July 2022 in Review

I actually finished this post on August 1st, I just didn't post it. August has not been a great month so far.

Health/Fitness

I hit 20 days of “some form of exercise”, which includes five days where all I did was stretching, and two where I counted “cleaning” as exercise. Not exactly my glory days of spending an hour on my bike most days, but still better than going full couch potato.

I changed how I track food. Instead of guessing at how much food I’m eating when it’s annoying to measure, I record the number of calories in the entire container when I open it. (As long as it’s one of the foods that Lut and I don’t both eat.) So my day-to-day count looks silly, but hopefully my count-over-time will be more accurate.

Writing

The first draft for Alien Peacelords is complete at 136,600 words! Up 18,600 from last month. It ran about 6,000 words longer than the estimate, mostly because I decide I wanted to add another sex scene.

The Business of Writing

I completed my “spend 5 hours on Demon’s Alliance” goal yesterday, after putting it off until the last weekend of the month. I finished writing the shorter of the two new sections and started writing the longer one.

I also read through A Game to You, which I have mixed feelings about. I loved reading it, to the degree that I read it in 24 hours, including staying up until 2AM. Reading my own book. Me to me: “Go to sleep. You know how it ends. YOU WROTE IT.”

OTOH, the structural problems that I knew the draft had remained glaring to me. The second half, in particular, feels off: too much stuff that’s vague and/or not shown to the reader. I made an editing list for it. It has fifty-six items on it. I am pretty sure there’s some stuff I forgot.

This is definitely one of those “it would be easier to write a different book than to fix this one.”

Art

I didn’t have a fresh CuratorPrompt to work on each day in July, but I continued to do some painting almost every day. So making art a habit is sticking! I didn’t post new art every day like I was with the CuratorPrompts. Absent the “just finish this one, there’ll be a new one tomorrow” mindset, I often spent more time on individual pieces. I worked on the same painting of a horse for four hours, and spent around three hours painting a pair of hands.

I also added creative elements to six pictures, instead of just practicing painting the reference photo. Things like “put dragon silhouettes in this dawn sky” or “had a centaur walking on this road instead of a person.” I don’t particularly love any of the results. But it’s nice to be working towards the sort of painting I want to do -- unrealistic subject matter in a realistic-ish style.

Spent 25-ish hours on illustration in July, pretty good by my standards.

Social

My friends canceled one Thursday night gathering this week because they were sick, and I skipped the one after it because I was feeling extra tired that day. But I did see them on the other two Thursdays.

Gaming

Terrycloth, Lut and I played a bunch of games of Space Base together in July. Lut and I played a game of Deus, which Terry and I learned last year and then I promptly forgot existed. I remember how to play it again! Hopefully Terry and I can get in another game of it in August. I’m not sure Lut liked it enough to play it.

July Goals

• Spend 5 hours on final revisions (and/or further refining editing list) for Demon's Alliance: I did this! Five hours was not enough time to finish it. It was also, like, five more hours than I felt like spending on this task, so I’m still taking it as a win.
• Finish Alien Peacelords draft: Completed!
• Exercise 13 times (aerobic), and at least 7 more times that can be just stretching for five minutes: Done!
• Look at goal list & schedule occasionally: Done!
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: Done!

Stretch Goals:

• Read through A Game to You: Actually did this!
• Make an editing list for A Game to You: Kind of done? It’s not an exhaustive list but it’s a starting point
• Consumption tracking: did this!
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice): Did both of these!
• Complete a painting that isn’t just a copy of a CC 0 reference. (Making a painting that combines multiple references will totally count for this.): I did this one too! Several times.
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month: Done
• Learn a new game: I will give myself partial credit for Deus because I really didn’t remember anything about it.
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before: I read the ARC for “Haley’s Cozy System Armageddon” by MCA Hogarth. It’s a novelette, not a book, but I’m gonna mention it here anyway because I loved it. Charming and full of heart. It made me very happy. <3

August Goals

• Assist Lut: I've forgotten to include this lately but it really needs to be #1. Not because I stopped doing it or stopped thinking it was important, but because I forget that it impacts how much else I can do.
• Spend 5 hours on final revisions (and/or further refining editing list) for Demon's Alliance: I do not think this will be enough to finish it, and I also think that setting a goal of Just Do It Already Sheesh will be counterproductive. I can make myself do five hours. “Until it’s done” is too likely to result in “let’s not even bother trying.” -_- But I’m also not gonna put down any other writing-related goals. So I won’t have “well, I need to do this other thing too, let’s just work on that” to distract me.
• Exercise 13 times (aerobic), and at least 7 more times that can be just stretching for five minutes.
• Look at goal list & schedule occasionally
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days.

Stretch Goals:

• Consumption tracking
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice)
• Complete a painting that isn’t just a copy of a single CC 0 reference
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review.
• Learn a new game
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before
• Refine editing list for A Game to You.
• Work on edits for A Game to You.
• Work on notes/outline for a new book
• Complete final edits on Demon’s Alliance
• Work on cover art for Angel’s Grace
• Create final editing list for Angel's Grace
• Get some use out of Color and Light by James Gurney
• Exercise 20+ times