December in Review

Health/Fitness

Still using a spreadsheet to track calories/exercise/weight! Do you know what that means? It means I can actually compare last month's data to this month's data! SO EXCITE.

 

My calorie consumption for December is up slightly from November: 1919 vs 1903. My exercise level is up significantly, from 291 calories to 416. This may be an artifact of how I'm measuring it, however. I noticed Google Fit has a "calories per workout" option and started using that in December, and for most of November I was estimating based on minutes of activity instead. On the other hand, it might be real: I've been doing a lot of long walks at the Plaza while I hunt down Team Rocket and rescue pokemon from them. Guess I should get the full data export from Google and check that.

 

*clicks on various boxes, waits, clicks more, retrieves download, pastes into existing spreadsheet with formulas to make sense of it, frowns at columns, compares new header to old header, inserts four columns for stuff that Google added to the tracking, checks out month-by-month comparison*

 

So Google agrees with me that my amount of walking was way up -- my steps-per day went from an average of 5600 in November to an average of almost 9200 in December. I spent several hours dancing or doing other activities in lieu of walking in November, so the low step count isn't as meaningful as it looks.  But Google thinks my calorie count differential is smaller: 84 more calories burned per day in December, rather than 125. Fair 'nuf.

 

My five-day average weight at the end of November was 171.3.  At the end of December, it's 170.88. I should work on eating a little less so that I can get closer to my "lose 1 pound a month" goal, but I am content. I currently cook 1/4 cup of cream of wheat for breakfast, which is an extremely convenient amount to measure, but I could try switching it to 3 tbsp and see how that goes. I have nutella with it and cutting back on the amount of nutella I eat would save me 50 calories a day easily. Heh.

 

I still haven't gotten back to stretching or doing push-ups regularly.

 

Writing

I probably did some writing in December. Let me check. Yup, 4,900 words of The Lord, HIs Monster, and Their Lady, bringing it to 48,900. I was not in the mood to write last month.

 

The Business of Writing

I ran a Cyber Monday sale on six of my books, with no promotion beyond mentioning it on Twitter and Tootplanet. Surprisingly, actually sold some books during the sale: my total unit sales for December was 64 and more than a third of that was during the two days of the sale. Writing income remains low overall.

 

I started editing The Twilight Etherium again: I made an editing list, wrote a new opening scene, and am halfway through a new closing scene. Yeah, wasn't really motivated to do editing, either.

 

I did do the revamp of the outline on The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady.

 

Art

Not doing art, either. Literally, "sketching" was on my to-do list every week, and I never did it.

 

Other

I am gradually getting back to cleaning on a regular basis again. I need to mop, but everything else has been done at least once recently, and clutter remains under control. I purchased a couple of freestanding shelves to put inside of cabinets, and these worked nicely to make the places I put them more orderly and the items easy to access.

 

I got Lut and myself signed up for COBRA starting in January.  I don't think I ever posted about the Great Insurance Debacle; I wrote it up, but my write-up talks about God and then I got too self-conscious to post it. Maybe I'll post it in January. The short version is "I'm still employed but work isn't providing insurance for me or Lut anymore."

 

I finally tried to find a contractor to replace the piece of missing siding by my front porch. I hired someone who was supposed to do this two weeks ago.  He has told me four times, on four different days, that he will show up and do the repair. He has never showed up.  The last time I tried texting him, I received a system message saying my number had been blocked. O_o (For the record, I have not so much as sent an irritated "where are you??" text to this guy, much less been mean to him. The last thing I successfully sent to him was "Ok!" in response to him saying when he'd be out.)

 

This is why I never get anything fixed around my house. -_-

 

Socializing

Jen visited Lawrence for a week in December, so I got to see her and that was lovely. <3

 

I sent an email to a friend I haven't heard from in several years, just to say "Is this address still good?" I got an email back last night and sent a real email back, so that was nice.

 

Happiness

I feel like this is a glum update full of "I didn't do very much", but I was perfectly cheerful for most of the month. I spent a lot of time outdoors, walking around, because that was what I wanted to do. I'm happy. I'm just insufficiently motivated to push myself into being productive when I'm not in the mood for it.

