Health and Fitness

The bullet journal thing once again fell apart halfway through the month, but I was pretty good about exercise for much of December. Eliyahu wanted to walk pretty much every day, and there were only a few times that we skipped anyway. I don't know exactly how many times I exercised this month, but it was over 20.

As is traditional for the season, I ate tons of junk food. But I ate some vegetables at the end of the month! So that should count for something.

Dailies

I have been so bad at these in 2025 that I feel like I should stop trying in 2026. Except that the check boxes are still satisfying to click. So I went ahead and made a new bullet journal for 2026. It's day 3 and I'm still keeping up on it! It helps that i've been doing most of the items on it, so there's stuff to check off.

Writing

A Dragon's Secret is at 53,200, for about 1000 words in December. Unsurprising. My personal journal was ~70,000. Still doing an excessive amount of writing about my own life. Processing.

Art

I finished the picture of Olive & Dahlia making out that I'd started in November. The main version of it had them in lingerie; I made an alternate version where their clothing was more concealing so I could share it on the Time Princess official Discord without feeling like I was being overly risque. For me, the most suggestive thing about the picture is not their clothing or pose, but their expressions. And yet no one would say 'you have to censor that expression'. Heehee.

I didn't do any other art in December, but I made a 2025 Art Retrospective. Woohoo! I've done an art retrospective for every year since 2020, which kind of amazes me, because the first one was for 2015 and I didn't have enough art in a year to do another until 2020.

I used a template with predefined sizes for each piece, where I had to crop the art to fit, which I've never done before. Using a template was so much easier. Although I only just now realized that the template didn't have a specific place for my name, so I didn't put my name on it. I should probably add my name to it.

It's half Olive fan art. That amuses me, too.

Reading

I finished the main story of Please Marry Me Again!, a romantasy manwha. I read most of the epilogue entries, but I'd lost much of my enthusiasm for the story by the time I reached the end. Romantasy manwha are often like this for me. I'll love the early relationship but by the time they reach the end, it'll have turned its attention away from the relationship and towards some boring political or action plot I don't care about.

I'm almost done with For My Derelict Favorite, which did a good job with its political plot so I enjoyed it all the way through, and The Greatest Estate Developer, a comedy/action-fantasy that's been a terrific ride. Tuftears recommended both to me and they're great. They'll probably have epilogues running for a month or three, but I expect the main story to resolve in January.

I almost finished the two chapters of "Coming Calamities" released by Time Princess in December -- I'll finish the rest in January.

Social

I saw Envoy, Sophrani and Kage most weeks in December. Eliyahu came to visit on December 14 and is staying through January 12, so that's fantastic. My brother M came down early in December and K and C visited at the end of the month. It's been a busy month for social activities, even with me staying home on Christmas because I was worried my mother might pass away that day.

December Goal Scorecard

Provide care for parents: Done!
Pay December bills: Done!
Send The Jewel-Strewn Night to first readers: Took until halfway through the month, which was surprising given that I'd finished edits on it 7 months ago. But I sent it off!
Brainstorm/work on a new outline: I actually did this! I didn't finish it, but I made meaningful progress on a new idea, and I like the idea.
Post journal entries within 48-ish hours of finishing them: I kinda whiffed this near the end of the month -- I posted the 25th-29th together on the 31st, and I'm pretty sure I finished the 25th's entry by, like, the 28th? I was running behind for that time period, but not quite that far behind. Still, I'm counting this as 'basically done' because I did well most of the month, and that period was a particularly crowded one.

Stretch Goal Scorecard

Exercise: Thanks to Eliyahu's determination to walk, I made it well over 15 times this month.
Do some art: Done!
Track what I read: Done!
Visit friends: Did that!
Spend some time with Eliyahu while they're visiting: Yessssss

January Goals

Provide care for parents
Pay December bills
Remind first readers that I'll edit book in mid-February: I don't usually jog readers' elbows -- they can finish or not, it's up to them -- but since I sent it out just before the holidays, I feel like I ought to send a reminder about it once the holidays are past and folks have had a chance to recover.
Do some creative things: Look this is gonna be another tough month. I will do some creative stuff because I want to do some creative things, but no pressure about what those things are.

Stretch Goals

Write more of A Dragon's Secret
Edit A Game to You
Work on outline/notes for next book
Play more of romance soloRPG
Exercise 15+ times
Track what I read, including Time Princess
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
Spend some time with Eliyahu while they're visiting

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

Write more of A Dragon's Secret
Play more of romance soloRPG
Exercise 15+ times (organizing stuff/cleaning counts as exercise)
Track what I read, including Time Princess
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
Spend some time with Eliyahu while they're visiting

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

Health and Fitness

I did well on exercise in September: 20 times. Most of that was an hour of swimming, though I did count "pacing in my room while on the phone" a few times.

Diet: unchanged.

Dailies

I was pretty good about tracking in September. Drawing was easily the winner on creative activities, at 20 times. Editing was 15 times, most of which was the final read-through. Writing was six times. Three were the last days of the month, as I finally dragged myself to the end of the scene I'd been so bleh about writing.

Writing

I wrote all of 718 words, but hey, finished the unenthusiastic scene of A Dragon's Secret. I bet I will do something else with that scene before I send it to first readers, but eh, done for now.

The Business of Writing

I finished the final read-through of A Wolf-Shifter's Pack! I have a few small things left to do before layout, and then I can publish it.

Art

I completed three more fan art pieces of Olive: two that were pretty complicated, and one straightforward portrait. I started a second straightforward portrait and didn't finish it until October, because I went overboard on details for it.

This one was my favorite of the three: https://mastodon.art/@rowyn/115175044747789153

Reading

I finished reading "Status Window to the Soul", which took me a while because after the first third, it just wasn't that compelling. I started reading "The Dragon King's Bride", but didn't finish that until October. I guess I should put those in my Storygraph. I'm trying to be better about tracking manwha as "things I have read", at least when I finish one, but I am still not good about it.

Also, in August I beta-read the second Space Dragons novella and forgot to mention it in my August review post, whoops. It's not published yet, so I'm not logging it. I kind of want to log unpublished things but it also feels rude to the author to add their work to Storygraph before they publish it.

I started reading the web serial for "The Housekeeper of the Dungeon"; I've been unlocking a few episodes per day for free and reading them as I go. It's made me feel even more like "reading manwha and other graphic novels is still reading", because the web serial is one long book. Each episode of it is a few pages long, and most of them cover significantly less story than the corresponding webtoon episode. For a long time, the manwha and web serial were almost identical in terms of story events; I'd expected the manwha to cut a lot, but it hasn't so far. I did finally get to some material that had been cut, one scene that was changed, and what looks like a couple of episodes that the manwha added (although possibly things have been rearranged instead of cut/added, since I haven't finished yet.) The manwha has a better translation and the changes it's made improve it, in my opinion, so I still prefer the manwha. But the web serial is enjoyable and complete already, so I'll finish it. But thus far, I'm fine with unlocking as much as possible slowly for free before I buy the last section. I suspect this will continue to be true, since the kind of tense, nerve-wracking scenes that make most people want to read quickly to find out how it's resolved generally just make me put the story down these days. I guess they still worked with Murderbot? So I'm not immune. Maybe it depends on the story, or maybe it's my mood. Or a combination of both.

Anyway, the experience has made me realize that I won't necessarily get more out of reading a book than I do out of reading a graphic novel.

Social

Still visiting Sophrani, Kage, and Envoy pretty regularly! \o/

Goal Scorecard:

Provide care for parents: Done!
Pay September bills: Done!
Complete final read-through on A Wolf-Shifter’s Pack: Done!
Do something about the next scene of A Dragon's Secrets (write it, or skip it, or phone it in, or whatever else gets me to writing a different scene): Finished the scene!
Look at this list a few times during the month so that I actually do the next two: Oh yeah did this too.
File 2024 taxes (I have an extension on filing until October but I don’t want to wait until the last minute. Again.): Done!
Complete and print forms to register car: Done!

Stretch goals completed:

Exercise 15+ times: got to 20, woo!
Track what I read: okay so I had to go back through my September entries and log them in this entry to remember, but technically, that's tracking.
Do some art: finished two things! Spent quite a bit of time drawing and painting, really.
Visited friends: did that! \o/

October Goals

It's more than a third through October, so I feel a little silly setting goals now. But I have some things I would like to get done this month that I have not done, so I better put them down or they're not happening.

Provide care for parents
Pay October bills
Publish A Wolf-Shifter’s Pack
Get COVID vaccine before my siblings leave (and flu vaccine at the same time, but COVID is the one I can't wait on because I need to do it while someone is here to take care of Mom while I'm sick from COVID vaccine aftereffects).
Take Dad for TDAP and shingles vaccine (or have someone else take him)

October Stretch Goals

Work on outline for some new project
Finish two or more scenes of A Dragon's Secret
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

Health and Fitness

Exercise was pretty spotty in August: 15 times, most of which were swimming. I was sick for the first week of August and for several days during the month, which cut into exercise.

I have gradually increased the length of time I spend swimming -- I started at half an hour while Alltoseek was visiting, then moved up to 45 minutes, and now am at 60-63 minutes. I probably won’t expand beyond that range. The default swim lane reservation is an hour, and exercising for more than an hour feels excessive anyway.

Diet is about the same.

Dailies

Tracking these has remained fitful.I have down 10 times editing, 5 times writing, and 10 times drawing, which is probably accurate.

Writing

I got 730 words into the unenthusiastic scene of A Dragon’s Secret. I re-read most of the draft so far in the hopes of motivating myself to write more, but while I enjoyed the re-read, I’m still not motivated to write.

The Business of Writing

I declared victory over the last three editing points before final-readthrough of A Wolf-Shifter’s Pack, and started the final read-through. Which means I should be able to publish it in October, finally.

