June 2023 in Review

Health & Fitness

For the most part, I didn't feel like tracking what I ate, and was more prone to snacking out of boredom rather than actually hungry or otherwise in need of food.

I didn't entirely give up on exercise, surprisingly. But I pretty much only exercised if Telnar called (because we have a habit of walking while we talk on the phone) or to do yardwork. I have a lawn service who usually does all my yardwork. But this year their quote to trim back the bushes and trees and crap that grows along the fence line was more than I pay them to keep the lawn mowed for the entire summer. And I was like "the parts of this task that matter to me will not take 20+ hours to do myself and it would take more than that to justify this price." So I spent four or five hours total chopping back bushes and whatnot with a lopper. I should either get a new lopper or find a sharpener for it, it's getting dull. Doing the yardwork bothered me less than in the past. I think it's because I didn't have to mow the lawn in addition to trimming back the crap. I do not want to go back to mowing the yard myself. For one thing, I don't even own a working mower anymore. I'm not sure I own a non-working mower. I might still have a dead weedwhacker but I'm pretty sure the one that worked was stolen. Possibly without the batteries.

Anyway, while I didn't give up on exercise, I did break my "exercise before or after work" habit. This was not a good habit to break.

But my mother had heart valve surgery at the end of the month, and she's supposed to start doing PT and whatnot. I used to find it very motivational to call her in the morning before I exercised to remind her to exercise, but I haven't been able to do that in months because the heart valve issue had left her with too little energy to exercise. So I might be able to get back to that routine now.

Writing

I wrote some Apothecaria. Not a whole lot of Apothecaria: 8,400 words, up to 45,500. I stopped writing The Jewel-Strewn Night entirely. My motivation to write is lower than it’s been at any point in the last ten years.

I started re-reading The Jewel-Strewn Night two nights ago, as one part “remember what I was doing” and one part “see if reading the existing story motivates me to continue it.”

The Business of Writing

I worked on final edits for Alien Peacelords, which is around 40% complete now, up 35%. I don’t know why exactly this is the thing I decided to work on. I kept watching CoffeeQuills’ stream most days during June, and there’s only so much time I can spend watching a productivity stream without being productive? Also, 4thewords had a Pride month event and I wanted to do something at least writing-adjacent for that. (Like many 4tW players, I count editing as an equivalent number of new words written for purposes of the game.)

Art

I kept illustrating Apothecaria entries in June: 35 new ones, up to 103. (I’ve posted 98 as of this morning). I am pretty sure I’ve been spending longer on each illustration, though a few have been comparatively quick. Probably more than 35 hours for these.

Social

I was on vacation from my day job for a week. During that time, my sister visited for a little bit -- she was attending a work conference in town, so we spent a Sunday in town and then I saw her for dinner on Tuesday night. After she left, Telnar came through on a road trip and we spent Thursday together.

The Thursday-night meet-ups with local friends were mostly canceled for one reason or another, but I did get to see them once.

Gaming

Other than Apothecaria and Race for the Galaxy: Telnar taught Lut and I to play “The Crew”, which is a fun cooperative card game. I also played sevenish hours of Sunless Sea, after deciding to cheat at it to make it less tedious.

I still play Time Princess; I started playing it in October of 2020 and have been active in it daily since. The game has undergone many changes over time, so much so that I hesitate to link to my Nov 2020 write up of it. (That write-up is here, but several things I mention no longer apply, both good and bad: https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/2020/12/01/novemberinreview.html ). One of the new additions is “societies”: you join a society and get rewards based on what everyone else does for the society.

Societies are complicated and badly-implemented. The most rewarding part of a society is the “quest wall”, but it’s only that way if everyone in your society is active, knows which quests to take and which to recycle, and completes them each day. There are very few tools for monitoring whether society members do this or not. You can see what everyone has scored on the quest wall so far on the current day, and that’s it.

A while back -- maybe a year, idk -- I decided to join a society, TARDIS, that advertised being active on the quest wall and enforcing a quota on the membership.

I’ve been very happy with TARDIS. Keeping a society active is difficult and tedious: it means checking quest wall scores right before reset, noting who’s under, talking to them about it, and replacing them if they have a pattern of inability or unwillingness to score appropriately. TARDIS is now on its third owner since I joined, because it’s easy to burn out on being in charge of this sort of thing.

At the beginning of June, the current owner asked me to become one of the managers.

My initial reaction was NO NO NO

no no no

absolutely not.

And then I thought, well, this is a little extreme. I could at least see what she expects of me first. I have always known how much work it is to keep an active society going. It'd be churlish to refuse to do anything without even giving it thought.

So I offered to do stuff like "screenshot activity before reset" and said I wouldn't talk to people in-game because I hate typing on my phone. She was good with that, so I joined the management team.

I promptly became overactive in management. 9_9

I not only took screenshots, but I made a spreadsheet and entered everyone's activity levels for each day, with overall averages and color-coding so we could see patterns of activity/inactivity. I created a "quest wall primer" to explain how it works and how to get to the required minimums (the quest wall is so unintuitive). I put it up on my website so that it'd have an easy-to-type URL and we could message it to people in-game. (The game does not support hyperlinks and in fact will mask anything that looks like a hyperlink, so you have to add in spaces to send one.) I put up a recruitment post when we needed new members and talked to applicants about joining.

I am enjoying this so far, but also feeling that I am likely to burn out on doing it, so I'm glad doing all this wasn't part of the explicit agreement. We'll see how it goes long-term.

Reading

Terrycloth shared a WIP with me, a sequel to Kobolds from Space, which he finished and posted near the end of the month. I read it in the Word version. Very fun. ♥

I’ve got one new entry to read on Alien Tastes but have otherwise stayed current on it.

I mentioned starting a book in my May-in-Review post, but I don’t remember what book. Obviously I have not continued it.

Goal Scorecard for Prior Month

• Take care of Lut: This has been challenging lately. His oxygen levels dropped, which means he’s more likely to be confused if he doesn’t wear the oxygen canula/use the bi-pap with oxygen to sleep. And when he’s confused, he’s more likely to take off the oxygen and forget to put it back on. He’s also had more trouble wearing the bi-pap mask, which means he doesn’t sleep well, which also increases confusion and makes everything else harder. We are doing our best.
• Keep in touch with Terrycloth: I’ve done okay with this -- we’ve talked most nights. A lot about the stories he’s working on, which is fun.
• Keep in touch with parents: Weakest on this, but I did call them several times in June.

Goals for Next Month

The minimal goals approach of June went well enough that I’m gonna do it again in July. Adding exercise & food back to the goal list, though. And paying bills. Because I meant to do it yesterday or Thursday but here I am.

• Take care of Lut
• Keep in touch with Terrycloth
• Keep in touch with parents
• Exercise/stretch (13 times aerobic, 7 more of whatever)
• Pay attention to what I’m eating
• Pay bills

Bored? Maybe Try One of These

• Play (Terra Nil, Wandering Village, Boyfriend Dungeon, RftG. Apothecaria, 4thewords)
• Read (webcomics, Hoopla, books, webfiction, Dreamwidth, Discord, fediverse)
• Watch (The Dragon Prince, MCU, ??)
• Draw (Apothecaria, A Game to You, Alien Peacelords, A Dragonling's Family, fan art, sketching practice)
• Write (Apothecaria, blog post, email, chat, social media, The Jewel-Strewn Night, something new)
• Edit (A Game to You, Alien Peacelords, A Dragonling's Family, Fellwater)
• Exercise (walk, pace, stretch, lift weights, do aerobics video)
• Track (activities, food, exercise)