October in Review

I started this post on October 31, didn’t quite finish it, shrugged, and went straight into NaNoWriMo. Between work yesterday and today, I didn’t have much time or energy for working on A Dragonling’s Family, so I figured I’d finally finish my October-in-review post instead.

Health/Fitness

This was the month of illness: I was mildly sick for over a week early in the month. Then, last Wednesday morning, Lut started having much more pain than usual and had to sit up fairly straight to lessen it. The pain improved over the course of the day, then got worse again on the next day. At this point, Lut googled his specific symptoms and said "hmm, I might be having a heart attack?"

(I had not realized this was chest pain -- I misunderstood and thought it was the new back pain, but suddenly much worse.)

So we went to the ER.

It was not a heart attack! They hospitalized him for two days and ran various tests. The most likely possibilities are pericarditis (an inflammation/fluid in the tissue around the heart) or liver damage (his liver and spleen are both enlarged). Pericarditis matched his symptoms best (in particular, the 'can't lie down, need to sit up straight to minimize pain'). But there wasn't a lot of fluid in the area so the cardiologist isn't sure. We have to follow up with both cardiology and GI doctors.

Anyway, I didn't do much exercise this month and I was pretty mediocre about tracking what I did do. I managed thirteen aerobics workouts but I don't think I did any extra stretching during the month. I do not consider this a failure. My exercise goals are set on the assumption of 'basically normal month without a lot of disruptions to my routine' and October was Not That. I let myself off the hook for the days I was sick and the days Lut was in the hospital, and that was like half the month.

I do need to get my baseline exercise up again, though. My cholesterol keeps creeping higher. My primary care physician wanted to put me on medication for it, and I went "meh, I guess I can try it and see if it has side effects I hate before I stop." So far, I have noticed zero side effects so I guess I'm staying on it. I'd still rather get my exercise back to pre-pandemic levels, though. Starting with "more than the bare minimum that I'm willing to consider exercise" would be good, though.

Writing

I did a little more writing of A Dragonling's Family: another 8300 words to get it to 9500 words total. Then I realized that my scheduling goals meant that if I (a) want to do NaNoWriMo and (b) want to publish Angel's Grace soon, I really needed to prioritize finalizing Angel's Grace. So I stopped worrying about making progress on this halfway through the month.

The Business of Writing

I published Demon's Alliance! Only two years after I finished drafting it!

Goodness, that took a while.

I also made a final editing list for Angel's Grace, started the cover for it, and started final edits.

Art

I did a bunch of quick-ish paintings for practice, almost all using Curator Prompts. I also did a few mock-ups for possible Angel’s Grace covers, settled on one layout, and started on it.

Social

Because Lut and/or I were sick for most of the month, I barely went out. I think I saw my local friends once in October.

October Goal Scorecard

Goals

• Purchase Atticus: done!
• Attempt to lay out Demon’s Alliance in Atticus: done!
• Publish Demon’s Alliance: done! Woohoo!
• Write more of A Dragonling’s Family: 8500 words, good enough
• Exercise 13 times (aerobic): barely managed this!
• At least 7 more times of “exercise” that can be just stretching for five minutes: nope
• Look at goal list & schedule occasionally: done!
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: done!

Stretch Goals:

• Consumption tracking: done!
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month: technically done! (I recorded something for each day, but some of those days were badly reconstructed, especially the ones where Lut was in the hospital.)
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice): done! With bonus even!
• Complete a painting that isn’t just a copy of a single CC 0 reference: I did this! I even like one of them.
• Work on cover art for Angel’s Grace: It is begun!
• Create final editing list for Angel's Grace: I did this!

November Goals

NANOWRIMO BAYBEEEEE!

NaNoWriMo requires no stretch goals.