Art

I finished another two portraits for Ex-Villainess, and did two Time Princess fan art illos. I ended up particularly liking the one of Olive and Dahlia kissing: https://mastodon.art/@rowyn/115118505363629540

Reading

I have not motivated myself to listen to any more audiobooks while swimming. I’ve been listening to podcasts instead. Still reading a lot of manwha, almost all of it incomplete. One series, “My Failing Divorce” finally concluded. I unlocked the remaining episodes but haven’t actually read them yet. The first half of this series was fun in a “there’s never any serious threats” way. Eventually, though, the author introduced an incredibly tedious and annoying amnesia plot and I regretted unlocking the episodes. I read through to the eventual unsatisfying conclusion of that arc. I think Tapas ran a sale on the final episodes so I got them, but I still haven’t actually read them. I’m not sure where I stopped reading anymore; Tapas marked all the episodes as read when I bought them, because I had to click on each one to buy it. At some point I guess I should actually read it.

Social

I’ve been seeing Sophani, Kage and Envoy on most Fridays; I think three times in August, because I cancelled twice over not feeling well.

Goal Scorecard

Provide care for parents: Done!
Pay August bills: Done!
Decide what I’m doing with those last three editing points on A Wolf-Shifter’s Pack: Done!
Look at this list a few times during the month so that I actually do the next two: I actually did check it enough times to do the last two!
Find out what I need to do to register car in new state: Done. I need to fill out and print two forms but I have all the information and other paperwork I need.
Make podiatry appointment for Dad: Done! It was September 2.

Stretch Goals completed:

Finalize whatever I'm gonna call the Untitled Polyam Lesbian Romantasy: Yeah I think I’m sticking with A Wolf-Shifter’s Pack at this point
Start final read through on Untitled Polyam Lesbian Romantasy: Oh hey I thought this stretch goal was to finish it. I didn’t, but I started it, so I got this stretch goal
Play more of romance soloRPG: I wrote out Day 3, which was fun! Then the Day 4 prompts bored me and I stopped writing it. Aw.
Exercise 15+ times (organizing stuff/cleaning counts as exercise): Just barely!
Track what I read: So I didn’t finish anything but technically I have tracked the nothing that I finished!
Do some art: 4 pictures!
Visit friends: oh hey I did this one too!

September Goals

Provide care for parents
Pay September bills
Complete final read-through on A Wolf-Shifter’s Pack
Do something about the next scene of A Dragon's Secrets (write it, or skip it, or phone it in, or whatever else gets me to writing a different scene)
Look at this list a few times during the month so that I actually do the next two
File 2024 taxes (I have an extension on filing until October but I don’t want to wait until the last minute. Again.)
Complete and print forms to register car

September Stretch Goals

Work on outline for some new project
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
Register car
Visit friends

Health & Fitness

Alltoseek’s visit got me on a swimming kick that lasted until I got sick on July 29. I went swimming for 30-45 minutes twenty-five times in July. I even got back to lifting weights, going three times before I got sick. I expect I will return to exercising once I feel fully recovered. Especially when this unseasonable cool period ends. (It hasn’t been cold here, but it’s been in the high-60s and 70s for the last two days, which is perfectly comfortable walking weather and therefore not making me yearn to be immersed in a swimming pool.)

Not paying much attention to diet, so it’s been mediocre.

Dailies

I started tracking these again but I still wasn’t doing much creative in July. I worked on drawings 8 times, writing The Dragon’s Secret 4 times, and editing 9 times. Tracking fell apart after I got sick.

Writing

I made a thousand words of notes for The Dragon’s Secret, about the next scene. I am not enthusiastic about this scene. Perhaps I should skip it, or make a placeholder for it and come back to it.

The Business of Writing

A Wolf-Shiter’s Pack (fka Be That Way) is at 73% edited. I have three remaining editing points before the final read-through. I made a few notes on how to address those last editing points. If I can knock those out, the final read-through is straightforward. It’s much harder to motivate myself to work on “read through the text and fix errors and poor word choices” than “figure out a solution for this issue.” It’s not even that they’re hard issues or plot holes. It’s just coming up with ideas for an interesting new scene that will [establish thing]. For some reason this feels so much harder when I have to do after writing the book than if I do it while writing the outline.

Although I’ve been stuck on The Dragon’s Secret for a while so maybe planning is just too hard for me now in general.

Art

My eight times of ticking off drawing resulted in three portraits of characters from the Villainess soloRPG I started back in March. I also re-started writing it since I was drawing for it anyway.

Reading

I did a lot of reading this month, mostly unfinished manwha. I also listened to Lady Susan, an early epistolary novella by Jane Austen; I’ve read it before but remembered it so poorly that I’d forgotten how much of it was not letters from or to the title character. The LibriVox dramatic reading of this was excellent. And I listened to Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte; some aspects of the story were overstated, but overall I enjoyed this book and am glad to have read it. I started with a collaborative recording on LibriVox and liked the first narrator, Melissa. The next two narrators I was less impressed by, so I switched to the dramatic reading, which was well done.

And I listened to two Brandon Sanderson novels, Tress and the Emerald Sea, and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. I enjoyed both of them: YA fantasy novels with strong romantic elements. Sanderson normally does a great job writing climaxes and bringing all the elements of the story together, so I was surprised at an aspect of Yumi that left me saying “that? Really? That’s what you’re going with here?” It didn’t ruin the story for me, just startled me.

Social

I made it out to see Sophrani, Kage, and Envoy twice in July! It was nice to visit my friends again. I cancelled once because K was visiting, and again this week because I was sick (though that was in August), but I plan to see them again this weekend. Yay friend-time!

Goal Scorecard

Provide care for parents: Done!
Pay July bills: Done!
Make podiatry appointment for Dad: oh I forgot this was on here
Find out what I need to do to register car in new state: and this too

I had only four items and somehow I managed to drop the ball on two of them. o_o It was not a good month.

Stretch goals:

Exercise 15+ times: I did a stretch goal!
Play more of romance soloRPG: technically!
Track what I read: my tracker didn’t have the read dates for Tress so I’ve guessed at them now, but eh, good enough.
Do some art: another technically!
Visit friends: twice!

August Goals

Provide care for parents
Pay August bills
Decide what I’m doing with those last three editing points on A Wolf-Shifter’s Pack
Look at this list a few times during the month so that I actually do the next two
Find out what I need to do to register car in new state
Make podiatry appointment for Dad

August Stretch Goals

Do something about the next scene of A Dragon's Secrets (write it, or skip it, or phone it in, or whatever else gets me to writing a different scene)
Finalize whatever I'm gonna call the Untitled Polyam Lesbian Romantasy
Start final read through on Untitled Polyam Lesbian Romantasy
Work on outline for some new project
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
Register car
Visit friends

Health & Fitness

I exercised the first eight days of May: two times at the community center gym, while the rest were either unpacking-related or pacing while on the phone. Then on May 10, I came down with COVID (caught from my dad, who caught it from his poker buddies.)

On May 11, Mom also came down with COVID, and at 2AM on May 12, she fell on her way to the bathroom and broke her leg.

Between all of that, I didn't do any more exercising for the rest of May. COVID was weird. I never felt very sick. I had a sore throat for a while. It was mostly gone after several days and I went back to drinking caffeine-free Diet Coke instead of strawberry-watermelon drink mix. Then a few days after that, I switched back to drink mix because my throat felt a little not-right. It wasn't exactly sore, but soda did not feel good going down. I am still having drink mix instead of soda, though I stopped warming it up a week or so ago. (Now I make it cold, with filtered water from the fridge and crushed ice.) My throat doesn't bother me at all but I feel like it would bother me if I drank soda, so I haven't. I like the strawberry-watermelon drink mix pretty well, and the nice dietitian Lut saw a year ago recommended flavored drink mixes over soda. I had a significant amount of fatigue that lingered along with a little congestion and a little cough and the barely-noticable sore throat. So I was like 90% recovered after four days and then stayed at 90% for a week and a half, and then upgraded to 95%. By the end of May, I'd reached 99%, with just the barely-noticable throat thing remaining.

Eating habits have been reasonable by my standards. Mom often wants a sub, and I get one whenever she does, so technically I'm eating a lot of restaurant food. But sub sandwiches are fine as restaurant food goes; I get a bit of veggies on them and they're not particularly fatty, nor large; I'll eat half of an 8" sub for lunch and have the other half for dinner (unless my father eats it for dinner first). No worse than the usual foods I eat. I also ate more frozen vegetables at home this month.

Dailies

I did well with these until I got sick, and then stopped using them again. May 11 through May 23 is just blank. Once again, with the new month, I've started using them again.

Writing

I basically did no new writing in May. Like two hundred words added to The Secret Dragon, up 39,604, I'm guessing. (I haven't done much writing so far in June, either, but I forgot to check where I was at the start of the month. Didn't work on the soloRPG at all.

The Business of Writing

I renamed Be That Way to The Kitty Coffee Pack (which also may not last as a title) and made progress on edits. I got it to 40% complete by the end of May. My goal for the month was 50%, so I missed it, but with everything else going on this month, 40% is pretty great.

Art

I drew a few times in May, finishing one small (6"x6") marker picture of Koysko from The Secret Dragon, and starting a similarly small picture of Strikvi from the same story. Art ranked at the bottom of things to do this month, so it's amazing I did any of it.

Reading

More big chunks of unfinished manwha. I re-read some of my own books for comfort, but no books by other people.

Lyric update

Lyris has adjusted to her new home pretty well. She likes to hang out in the garage. At first, I thought garage was her Substitute Outside. But it has since struck me that the detached garage at my old house was a favorite hangout of hers, too. It was very common for her to emerge from it when I called for her to come in after a few hours. Perhaps even more common than hanging out on the porch. Maybe she just likes garages.

