July in Review

Health & Fitness

My diet is still all over the place. I've eaten somewhat more vegetables than my usual "zero", but not reached any consistent level about that.

Exercise has, much to my surprise, become pretty consistent, though. I've continued to use Spirit City's habit tracker. It only tracks for one week at a time, alas, but I've saved screenshots for most weeks since I started using it. Really, I should just do check boxes in a spreadsheet instead, but somehow the UX of Spirit City makes it more fun to do there. Anyway, I'm missing one week, but in the other 3.5 I only missed 5 days of exercise, which is not bad. The pattern bobbled after Eliyahu left; I missed exercising on the Monday they left and the Thursday of the same week. But I got my stride again and am on a 7-day streak now. (I might miss today, depending on whether or not I decide to do late-night exercise. But missing one or two days a week is fine. Update: I opted to do late-night exercise yesterday and have exercised today, so am now up to 9-day streak.) Since Eliyahu left, I've mostly been doing the same 10-minute aerobic video, which is my "minimum unit of exercise." But I did the 15-minute one a few times.

Writing

I've only been writing Apothecaria. My Apothecaria playthrough has reached the point where most of my writing is based on my plans rather than prompts, so it's not as easy as it was in the early days. But I've managed to build up a little buffer of entries again, which is nice. At the end of the month, I had 5 illustrated entries in the buffer, so I wrote at least 36 entries in July. (I might have had 1-2 more written; I've sometimes written further ahead than I've illustrated, but not yet consistently.)

I haven't written anything else, though I think about other story ideas now and then. I have mostly resigned myself to "my writing energy goes to Apothecaria until that's done."

The Business of Writing

Having "Editing" on the daily checklist has done wonders for my willingness to do at least a tiny amount of editing on each day. Often not enough to cross off even one editing point. But I am willing to check the box as long as I open the file and work on an editing point, even if I don't finish it. Edits are 80% finished on A Dragonling's Family, now. I am down to the last seven editing points for it (one of which is "final read through", which will take the most time-actually-working but has the least amount of mental-resistance-to-working-on-it.)

Gaming

Sebkha visited for two days in July, after seeing John in Canada and before attending a local convention. His visit overlapped with Eliyahu's. We talked about games throughout the visit--mostly roleplaying games, but sometimes other kinds--which led me to suggest playing some on the last night of Sebkha's visit. Sebkha asked, "What board game do you own that you've never played and most want to try? Every board gamer has one."

Which is amusingly accurate even for me. I say 'even for me' because I am the rare board gamer who almost never buys a game without having already (a) played and enjoyed it and (b) firm plans to play the purchased copy with a particular person or group. I rarely like to buy things unless I know I will use them.

But even I had two board games that I'd bought and never played. (I also own a few unplayed games from gifts or giveaways). I dug these games out, along with a few other options:

This War of Mine: I saw a fascinating review of this game as something like an anti-war game, about the experience of being in a war zone as a civilian. It has a solo mode, but I've not tried it even in solo mode because it sounds so grim.

Flamecraft: I backed this on Kickstarter because it's got adorable dragon art. It's a cozy gather/build game about improving village shops with enchantments.

Dice Forge: I've played this a bunch but not exhaustively: most of my games of it were online with Terrycloth. Telnar bought a physical copy for me when he visited in April. The best part of the physical game is that you "forge" your dice by removing faces and adding on better faces over the course of the game. Doing this with actual dice is very satisfying.

The Crew: Another game Telnar got for me. We played it a few times with Lut. I suggested it because it's one of the few cooperative games I've played and liked. The mechanics prevent you from group-analyzing the game and then group-deciding what the next play will be, and I like that each player has to make their own decisions without being to able to (or supposed to) consult with the others, even though it's co-op.

Space Base: The last game Telnar bought for me. Also 'played a bunch but not exhaustively'. Lut, Terrycloth and I used to play it online together. Telnar, Lut and I played the physical copy a few times during the April visit (as we did with Dice Forge).

After some discussion, Sebkha, Eliyahu and I ended up playing both Flamecraft and Dice Forge. It turns out Sebkha doesn't like gather/build games, so was not a fan of Flamecraft. Dice Forge is also a gather/build game but was sufficiently different to entertain Sebkha, so that was good. Eliyahu liked both but didn't think Dice Forge worked as well two-player. So after Sebkha left, Eliyahu and I played several more games of Flamecraft. It was nice to finally get the game out of the wrapper.

