October 2025 in Review

 Health and Fitness

My daily swim routine slowly fell apart this month. I didn’t do too badly in the first twenty days -- swam twelve times, which is a lot less than “almost every day” but still regular. In the last eleven days, though, I only swam twice. Oops. Fourteen times for the month isn’t terrible, though, and I had a time or two of pacing-while-on-the-phone or whatever that I can also count as exercise.

Dailes

I just didn’t do these in October. I think I checked them off for one day and part of another, then gave up for the rest of the month.

Writing

I wrote all of 165 words on A Dragon’s Secret in October. 

The Business of Writing

I published A Wolf-Shifter’s Pack! It’s done! I can take it off the to-do list forever now.

*dances*

Art

I finished this crazy-detailed portrait of Olive from Time Princess, and was super-happy with it: https://mastodon.art/@rowyn/115312491580621682 

I started another crazy-detailed painting of the same character and mostly finished it. I’m not as happy with it, though. I still have to declare it Officially Done so I can start something else.

I also worked on the art for A Wolf-Shifter’s Pack: the cover and three interior illustrations. I mostly-finished all four back in March, but I cleaned them up and polished them a bit more for publication.

I am pretty sure I spent more time on art than anything else creative in October. Maybe getting A Wolf-Shifter’s Pack out the door took longer? But part of that was also art.

Reading

I got to the end of the free episodes of The Housekeeper of the Dungeon webserial, unlocked the rest, then stalled on reading it. Still reading a half-dozen manwha but none that are finished.

Oh, and I finished “The Dragon King’s Bride”, a manwha on Webtoons for a change instead of Tapas. “The Greatest Estate Developer” is almost done posting, too, so I may finish that one in November.

Social

I did quite a bit of this, really. Alltoseek visited from October 2 to October 14, C and K visited from October 12 to October 18, and E visited from October 25 to October 27.  These visits were all really more about helping Mom than about specifically being social, but I love my family and when they're around I want to spend time with them. So I socialized a fair bit while they were here.

I also visited with Envoy, Sophrani, and Kage a few times during the month. I think we cancelled one Friday get-together and rescheduled another for Sunday? 

Goal Scorecard:

• Register car: I opted not to do this. My excuse was that we had to get this affidavit to unregister Mom's former car notarized and couldn't do that until November, so I figured I'd deal with that and the car registration at the same time. This was not a good excuse because the car has to be registered in person, though, and the affidavit could be mailed in. The real reason was that I didn't get to it early in the month and late in the month I was too stressed out by trying to publish A Wolf-Shifter's Pack and also by the shenanigans with Pruitt Home Health over the blood draw.
• Provide care for parents: Done!
• Pay October bills: Done!
• Publish A Wolf-Shifter's Pack: Done!
• Get vaccinated: Done!
• Get Dad vaccinated: Done!
• Schedule maintenance for my car: Not only did I schedule it, but I even brought it in and had the maintenance completed!

Stretch Goal Scorecard

• Exercise 15+ times: Just barely!
• Track what I read: Eh more or less? I don't think I read anything new outside of Tapas and Webtoons.
• Ask Bookbub for a Featured Deal: Oh, I actually did this. They had some new sort of thing and applying for a featured deal automatically applied you for that, so I went ahead. Got rejected like the last 20+ times.
• Do some art: Yep, finished one fan art and worked on a second
• Visit friends: Did this one too!

November Goals:

• Provide care for parents
• Register car: so this can finally come off the goal list >:(
• Pay November bills 
• Post any complete entries at end of day: This isn’t “I have to finish writing up each day by the end of the day”, which would be a terrible goal. It’s just to get me into the habit of posting when I finish a day instead of eventually posting a 10,000-word entry covering the last week. I’ve posted two entries this month that covered two days, but that’s because I happened to finish writing about both days on that day, rather than because I forgot to post
• Make meaningful progress on A Dragon’s Secret (let’s say 10,000 words) or officially shelve it and work on a new outline: I think I’m more tired of writing fiction than I am sick of this book in particular. But it’s been my official WIP for almost a year now and in the last seven months I’ve written less than 7,000 words total. I still enjoy re-reading it and reading the outline, but the lack of momentum on it is unsettling. November is normally good for writing, but I’ve not even tried to work on fiction yet and it’s Day Six already. Still, we’ll see. 

November Stretch Goals

• Play more of romance soloRPG
• Exercise 15+ times (organizing stuff/cleaning counts as exercise)
• Track what I read
• Keep up on my Dreamwidth feed
• Ask Bookbub for a Featured Deal and run another ad campaign for a book
• Get backmatter updated for whatever book I promote
• Pick an old picture to redraw
• Do some art
• Visit friends