April 2022 in Review

Health/Fitness

I actually managed to exercise 16 times in April, which is pretty good considering that I did no exercise for the first week or so, while I was on vacation.

The will to track what I’ve been eating has been weakened substantially, and the guesses outnumber the actual items on April’s list. I’m not giving up yet, though.

Writing

I added 25,400 words to Alien Peacelords: it’s at 61,757. Percentage complete is at 48%, up by 20%. Estimated word count to this stage of the outline remains spookily close to the actual word count. So weird.

The Business of Writing

I am still at the "hard thing is too hard, let's not work on this anymore" stage of final edits on Demon's Alliance. At the end of the month, I decided that I could let myself work on Alien Peacelords, which I actually wanted to do, or I could stare at Demon’s Alliance and beat myself up for not making progress on it. I wrote 5500 words of Alien Peacelords on Friday 4/29. This was a good choice. I stand by it.

Occasionally, I panic. “Oh no, what if I’m turning back into Past Me, the one who bounced from one project to the next and never finished anything?”

And then I remember that I’ve published 15 books, including two last year. Yes, I’m slowing down, but I’ll still get there.

Reading

I read Warden, an M/M romance novella. I’m working my way through a fantasy novel book, but it’s long and I haven’t been focused on it.

Art

Finished the back cover for Demon's Alliance. I also drew a bunch of cartoony pictures of imaginary plants for the Strange Horticulture RPG. I don’t know if I learned anything from this, but it was surprisingly fun and satisfying.

Social

I already mentioned the visit to my parents in my March update, though most of the trip took place in April. In April, I also started visiting my local friends for their small Thursday night gatherings again. The Thursday night gatherings are very small lately -- two out of three were just the three of us. It’s good to crawl out of my shell for a bit, though.

Gaming

I launched a group for the Strange Horticulture RPG! Only one PC created so far, so I’ve not been in a rush to write up the plant descriptions and start playing.

One of the phone games I play, Time Princess, released another horror story -- “House of Horrors.” I’d hesitated to start it because I hated their first horror story (“Have You Seen Claudia?”). But some of the redditors said it was good, so I tried it. The first chapter was creepy and compelling: a group of strangers trapped together in a mansion by an unknown supernatural force, for unknown purposes. I was afraid that the resolution couldn’t be as good as the setup. It turned out to be even more disappointing than I’d expected: the second and last chapter was just boring.

But I think reading it was part of why I didn’t read as much of traditional books this month -- it took up the ‘interesting story’ slot for a little while.

April Score Card

• Do taxes by 4/15/2022: I did the thing! dances I even got my tax refunds. Oh, I still need to pay my bills for April, oops.
• Make final editing list for Demon's Alliance: No.
• Log into Soul Scribes to fish and/or do the dailies on 16+ days I failed at this, too, surprisingly
• Exercise 13 times: Done!
• Look at goal list occasionally: Meh
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: Done!

Stretch Goals:

• Get Alien Peacelords to 50% complete: Close! But no.
• Finish back cover art for Demon’s Alliance: Done!
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review: I did write three and started a fourth, so pretty close on this one.
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month: Done!
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before: Done!

May Goals

• Pay April bills (today) and also May bills (at the end of the month)
• Make final editing list for Demon's Alliance
• Write a few paragraphs on 20+ days, and/or log into Soul Scribes to fish and/or do the dailies
• 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 75% complete
• Complete final edits on Demon’s Alliance
• Get some use out of Color and Light by James Gurney
• Consumption tracking
• Finish back cover art for Demon’s Alliance
• Work on cover art for Angel’s Grace
• Create final editing list for 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
• Exercise 20+ times