February 2026 in Review

Health and Fitness

I exercised 21 times in February! Pretty good for a short month. I'd thought maybe I'd done more cooking than usual? I've been making potatoes with broccoli, cheese and imitation crab every now and then since Eliyahu left in January. But it looks like I mostly did that during January and only once during February. I might have missed a time or two of cooking, though, since I wasn't as scrupulous about keeping my journal current as I have generally been for the last year and a half.

Dailies

I was not bad at keeping track of these! I have records for every day in February. I checked off editing 21 times, writing 19 times, drawing 17, and exercise 21. I was also pretty good about reading a little every day (usually manwha) -- 26 times on that.

Writing

I made more notes on Kingslayer, including starting to reorganize them to get rid of some cruft and make bits easier to find. The file is up to 4400 words, so 1100 words since January. I feel like I made more progress than this, but this is probably because I thought about it more than I wrote things down. Oops.

A Dragon's Secret is up to 59,000, so 4300 words for February. Perceptible progress, woo!

Business of Writing

My first readers were done with The Jewel-Strewn Night. Going through the comments and moving action items to the editing list took much longer than usual, but it was my only creative goal for February, so I made sure to finish it. 

Art

I finished the non-Olive-art, or at least pronounced it as done as I was gonna get it. It was based on a photo on Sandra Tayler's Discord server, so I shared it there and nowhere else. I remain weirdly more interested in painting than in showing anyone what I've painted.

After that, I went back to painting Olive, this time in a modern business suit. Her boymode in Time Princess is suit-inspired, with a neckcloth and a long coat. Even though it's much more interesting than a modern business suit, I kinda wanted to draw her in one anyway. So I did! I didn't finish it in February, though I got very close to done. To the point where most viewers will not be able to tell the difference between the version as of Feb 28 and the final version after several hours of additional work.

Reading

I started reading Tears on a Withered Flower, which probably won't finish for a few more years, alas. I didn't get to the end of the available episodes because I ran out of coins and figured I'd just let Webtoons bill me for another month of subscription in mid-March, as the most dollar-efficient method. When there aren't many episodes left on an unfinished story, I sometimes lose enthusiasm to catch up, because I know the last episode is unlikely to be satisfying. Not always, though; there's several series that I stay current on using Tapas.

I also started another unfinished series, What a Bountiful Harvest, Demon Lord! by BK_Moon, the same author who wrote The Greatest Estate Developer. Time Princess released the rest of The Coming Calamities, and I read a bit of it, but didn't get very far. I'm still enjoying it, just not patient enough to read it.

Social

I saw Kage, Sophrani, and Envoy every Friday in February, so that's on track! M also came down for a weekend, though he was mostly down to take care of financial things for Dad and related to Mom's passing. I was not very social during his visit, though we did go for long walks together with Rosie each day of it.

February Goal Scorecard

• Provide care for Dad: Done!
• Pay February bills & do withdrawal from brokerage: Also done!
• Look at comments for The Jewel-Strewn Night and make an editing list: Took me until the last day of the month to finish, so way more challenging than I expected. But I finished it! And haven't wanted to look at it since, so that part is not great, but oh well.
• Write 2000 words of A Dragon's Secret: I wrote over 4000 words! Woo, overachieved on extremely lowballed goal.

Stretch Goals Scorecard

• Edit A Game to You: I made some progress on this. I even started assigning difficulty values to the various points on the outline, so at some point I may even be able to estimate how much progress I've made. I think probably less than 10%, but mostly because edits on this book are so much more extensive than I usually deal with.
• Work on outline/notes for Kingslayer: I didn't write a lot of words, but I felt like I made progress on it, so sure, let's count it.
• Exercise 15+ times: 21! Aw yeah.
• Do some art: Finished the crypt piece and started a new fan art

March Goals

It's almost halfway through March and I have done very little creativity-wise, so I do not think this month is gonna be very productive at this point. 

• Do not go into hermit-mode while siblings visit for Dad's birthday
• Provide care for Dad
• Pay February bills & do withdrawal from brokerage
• Finish assigning values to A Game to You editing points. Break down the points that feel too complicated to tackle so they're more manageable.
• Do a perceptible amount of work on something else. 2000 words on A Dragon's Secret or notes on Kingslayer or edit Jewel or make progress on A Game to You. Whatever. Enough that I can feel like "yeah I can finish this within a few years."

March Stretch Goals

• Organize Jewel's editing list. Assign difficulty values to editing points.
• Write 5000 words of A Dragon's Secret
• Create a rough outline for Kingslayer (beginning, middle, end)
• Make 5% of progress on A Game to You after settling all the values for the list
• Any of my other usual stretch goals