April 2026 in Review

Health and Fitness

Eliyahu made sure I was conscientious about exercise this month: 23 times. Amusingly, despite Eliyahu insisting that we walk almost every day, Eliyahu is not good at all about exercise when they're at home. It's only while they're visiting me and I'm available to walk with them every day that they're diligent about it.

Diet was again a smidge better than usual; Eliyahu and I made seafood potatoes a few times while they were here. 

Dailies

Was pretty good at tracking these, though not particularly good at doing them. I drew 6 times, wrote 9 times, and edited 13 times. Reading picked up slightly, to 23 times.

Writing

Still making notes for Kingslayer, still haven't finished the outline. Notes file is around 10,000 words, so up another 2750. I don't think I even opened the file for A Dragon's Secret.

Business of Writing

Made some progress editing A Game to You. It's now at 30% done, up from 23% last month. Also, it's gotten much easier to convince myself to do editing at all, so that's useful.

Art

I finished the backlit Olive and only showed it to Maria because eh, whatever, she and I are the only people who care.

I didn't have any new fan art ideas so I worked on a landscape after that for the sake of drawing something. It's mostly finished but not very interesting.

Reading

After forgetting "Mistaken as the Monster Duke's Wife" existed for a few months because I hadn't subscribed to it (it's a Tapas webcomic), I hunted it down again and discovered that it had wrapped up. So I finished reading that. That was nice; a short one for a change, at 68 episodes. A few others had started new seasons and I read those: "The Falcon Princess" (which is into the denouement now), "The Little Saint and the Grand Duke of the North", and "I Shall Master This Family". I tried a few new ones. "I'm a Homebody but I Transmigrated into a Dark Captivity Novel" is cute, but it's only in the first season so there's not much there and I've only read 14 episodes so far.

Oh, and "Seducing the Monster Duke" (there are a lot of monster dukes and dukes of the north in romantasy manwha, it's a whole thing) finished. The second half was weaker than the first half, but this is a strong story with lovable main characters and a distinctive female lead who is often clever and assertive, and yet at times has what I can only describe as Big Orange Cat Energy. It works; she's clueless about certain things but not everything. The male lead is sweet and a green flag; I recommend this one.

"Just Kill Me Now" also concluded; this one is wild, just a very strange time-looping plot with both the male and female protagonists going back in time to repeat parts of the story, often together and both of them remembering. The initial premise is that the female protagonist just wants to die, so she keeps killing herself and looping back to before she killed herself, so it's not very effective. But it means that her perspective is pretty unusual for a protagonist.

"Isekai Maid" posted five episodes of recap, then put up one new episode in mid-April, and hasn't posted anything since. Alas. Waiting to see if we get some consistent new posting before I put in the energy to read the recap. Maybe too many of her readers are planning the same thing and low reader numbers dispirited the author for posting more. o_o;;;; It's so tough being the author and writer for a webcomic, don't blame her a bit.

Social

Eliyahu was here for all of April, and M visited for the last weekend of the month, just before Eliyahu left. Eliyahu and I also saw Envoy, Kage and Sophrani on every Friday but the last one, and went out to visit Envoy three additional times to watch Frieren. I even continued this pattern by seeing Envoy last Wednesday to watch a different anime.

So I was Very Social in April.

April Goal Scorecard

Provide care for Dad: Done! 

Enjoy Eliyahu's visit: Done! <3

Do April withdraw from brokerage and pay April bills: Done! yes I still need this to remind me to pay bills. Even though I only have two bills now.

Pay 1st quarter 2026 taxes: Done. I haven't had them refunded yet so hopefully this time they were applied to 2026 and not 2025. 

Complete one creative stretch goal: I finished 7%+ of A Game to You. Good enough!

April Stretch Goals

Track what I read: I updated my StoryGraph with the manwha I finished, even

Do some art: I did not do A Lot, but I am still on track for being able to do a 2026 art summary, so good enough.

Exercise 15+ times: still doing the thing!
Visit friends: So much of this. So much. At least relative to my baseline :D

May Goals

Provide care for Dad

Schedule COVID-19 booster for Dad

Do May withdraw from brokerage and pay May bills

Either contact an artist or start work myself on the cover for The Jewel-Strewn Night

Complete one creative stretch goal (can combine effort if I'm productive but scattershot) 

May Stretch Goals

Figure out middle and denouement for Kingslayer

Refine editing list for The Jewel-Strewn Night

Get A Game to You to 50% edited

Write 15,000 words of A Dragon's Secret

Check off 60 boxes on the bullet journal for writing/editing/drawing

Any of my other usual stretch goals

~

My stretch goals for this month are ambitious compared to what I've been actually doing for the last year+. But I need to get a move on if I'm to finish my (fairly modest) goal of "complete 5 writing/publishing stages". I have completed zero in the first 4 months of this year, so that's not going great. I kinda need to finish, like, one every seven  weeks for the rest of the year. If I can finish final edits on Jewel and get a cover for it, the layout stage is quick, so that'd be three. But I still need to do two other stages, like finishing the first draft of A Dragon's Secret or the Kingslayer outline or initial edits to A Game to You. I could do covers for unfinished or unedited draft if necessary. though. I have kind of a start on A Game to You's cover, but I don't think I'll be able to finish it to my satisfaction. Anyway, we'll see how it goes.