January 2024 in Review

 Health/Fitness

I more-or-less tracked consumption and exercise this month. Tracked exercise with more diligence than eating, but I only had to guess on four days. Good enough. I exercised 21 days in January: not as good as the 28 days in December, but I'm all right with this level. I'd like to increase the amount I exercise per session, but it's more important to get myself moving than anything else, and telling myself 'you only have to do a little bit' makes it easier to get started.

Writing

Writing was a struggle this month. I didn't even want to write Apothecaria. The only things I wrote easily were blog posts. I wrote a bunch of blog posts, though! Sixteen total, including the month- and year-in-review posts. It's at once surprising to have started using my blog often again, and natural. Maybe I'll get bored of writing about my day or thoughts after a few months and stop again? We'll see.

In any case, I pushed through my lack of motivation to work on Be That Way, the outline for what will probably be my next WIP. I don't like the working title for it -- it's a fantasy and the working title doesn't reflect that at all -- so hopefully I'll come up with a better one eventually. I started out with an incredibly detailed outline where I was scripting conversations, and then decided to make it much more outline-ish so that I could get to the end on January 31. So it now has a really detailed beginning, and a middle that gets gradually less detailed, until the last half is very sketchy. I am willing to call it an outline: it's got a beginning, middle, and end. But I'll be working some more on it before I start writing the actual book. In theory, a more detailed outline means fewer edits. Although my super-detailed outline for A Jewel-Strewn Night did not bear this out.

The Business of Writing

I started edits on A Dragonling's Family! I finished the editing list and got the draft to 25%. Pretty much of all the actual editing was on a single day. I feel like I should've devoted more time to editing but in fairness I was spending a lot of time procrastinating on Be That Way instead. Editing was easier than expected and outlining was harder, is the thing.

Art

I illustrated 29 Apothecaria entries, through entry 314. That was just enough to last me until Feb 1. I've been writing and illustrating the next entry the day before I post it, lately. I managed to write tommorrow's entry yesterday but didn't finish illustrating it until tonight. And now I'm too tired to write so writing the next day's entry will probably wait until tomorrow. At some point I am either gonna get ahead of the curve again, or I'm gonna break my streak. Which has been one entry per day (plus a bonus entry on one day) for 316 consecutive days, so far. Fairly ridiculous for a nominal "fun" project. At least I don't have to edit it!

Social

I once again forgot to social at all this month. I need to talk to my local friends again. They're getting divorced so they stopped hosting a weekly gathering, which is fine, but that should not have somehow translated into "I never talk to either of them again" and my track record for this has been Very Bad so far. o_o;;;

I also have to call my parents, because it's been a few weeks. Why are phones so phone-like. Ugh.

Gaming

Lut and I have continued to play a game or two of Kill Team each week. I got back into painting miniatures, briefly, and then lost motivation when one of my painted miniatures failed to assemble correctly. Pretty sure I posted about that part already. The store manager managed to separate off the slightly-misaligned pieces without damaging them, and then tried to show me how they're all supposed to go together. I could not get them to work even so. He took pity on me and said he'd glue it together for me if I wanted to leave the bits with him. It's probably done now but we didn't stop in on Saturday to see. I should do that on Tuesday or Wednesday, probably. We'll see when Wal-mart next has prescriptions ready for me to pick up and I'll try to time it to coincide.

Goal Scorecard for January:

• Help Lut: done!
• Keep in touch with parents: I am getting worse at this instead of better. o_o;;;
• Track exercise & consumption: done, albeit imperfectly. Good enough, tho.
• Pay bills: done!
• Check goal list occasionally: done! I checked a bunch of times because I wanted to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything. I am pretty sure checking the goal list is what reminded me to pay bills this month.
• Complete the 2023-in-review post and set goals for 2024: I did this on January 2 and then panicked when I saw it on last month's post, because it was so long ago that I'd forgotten if I did it. Of course I'd marked it "done" on the list so I hadn't paid any attention to it since.
• Complete an outline for a new book: Technically? I'm giving myself credit for this because it's got a beginning-middle-end, even if it's not as detailed as I'd like.
• Flesh out editing list for A Dragonling's Family: Done! I think I want to add some more items based on Be That Way, but I'm not gonna do surgery on Dragonling for that.
• Get 25% (combined) through editing one or more drafts: Done! With A Dragonling's Family. The percentage complete may go down when I add more stuff to it but whatever. It's fine.

Stretch goals:

• Illustrate 30+ Apothecaria entries: Technically I only did 29, but I'm giving myself this one anyway. GOOD JOB ME.
• Post an Apothecaria page every day: Done!
• Keep up the blogging habit. "Every week" qualifies for this but "almost daily" is fine: Oooh I did this one too!
• Compare actual spending to budget for December and see how that's working out: And this one!  Budgeted spending was pretty close to actual, except for wargaming spending which was somehow about 2.5 times budget. XD It's fine, it'll average out in the long run.
• Any other productive stuff: I kept up with exercising! Even though I wasn't spending much on Time Princess and so technically didn't have to! Oh, and I painted terrain, finished the Void Dancer mini, and mostly-finished the Death Jester.

Goals for next month:

I felt kinda stressed during January over my inability to get to all the things I wanted to do, so I'll scale back a bit on my creative ambitions in February.

• Help Lut
• Keep in touch with parents
• Track exercise & consumption
• Pay bills
• Check goal list occasionally
• Get 66% (combined) through editing one or more drafts

I want to keep in mind my 2024 goals when putting together the monthly goals. I need to publish a book this year, which means I need to finish both initial and final edits on A Dragonling's Family (I have other drafts, but realistically A Dragonling's Family will take the least work of any of them.)  

I need to write one more outline.

I need to get two other books either through drafting or initial edits. If it takes around 4 months to edit a book and around 4 months to draft a book, and I can overlap in writing one outline with edits/drafting, I will just barely manage this. I would prefer that this not be just barely manageable, so I'll aim for finishing initial edits on Dragonling in March.

Stretch goals:

• Illustrate 28+ Apothecaria entries
• Post an Apothecaria page every day.
• Keep up the blogging habit
• Get 75% (combined) through edits.
• Make an Illustration Retrospective for 2023 <- I wanted to do this in January but I didn't notice it when I was checking the goal list. I wasn't really looking at the stretch goals because I was so stressed about the regular goals. But it's not too late to do it!
• Work on the cover for A Dragonling's Family
• Any other productive stuff (things from the Bored? list, for instance)