I also showed Eliyahu the Kickstarter version of Ogre, which I backed many years ago purely because I wanted to own it, not play it. Ogre is a Steve Jackson war game where the original edition (from the 70s) came in a plastic bag with a folded paper map and tiny cardboard tokens. The Kickstarter version is this: https://www.sjgames.com/ogre/products/ogredesigner/ . The box is like 2.5' long. Eliyahu took a photo of me with it in its carry case to showcase the ratio of smol gamer to ginormous box.

I have played Ogre! I've never played with the Kickstarter edition, though, because Lut and I played an earlier edition in the 2000s and while Lut liked it (he owned the copy and had played it many times), I didn't care for it. Lut and I assembled all the pieces for the Kickstarter edition when it arrived way back when and I enjoyed doing that and I like owning it. One of the few things that I like owning even though I don't use it.

Social

Eliyahu stayed through July 22. They were scheduled to leave on the evening of July 20, but the Cloudstrike catastrophe (from the morning of July 19!) was still causing problems on July 20 and their flight was cancelled. They at first planned to reschedule for around 12 hours later, which required us to get up at 4AM to get to the airport. Me: "I don't mind getting up at 4AM but why don't you schedule it for July 22 instead? It would be annoying to get up at 4AM only to discover that flight was cancelled too, and this will give them an extra day to sort out their computer woes."

So we got an extra day and a half together and were genuinely delighted by it. They plan to come back again sometime soon, and I am looking forward to that.

Reading

I read an actual book in July! Mending Madeline by Lucia Green. It's a cozy fantasy romance about recovery from a super-horrifying backstory. I did a detailed review of it over on Fediverse.

Still reading a lot of fantasy romance manwha. I'm reading two modern romance manwha that I like too. Since my last update, I've only read one more that's finished: "This Wolf Won't Bite". I didn't actually read the last 30-ish episodes, because (a) the story had basically wrapped up by the time I reached the last free episode and (b) I was extremely meh about the series. The first 10-15 episodes were cute and sweet, and then at episode 20 the male lead turned into a walking nightmare of inconsistent behavior and blatant lies. While he eventually went back to something more like his former self and there was sort of an explanation for the 20ish episodes of appalling behavior, the comic never did return to "I actually enjoy this" levels. I kept reading it because a bunch of commenters were like "yeah, this part it awful but it gets better!" and I suppose, yes, it technically got better but it never made it all the way to good again as far as I was concerned. I was not motivated to pay money to read the rest and see if that helped redeem it.

It struck me that one thing I like about the fantasy romance manwha is that the stories are intended to have closure. Even though I'm reading many that are incomplete and/or the translation is incomplete, I don't feel like I'm reading open-ended comics that will never resolve the main story arc and/or don't have a main story arc. That's very different from my experience with most web comics, which are closer to the structure of newspaper strips or serial comics: intended to continue indefinitely, with no planned ending.

I like closure in stories.

Unrelated to the above, one comic that I'm only 17 episodes into is "The Flower That Swallowed the Sun". I'm not engaged with the story but the protagonist fascinates me because they are so detached from their own life.

The protag was a 200 year-old ultra-powerful sorcerer who decided to reincarnate after he couldn't ascend to godhood because he was "missing something." So now the protag is a teenage girl and just kind of gliding through life without actually identifying as either the person they are now or the person they used to be. It's as if they're a player and their lives are just PCs they play. "What would this PC have done? What should this one do?" It's an interesting device that I haven't seen in other stories. So even though I'm meh about the rest of the story, I keep reading out of curiosity about what will happen with the protag. It's also the sort of trope I might steal for a story of my own some day: the idea of living your life as if it's a role you're playing.

Goals

July Goals

• I paid my July bills! In July, even.
• I paid my quarterly estimated taxes and, for bonus points, took notes on how to pay them so I won't have to dig around so much when I need to pay them again in October.

July Stretch Goals

• Have some idea of what I did in July: I have a pretty good idea, even. Got a whole entry out of it.
• Edit A Dragonling's Family: 80% complete!
• Apothecaria: 36 entries done!
• Update the "Bored?" list so it's less likely to make me cry: I looked at my goals before July ended so I did this. I still don't look at the Bored? list much, mostly because when I'm bored I cycle through a short mental list of activities instead of digging down to the lower-priority ones.

August Goals

I guess I can set some goals.

• Finish editing A Dragonling's Family
• Pay August bills
• Buy plane tickets to visit parents

Stretch Goals

• Make cover art for A Dragonling's Family
• Publish A Dragonling's Family
• Apothecaria
• Start tracking eating habits again
• Do things on the Bored? list