see but it has all been... a learning experience. (insert bah-dum-tss here.)

Skipped gym out of sheer being lame.

For Psychology today I read and took notes on the preface and time management section of "Psychology" by: David G. Myers. (i.e. my chosen textbook.) There are 17 sections in this book besides those two smaller ones. I'll have to figure out how to spread them out later.

Foundations of Math went well. I went from 68% progress to 87% in Early Math. In fact, because of how KhanAcademy works, I wasn't able to do anything more in Early math today and so moved on to 3rd grade math for a little bit. (I went from 30% to 47% there.)

I skipped Italian, reading, and art due to an emotional... attack? that lasted pretty much all day. Well, until grocery shopping, when I learned how awesome some college students can be.

Today was a pretty bumpy, but I'm optimistic about tomorrow!
-Alexandria
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Ultra-Awesome-Self-Homeschooling-Like-Thingamajig Day Three

Thursday Schedule:

• Gym
• Cleanup Break
• History
• Foundations of Math
• Lunch/Break
• Italian
• Reading
• Art

Day Three: September 4th, 2014

Gym started at 11:10am this morning because facebook and such. (At least I didn't nap until noon...) And then of course I made some tea, because logic right? It looked nasty inside today so I did some tennis jumps (what I call them) as part of something I call minute sprints.

Then because weather, lunch was early.

History came next. On KhanAcademy I watched four videos, each of which I wrote a synopsis on. I started class today at 1:45.
The videos were:

1. Empires Before World War I
2. German and Italian Empires in 1914
3. Alliances Leading to World War I
4. Language and Religion of the Former Yugoslavia

Foundations of Math started at 2:45 after a brief break that came after history. I started the day with 47% Progress in the Early Math area and ended with 68%!

After a brief break came Italian at 3:45. Italian for the day involved looking at a few ebooks I have in Italian and familiarizing myself with the words.

Reading found itself skipped due to a splitting headache. I had no ibuprofen so I did the next best thing: I took a nap. After I woke up the second time, my headache was gone but I didn't have enough time for reading.

At dinnertime I did my art which consisted of me trying to figure out the setting for my story. I have tentatively chosen Russian Impressionist Paintings as the main subject matter or setting for the art related story. Which, yes, means I'll have to do some studying of Russia, Impressionism, Paintings, and the Impressionistic time period.

Ultra-Awesome-Self-Homeschooling-Like-Thingamajig Day Two

Wednesday Schedule:

• Gym Class
• Cleanup Break
• Information Theory Psychology
• Foundations of Math
• Lunch/Break
• Italian
• Reading

Day Two - September 3rd, 2014

Today was a little hectic. By a little hectic I mean there were issues getting up and, well, I napped until 12:30 and then had lunch and then went out with a friend and didn't do any work until dinner started.

I moved Reading to earlier because I went to the library with Darrel, which allows me to look at books and all that fun. I ended up grabbing some Information Theory books.

I was planning on doing Information Theory and spent my time at the library, checking out the books I had grabbed. I soon realized that this subject required a much higher mathematical knowledge than I currently possessed. So I decided I would now learn Psychology in its place and just add an extra half hour to my math studies so as to get to a higher level, sooner.

Italian today was going to consist of just listening to Italian anyways, so found an Italian podcast and listened to it.

Gym I was planning on skipping but Darrel wanted to play Frisbee for game night, so that became gym. I'm pretty glad we got to do it so I didn't have to skip a class :) (and because Frisbee is hella awesome.)

Because I had a little extra time I decided to put in a little bit of Psychology work today... Because today is story creation day for that I worked on choosing a setting and putting together the loose-leaf textbook.

Foundations of Math was cut down by a little bit due to my timing error. I spent the time before bed working on it. The most important thing was that I got in the Mastery challenges.

I went from 29% progress on the Early Math section to 47% which makes me pretty excited.

All in all, today was harsh and difficult, but I got the important things done.

Stay Awesome!
-Alexandria
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Day One of the Ultra-Awesome-Self-Homeschooling-Like-Thingamajig

Day One - September 2nd, 2014

So for those of you that are confused (i.e. most of you) I decided to do some self-learning style stuff. Sort of like homeschooling. It's pretty cool. I feel I don't remember most of the stuff from school so a lot will be review, but hey, it's fun.

If you don't want to read these posts just ignore anything titled "Ultra-Awesome-Self-Homeschooling-Like-Thingamajig" or just look for a long hyphenated string, same thing. XD

I'll be following pretty similar schedules each day, sort of like how a college schedule works.

Schedule for Tuesday's:

• Gym
• History
• Foundations of Math
• Break/Lunch
• Italian
• Reading

First up was Gym Class! I took a brisk walk about with Darrel on the route I like to call "the figure eight." We did the figure eight in about 17 minutes. After that we went inside and did a minute of curlups and a minute of jumping jacks each. Twas a great way to start my morning.

After I cleaned up a bit I moved on to history. History is Tuesdays is "story creation day" so I looked up different eras of history and narrowed my story setting down to the modern era.

Next up was my math foundations class. What is my foundations class? I go on KhanAcademy and do all of the things from Kindergarten counting up to, well, as far as it goes. 

Today I made good progress. By good progress I mean I went from 13% "Early Math" mastery to 29%

Italian... was hard. I can't seem to find a good course. My current plan is to brush up on my Spanish at the same time I learn Italian so that I know what I have to learn in what stages. ^^"

As for Reading... I skipped class today. I'll do extra reading tomorrow to make up for it. XD