She got outside once, when Mom let her into the garage without realizing I'd accidentally left the outer door open. I came home when Mom let me know, and Lyric came running to me as soon as she heard me calling for her. Since then, she hasn't tried to get outside; she no longer mews at the door, or comes running when it opens, or runs in front of me when I approach a door, hoping to get out when I open it. I keep an eye on her when Dad and I leave the house, because there'd be plenty of time for a cat to get out, but she just watches us from the living room.

So while I still feel like it'd be nice to have a screened-in porch for her, I'm not sure she needs it. Also, I asked the HOA about a catio and the rep was like "NO CATIO. But MAYBE you can have a screened porch. First you need to read this 80 page document and figure out what in it is relevant and complete this form asking for approval from some number of neighbors and then we'll think about whether or not we'll allow it."

I don't even want to read the 80 page doc and I definitely do not want to wander the neighborhood stalking neighbors to get them to sign the form. Dad has a poker buddy who's involved with the HOA; I may ask him at some point if there's a way to make this process less onerous than it appears. But between the cost, the bureaucracy, and Lyric's increased tolerance of life as an indoor cat, I'm leaning towards letting the whole thing slide.

Goal Scorecard for May

Provide care for parents: This has been A Lot. Dad is low-maintenance, thank goodness. The home health aide is mostly important for ensuring he gets showered; he's pretty self-sufficient on other daily tasks. Mom was in the hospital for nine days and is now in a skilled nursing facility. I've visited her every day but one (when I was too exhausted from COVID and poor sleep to feel safe driving). I've been bringing her food most days (she won't eat the institutional food), and doing what I can to make her more comfortable and promote her recovery. (Sometimes those goals do not go together.) She hasn't been able to walk since her leg broke; she's not allowed to put weight on it and she's not strong enough to support herself with her arms and one leg. So therapy is doing what they can to improve her mobility.
Pay May bills: Done!
Call Ting to cancel second phone line: the magic of goal list works again: this is done.
Complete at least 50% of final edits: Not done, but honorable mention for making it to 40%
Register with the HOA: Done
Find out HOA approval process for catio: Done and bleh.
Attempt to get DMV appointment: Done! On the second attempt, I even succeeded at getting an appointment!

Stretch Goals:

A bit surprisingly, I did none of these. I mean, yeah, it was a busy month. But usually I get some random stretch goal done anyway.

June Goals

Provide care for parents
Pay June bills
Complete 70% of edits on The Kitty Coffee Pack
Find out what I need to do to register car in new state
Make podiatry appointment for Dad

June Stretch Goals

Write 10,000+ words on The Secret Dragon
Finish edits on The Kitty Coffee Pack
Publish The Kitty Coffee Pack
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
Sell mom's car (I do not expect to do this until Mom is home and I don't really expect her to come home until July, at this point. But I want this to stay on the list so I don't forget about it entirely.)
Register car

Health & Fitness

I finally had gallbladder surgery on March 3rd! This meant I felt much worse from March 3-8 or so, and then started to feel better. By the end of the month, I was more-or-less back to baseline.

I've sometimes wondered if my "takes a nap every day" thing was a sign of excessive fatigue, and I'd had a little hope that I would have more energy after recovering from surgery than I'd had before the first gallbladder attack. That does not seem to have panned out. I'm not entirely sure I have more energy now than I had on February 26 and 27, before surgery, when it had taken me a while to load 9+ boxes of books into the car for two trips to donate books. I'd needed to rest a few times, but I had loaded them. I'd been feeling pretty good.

On the other hand, from February 28-March 2, I mustered basically zero energy for activities related to purging stuff, so...yeah, I'm probably doing better now than before surgery. When your main symptom is fatigue, it's hard to tell how bad the fatigue is.

I did laundry on March 2, including all the bedding, and counted that as exercise, then counted pacing on the phone as exercise on March 8. But I didn't make a real effort to get back to exercise until March 10, when I had the post-surgery follow-up. From the 10th through the 31st, I exercised 17 times, so 19 for the month. Which is pretty good for a month where I had surgery!

My diet has mostly gone back to pre-gallbladder-attacks foods, which means I am once more eating lots of cheese and high-fat snack foods, and almost no vegetables. The one exception is breakfast: I used to make cream of wheat with nutella for breakfast every morning, and now I have yogurt with granola. This is more because I don't have to cook it than out of a belief it is significantly healthier. It's probably a bit healthier, though: no palm oil.

Writing

The Secret Dragon is up 36,526 words: 13,200 words for the month. More than I've written in any other month this year! Progress still feels sluggish but

*waves arms at everything else*

yeah that.

I started a romance soloRPG, "Reincarnated as The Unlovable Villainess." That journal is at 3,328 words, with another 1000 words of notes for it. It's fun but not enough more fun than writing The Secret Dragon, so I've mostly been working on that when I'm in the mood to write fiction.

The Business of Writing

I did a bit more editing on A Game to You early in the month. Then, while recovering from surgery, I read through The Jewel-Strewn Night and decided to edit that instead. I've remained focused on The Jewel-Strewn Night for editing, and it's now in the final proofreading pass before I share it with first readers.

Except most of my first readers haven't finished with Be That Way yet. So I'm likely to finish The Jewel-Strewn Night in April but not share it with first readers until May? Idk. We'll see.

Art

I checked the "draw" box 23 times in March. Most of that time was spent on the cover illustration for Be That Way, which I finished on March 18. I'll probably tweak it a bit when I do the cover layout, but that can wait until I'm done with final edits and know the exact dimmensions of the paper book. (And therefore the exact size for the wrap cover). I worked on three other character portraits for Be That Way in March and finished two; the last one is still in progress.

Reading

I finished one Time Princess spin-off story (the spin-offs are short and have no meaningful choices), "Timeless Love". I got halfway through Feathers of Dawn and then stalled. I haven't quite decided to DNF it yet, tho. Mostly I've been reading big chunks of unfinished manwha and a new unfinished Time Princess story. I checked the habit box for reading on 30 days; probably half for Feathers of Dawn and the rest reading manwha (I don't count reading a single update, but if I read a big batch of episodes, I count that) or Time Princess stories.

Moving Preparations

I did very little in the way of physical preperation, but I made arrangements for a bunch of things. I have movers scheduled for both my stuff and my car, plane tickets for myself and my cat, and a new cat carrier. I also took Lyric to the vet to get her shots updated and also cleared for travel (this last turned out to be unnecessary, because the airline I'm flying on doesn't require a certificate of health from pets on domestic flights. But I had to take her in for shots anyway, so no issue.) And got the vet's recommendation to give her gabapentin before the flight.

This felt like so much while I was doing it, I gotta say. I have my sister-in-law to thank for me getting it done at all, because she went through and called bunch of movers in my area to find the best ones for me, and contacted the transport company I'm using for my car.

On the last day of the month, I also called a nearby thrift shop about what kind of donations they take (basically everything I have to donate), and filled two 25-gallon bags with the clothes from Lut's bureau.

Things I have to do in April:

Take care of payment for movers
Talk to realtor about selling the house
Shut off the utilities to the house, unless the realtor advocates leaving them on for a while? I actually might need to leave them on because the gas furnace has an electric start, so if I want the furnace to run to keep the pipes from freezing, I need both (freezing is unlikely in mid-April but still). Oh, and the sump pump is electric and the backup sump pump is water-based so...yeah. I don't want to turn off water/gas/electric until the house sells. I'll unplug everything instead. Still need to turn off the fiber, though. Also need to find out if Google Fiber will want their equipment returned to them.
Talk to my mom about anything else I might not be thinking of.

My parents have bought, moved, and sold so many houses just in my lifetime. I think they've owned four different houses in the time I've lived in this one, and four more between when I was born and when I bought this house. I've never sold a house before and I haven't moved in 22 years. I hired movers the last time I moved, too, but that time was local so it was simpler. Though I'm actually moving much less this time, since I'm not moving Lut's things or most of the furniture. The reclining loveseat, the painting desk, the desk chair, and one bookcase are the only big awkward pieces that I'm bringing with me. Everything else is either small or folding. Anyway, my mom is an expert on moving and selling houses so I should consult her.

I have some other prep things that I'd like to -- mostly donate or throw away more stuff -- but if that doesn't get done, oh well. House is selling as-is. It will be worth less because of this but meh. My house was always a place to live and not an investment.

Goal Scorecard

Have gallbladder removed: done! Rest in peace, gallbladder.
Recover from gallbladder surgery: done!
Call parents a few times: done! I talked to them four times in March, even.
Pay March Bills: I forgot to put this on the goal list but did NOT forget to do it. So victory!

March Stretch Goals Completed

Talk to vet about traveling with Lyric and see what they recommend: done!
Contact moving compan(ies). Figure out date for moving: done!
Get plane tickets for move (including whatever ticket Lyric needs): done!
Track what I read: I didn't finish anything in March but technically I'm still tracking it!
Exercise: 19 times, pretty good for a surgery month (even if my bar for what consitutes "exercise" was very low)
Write some of The Secret Dragon: 13,200 words!
Edit: Made good progress on The Jewel-Strewn Night and got a little done on A Game to You
Play a romance soloRPG: Done! Though I haven't played very much of it.
Work on cover art or book illustrations: I did both! Cover and one book illo is done and the other two book illos are mostly done.
Keep up on my Dreamwidth feed: Pretty sure I missed some days, but I covered the 5th through the 31st, at least. Good enough.

April Goals

Move to provide care for my parents
Cancel Google Fiber & return equipment if necessary
Contact realtor about selling house
Pay April bills

I know I'm gonna do more than those four, but those four are the big ones that I must do in April, and moving is super-stressful even when you can afford to pay for all the things to make it easier.

