Has my summer failed to achieve liftoff?

At what point does it become clear that something has failed to begin?

I had a fairly simple goal list for this summer:

1. Work on re-write of Ilios, and possibly of my quasi-YA novel series.
2. Clean my house.
3. Start swimming laps again.

I have, at this point, re-read eleven chapters–out of fifty-six (most are very short), having made only the tiniest of modifications to the first ten (if any), and having decided that the eleventh chapter just wasn’t working, and needed at least its first half re-written from the ground up.  And I got about halfway through that first half.  So about a quarter of the way through the whole chapter, that is.  But then I got stuck.  Now, in all fairness, it’s a difficult part to write for a couple of reasons:

1. Despite my tendency to gravitate towards stories that require them, I suck at combat scenes.
2. I’m having to describe a fight in which the narrator loses a fight.
3. The losing narrator is a son of Heracles.  (So he really shouldn’t be losing.)
4. He’s losing to a teenage boy.  (Even though he’s a grown man and a king.)

Now, as you might guess (especially if you know the Trojan War pretty well), the teenage boy in question is Achilles, so it’s not like it’s unlikely for said narrator, Telephos, to lose to him (and he’s only injured, not killed outright, of course), but it’s still hard to write it, especially since it was pretty contrived last time, and I want to make it feel a bit less awkward this time.

Anyway, so that’s as far as I’ve gotten in #1 on my to-do list in nearly a month and a half of summer break.

I haven’t even touched 2 and 3 yet.

Seriously.

I don’t even have an excuse, not really.

Well, apart from the medical condition with my arm making me not want to do anything, except that was supposed to be one of my motivating factors to make me want to go swimming again, since swimming was one of the few things that helped when this condition first started, though with the new medication I’m on, I’m not so sure swimming is a good idea.  And there’s the whole car-engine-overheating-and-forcing-me-to-get-a-new-car-and-then-new-insurance-and-god-only-knows-what-else and the whole cat-sitting thing and…but those are all just excuses, really.  I should have already been working on all this stuff long before those things came up.  (Uh, apart from the arm thing.  That’s been going on for more than ten years.)

Ugh, this is getting depressing.

I gotta think of some plan to motivate myself to get working…