November 2025 in Review

Health and Fitness

I wasn’t tracking outside of my daily entries, which are awkward to use for statistics. It looks like I biked 16-17 times and paced on the phone 3-4 times. Some of which might have overlapped. I’ll just say 20. Exercise completely fell apart after Mom was hospitalized on the 25th, so getting to 20 anyway is pretty impressive.

My eating habits are worse: I’m snacking more as a way of self-soothing, and especially doing things like two Coke floats in one day.

I felt very burnt-out and exhausted by Mom's latest hospitalization, especially since the doctors had decided she was too confused to make her own decisions, so it was up to me and M to decide whether she should stay or not, and for how long.

Dailies

I tracked these for the first 12 days of the month and then quit. Actually, I think on Day 12 I tried reconstructing the rest of the month, rather than really keeping on top of it for the early part of the month. Either way, I didn’t record anything after the 12th.

Writing

I wrote 9147 words on A Dragon’s Secret, which is honestly a triumph for this year, good job, me. It's up to 52,209. My personal journal weighed in at 66,857 for the month. My obsession with chronicling my days is definitely cutting into my time for doing other creative activities. But it’s a coping mechanism, and I like having the record, so not gonna worry about it.

The Business of Writing

I didn't do anything business-related during November. What little energy I had went to writing, with a bit for art.

Art

I declared victory on the picture of Olive (in her boy-mode) that I'd started in October: https://cdn.masto.host/mastodonart/media_attachments/files/115/521/968/755/750/337/original/7bf1773e83cd305b.jpg

I made a handful of sketches of Olive and Olive-with-Dahlia in November, and started an ambitious and steamier painting of the two than any I've attempted before. Because of my obsession with keeping up on my journal (and also that I was more working on writing in November), I didn't finish it.

Reading

Andy Brokaw recommended Of Monsters and Mainframes, by Barbara Truelove, with a suggestion of "don't read my review, don't read the blurb, just read the book." Hoopla had it, so I checked it out. The first few pages were enough to convince me to read the rest over the course of two days. Fun book! Do not read the blurb, it's got spoilers for like the last quarter of the story, COME ON. It's an sf book with supernatural elements, queer rep, and some horror.

I read various manwha, but nothing that finished. I am still stalled on finishing The Housekeeper of the Dungeon webserial. It basically resolved the romance with 60+ episodes left and there hasn't been enough remaining plot to keep me reading the rest. I expect I'll finish it eventually, though.

Social

I saw Envoy, Sophrani, and Kage every week in November, I think. I missed a visit because of Mom's hospitalization, but only one, and since I saw them for Thanksgiving that week, still got to see them each week.

Goal Scorecard

Provide care for parents: Yeah this was pretty time-intensive this month
Register the car: I actually did this! On the 24th, the Monday before Thanksgiving. Since Mom had an appointment on Tuesday the 25th (and ended up hospitalized that day), this was pretty much the last possible day to finish it in November. But I got it done! I even put the new license plate on the car the same day.
Pay November bills: I remembered to do this!
Post any complete entries at the end of the day: Basically done. There were a few entries I posted the next morning instead, and I think once that I got to it later in the next day. Still, I stuck to the spirit of this.
Make meaningful progress on A Dragon's Secret: I didn't reach my 10k threshhold, but I got to 9100 and decided that was good enough, under the circumstances.

Stretch Goal Scorecard

Exercise 15+ times: Somehow I made it to 20. I have no explanation for how that could happen.
Track what I read: I actually put the book I read into StoryGraph, even.
Do some art: Didn't finish anything, but I sketched and painted and it counts
Visit friends: \o/

December Goals

Provide care for parents
Pay December bills
Send The Jewel-Strewn Night to first readers
Brainstorm/work on a new outline: I don't think I can finish an outline in the last two weeks of the year -- I don't even have an idea I really want to work on -- but this is my best shot at making my 2025 goal of "complete 6 writing stages", since 'finish A Dragon's Secret' is even less likely to happen. So I should at least give it a shot.
Post journal entries within 48-ish hours of finishing them: 'at the end of the day' was kind of annoying, but I still want to avoid stockpiling a week's worth of entries and posting them all at once.

December Stretch Goals