I've been poking at the site recently, updating the templates and sprucing them up a bit, as it were. Which I find both amusing and annoying; I just can't seem to stop picking at the site, and adding bits and pieces (see the new footer?), when what I want to do is write more content for the blog. I don't want to keep messing with things; for the most part I'm enjoying how the site looks and the layout and ease of navigating. But I just can't leave well enough alone.

I even went so far as to install Ghost on my local machine to start playing with that particular CMS to see if I wanted to install it on my site. Why? Mostly because... why not? I like to tinker and get a feel for something, but one of my bigger shortcomings -- at least in my eyes ( and if you think there are other, bigger ones, please keep it to yourself, thank you very much) -- is my lack of digging deeper and really getting to know how to work with, and learn what it is I'm tinkering with.

I have four different DAWs. FOUR! Who needs four? I just like to poke around and see what's different about each one and dick around with them all. I do that for not only a lot of software, but kind of my life in general. I have several guitars, but can only play passing well. Why several guitars? Because I can! I figure out what I need to do to get what I want accomplished, and then either get bored or am not that excited about learning more about (insert whatever here).

I want to write more, and get better at it. I enjoy writing short stories and want to take a stab at something bigger. What tools does one need to write? Paper and pen at the very basic level. I have horrible handwriting so I would rather type something out. All computers nowadays come with some sort of basic editor preinstalled (TextEdit on Mac for example), and if you need something fancier, Google Docs is free. But I want to write literature. So I need some fancy piece of software designed specifically for someone to write novels with.

At least, that's how I tend to normally think.

Some years back, my wife gave me Scrivener for Christmas, and I was all set to sit down and write The Novel with it. While that hasn't even come close to happening, I have written several smaller pieces, from short stories and poems to journal entries. And recently I purchased an iPad (that's a whole other journal entry waiting to happen), and because I have the iPad, I just needed the iOS version of Scrivener.

Or did I?

I started looking around at other writing apps for iOS. The one that seemed like the one to get was Ulysses, and to be quite frank, the reason I zeroed in on that particular piece of software was because one of the bloggers I follow, a fellow by the name of Matt Gemmell, uses it on his iPad. He had been a Scrivener user and then switched to Ulysses. And I figured if Matt went that route, maybe I should too.

Before I plunked down the cash though, I managed to take a step back and reconsider. I'm not a writer. I'm a dabbler. Or a wannabe, as I stated in my About page. I have perfectly good software in Scrivener. Better than good, in fact. It's consistently rated as one of the best apps specifically aimed at writers. And while I might not know all the ins and outs of it, I am fairly comfortable with it. The end goal, which is writing a story, is still the same. I'm just wanting to use different tools. In this particular case, it's like using Indeed or LinkedIn to find a job - both have plenty of jobs listings, but it's the end goal of find the job one should be concerned with.

And if I'm completely honest here (and after all, isn't that what part of journaling is all about?), there's also an aspect of avoidance. I tell myself I need to get better with the software to write/compose/create, or that I need to checkout all the options because I might miss the best software available, but that's an excuse. Because writing, playing music, photography, whatever it is I'm into currently is hard. It takes discipline, which I lack in droves. It takes commitment, which I'm lacking in as well. As an example, just in writing this entry, I've stopped once already to go play on slither.io. At times, I wonder if it's a medical issue - maybe like a sort of ADD. I do tend to get distracted easily, so it's possible I suppose. I doubt I'll ever go to a doctor to find out for sure though. So I'll try to focus on recognizing when I'm procrastinating and avoiding.

Ulysses is also subscription based. I want to pay for my software once and own it. I hate feeling like the program I'm using will suddenly stop working if I don't want to pay year-after-year. So another positive for Scrivener.

In short, it's time to be appreciative of what I have, and focus on the what I want to accomplish. I'm going to make myself a promise to write something tonight, something aimed at getting my story (be it a novella, novel, short story, or hell, maybe an epic poem, who knows) started.

It's time for me to listen to Nike. I need to...