April Stretch Goals:

Call Ting to cancel second cellphone line
Finish initial edits on The Jewel-Strewn Night
Write some of The Secret Dragon
Play more of romance soloRPG
Finish illustrations for Be That Way
Exercise 15+ times
Track what I read
Make progress clearing out stuff I no longer want
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

Health & Fitness

Overall health for most of February was Not Great. After feeling mostly-okay on the 1st and 2nd, I felt much worse again on the 3rd. For probably half of the month I was having regular but minor pain, and for basically all of February I had high levels of fatigue: taking multiple naps every day and too tired for much if any exercise. I started setting the bar for "have exercised" very low, including at one point "finished filling one (1) bag of trash in the basement and carried it out to the trash cart." Because if that's all I have energy for, I might as well count it.

I reached this extremely low bar 17 times in February, so hey, that was something.

Eating habits were not bad, in the sense of "I generally managed to eat enough food." My appetite started to recover towards the end of the month. I have continued to avoid eating more than tiny quantities of my usual high-fat snack foods (ice cream, brownies, hot chocolate).

I'm having my gallbladder removed on March 3, so I expect to feel much worse for several days and then hopefully I will gradually feel better at after that. The surgeon said most people have a few weeks of digestive turmoil after gallbladder surgery and then everything goes back to normal, but some people have long-term issues, especially with eating lots of fatty food at once. No telling which I'll be.

Writing

Work on The Secret Dragon continues slowly. Book was at 23,325 words at the end of the month, so 8,560 new words in February. Still haven't started another soloRPG. Maybe this month?

Part of me is like "8500 words? This is so slow. I'll never finish writing it at this rate." And the rest of me goes "please bear in mind everything else going on and chill."

Oh, right. Everything else is going on too.

The Business of Writing

I finished initial edits on Be That Way and sent it to first readers. At least one person finished commenting on it (because they told me) but I am following my usual policy of not looking so I don't get neurotic about it. I told first readers they had until May because between gallbladder and moving plans, I doubted I'd get back to it any sooner than that.

I started initial edits of A Game to You, more so that I could check the "edit" box on my habit tracker than because I think I will finish editing it in 2025.

Art

I did some drawing in February: portraits of Caliper and Raeku from Be That Way, random drawings of ocean and a rose, and some miscellaneous hand sketches. I checked the "draw" box 14 times; I generally didn't push to finish pictures in a single day.

Reading

I finished first-reading Tuftears' Timecrossed Engineer, and went back to reading The Spellshop. After I finished that, I read Jaycee Jarvis's Taxing Courtship. Also read a graphic novel, If You'll Have Me by Eunnie. I started reading Martha Wells' The Cloud Roads on February 28; haven't gotten very far in it yet.

I opened a Storygraph account to see if that'd help with tracking. I am not enamored of it yet but I guess I like it marginally better than Bookwyrm? It does some things that annoy me -- like when I mark a book as read, it defaults to "no date" for when I started or finished and I have to manually adjust it 3 weeks later when I notice (and no longer remember when I started or finished). But maybe I'll get used to it. It might be better about the date behavior if I mark books as "currently reading" before I mark them as "read", idk. It does use the current date as the default "start date" when I mark a book as currently reading (which I had to fix for The Cloud Roads because I changed the status on the 27th but didn't start reading until the 28th, but at least it was close.)

Three books and one graphic novel in a month is not a tremendous amount of reading by my childhood standards (I was a book-a-day reader before I went to college). But it is evidence of Reading Regularly: good enough. I checked the habit box for "read" 26 times in February. Yay!

Moving Preparations

I filled the trash cart every week in February with unwanted things that I didn't think anyone else would want as a donation. I have failed to do this for tomorrow, mostly from lack of energy. I will also fail to do this next week, because I'll be recovering from surgery and also not supposed to lift much weight at one time. (I am allowed to pick up my cat, though, so that's good. Not that she likes being picked up much so I rarely do, but it's the principle of the thing.)

However, this week I accomplished the much more important task of donating all the books. 19 tubs of books. I'm keeping some books but I donated the vast majority to a used bookstore.

I have a bunch of other stuff I'd like to donate -- all Lut's clothing, for one category -- but made zero progress on that.

I need to call movers and buy plane tickets and figure out cat and car transportation. (My plan is to pay someone to move the car, while the cat will fly with me. But I should see if I can get good drugs for Lyric for the trip because she hates even short car rides. And also I don't know the exact logistics for these things.)

Goal Scorecard

Finish initial edits for Be That Way: done!
Contact primary care physician if I haven't heard from specialist by 2/7: Yes I did have to follow up, and yes I did. SUCCESS.
Contact at least one (1) place about donations. Of anything.: I contacted TWO places! Because the first used bookstore I tried didn't have space for all the books I have to donate. The second one did, which is why I stopped at two.
Finish reading Timecrossed Engineer: Done!
Call parents a few times: Three times! Yeah, that's about as good as it gets. On the bright side, I will be living with them soon and will no longer need to use the phone to contact them. So that'll be nice. Phones should be seen and not heard.

February Stretch Goals completed

Write some of The Secret Dragon: 8500 words!
Made progress on clearing out stuff I no longer want
Track what I read: I even got a Storygraph account!
Got a HIDA scan and scheduled gallbladder surgery: okay so this wasn't a stretch goal, but these were important things and they count.

March Goals

Have gallbladder removed
Recover from gallbladder surgery
Call parents a few times

Yeah that's gonna be it for the Actual Goals. Everything else will have to be a stretch goal. Surgery recovery is supposed to be "one week to recover, one month before you can lift heavy things," so in theory I should have around 3 weeks where I can do things like write/draw/edit/sort out logistics for move. But in the spirit of being gentle with myself, I will not count on it.

March Stretch Goals

Talk to vet about traveling with Lyric and see what they recommend
Contact moving compan(ies). Figure out date for moving.
Get plane tickets for move (including whatever ticket Lyric needs)
Contact real estate agent about selling house.
Maybe donate/throw out stuff by carrying small quantities at a time idk?
Track what I read
Exercise (at all)
Write some of The Secret Dragon
Edit A Game to You or another book
Work on a book outline for whatever I'm writing next
Play a romance soloRPG
Work on cover art or book illustrations
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

In June of 2024, Lut died.

I have written about this extensively, especially on my Fediverse account. I don’t have much else to write about it now. I still think of him every day. I think about Terry and Bard often, too, though not daily. I am not over my grief, but it is easier to bear, I guess.

2024 was mostly about grief for me: for the loved ones I lost in 2023 and for the one I lost halfway through 2024.

Goals 2024

Continue caregiving for Lut: I have walked this road to the end.

Keep in touch with parents: I was not particularly good at calling my parents, but I visited them three times after Lut’s passing, in September, October, and December.

Publish one book: I published A Dragonling’s Family in October. I also posted the second epub for my Apothecaria playthrough.

Finish outlining two books: Outlined both Be That Way and The Secret Dragon.

Complete three of initial edits or first drafts: I finished initial edits (and final edits) for A Dragonling’s Family and finished drafting Be That Way. Technically, I also finished the first drafts for the last two books of my Apothecaria playthrough. I had not intended to count my Apothecaria playthrough for this goal but you know what? I also hadn’t intended for Lut to die. Sure, let’s count the super-long fanfic as two drafts.

Track food & exercise on most days: Completely lost interest in tracking during the downturn in Lut’s health and never tried to pick it up again.

Post monthly updates: My update for May was just a post about Lut’s passing, but hey, it was an update. I continued to do this each month.

Put month & year goal list in my bullet journal so I'll remember to look at it: So it turns out much of what I used my virtual bullet journal for was “tracking Lut’s appointments and care”. After his passing, I mostly stopped using it. I didn’t look at the page with the goal list, much less update it. I used it for a few things. For several weeks, I used daily checkboxes for five habits: Edit, Write, Draw, Exercise, and remembering my 4thewords streak. I started this in July with Spirit City and stopped at the start of September, shortly before my trip to see my parents. I stopped using Spirit City much around then and also stopped using the bullet journal checklist. Anyway, I didn’t do this one.

Be gentle with myself: Yes. This one was important.

I’ve sometimes done grading by bullet point. I didn’t bother with that one this time because 2024 was a crap year for me on a personal level and I did great. Look at me, not curling up into a ball of stress and grief for the entire year. Aw yeah. Good job, Past Me. You did great and I’m proud of you and the stuff you stopped doing wasn’t as important as everything you maintained. A+, absolute champion.

Stretch Goals 2024

Post 365 Apothecaria entries or until the story arc is complete: 2024 was a leap year so 366 entries posted, and yes, did this.

Illustrate 365 Apothecaria entries or until the story arc is complete: I had a three-entry buffer going into 2024 (entries for Jan 1 through Jan 3 2024) and a one-entry buffer for Jan 1 2025, and there were 366 days in 2024. So I illustrated 364 entries in 2024. The spirit of the goal was accomplished, tho.

Start another journaling game if I finish my current journaling game: I didn’t finish Apothecaria in 2024, but I started two other journaling games: Princess with a Cursed Sword and Lo/oper. I also did a kind of roll-your-own soloRPG inspired by other soloRPGs. I didn’t complete any of them but the goal was “start” so hey. Started. At this point, when I’m so fanatical about finishing things that I made a four-book fanfic while playing a soloRPG, it might be good for me to start things without finishing them.

Write 50 Blog Posts: I wrote 70 blog posts in 2024. This was very sporadic: 16 posts in January, a handful in each of February, March, April, and May, then just one each for June, July, August and September, and then picking up again with a handful in October, 17 posts in November, and slowing to a handful in December. I mostly blogged about my life. I’m fine with that. I like Dreamwidth as an archive of my life.

Outside of my goal list, I also moved from semi-retired at the start of 2024 -- working 7 hours per week -- to full retirement at the end of August 2024. I am the youngest of my siblings and the first to retire. Weird, that. I retired at about the same age that my father did. Retirement is good. Five stars, recommend to all my friends, much better than any of the stuff I could’ve bought instead of saving for retirement for 27 years.

