This is a week of beginnings and endings . . . with no break between them.  I finished the school year and am already excited about September.  My plan is to put in for Teaching Assistant Level III over the summer, which will get me a step closer to going for teaching certification in September.  If I’m lucky, my time in Florida as a sub and the program I finished will get me somewhere.  If not then I have to find a college that allows for online courses and add that to my hefty schedule.  After thinking about it, I want to get my graduate degree in literacy.  That would match up really well with my English Writing Arts undergrad work.  Anyway, that’s the long plan.  Right now, I have to figure out what to do about the summer.

My camp job began on Thursday, so I was running back and forth for a bit.  Finished the training yesterday and my first full day is Monday.  Things haven’t gone exactly as I had planned.  Some of the equipment I expected isn’t there and the video games gain most of the attention.  They got a Super Nes mini and a NES classic mini, which has led to some interesting encounters.  Mostly, I’m kind of surprised how much trouble people are having with the old games.  Have video games gotten so much easier that things like Super Mario World and Mike Tyson’s Punch Out are insane levels of difficulty?  I understood that there would be some problems, but a few attempts left me scratching my head.  Almost wondering if I could do a classic game lesson, but most only care about the Nintendo Switch.

I’m left with another challenge because my plan was to do tournaments every week.  I saw that the campers were either doing their own or didn’t really show much excitement when they won a game.  So, I’m redirecting my energy to coming up with fun gimmicks that I bring up every now and then.  We’ll see how it goes since I might get some push back when I attempt to mess with the simple ‘sit and play’ habits.  I only have a handful of ideas though because I have to build things from scratch.  Some revolve around the Nintendo Switch while others will be using the other room equipment.  I have to move between 3 rooms with two next to each other and the other downstairs, so I’m going to be moving around a lot.  Going to leave me pretty tired by the end of the day, which means nights will be puzzles and TV.

That means I need to figure out how to finish War of Nytefall: Eradication.  As we remember from last weekend, I’m not having any luck getting to this project.  3 chapters to go and I haven’t touched them in a month.  I have this weekend to tackle it, but I can already see signs of distractions.  Whenever my son isn’t around, some people turn up to consume my time because nobody wants me to be left alone.  This actually stresses me out more and I need to go hermit, which isn’t possibly once I get hungry and thirsty.  If I can get even 1.5 chapters done then that leaves me the rest to do during the 4 day July 4th break when my son will be with his mother.  Maybe I can gain a little luck and pull that one off.  I really don’t want this project left unfinished through the summer because it’s hard enough regaining my place after a month.  As it stands, I might lose tomorrow morning to reviewing what I already did and figuring out how to do the characters again.  I dread the editing run because it could be a mess.  If I have to do full rewrites then I might as well junk it all and leave the books alone until I’m on my deathbed.  With my level of planning, it doesn’t make any sense for me to screw up the first draft so horribly.

I need to finish the September blog posts as well.  This clears more time during the summer when I can rest and collect my energy.  I have 5 posts left, but two of them are complicated poems that I want to try.  Got a bunch written while I was acting as a backup proctor, which is good.  These two require a lot of quiet and concentration.  Surprised I was able to write about ‘fictional perverts’ while I was there, but it was analytical with tame pictures of manga characters. I have 3 nights to tackle these 5 if I want to get them done before the 4th.  It would be nice to lock it down since I have a dental appointment that morning, so I might lose the holiday to whatever happens there.

Do I have hope that I will get both projects done before the end of the week?  I really don’t want to get my hopes up.  Every time I do, I get crushed.  People don’t like me saying that I’m done being positive and hopeful.  I’ve gotten a lot of complaints and platitudes, but I’m being honest.  Quite a few people have looked at me this week and admitted that I’ve had a horrible year.  The fact that I’m still standing and haven’t crawled into a bottle shows I have some strength.  Yet, I’m so tired of focusing on the light only to find that its another fire barreling towards me.  All I’m going to do is what I can and expect things to fall apart regardless of my efforts.  Oddly enough, this makes me feel better about smiling and pushing forward.  Any victories will be pleasant surprises while failures will be fully expected.  Not a pretty way to continue on, but it should get me through some of the lingering chaos.

Well, that’s really it.  What are the goals?

1. Pay bills . . . Ouch.
2. Finally have a full day of summer camp.
3. Work on September blog posts.
4. Work on War of Nytefall: Eradication
5. Dentist
6. TV and puzzles
7. Work a bit on the fantasy writing book.
8. Come up with fun gimmick days for camp
9. Start ball rolling for TA Level III  (This might not be until after the holiday though.)