It’s Week 2 of my 52 Weeks of Done. And it’s time to lay out some ground rules. I’ll sum them up at the end, for now I’ll demonstrate them in action.

Thing : Lunar Kitsch Missile – Text Contribution, Review & Punt
Type : Game Design / Writing
Size : Scattered, Smothered and Covered
Description : Lunar Kitsch Missile is a game I’ve been working on with two other contributors, off and on, for several months. I have some text contributions of my own that need to be completed, and some of my existing text needs to be revised. I also need to reconcile some of what’s been written by one other contributor to what I have, and then punt the revised text to the contributors for comment and additional revision.
S.Q.U.I.D. Test : This Thing will not be Done until the following tasks are complete

1. A finished first draft of my text contributions
2. Reconciliation of my own contributions to those of the other contributors
3. Distribution of the reconciled text to the other contributors for review
4. Agreement between interested parties on a timeline for the next deliverable

Lunar Kitsch Missile is one of those projects that’s gotten pushed aside a few too many times over the past few months. It’s floated to the top of the stack for several reasons : There are other people involved that are interested in seeing some progress, there’s a convention coming up this year where I want to demo the game, I need to free up the mental space this is taking up so I can work on other things, and it’s just a really cool, fun project that I enjoy working on (when I work on it). Plus, I think that it’s an easy win for 52WoD – It has well defined success criteria, that are suitably sized for the time in which I have to work on it (it meets the Limit that I’ve defined), and it’s a project that’s half-completed already, so it clearly has some direction behind it. I think it’s important to me to get a good success in early for 52 Weeks, to help me build momentum.

Now, let’s talk just a bit about those ground rules I set up. They pertain specifically to the Kick Off Post that will begin each Week.

1 – Weeks run from Monday to Sunday. It fits my own rhythm better to wrap up on Sunday and start new work on Monday.
2 – The Kick Off Post describes the Thing being done, the Type of the Thing, the Size of the Thing (expressed in Waffle House Hash Brown Units (Imperial), or WHHBUIs), a brief Description of the Thing, and most importantly, the S.Q.U.I.D. Test.
3 – The S.Q.U.I.D. Test is important enough to warrant more than one rule.
4 – The S.Q.U.I.D. Test refers to the success criteria for the Thing – ways to determine if the Thing has been Done. Criteria for the S.Q.U.I.D. Test must be Specific, Quantifiable, Understandable, Intelligent and Deliverable.

That will have to do for now. I’ve hit the Limit for this Post.

Well, it’s the end of the first week of 52 Weeks of Done.  Time to talk about what got Done this week.

My task was to create a Space in which I could get things done.  I had left this conceptually undefined, but had initial visions of heavy rearrangement of furniture, building walls, setting up a tumblr, a youtube channel, and more.

Then I got the plague, and got discouraged, and finally eeked out a kickoff post on Thursday, in which I declared that I would, in fact, Do Something.

In this case, something amounted to some purging, organizing and desk clearing.  And earlier this evening, I declared victory.  I have made a Space.  It is Done.

Did I take before and after pictures? No. I should have. Maybe some of it was being vain, but in truth I was halfway done before I remembered, and now I am in bed and I’m not going down there just for that.  But, suffice to say, where once there was an enormous jumble of gaming supplies, unopened bills, half-soldered projects and stuff I didn’t really need anyway, now there are a few scant but precious square feet of open desk space – enough to hold a laptop, a notebook, a cup of tea and a totem. Everything I need to start the next week.

It’s not pretty, but it is Something.  And that’s a damn sight better that whining about how I was too sick to build walls.

Morning, and Week 2, comes early.  Night then.

I was excited as the new year rolled in. Subdued, but still looking forward to a year of getting things Done. I saw the calendar reset whileshowing Short Round the original Tron and dozing off on the couch. It’s like I am an old guy or something.

I woke up January First with a head full of wrong, like the mucus gnomes snuck in and filled my sinuses with 32 ounces of liquid nails. I took Short Round to the airport, went home, and slept for something like five days.

Has it really been five days? Wow.

In my brief waking interludes, I reflected on 52 Weeks Of Done, and that all important S in SPLAT : Space.

I cannot get things Done without a Space. A Space for getting things Done will be made. Making this Space will be the first thing that is Done.

I spent days in the run up to the new year purging my place of things long stored. Records for a friend who fled the bay for LA. Comics for a friend who fled his space for a slightly smaller space. And a whole multitude of things held on to for too long because they might be useful someday. But I had more purging to do, and more work to do, if I was going to create the Space I intended.

Then five days happened, with the liquid nails and the sinuses, and I’m staring down the end of the first week, and not only don’t I have a chicken in the pot, I haven’t even build the hen-house. In layman’s terms, I’m five days behind schedule already, and I’m only five days in.

So, folks, we find ourselves at a very early cross-roads with 52 Weeks of Done. And I may as well use this as a chance to talk about What To Do When Things Ain’t Going Right. The way I see it, you’ve only got so many options.

Option 1 – Do Something.

Option 2 – Do Nothing.

Everything else is a variant on one of these two options. Allow me to demonstrate.

“I want to do this right, so I’m going to do this later.” That’s Do Nothing.

“I want to do this right, so I’m going to push the date back and keep working on it.” That’s Do Something.

“I’m upset that this isn’t turning out and I’m only getting started.” That’s Do Nothing.

“I don’t have time left to do what I wanted, so I’m doing this instead.” That’s Do Something.

“I need to think about this some more.” That’s Do Nothing.

And so on.

The end result is, I’m only just feeling a little human, I’m 5 days behind, and I don’t yet have a Space in which to get things Done. So, what do I do?

I’m going to Do Something. I may not have the Space I wanted when I’m Done, but I will have a Space. Even if that’s just re-clearing my desk and not moving the desk into a walled off niche with the amontillado. Some part of Space was also intended to be the creation of a format for the posts that follow : The kick off post, the update, the wrap up. There are other senses of Space which are still undefined, but in my head. There will still be a wrap-up post on the week, but for now, this will have to do for the kick off.

Should this experience be an omen of the 52 Weeks To Come, then I hope a favorable interpretation of the omen will prevail.