I will make a separate post this year for my 2025 goals. I’m gonna have some.

I want to say that the reason I keep doing these every month, including in the absolutely terrible months, because I genuinely love these reviews. They help me remember my life and they help me align my perspective with reality. If I had to rely on my memory alone, I would have such a weirdly skewed perspective from reality.

But also, I just really like writing these. I woke up this morning and was like "aw yeah it's a new year I get to do my year in review!" And then when I sat down to do it, I remembered I have to do a month in review too, and was like "Great!"

I don't think I can explain why I enjoy this tradition so much. Part of it is that I have such a long history of accomplishing whatever goals I set that by this point I associate the review with a sense of accomplishment even if I didn't get things done. Maybe another part is that I have prompts for the reviews (the section hearders) and it's comparatively easy to write to prompts. Anyway.

Woohoo! Another time-period-in-review!

Health & Fitness

Exercise remains mediocre at best, in the 1-2 times per week range, I'd guess. During the week-long visit to my parents over Christmas, I got myself to use their exercise bike exactly once. Eliyahu came to cat-sit and visit on the 19th, and we walked together on the 20th before I left, and on the 29th and 30th. We didn't go out on the 31st because it was below 40 F and breezy. I teased Eliyahu, "I won't make you walk today in deference to your delicate northern Canadian constitution."

Today's high is slightly above 40F and no wind to speak of, so I think I'll make them walk today, though. After they're done with morning prayers and the grocery delivery has arrived.

Writing

Because of 4thewords' 250k-in-44-days challenge, my usual November push continued well into December. I wrote another 55k from December 1-11. Most of that was dictation word salad, journal entries, and notes for The Secret Dragon, which I finished outlining.

My total fiction drafted for December was 7237 words on The Secret Dragon. Most of that was after the challenge ended. It's not a huge amount, but I am pleased that my fiction writing didn't grind to a total halt after November like it usually does.

The Business of Writing

I set my books to 75% off for the Smashwords annual sale and mentioned this once or twice on the Fediverse. I didn't do anything else business-related.

Art

I kept up with daily Apothecaria illustrations in December, completing 31. The buffer is at zero now (after posting Jan 1's entry), and is not likely to get much above that because there's only 11 entries left to illustrate and post. Unless I add some material or revise where the breakpoints are, final Apothecaria entry will go up on Jan 12. Woohoo! I am excited to finish this and also to have "illustrate and post Apothecaria entries" off the mental to-do list.

Reading

I finished the audiobook for The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in December. It was fine. Maybe I'll write a review for it eventually. It had many good qualities but did some things that rubbed me the wrong way so my overall impression was very much "that was a book, yup."

I finished three manwha: I Accidentally Saved the Male Lead's Brother, The Lost Stiletto Affair, and The Flower That Devoured the Sun. These were all pretty good. The Flower That Devoured the Sun is somewhat unsatisfying as a romance but makes up for it by having such a delightfully unusual protagonist. I mentioned this story in my July review (https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/694078.html) ; because the main character is the female reincarnation of an ultra-powerful male sorcerer; she chose to reincarnate, remembers her past life with as much clarity as her current life, and still thinks of herself as the same person. The gender aspect here is largely unexamined -- it comes across as cosmetic more than anything else, of no more importance than the change in her hair color (previously black, now silver). She gets a little more connected to her current life and the people in it as the story progresses, but retains the sense of detachment and analytical thinking that makes her compelling.

Social

Eliyahu flew in on December 19 and cat-sitted from December 21-28 while I visited my parents and also my North Carolina friends. Friends-visit was Dec 22-23 and Dec 27, while I spent the rest of the visit with my parents. For Christmas, my brother refrained from giving me any chores to do for my parents while I was there, which was very kind of him. My mom asked me to change the batteries in all the smoke detectors, though, so I did that. I have done this once before but, surprisingly, did not remember that two of their smoke detectors take two AA batteries instead of one 9-volt, like every other smoke detector in their house (which has this strange wired-in-place system so they all use what look like identical detectors) and also literally every other smoke detector I've ever seen anywhere. What. Why.

The first one I checked was AA and they didn't have any AA batteries at home because we'd ordered 9-volt batteries because that's what you put in smoke detectors. My mother suggested I check another before giving up and going out for 16 AA batteries, and thankfully I did since it was only two of the eight that used AA. I wrote an email to the rest of the family describing the situation, 5% in case they had to change smoke detector batteries in the future and 95% so that I'd remember when I had to change them. I will be moving to live with my parents so they have someone relatively able-bodied on the premises. Probably in March or April, possibly sooner if my mother gets hip surgery scheduled for sooner than that.

Goal Scorecard

Finish an outline: I finished the outline for The Secret Dragon!
Pay December bills: I very nearly forgot to do this, but took care of them at 10PM last night
Call parents at least once before trip: I think I called them exactly once before the trip, but hey, that counts
Visit parents: Sure did!

December stretch goals

Illustrate Apothecaria through end of December: Done!
Start writing something: I started The Secret Dragon!
I didn't have "journal entries" down as a stretch goal, but I posted 5 entries beyond the review in December, so that was cool.

January Goals

Write some of The Secret Dragon
Read through Be That Way
Make an editing list for Be That Way
Finish illustrating and posting my Apothecaria journal
Make plans for next trip to parents
Call parents a few times

January Stretch Goals

Play a romance soloRPG
Work on cover art or book illustrations
Exercise 20+ times
Track consumption
Track what I read (maybe try Storygraph finally?)
Make progress on clearing out stuff I no longer want
Keep up on my Dreamwidth feed

Health & Fitness

I did well on exercise in November up until I finished listening to System Collapse, the last Murderbot story. Then I started Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and: meh. I have not been motivated to go out and exercise. Or exercise indoors. I've done it several times anyway, but I'm down to closer to 1-2 times per week instead of 6-7 times per week. It doesn't help that the weather has gotten colder. Yesterday it snowed. The roads are slushy today. I'm not sure they ever plowed, but there was some melt-off from direct sunlight. Eliyahu is here so maybe we will be motivated to walk despite cold and snow (today's high is right around freezing) but: meh.

Lyric was eating last night, but she's relapsed this morning and is back to putting her face in food and making the occassional eating motion without actually eating anything. :( So probably taking her back to the vet Monday or Tuesday. I will call tomorrow with an update and see what they recommend. "Eating but not well" is better than "not eating" and might be an indication that she's recovering slowly and just needs more time instead of more being-prodded-at.

She's eaten more dry cat food over the course of the day, but not a lot. I gave her a gabapentin this evening in anticipation of taking her to the vet tomorrow. She went outside for a bit afterwards, then came back in, climbed on top of me, and zonked out in my lap. This is not wholly unlike her; sometimes she does like to sprawl for an hour or so on top of me. But she's rarely this level of zonked out. Gabapentin makes her more mellow but doesn't knock her out, and she's pretty out of it now.

Writing

Oh yeah I did a lot of this. It was November.

I started and finished the first draft of Be That Way, which is 57,330 words.

I finished writing my Apothecaria journal, adding another 17,591 words. The whole saga weighs in at 264,000.

After finishing Be That Way, I worked on notes and the outline for The Secret Dragon (new working title in place of Koysko and the Witch. I'm debating using The Dragon Duke as the title instead. or The Dragon's Secrets. Idk. Names are hard.) The outline is coming together but outline-progress feels so slow and frustrating compared to writing progress. Meh.

I dictated 5000 words of a soloRPG-ish story, as a combination of play/notes/actual story. I started writing it out as an actual story and got 800 words in. I don't know if I'll finish the whole planned thing; it'd probably be novelette or novella-length.

Apart from fiction, I wrote seventeen blog posts: most of them just diary-style entries about my life, but a few about specific topics.

I used dictation to catch up on the "250k words in 44 days" goal. The "dictation word salad" file is up to 28,500 words and is mostly stuff I'm not gonna post or use anywhere. There is some "me talking through plot problems" in it that was relevant to The Secret Dragon or my Apothecaria journal.

On the "250k in 44 days" quest, I was at 194,071 at the end of November. 18,232 of those were from October, so 175,839 were November. About 75,000 were fiction, 28,500 were dictation spam, and the rest were notes, blog posts, deleted words, and other miscellanea.

The Business of Writing

November was for writing, not business.

Art

While November was also for writing and not art, I only had illustrated Apothecaria entries going through Nov 15. So I illustrated 16 more entries during November, to take me through to Dec 1.

Reading

I finished three audiobooks in November, all Murderbot: Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry, and System Collapse. I started Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, which has gone so slowly that it auto-returned while I wrote this entry. I'm 70% through, so I guess I'll check it out again to finish it? It's not that it's bad. It's fine. It has many good qualities, even. It's just not that engaging to me at this time.

I also finished a manwha, Observing Elena Evoy. It's not great at the romance part and did some things that annoyed me. But it also had aspects that I absolutely adored and that are incredibly rare in manwha. The female protagonist is clearly neurodiverse and an absolute delight. She has a cold, flat affect early in the story, but gradually warms and becomes more skilled and confident at socializing by the end of the story. Another aspect: the male protagonist is the main (but not only) viewpoint character -- the only manwha I've seen that made this choice. At one point, he's reflecting on the change in Elena and I was like "yeah, she really has changed, oh no, it's all because of the male protagonist UGH". But no, the male protagonist's take is: she has worked so hard at this. Not "I helped her" or "she wanted to change because of me" or anything else, just: this was dificult for her and she decided she wanted to do it and she has done it AW YEAH SHE ROCKS. It was so endearing.

One manwha I've mentioned before, The Flower That Swallowed the Sun, recently completed. I haven't finished it yet because I've got a big chunk of I Fell into a Reverse Harem Game entries to read and I've been putting off buying large numbers of episodes in a new story if I still have a bunch that I've already bought from another.

