September 2022 in Review

Health/Fitness

Exercise in September was pretty minimal. I made my goal but only by counting the times I did hand-stretches while sitting at my computer. c_c Although I could’ve made it normally if I’d remembered to do normal stretches on the last day of the month, which I absolutely did not remember to do. Whoops.

Lut and I got flu shots and the bivalent booster last Sunday. I started to feel vaccine-induced exhaustion midway through Monday. My boss encouraged me to take time off if I needed it, so I called in on Tuesday and spent the whole day sleeping. Even now, I still feel kind of tired, but at this point it’s probably my usual tired instead of vaccine-induced. “Everything Is Exhausting and I Am Exhausted: the L Rowyn Story” was already the title of my memoir.

In other health news, sometime around September 6-8th, I think, my tongue started to feel weird: a little sore and tingly. Anyway, at first I thought I’d bitten or burned my tongue and forgotten, but it still felt weird two weeks later. I saw my dentist on 9/28 to have her look at it. It has no signs of trauma or cancer or other damage. The dentist said “So ‘tongue feels weird’ is a COVID symptom*, did you have any other symptoms?”

Well, not really? I remembered that I complained to a friend about being more tired than usual, but “I am tired” has long been my default state so it’s hard to tell? I took a COVID test at the time, but felt silly doing so because Lut and I hadn’t even seen anyone in the last several days. I damaged the test while taking it, so it gave the “test error, take again” result. And then I didn’t do it again because it’s annoying and I didn’t think “tongue feels weird” was a real COVID symptom.

But! On the evening of 9/8, Lut had mysterious fever-like symptoms -- chills and sweating -- although with no actual fever (his temperature was 98). So he took a COVID test too. His came back negative, and the chills/sweating was over by the morning.

So there’s some possibility that we both got extremely mild COVID? This seems extremely fortunate for an immuno-compromised person 10 months out from his last booster, but it’s not out of the question. Or we might have acquired some less-famous virus. The only concrete long-term symptom is that my tongue still feels weird.

I stopped using the Sippy Cup For Grown-Ups that I’ve been using exclusively for years, on the off chance that it was somehow connected to Weird Tongue Syndrome. My tongue seemed to get a bit better but not back to normal. I started using the sippy cup again on Saturday (I really miss it, it’s vacuum-insulated and I drink continuously and I’m clumsy so not using it is annoying.) I woke up this morning and my tongue felt as bad as a week ago, so I have exiled my beloved sippy cup for the duration.

The dentist told me to see an ENT if it wasn’t better in a week, so I ought to do that. But I’m gonna give it another week or two of No Sippy Cup At All and see if it gets back to normal.

The last health-related tidbit on this is that Weird Tongue Syndrome makes some foods taste a little odd. Most of my usual meals are still good, as are Coke floats. But the texture of chocolates and cookies is less appealing. So I don’t eat as much junk food as before. This honestly feels like a bonus. Yay, I don’t crave junk food quite as much! It’s funny because I’m sitting here going “I should be sad that this food I used to love isn’t as enjoyable, right?” and all I can think is “But ... I’m not? It doesn’t bother me at all? There are still foods I enjoy, and it wasn’t like this was a nutritious food that gave me energy and strength.”

*Everything is a COVID symptom, I guess.

Writing

I didn’t want to write any of the stories or settings I’ve put any time into developing, so I spent some time digging through my notes and brainstorming. I came up with A Dragonling’s Family: a polyamorous fantasy romance about a crow shifter, a witch, a dragon, and a baby dragon that needs a family.

Really, they all need a family, but the baby dragon is the one who’s most obvious about it.

I made several thousand words of notes and wrote an incredibly detailed outline of 13,000+ words. On the last day of the month I started writing it, and got about 1200 words in. I am very excited about it. It has no violence and no nation-wide threats, just three people trying to raise a baby dragon. The central conflict is a custody battle. My last few books have all been large-scale and I’m really looking forward to writing a small-scale fantasy again.

The Business of Writing

I completed the latest draft of Demon’s Alliance (number three, I think) and sent it to first readers. No one had any issues with it or suggested major changes. So I can finish that up and hopefully publish it this month? I plan to buy Atticus and see if that’s as user-friendly as advertised. It’s supposed to be “feed in formatted Word document, get out epub and paperback, no fussing with it required” software, like Vellum. Except that it’s for Windows so I don’t need to get a Mac or rent a mac-in-the-cloud to use it. Wish me luck!

Art

I spent about 18 hours working on illustrations in September. Most of that was on this painting, of the crow shifter from A Dragonling’s Family.

Social

I didn’t see as much of my local friends this month -- I think I canceled on them twice and they canceled on me once? But we did get together at least twice.

Gaming

Lut has continued to join Terry and I to play Space Base on some weeknights. Terry and I have played more JumpDrive, which has enough similarities with Race for the Galaxy to feel familiar and also enough differences to feel new, so that’s nice.

Learning

The witch protagonist in A Dragonling's Family is hard-of-hearing. She uses sign language while her animal companion acts as an interpreter for her. I've long thought it would be neat to learn sign language. My father is mostly deaf and my partner is losing his hearing and if/when this happens to me, it'd be good to know sign language. Although granted, it seems likely I won't know anyone else who knows it. STILL.

So when a link to a series of Youtube lessons on ASL popped up on my feed in September, I decided to follow it.

I have watched about an hour and a half of videos and have retained more signs than I expected, to be honest. I am not sure I will stick with this long enough to learn the language -- my past efforts to learn languages strongly indicate HAHAHA no. OTOH, ASL does appear to be easier to learn than most foreign languages. (It's based on English, with simplified grammar to make signing faster, and many of the signs have obvious associations that make them easier to remember.) Also, it's fun. n_n

In the unlikely event that I do learn ASL, it will mark a new achievement for me: acquired new skill because a character I was writing had it. :D

September Goal Scorecard

• Finish Demon’s Alliance third draft, send new material to first readers for review: Pretty sure I had already finished this by the time I made my August-review post, but yes, this is done.
• Exercise 13 times (aerobic), and at least 7 more times that can be just stretching for five minutes Technically?
• Look at goal list & schedule occasionally: Done!
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: Done!
• Work on notes/outline for a new book: Done!

Stretch Goals:

• Consumption tracking: Done!
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month: Done!
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice): Done WITH bonus AGAIN!
• Complete a painting that isn’t just a copy of a single CC 0 reference: Done aw yeah rockin’ the stretch goals
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before: Done! I finished Jubilant by Galadriel Coffeen and Anneliese Knop. I have the review half-written but haven’t posted it. Short version: good naval fantasy adventure, shows strong influence from the Aubrey/Maturin books but doesn’t mimic them, do recommend.

October Goals

Goals

• Purchase Atticus and attempt to lay out Demon’s Alliance in it. Assuming this goes well, publish Demon’s Alliance. If this doesn’t go well, return Atticus and give book to Alinsa to lay out. c_c
• Write more of A Dragonling’s Family
• 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)
• Exercise 20+ times
• 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 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