 

Goal scorecard for previous month

~ Helped Lut

- Caught up on on the one-time section of the to-do list

- Failed to get back to doing regular push-ups, stretching, or drawing. Can't bring myself to care much.

~ Made editing list for TTE and started edits.

- Revamped outline on The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady, wrote some more of it.

 

 

Goals for coming month

- Help Lut

- Mop at least once

~ Do something art-related at least once a week. Anything counts, including 5 minutes of doodling.

- Finish edits on The Twilight Etherium and send to another round of beta-readers.

- Write more of The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady

~ Set calorie goal to 1850 instead of 1900.

 

2019 in Review and 2020 Goals

Published

January: Frost and Desire

July: The Princess, Her Dragon, and Their Prince

December: "Insecurity" (novelette for The Reclamation Project )

Edited

The Princess, Her Dragon, and Their Prince: complete

The Mortal Prince and the Moon Etherium: novelette, complete

The Twilight Etherium: completed first-round edits, needs a second round

"Insecurity": short story, complete

 

Written

The Twilight Etherium (draft started 2018, finish January 2019. Total length 102,900): 28,500. Draft complete, partially edited.

Spark of Desire: 91,200

The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady: 48,900

"Insecurity": 8000 words

 

That's a total of 176,500 words, almost half of last year's total word count. Meh. On the upside, it's still 2.5 books completed.

 

Art

I did more sketching than usual this year, which is still "not much sketching". I also did a handful of nice fan art pieces and one ridiculous illustration of Frost in lingerie.

 

Support Lut

He's still alive!  And doing reasonably well, although still too fatigued to do much activity on any given day.

 

General Adulting

On the home maintenance front, I continue to be a failure.

 

I got a quote on what it would cost to repair the garage and realized that having a garage is not worth that price to me. It's not even worth 25% of that price. Like, I might pay 25% of that just to not have a broken garage, but the truth is all the garage is to me is a place to store the bike I don't own anymore, and even if it were fixed I'm not sure I trust it enough to keep a bike there again. Even if I got another bike. Which I haven't really wanted to do. A lot of why I loved having a bike was because it's good transportation if you don't have a car. I have a car.

 

Home maintenance aside, I have done Excellent Adulting, including things like getting myself to the doctor for general wellness visit for the first time in many years, and twice-annual dental visits, and managing Lut's care and our insurance and renewing my driver's license and car registration and all that other adulty stuff.

 

2019 Goal Recap:

* Support Lut through cancer treatment process: Done!

* Do something about the broken garage wall: Nooope.

* Publish three books: Nope. Published two.

* Finish drafting three books: Nope. Finished two. Did finish a couple of short works, tho.

* Write a book in the 55,000-85,000 word range and which covers the entire original outline for the book: Nooooope. Spark was just 6,200 words over it, granted, but tbh I'd forgotten this one was on here until like October or something, and by then I didn't care.

* Post monthly updates: Done!

 

 

2020 Goals

~ Continue caregiving for Lut

~ Publish two books

~ Publish The Mortal Prince and the Moon Etherium

~ Finish drafting two books

~ Do enough maintenance on house to keep it from falling down around us

~ Make one color picture every month

~ Continue to track food & exercise

~ Post monthly updates. Check goal list when I post them.

 

Stretch goals:

~ Write a book in the 55,000-80,000 word range which covers the entire outline for the book

 

I failed on most of my 2019 goals and I don't feel like doing that again, so I'm just going to aim lower. Yes, I have published three books in a year in the past and I am sure I could publish three books in a year again. But I'm unconvinced that there's any real merit in pushing myself to do so. My revenue per year has been in the low 4 digits since I started publishing books, with 2015 remaining my best year for net income.  Even if my net income from writing was ten times higher, my 20-hour-a-week job at the bank would still pay better. The likelihood that someday I will make enough money at writing for it to replace my day job is slim, and those odds are very little impacted by whether I write 2 books a year or 3.

 

So. It's enough if I only write 176,000 words in a year. Or if I only write 100,000, for that matter. It's plenty.

I put art back on the goal list because I got to do a "year in art" thing back in 2015 and I want to be able to do that again.