Goal Scorecard:

Complete Outline for Be That Way: I thought I did this on October 31, but regardless, it's done.
Write 50k of Be That Way: Done!
Pay November bills: Done!
Talk to parents occasionally: Only called twice and both times around Thanksgiving, but that's better than zero?

November Stretch Goals:

Finished writing Be That Way
Illustrated Apothecaria journal through end of November
Finished writing Apothecaria journal
On track to complete 250k goal by Dec 10 (I am a tiny bit ahead at this point and need ~5600 words per day instead of 5682.)

December Goals

Oh right I need some goals for this month too. Sigh.

Finish an outline. (Probably The Secret Dragon but I'm not picky; it can be something else.)
Pay December bills
Call parents at least once before December trip
Visit parents

December Stretch Goals

Play a romance soloRPG
Start editing something
Start writing something
Work on cover art or book illustrations
Illustrate Apothecaria through end of December
Finish illustrating Apothecaria

Health & Fitness

I visited my parents for a week in October, and managed to get in some exercise during the trip this time: I think I used their exercise bike three times? They have an exercise bike in their living room, even though neither of them uses it. So I'd watch a show on their giant screen TV and pedal. Videos are kind of boring but it more-or-less worked.

Eliyahu was visiting for most of October, so we'd go for a walk and get a bubble tea on most days.

During the last few days of my trip, I caught a mild but lingering cold. It was more annoying than anything else: I had a sore throat for three days and a little bit of a cough, then a slight runny nose for four or five days. I was a little more tired than usual, but it wasn't much of an impairment. I had worried that my parents might catch it and masked for most of the time I was around them before I left. They were completely unconcerned about it and were fine. So was Eliyahu, although Eliyahu was fanatical about masking while I was home with them. (They wore a mask while sleeping and ate outside or in the basement.)

I didn't test for COVID-19 because all my tests were well past the expiration date, and given that the symptoms were so mild, I couldn't see how it would make a difference. I wasn't gonna try to get a still-hard-to-obtain COVID-19 treatment when I was barely sick. And whatever it was, I was going to stay home and avoid people as much as possible, and mask whenever I couldn't avoid people. It doesn't matter if it's just an annoying cold: I still don't want to share it. Also, I feel like COVID-19 is the least likely illness for it to be, because I'd vaccinated for COVID-19 a few weeks earlier so the protection against that would be at maximum, while I have no protection against any other illnesses that might be going around.

Anyway, I used being mildly sick as an excuse not to exercise for a few days, but Eliyahu and I got back to it by October 26.

After Eliyahu left, I kept up the long-walk habit because that meant I got to listen to Network Effect for an hour. I stopped driving to the trail, walking there, and getting a bubble tea afterwards. But I've started having daily Coke floats again, so as predicted, this doesn't improve my overall diet any. But hey, I use less gasoline, so that's nice. Nov. 4 is actually the first day this month that I didn't go for a walk, and the only reason I didn't is that it was raining all day. I wasn't motivated enough to do an exercise video in the house, though.

Writing

I wrote a bunch more Apothecaria entries. It is not done yet. I had, let's see, entries written through October 13 at the end of September. At the end of October, I had entries written through December 2. So that's 50 entries written. Whee! Most of my writing in October was Apothecaria, but I also added more details to the Be That Way outline, getting it fully fleshed-out before November started.

I wrote more Lo/oper than I posted, but did not finish writing the second week. Odds of me playing it all the way through at this point are low, but I shan't rule it out. I like finishing things and it feels weird to have posted a half-finished story.

The Business of Writing

I published A Dragonling's Family! With an all-time minimum of fanfare. Okay, maybe not an all-time minimum, I'm pretty sure I've released books before while making basically zero effort to let anyone know I'd put them out. If I'm gonna keep publishing books, I really should do more to talk them up.

(Maybe if I write that enough times, I will actually do so. This seems unlikely.)

Art

33 Apothecaria entries illustrated, I think? And I drew a waterfall because I felt like drawing a waterfall.

I might actually do some more non-Apothecaria art in November? I've been wanting to draw the characters for Be That Way, although I've been so head-down in writing that I haven't wanted to slow my momentum by drawing. Also, since I didn't get entries illustrated through the end of November before the month started, I will almost certainly start drawing Apothecaria again during the month.

Reading

I read "Space Dragons: Luxorian's Crew" by Veo Corva, which is a wonderfully cozy space fantasy about a neurodiverse, asexual, anxious, space-traveling dragon and the nonstandard crew they assemble. Also about the difficulties of taking up more room than your society allots for you, and maybe about society being more flexible in how much space it allots. It's full of queer and disabled characters, too. By which I mean "there might be a character who's neither queer nor disabled in the novella, but I wouldn't want to swear to it." I loved it and would recommend it.

Because I didn't have any other new Veo Corva books to read, I read the other three Murderbot novellas and started the audiobook of Network Effect. The Murderbot stories are also full of queer characters and have a neurodiverse, asexual, anxious, space-traveling protagonist.

I'm not saying "if you like the Murderbot Diaries, you'll like Space Dragons" or vice versa, because Murderbot is really not cozy. At all. I mean, maybe a little? The death toll on sympathetic characters is surprisingly low (but not zero) for action novels with 'Murder' in the series name and So Much Violence.

So much violence.

Anyway there are some fascinating similarities, for such different stories. The things I really enjoy about Murderbot--relationships and character growth and queer-normativity and a protagonist coming to the gradual realization that perhaps friends are a thing they could have and even a thing they maybe want--are the same things I enjoyed in Space Dragons.

I'm still reading a few manwha daily, but my reading there has remained low, especially compared to four or five months ago.

Goal Scorecard

Publish A Dragonling's Family: Published!
Pay October bills: Paid!
Buy tickets for next trip to see parents: Bought! My next trip will be around Christmas.

October Stretch Goals

Wrote 50 Apothecaria entries
Illustrated 33 Apothecaria entries (I'd hoped to illustrate 48, but hey, this isn't bad)
Finished up the Be That Way outline

November Goals

I already listed most of my November goals in my post about the 44 day Terrarium event on 4thewords, but I'll recap and also add important non-writing goals:

Complete outline for Be That Way
Write 50k of Be That Way in November
Pay November bills
Remember parents exist and would like to hear from you

Stretch Goals

Finish writing Be That Way
Illustrate Apothecaria journal through the end of November
Finish writing Apothecaria journal
Complete outline for another book (this will probably be Koysko and the Witch but if I decide something else is easier, I'm fine with that)
Start writing that book
Write 250k words total, counting literally everything (this one counts from October 28 through December 10, not November alone)
Occasionally remember things other than writing exist
Exercise maybe?

Health & Fitness

I visited my parents and friends in the area for several days in September, and I basically didn't exercise during that trip. But otherwise I was good about daily exercise. Eliyahu was visiting for most of September and we went for an hour-long walk on almost every day. Even when they were gone for a few days at end of September, I

No improvement in eating habits, though. Arguably slightly worse, since we usually drive to the trail to walk and then get a bubble tea afterwards. On the other hand, it's common for me to have a Coke float if I don't go out, so changing to a different treat drink doesn't make much difference overall.

Writing

I finished one dramatic arcs I had planned for Apothecaria, so that was nice. Still feel like I'm winding down now, but don't know how many more entries before I declare it complete. I've been building up the buffer on entries after running it to zero during the trip to my parents. Right now, I'm at 12 illustrated entries, plus most of an entry written but not illustrated. So that's 37.5 entries written.

I played a bit of a new soloRPG, Lo/oper. I'll post what I've done of that at some point, though I haven't decided if I want to play it all the way through.

The Business of Writing

I finished illustrating the cover for A Dragonling's Family!

And that was about it for business-y stuff. I read through part of A Game to You again for fun, because I love this extremely messy draft. But I can't claim I did any serious work or even thinking about edits for it.

Art

37 Apothecaria entries illustrated, woo. And the cover for A Dragonling's Family.

Social

Way more social in September! Visited my parents for three days, and Jared, Nicole and Paul for two during the September trip. Eliyahu visited me for most of the rest of the month. Corwyn stopped by my house at one point to drop off my ice-dyed curtains, and we hung out for a few hours. This included going over to see his new house, which is dinky but, more importantly, affordable. He plans to build a gigantic garage on the property to house his business and let him get rid of at least one storage unit.

Reading

I read two novellas! One was All Downhill From Here, an alt-universe novella by Erin Ptah, about Leif & Thorne trapped by an avalanche. The other was Martha Wells' All Systems Red, the first of the Murderbot Diaries. I enjoyed both! There's a bunch more Murderbot stories, and I own the next three novellas thanks to a giveaway by Tor a while back. So maybe I'll get around to reading those. As usual, I read on the plane, which means my October trip will perhaps see another book or two read.

I also finished a completed "boy's love" manwha, Don't Touch Me. It ended abruptly and without much resolution on the non-romance plot. But the romantic resolution was satisfying and that's all I really want out of a romance.

Several days ago, I bought the rest of the completed fantasy romance manwha Contractual Marriage to a Surly Duke, but in token of how disappointing the last third or so of the story has been, I haven't actually finished reading it. The first two-thirds or so had the romance plot intertwined with a mystery plot and I enjoyed that part. Then they resolved the mystery plot and I thought "ah, the rest will be a leisurely denouement to resolve the romance plot."

...no.

The rest has been wandering around with a new plot that neither I nor the characters have any investment in, while the female protagonist makes various inexplicable choices for no reason other than "the author doesn't want to resolve the romance yet and can't think of any remotely intelligible way to keep it going." Like, I was going to try to explain what's happening but I can't, it just makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, "romance protags making bad choices instead of having a normal conversation" is a staple of the genre, but this goes an order of magnitude beyond "why don't you just talk to each other" into "this doesn't make sense from literally any possible perspective and your own actions contradict each other on, like, the same page, what is even happening, I can't tell."

