October 2024 in Review

 Health & Fitness

I visited my parents for a week in October, and managed to get in some exercise during the trip this time: I think I used their exercise bike three times? They have an exercise bike in their living room, even though neither of them uses it. So I'd watch a show on their giant screen TV and pedal. Videos are kind of boring but it more-or-less worked. 

Eliyahu was visiting for most of October, so we'd go for a walk and get a bubble tea on most days.

During the last few days of my trip, I caught a mild but lingering cold. It was more annoying than anything else: I had a sore throat for three days and a little bit of a cough, then a slight runny nose for four or five days. I was a little more tired than usual, but it wasn't much of an impairment. I had worried that my parents might catch it and masked for most of the time I was around them before I left. They were completely unconcerned about it and were fine. So was Eliyahu, although Eliyahu was fanatical about masking while I was home with them. (They wore a mask while sleeping and ate outside or in the basement.)

I didn't test for COVID-19 because all my tests were well past the expiration date, and given that the symptoms were so mild, I couldn't see how it would make a difference. I wasn't gonna try to get a still-hard-to-obtain COVID-19 treatment when I was barely sick. And whatever it was, I was going to stay home and avoid people as much as possible, and mask whenever I couldn't avoid people. It doesn't matter if it's just an annoying cold: I still don't want to share it. Also, I feel like COVID-19 is the least likely illness for it to be, because I'd vaccinated for COVID-19 a few weeks earlier so the protection against that would be at maximum, while I have no protection against any other illnesses that might be going around.

Anyway, I used being mildly sick as an excuse not to exercise for a few days, but Eliyahu and I got back to it by October 26.

After Eliyahu left, I kept up the long-walk habit because that meant I got to listen to Network Effect for an hour. I stopped driving to the trail, walking there, and getting a bubble tea afterwards. But I've started having daily Coke floats again, so as predicted, this doesn't improve my overall diet any. But hey, I use less gasoline, so that's nice. Nov. 4 is actually the first day this month that I didn't go for a walk, and the only reason I didn't is that it was raining all day. I wasn't motivated enough to do an exercise video in the house, though.

Writing

I wrote a bunch more Apothecaria entries. It is not done yet. I had, let's see, entries written through October 13 at the end of September.  At the end of October, I had entries written through December 2. So that's 50 entries written. Whee! Most of my writing in October was Apothecaria, but I also added more details to the Be That Way outline, getting it fully fleshed-out before November started.

I wrote more Lo/oper than I posted, but did not finish writing the second week. Odds of me playing it all the way through at this point are low, but I shan't rule it out. I like finishing things and it feels weird to have posted a half-finished story.

The Business of Writing

I published A Dragonling's Family! With an all-time minimum of fanfare. Okay, maybe not an all-time minimum, I'm pretty sure I've released books before while making basically zero effort to let anyone know I'd put them out. If I'm gonna keep publishing books, I really should do more to talk them up.

(Maybe if I write that enough times, I will actually do so. This seems unlikely.)

Art

33 Apothecaria entries illustrated, I think? And I drew a waterfall because I felt like drawing a waterfall.

I might actually do some more non-Apothecaria art in November? I've been wanting to draw the characters for Be That Way, although I've been so head-down in writing that I haven't wanted to slow my momentum by drawing. Also, since I didn't get entries illustrated through the end of November before the month started, I will almost certainly start drawing Apothecaria again during the month.

Reading

I read "Space Dragons: Luxorian's Crew" by Veo Corva, which is a wonderfully cozy space fantasy about a neurodiverse, asexual, anxious, space-traveling dragon and the nonstandard crew they assemble. Also about the difficulties of taking up more room than your society allots for you, and maybe about society being more flexible in how much space it allots. It's full of queer and disabled characters, too. By which I mean "there might be a character who's neither queer nor disabled in the novella, but I wouldn't want to swear to it." I loved it and would recommend it.

Because I didn't have any other new Veo Corva books to read, I read the other three Murderbot novellas and started the audiobook of Network Effect. The Murderbot stories are also full of queer characters and have a neurodiverse, asexual,  anxious, space-traveling protagonist. 

I'm not saying "if you like the Murderbot Diaries, you'll like Space Dragons" or vice versa, because Murderbot is really not cozy. At all. I mean, maybe a little? The death toll on sympathetic characters is surprisingly low (but not zero) for action novels with 'Murder' in the series name and So Much Violence. 

So much violence.

Anyway there are some fascinating similarities, for such different stories. The things I really enjoy  about Murderbot--relationships and character growth and queer-normativity and a protagonist coming to the gradual realization that perhaps friends are a thing they could have and even a thing they maybe want--are the same things I enjoyed in Space Dragons.

I'm still reading a few manwha daily, but my reading there has remained low, especially compared to four or five months ago.

Goal Scorecard

• Publish A Dragonling's Family: Published!
• Pay October bills: Paid!
• Buy tickets for next trip to see parents: Bought! My next trip will be around Christmas.

October Stretch Goals

• Wrote 50 Apothecaria entries
• Illustrated 33 Apothecaria entries (I'd hoped to illustrate 48, but hey, this isn't bad)
• Finished up the Be That Way outline

November Goals

I already listed most of my November goals in my post about the 44 day Terrarium event on 4thewords, but I'll recap and also add important non-writing goals:

• Complete outline for Be That Way
• Write 50k of Be That Way in November
• Pay November bills
• Remember parents exist and would like to hear from you

Stretch Goals

• Finish writing Be That Way
• Illustrate Apothecaria journal through the end of November
• Finish writing Apothecaria journal
• Complete outline for another book (this will probably be Koysko and the Witch but if I decide something else is easier, I'm fine with that)
• Start writing that book
• Write 250k words total, counting literally everything (this one counts from October 28 through December 10, not November alone)
• Occasionally remember things other than writing exist
• Exercise maybe?