February 2022 in Review

Health/Fitness

I managed to exercise 20 times in February! \o/ Which was particularly cool since February is a short month.

Halfway through February, I forgot to order any snacks with our regular grocery order. This did not result in me eating fewer snacks. Instead, I started baking cookie bars and brownies and eating those. I suspect this is a net negative on the “health” front, because home-baked goodies are more delicious and therefore I eat more of them. But my weight hasn’t changed so maybe it’s fine.

Writing

Despite putting this on the goal list for February, I didn’t do much of it. Alien Peacelords was at 18,900 as of month-end, and 15% done -- up from 13,120 and 11% at the end of January.

The Business of Writing

Most of my focus in February was on Finishing Initial Edits of Angel’s Grace Finally. Which I also failed to do. My goal was “everything but the final readthrough”. Instead, I got “everything but the timeline check and the final readthrough.” That is pretty close, though. The percentage stands at 88.5%, and the timeline check is more painstaking than creative. Creative stuff is generally harder.

The real problem here was that I kept adding to the work I needed to do to finish it. Like I finished revising one set of scenes, and then took a shower and thought “oh, it would be way cooler if I made this set of revisions instead.” And also had forgotten to add to the list one of the new scenes I’d wanted to write. Eventually I broke down and added all the new stuff to the list and then did it, but it was annoying to watch my progress bar keep rolling backwards.

Reading

I DNF’d three different books this month, and then read terrycloth’s Kobolds in Space story in three days. Extremely fun. ♥ Terrycloth’s description of it includes “Sex tag is for lots of sex but not enough to really qualify as porn because why can't I just make up my mind you know?” which amuses me. The sex in the story is interesting as a reflection of the culture of the kobolds, though. The kobold society as a whole was fun, in the ways it reflected the genetic engineering that had made them, and the advanced human society they were descended from. The best part of it was watching this alien-but-understandable culture make contact with other people from other cultures, and the ways in which they both clashed and got along. Definitely recommended.

It’s a “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic” fanfic, mostly dealing with the non-pony cultures from the show and comics. Mostly original characters, both kobold and otherwise.

Art

I worked on the cover for Demon’s Alliance! I might even use it for Demon’s Alliance! Anything’s possible. Still in progress, but I’m less displeased with it than with most of my previous attempts.

Social

Still doing the online Craft & Chat on Saturdays, which is when I do my drawing. Still staying home otherwise. Paxlovid news is something like “readily available for high-risk patients” but I’m kind of hoping for just “readily available”. My area is not quite down to pre-Delta, post-vaccine levels, but the case rates have been in a steep decline since January peaks. So we might start risking going out to restaurants or to see friends in March. Haven’t decided yet.

Gaming

I did a bit of this last month, but in March, I’m going to experiment with using Soul Scribes more. It’s another writing gamification site, like 4thewords.com. But Soul Scribes has a focus on micro word counts. Where 4thewords has a lot of “write 500+ words over the course of multiple hours” stuff, Soul Scribes is almost entirely mini-games of “write 100 words or less”. When there’s a timer involved, it’s generally no more than five minutes.

I love both sites for different things. I like using 4thewords as a “reward for having written”. 4thewords lets you paste your writing into it to battle monsters and get quest rewards.

But I love using Soul Scribes for actually writing. The fishing game is particularly effective for me. I’ll log into Soul Scribes and move the browser window somewhere that I can see the upper left side, and ignore it until I see the indication that a fish is available to be caught. Once that happens, I click over to the window and write for a few minutes until I either catch the fish or it gets away. Then I’ll go back to ignoring it. It acts as a random reminder to write for just a little bit of time. Because the time involved is so short and the word count so small, it’s less likely to trigger my resistance to getting started. It’s similar to why CoffeeQuills’s productivity streams work for me: someone else is telling me when to start and when to stop, and because the work periods are short I don’t object to them. Tracking the start/stop cycle on my own doesn’t work as well for me.

I had the fishing window open on Monday and Tuesday, and wrote several hundred words of Alien Peacelords on both days. This is particularly notable because Monday and Tuesday are work days for me, and I seldom write at all on days where I log into my day job. So it’s a good sign. I did feel some fatigue/impatience with the fishing game by late evening on Tuesday, so I don’t want to commit to running the game all the time. But I’ll keep it up in a window more often.

February Score Card

• Get Angel’s Grace to the “final read-through” stage: Failed, but came close at 88.5%
• Get Alien Peacelords to 18% complete: Failed, at 15% instead
• Exercise 13 times: Overachieved!
• Look at goal list occasionally: Did this pretty often, in fact
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: Also overachieved!

Stretch Goals:

• Exercise 20 times this month: yes!
• Consumption tracking: I’m kinda phoning this one in these days -- mostly guessing rather than trying to be accurate -- but keeping it up to one degree or another.
• Work on cover art for Demon’s Alliance: It is begun!
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month: Also kinda phoned-in, but I did it.
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before: I am 100% counting “Kobolds from Space” for this one.

March Goals

• Finish Angel’s Grace initial edits & send to first readers..
• Log into Soul Scribes to fish and/or do the dailies on 20+ days.
• Exercise 13 times
• Look at goal list occasionally
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days.

Stretch Goals:

• Read through A Game to You.
  
• Make an editing list for A Game to You.
  
• Work on notes/outline for a different book
  
• Get Alien Peacelords to 40% complete
• Start final edits on Demon’s Alliance
• Get some use out of the art book I bought in November (Color and Light by James Gurney)
• Exercise 20 times this month
  
• Consumption tracking
  
• Make an art
  
• Work on cover art for Demon’s Alliance and/or Angel’s Grace
  
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice)
  
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review.
  
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month
  
• Learn a new game
  
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before