I already paid for it and there's not much left, so I guess I'll finish it and see if there's anything fun left, but UGH.

Oh! And I finished another fantasy romance manwha, How Did I Become the Princess? This also featured some "what is happening" moments that made no sense. It was fine overall, but I can't enthusiastically recommend it.

I'm down to just two manwha that I'm reading daily installments of. There are several incomplete ones that I'm current on and enjoying, but I have to wait for weekly updates (or for the hiatus to end, sigh.) I picked up a few new ones but put them down again. I'm slowing down on consuming them; there's one that I could finish but haven't bought the rest of yet because I was waiting until I finished all the other episodes I'd purchased.

Goal Scorecard

Pay bills: Done! In September, even.
Finish illustration for A Dragonling's Family: Also done!
Buy plane tickets for next trip to parents: and done!

Stretch Goals:

Continued posting Apothecaria!
Started a new soloRPG for the SoloRPGBookClub

October Planning

I am so fed up with NaNoWriMo-the-organization that I no longer want to even use the hashtag. Congrats, on thoroughly poisoned your brand there, folks. I'm not gonna rehash the problems with the org because there are Way Too Many. See here for write up: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1ae33g5/writing_discords_forums_and_a_decades_worth_of/ . Note: it's part one of two. Way Too Many Problems.

But the org doesn't have a trademark on "writing lots in November". 4thewords.com, the writing website I've used since 2016, is still having a big November event (also no longer affiliated with NaNo). It's actually overflowing November to run for 44 days, starting at the end of October and going until December 11. (Because 4thewords loves the number 4.)

I expect the social media zeitgeist will still be focused on November, and I expect I will focus on that month, too. But I am moderately excited at the prospect of Writing Month post-retirement and with no other commitments. Maybe I could write 100k in a month finally! Probably not; I expect emotional concerns will continue to weigh upon me. But I'd like to set myself up for a month Focused On Just Writing as well as possible.

That means some things I want to complete in October:

Publish A Dragonling's Family: should be quite doable; all that's left out is layout and final read-through.

Get Apothecaria buffer to 30 by the end of October (or finish the story): I have Apothecaria entries through the 13th. So I need another 18 entries for October and then 30 for November. That's 48. So 48 illustrations and around 24000 words. This is pretty ambitious. I had been completing two entries per day for ten-ish days, but then fell out of the habit and even failed to do one entry on a day. Anyway, not sure I can manage it, but I'd like to. November 2023 I just did illustrations every day while completing NaNoWriMo, and also counted Apothecaria for some of my 50k words.

Get one (or possibly two) outlines in shape for writing: I have one more-or-less complete outline, for "Be That Way", but I want to add more romance to it. I have another outline in progress for "Koysko and the Witch" that's more like 60% done. "Outline two books" was one of my goals for 2024 so it'd be nice to do that. But I am formally giving myself a pass on completing 2024 goals. 2024 was a disaster of grief and medical crisis for me. Some stuff is not happening. But I'd like to write in November and this will be more fun if I have good outlines to write to. This is more a "towards the end of month" goal. I probably want to work on these during the Halloween 4thewords event, running from Oct 25-31.

So I want to do all three of these things, but breaking it down to be more realistic and also to add the two little things that I will forget to do if they're not on the list:

October Goals:

Publish A Dragonling's Family
Pay October bills
Buy tickets for next trip to see parents

October Stretch Goals:

Write & illustrate 48 Apothecaria entries (or finish the story, if it doesn't take 48).
Get one or two outlines in shape to begin writing

Health & Fitness

Still not paying much attention to what I eat. I remain on track for regular “exercise”, as long as you’re willing to accept things like “10 minutes of aerobics” or “45 minutes of cleaning” as exercising. (I feel like I ought to up my Average Amount of Exercise but “too little” is still better than “none.”)

Writing

Still only writing Apothecaria. I think the illustrated buffer was still around five at the end of August, but the written buffer had grown longer, so I probably wrote another 35-ish. I’m getting close to resolving all the major story arcs, so I may declare this playthrough finished at some point in the next four-five months. I don’t have an outline for the story -- the original point was to let random prompts guide the development. I am well past the point where I’m using much in the way of prompts but I still haven’t written out a guide for the remainder. Just seeing where writing takes me.

The Business of Writing

I finished editing A Dragonling’s Family! Remaining tasks are:

Illustrate cover
Layout cover
Layout book
Final readthrough (this pass is 98% ‘make sure the layout process didn’t munge the book’ but I generally also catch a few typos during it.)

I have made very little progress on the “illustrate cover” front. I made some sketches I didn’t like at all and one sketch that’s kind of okay. I have thought of three other options, two of which are just ‘please don’t make me draw all three viewpoint characters plus the eponymous dragonling’.

The whole reason I haven’t done this illustration yet is that I’m dreading trying to capture the triad. UGH. I am tempted to go back to the old silhouette-style covers I used for the Etherium and Arranging Paradises series. I am just not that good at full illustration. 530+ illustrated Apothecaria entries notwithstanding.

Social

A convention friend was in town for a few days in August, and we got together for dinner on two nights. Other than that, I don’t think I saw anyone. It’s weird how happy I am just to stay at home and do my own thing and not see people. It’s not that I mind seeing people; I enjoy seeing my friends and family. But I don’t crave it or feel like my life is lacking when I’m alone. I went out about once a week by myself to get a bubble tea and takeout, but pretty much stayed home otherwise.

Eliyahu is visiting me again this month, plus I visited my parents & friends in North Carolina, so I’m getting out more this month.

Goal Scorecard

I forgot that I set actual goals for August! Fortunately, there weren’t many and I did them all.

Finish editing A Dragonling’s Family: Done!
Pay August bills: Yup! In August!
Buy plane tickets to visit parents: Done! I am visiting them as I write this, in fact.

Stretch goals

Kept up with Apothecaria!

Goals for September

Pay bills
Finish illustration for A Dragonling’s Family cover
Buy plane tickets for next trip to parents.

Stretch Goals

Publish A Dragonling's Family
Continue posting Apothecaria
Start tracking eating habits again
Do things on the Bored? list

June was worse than May, but I'll do a normal review entry for it anyway. Why not.

Health/Fitness

Lut had an appointment with a nutritionist in mid-April. She and Lut agreed on three modest goals: 1) eat vegetables once per day, 2) have restaurant meals no more than twice per week, and 3) eat fruit as a snack. We were doing pretty well at these for maybe two weeks, until the final health crisis began.

I have kind of stuck to the second one. Even while Lut was in the hospital and I gave myself permission to eat whatever, I didn't actually want to go to restaurants. I ate at Panera a few times. Twice, I think, I got a triple chocolate concrete for Lut while he was at the hospital, and had one myself at the same time. Once he asked me to pick up a small pizza, which I did, but I don't think I ordered anything for myself at that time. Maybe I did. Might've been a few other times that I ate out and don't remember, idk.

Since his passing, I've had three restaurant meals: Italian, Thai, and Mediterranean. All three with friends visiting from out of town. I like going out for food but not enough to do it by myself. I thought I liked it enough to get takeout but not so far. Lut loved fast food and often asked me to pick up some for him. Sometimes I'd get something for myself from a different place (there's very little fast food that I actually like better than eating at home). But even then it was common for me to pick up food for just him and make food at home for myself.

But that aside, all my other habits went to crap in May. I ate more chocolate and pastries. I stopped eating vegetables. I stopped exercising.

In late June, I made some baby steps to improve again. I exercised two or three times. My Canadian friend came to visit (they're still here until 7/20), and we made the roasted cauliflower & garlic soup that Lut and I liked. (We've had four servings and have another four left to go). I've roasted asparagus spears and eaten some broccoli, too.

We'll see how it goes.

Writing

Wrote enough Apothecaria to keep posting through the month. So sixty-one entries from May 1 to June 30. Somehow Apothecaria is the thing I keep doing even with my loved ones literally dying. I haven't written anything else.

The Business of Writing

I started final edits on A Dragonling's Family in May and, amazingly enough, did some more editing in June. It was 48% complete at the end of June, somehow. I knocked out a lot of edits on June 29. I don't know why.

Gaming

I bought a new productivity game: "Spirit City: Lofi Sessions". It's mostly a timer app with ambience. But I have really wanted a timer app that would let me specify "x minutes working, y minutes break" and it does that. Plus the ambience is lovely: the imagery has your avatar lounging and working in a cozy bedroom with their magical animal companion.

It has a "habits" section that you can check off, so I put in four habits: exercise, write, edit, draw, and check off if I did any of each thing that day. So it's giving me motivation to clear at least one editing point per day on A Dragonling's Family, so that I can put down that I edited. I am down to 16 points left (after finishing several in July as well), so there's a non-zero chance that I'll finish it this month. And actually have to figure out what I'm gonna use for a cover.

Social

My friend Eliyahu came to visit on June 24 and is staying for about four weeks, until July 20. I don't know if there's anyone else for whom a four-week visit with me would be a good idea, but Eliyahu and I have known each other for over thirty years and I've always found them very easy to live with. It's been a very low-key visit. We make meals together and chat when the mood strikes, and mostly just sit in the same room and entertain ourselves on our respective computers. At the end of June, we took to going for walks in the morning. By the time I get up, it's already too warm outside, but it's not yet unbearably hot, and we both can use the exercise.

So that's been lovely.

Reading

Still on the same fantasy romance manwha kick. I've tried a few manwha outside that genre -- action fantasy, modern romance -- but they haven't stuck. Rationally, I consider "reading comics" to be "reading", but I can tell my brain doesn't believe this because my brain fights with me over reading books and is perfectly happy to devour endless comics.

Most of the comics I've started are still in progress. I tend to pick comics to read based on "Tapas offered a reading event for this and it's a fantasy romance manwha", and most often the reading events are because it's a new comic or a new season of a comic -- and therefore by definition incomplete.

