March 2024 in Review

[rowyn]

 Health and Fitness

I did pretty well for exercise this month, although I kind of fell down towards the end of the month, in both frequency and intensity. But I wanted to spend some money in Time Princess and I mostly remembered my exercise-incentive plan for TP and it succeeded at incentivizing me. Yay! Anyway, exercised about 21 times. For tracking, I did better than I have been, but still not 100%.  80-90%? Good enough.

Writing

I wrote two new scenes for A Dragonling's Family, and 35-ish more Apothecaria entries. Enough to give me a bit of a buffer again, which is nice.

I have also been posting Apothecaria for over a year now, with one or two entries posted every day. (I have had an entry to post every day but since I manually post them four different places, on some occasions I've forgotten to post to one place or another. I think the Downtown Discord server has gotten an entry every day, though. It's the quickest place to post and the one where I have the most readers, so I'm most consistent about it.) 

The Business of Writing

As noted in my last post, I finished editing A Dragonling's Family! And two people volunteered last night to be first readers for it. So I even got it off to first readers! Plural! (I sent it to two more people this morning and am still open to volunteers if anyone else wants to be a first reader.) 

Art

I illustrated 35 Apothecaria entries, with 379 being the latest (and not yet posted, yay buffer). I also put together an art retrospective image for 2023, which I posted on fediverse but not here. I should post it here too. In the meantime, link to the fediverse post if you wanna see: https://mastodon.art/@rowyn/112176770573225543

Gaming

I did less painting miniatures/terrain in March and more playing Kill Team. I'm kind of disappointed with how the remaining void dancers are coming out but I don't have a different idea of what to do with them so OH WELL. It's made me less motivated to keep working on them, though. Lut and I have taken to deciding after a game if we're gonna replay the same map late, and dismantling the battlefield if we're not. This has the pleasant effect of freeing up the table for other things. We've made it through all the "Into the Dark" missions and are going to move on to the "Soulshackle" missions next, because we already have the unique terrain bits for "Soulshackle" and not for the other missions in the book. (The unique terrain bits for the remaining missions have not yet been released. Games Workshop has an extremely weird idea of how to release things.)  Anyway, I assembled all the Soulshackle bits but haven't started painting them yet. I kind of want to inventory all my painted pieces and see what else I have yet to paint for some mission that we haven't gotten to yet. I have a dream, not yet realized, of playing with only painted terrain.

Lut accidentally painted the six-inch measuring stick that came with Kill Team because it was with a heap of other things to paint and he thought that meant I wanted it painted. Then we decided that painting the measuring stick was a great idea and he added some nice silver trim and picked out the pentagon marking on it, and painted the measuring trapezoids as well. And now we no longer misplace the measuring stick/trapezoids because they stand out instead of being a flat dark gray that blends in with everything.

Goals Scorecard

• Help Lut: Done!
• Keep in touch with parents: less dismal than February but sheesh, this should be EASY. I called them this morning when I realized it'd been two weeks. 
• Track exercise & consumption:  Eh, 80-90% is okay.
• Pay bills: ... gdi. I will pay bills after I finish this. 
• Check goal list occasionally. Remember to glance at stretch goals too: I did this many times! Glancing at the stretch goals is the only reason I remembered to do the 2023 art retrospective.
• Finish editing A Dragonling's Family and send to first readers: aw yeah at the very last minute but still I got it done!

Stretch goals

• Illustrate 31+ Apothecaria entries: aw yeah
• Post an Apothecaria page every day: still doing the thing!
• It's not too late to do that 2023 Illustration Retrospective you want to do but keep forgetting about: done!

Goal Planning

I am fine with how March went, but April will be busier. I have a friend visiting next weekend (we plan to drive down together to watch the eclipse on Monday, weather permitting). After he leaves, my sister will be in town for a conference and I will see her for a few evenings during the conference and a day or so before and after it. So I need to plan for (a) busier and (b) what do I need to do to accomplish my goals for the year.

In the next nine months, I need to:

 

• Complete final edits on A Dragonling's Family (estimated 3 months)
• Paint and layout the cover for A Dragonling's Family. (estimated 2 weeks)
• Publish A Dragonling's Family (estimated 1 week)
• Write one outline for a book (estimated 1 month)
• Draft or complete initial edits on another book (estimated 3 months)
• Draft or complete initial edits on a third book (estimated 3 months)

Hmm.

So that's a little under 11 months of estimated work for 9 months of time. More like 8.5 months because I know April will be busy. 

So some of this will have to overlap but that's okay because my process is all about overlapping creative activities. I mean, I've been overlapping Apothecaria with everything else for the last year.

...possibly I should stop prioritizing Apothecaria so high.

Goals for April

 

• Help Lut
• Keep in touch with parents
• Complete federal and state income taxes
• Pay estimated quarterly taxes for 2024 (or set up something that accomplishes the same purpose)
• Pay March bills
• Pay April bills
• Do about two weeks' worth of work on one or more of the following: the Dragonling cover, a new outline, a new draft, or editing an existing book. You don't have to finish any of these things. 15% edited or 15% drafted or 50% of an outline would all be fine. Combining multiple things is fine. You only have around two usable weeks in April so do not stress yourself about this.
• Track exercise & consumption
• Check goal list occasionally, including glancing at stretch and annual goals

Stretch Goals

 

• Write/illustrate 25+ Apothecaria entries
• Post an Apothecaria page every day.
• Keep up the blogging habit
• Refine the Be That Way outline
  
• Any other productive stuff (things from the Bored? list, for instance)

Comments

[tuftears]

*cheers for finishing the editing* ^.^

*also cheers for continuing Apothecaria* I am really impressed you've kept doing a *color* sketch and writing a day for it!

Yay, friend coming over for eclipse-watching! And sister visiting during conference! You will have seen *people*!

If it helps, you could base your estimated quarterly taxes for 2024 on the lower of 110% of your calculated income tax for 2023 or 90% of your estimated income for 2024... But given you recently semi-retired, it's probably more likely that your 2024 income will be lower so you might prefer to only pay the 2023 taxes and then quickly hack out an estimate for the 2024 income... Meow mew if I should try and fix up a spreadsheet for sharing purposes.