November 22-23: Time is an illusion, dreams, and writing fiction

 At 3:40PM today, I lay down for a nap because I was tired and Coffee's stream wouldn't start for three hours. And then instantly remembered, "oh yes, it's Saturday, Coffee's stream starts in one hour, not three." You might think that I forget what day it is because I'm retired, which would make sense if I hadn't spent all day doing specific things because I knew it was Saturday. ("It's Saturday, I should get dim sum because it's only available today and tomorrow." "It's Saturday, I should do this Saturday-only event in Time Princess.") Perhaps my brain is iffy about this whole "time" thing. Time is just a thing our brains make up to convince us everything isn't all happening at once. 

I have a hard time napping for under an hour, but I decided to give it a shot. I must have fallen asleep, because I had a dream where I was at a Rush concert. Where they were playing Laura Branigan' "Self Control" (no, the dream didn't explain why) and I was flying in my oval cat-bed-esque-pillow. At a musical crescendo, my pillow landed on the stage. I woke up before I had to explain to Rush what I was doing on their stage. I stayed in bed another 20-30 minutes before coaxing myself up to wait for Coffee's stream to start.

Earlier, I went to the park in midtown, so I could get bubble tea and dim sum after my walk. The weather is cool but not too cold for walking; I did my first circuit of the park wearing a sweatshirt, then dropped it off at my car for the second circuit. I've been to various sites trying to find out how long the trail is, and gotten wildly different lengths. I think, based on how long it takes me, "1.4 miles" is probably the most accurate. I am a slow-ish walker and two laps is a bit under an hour, IIRC. I used to have Google Fit track this stuff automatically for me, but it turned itself off and then uninstalled itself after I didn't walk anywhere or open it for 6 months. Poor app. 

I have since finished my bubble tea and half of my dim sum (the other half is saved for later). And tried to motivate myself to write. Unable to convince myself to write fiction, I am settling for 'let's write about my day.' 

And I just remembered that I wanted to do some stuff in Time Princess, so I've started that. I have to click on it now and again while it plays so it's only a little automated. Ah well. 

This morning, I woke around 7AM, at which point Lyric went "Ah, you're awake. It's time for snuggles." So I snuggled her for a while and then failed to get back to sleep after she was done snuggling. And then Lyric wanted more snuggles. I gave up on sleep and got up around 8:15, after more cat-cuddling. 

I woke from a dream with an amusing note: in the dream, I watched a presenter show an AI-generated video that included a cat knitting, using two giant ball-tipped rods instead of needles. The presenter than pointed out features that proved this was AI-generated, such as that while the knitted piece grew larger, the ball-tipped rods were unsuitable for knitting and also the yarn never looped or went over the tip of the 'needle'. 

Awake, I thought, first: wait is that right about yarn and needles? I didn't know I knew enough about knitting to give any remotely accurate description of what knitting-in-progress looked like. And second: it's a Cat. Knitting. Of course it's implausible. I don't feel like AI has a lock on crappy animation that doesn't reflect how things really work. 

I managed to go to bed at a reasonable time last night! Around 11:30. At long last! I went to sleep a little after midnight. Still want to shoot for a little before midnight, but hey. Progress.

CoffeeQuills streamed earlier than usual last night, from 4PM to 7PM in my timezone, because they had an errand for later in their day. I had finally remembered a thing I wanted to do in my Apothecaria journal, so I worked on writing that up. I managed 3400 words! It felt like the first day I'd gotten a decent word count for fiction since I finished writing Be That Way. Which it isn't; I wrote 3200 words of the Apothecaria journal on the 20th, but I'd miscalculated and thought that was only 2200. Mostly, I worked on The Secret Dragon outline from the 18th through the 21st, but I was so frustrated by my lack of "tangible progress" (ie, words in general and words on a manuscript in particular) and also because I kept thinking I was "almost done" only to discover some plot hurdle I hadn't really tackled at all yet. x_x I do not love outlining but writing books without an outline is much worse for me. And editing books that I didn't outline is a nightmare. I don't like editing as it is. I'd rather frontload the task at the outline stage.

But it's November and I want to be writing fiction. /whinge 

I have considered working on the early part of The Secret Dragon -- I outlined this part already and surely it's not going to change, right? 

This way lies regrets.

So I might finish writing my Apothecaria journal instead. I ran out of illustrated entries on November 21, so I illustrated a new one on the 21st to post on the 22nd. And then a reader pointed out that there was a weird gap between entries and I realized I'd illustrated entry 610 right after entry 608 and skipped 609. I pulled it down as soon as he pointed out the mistake (thanks, MSL!) and drew 609 early on the 22nd. 

Other than that, I spent some time on the 22nd petting Lyric and playing Time Princess. And doing some dictation word salad while doing those. I also managed some actual constructive writing using dictation! I still can't use dictation to "write faster", which is the big argument for dictation. But I can use it to write while petting the cat. It's slower than typing with both hands but faster than not writing at all.