But I have read two completed manwha: "The Monstrous Duke's Adopted Daughter" and "I Belong to House Castielo".

I've found the "romance fantasy" genre on Tapas to be much less focused on the "romance" part than the romance novels I've read. Both "Monstrous Duke" and "Castielo" were more about the female protagonist's family and her relationship with them than the romance. Both stories started when the protagonist was a child and followed her as she grew up. In both cases about two-thirds of the story took place while the protagonist is still a child and there's basically no romance involved. The male romantic lead is present in the story but in a non-romantic way. In "I Belong to House Castielo", the male romantic lead is introduced while the girl is 12 and he's a full-grown man and her bodyguard. All through the first two-thirds, I was like "I can't believe they're going to pair these two up for a romance; that seems like it'll be creepy and awkward."

It was, indeed, creepy and awkward. As a romance, it's a failure for me. I kept reading it because the romance wasn't a major part of the story and I enjoyed the interactions with the rest of the cast.

I enjoyed "The Monstrous Duke's Adopted Daughter" much more. The male lead is still older than the female, but they meet when they're 12 and 15 (and don't date for several more years). It's not off-putting the way meeting at 12 and 22 is. The characters are better-developed, too, without the misogynistic undertones that many manwha have.

As someone who's mostly been reading queer content for the last several years, the extremely unqueer nature of the manwha I've been reading is weird, too. Everyone is cis. What's up with that. Where are all the enbys??? Never mind that all the romantic pairings are straight. And almost all monogamous. (I'm reading one where the protagonist isekai'd into a princess who kept a harem, but the protagonist has mostly been divesting herself of the harem. It's not clear that she's gonna end up in a monogamous relationship by the end, but it seems probable.)

Even aside from the unqueer content, there are other tropes I find off-putting, like "jealousy and possessiveness are romantic and endearing qualities". It reminds me of reading romances from the 70s and 80s: just a lot of gross/misogynistic behavior packaged as "romantic" because that was the trope and many readers were fine with it.

Some common tropes are wildly unrealistic but don't particularly bother me. For instance, many manwha protagonists have an early childhood filled with horrific levels of abuse, from which they are then rescued (this happened in both of the above comics). Once rescued and among a loving family, these formerly-abused children are grateful, generous, and sweet. They may have some traumatic associations, but no chronic behavioral problems. I used this trope in Frost and Desire myself, so I get the appeal: the idea that you can save someone and treat them well and afterwards their life will be perfect and they will never cause you any trouble. It's a nice fantasy. But I am pretty sure that most actual abused children wind up with a host of issues from it, many of which are not easy to live with for the people around them, either.

Goals Scorecard

I had no goals for June.

Of things not noted above: I paid my June bills.

July Goals

I don't really want any goals this month, either. "Help Lut" has been on my goal list for years and now it's not. I didn't ever want to cross that off the list.

Pay July bills.
Pay quarterly estimated taxes (I did this on July 3).

July Stretch Goals

Have some idea of what I did in July.
Edit A Dragonling's Family
Work on cover for A Dragonling's Family
Apothecaria
Update the "Bored?" list so it's less likely to make me cry

Health/Fitness

Up until Lut went to the ER on Sunday morning, I was doing pretty well for both exercise and eating during April. Even with that, I exercised 24 times in April and tracked food for most of the month, only stopping during Telnar's visit for the eclipse. Also, I ate some vegetables! I seldom eat vegetables so having a large quantity of vegetables with several meals in a month is a noteworthy accomplishment. I know that sounds pretty sad for a full-grown woman but here we are.

Writing

I wrote enough Apothecaria to keep posting throughout the month. Looks like that was 26 entries.

I started work on a new outline, with a working title of Koysko and the Witch. I'm probably not keeping that title because (a) doesn't have much going for it and (b) story's supposed to have four main characters, not two. Maybe The Duke's Sister. People like dukes. There's a chunk of outline now but I don't have a way to measure how far along an outline is so idk if it's half-done or more like one-quarter or three-quarters. Somewhere in there.

The Business of Writing

Didn't do anything on this front.

Art

I illustrated the aforementioned 26 Apothecaria entries. Didn't do any other art stuff. I'm not sure I even did any miniature painting.

Gaming

Lut and I played some Kill Team at home, including notably last Saturday, the last day that he's been well enough to do anything.

We also played some physical board games that I'd previously only played online -- Telnar bought copies of Dice Forge and Space Base. Not new games to me, but I had to re-learn the rules to play them. When you play games online, they enforce the rules for you. There's so many more mistakes you can make with the rules when you're playing with a physical board. Like Space Base has "income" and I forgot that income behaves unintuitively in the game: instead of "you get your income added to your credits at the beginning of every turn" it's something weirder, like "after you spend for a turn, your credits drop to the level of your income." We played at least two games with income wrong before I noticed the distinction while glancing through the rules for something else.

Social

After Telnar visited for a few days, my sister came in to my city for a work conference, so I saw her for two evenings and most of a Saturday. My sister likes walking, so we got to do a bunch of walking while she was here, around my neighborhood and at the trail I used to bike on now and again, back before my bike was stolen. Anyway, it was great to see both of them, and nice to see have some long-distance family & friends come to me.

Reading

I read the archive for The Greatest Estate Developer. This is an adaptation of a Korean web novel. I am not clear on whether it's a Korean comic translated into English or whether the adaptation was originally done in English. I read it because Tuftears and some other folks on Discord loved it, and it's a litRPG where the main character was a civil engineer before being isekai'd into a fantasy setting. So he addresses most of his problems with civil engineering. I am a sucker for fantasy comics that are not All About Fighting, though there's lots of straight-up fighting in this one too.

After I finished it, I hunted around for an English translation of another webcomic with the same original author and in the same setting, How I Became the Dragon King's Cook. I couldn't find the full archive and instead read the first 60 episodes or so.

Around the same time, someone recommended The Villain Duke's Precious One, another translated Korean isekai comic. This is a tapas.io comic and unlike the others, I couldn't easily read the online archive at my own pace. After the first handful of episodes, the rest were "WUF" which stands for "Wait Until Free", which means you have to wait a day to unlock the next episode (and only have 72 hours to read it). The tapas.io model is REALLY CONFUSING. If you want to pay money instead of waiting to unlock episodes, you have to buy "Ink". You can buy "Ink" on the webpage by logging in, clicking on your icon, and selecting "Inkshop". The webpage said "some comics give you a discount for unlocking in bulk", but I couldn't find anything that suggested the particular webcomic I was reading had any discounts.

After ten or fifteen days of reading zero-one episode per day (depending on whether I remembered to check or not), I downloaded the Tapas app to see what other options there were for unlocking episodes. I could play games, which is kind of an amusing way to unlock episodes and I assume is the equivalent of advertising for the games. I could play up to three ads for one episode each. Or I could use Ink to unlock varying numbers of episodes...with a discount for unlocking in bulk.

Huh.

I tried to find where to buy Ink in the app, and got no hints that Ink was a purchasable thing there. Oh, right, they didn't want me to buy in the app because then they'd have to give a cut to Google/Apple. It's SUPER WEIRD the way the Tapas website made it way more obvious that you can get ink by downloading the app and jumping through hoops on it than that you can get ink by giving them ACTUAL MONEY. Like you'd think they'd rather just have money? But no? Even the location of the inkshop on the webpage is unintuitive. If I was doing the UI, I'd put a link to the Inkshop front and center when someone with no ink tried to unlock an episode, but nope. I think there was a big ad for the mobile app instead.

Anyway, by that point, if I paid $50, that would give me twice as much ink as I needed to unlock the rest of the series. And I'd have a bunch of extra ink for the next time I wanted to read an expensive archive on Tapas.

I figured the archive was worth $25 and I'd probably find something to spend the other $25 on at some point, so I went ahead with that. And now I'm reading through the archive at my own pace, yay.

Oddly, my biggest reservation about spending money at Tapas isn't "is this a good value?" but "where does the money go?" The credits list all the original creators plus the Tapas localization team, and I have to wonder how much trickles back to the original creators and translators vs retained by Tapas itself. :|

So, been on a big "Korean isekai webcomics" binge lately. It's nice that my brain still lets me read comics after giving me such a hard time with books.

Goals Scorecard

Help Lut: Done!
Keep in touch with parents: Eh. I called my parents three times in April, which still isn't great but at least it's trending in the right direction.
Track exercise & consumption: Done! Not every day, but I'm happy with it.
Complete federal and state income taxes: Aw yeah did the thing
Pay estimated quarterly taxes for 2024 (or set up something that accomplishes the same purpose): Done! I didn't find a good way to automate this but there was an online manual way that shouldn't be too bad. Just have to remember to do it every quarter.
Pay March bills: Done!
Pay April bills: Done! Yay, I actually remembered to do this in April this time.
New ID for Trask: This wasn't on the goal list but should've been. We also didn't get it done. Oops. His id is expired now. I am not prioritizing this now because health crisis.
Get two weeks' of creative thing done: I don't know if I really got 50% of an outline done but eh, I'm gonna count it as that.
Check goal list occasionally, including glancing at stretch goals and annual goals: Done!

Stretch Goals Scorecard

Write/illustrate 25+ Apothecaria entries: Done!
Post an Apothecaria page every day: Done!
Keep up the blogging habit: I posted four entries in April, beyond the month-in-review; sure, that counts as keeping the habit.

May Goals

For health crisis reasons, I expect that "help Lut" will take basically all of May. I will try to do things anyway because that's what I'm like now. But I don't expect much. So the basics:

Help Lut
Keep in touch with parents
Pay May bills
Look at goals & "Bored?" list sometimes

May Stretch Goals

Look through first reader feedback on A Dragonling's Family
Make final editing list for A Dragonling's Family
Work on cover for A Dragonling's Family
Whatever other victories you want to claim

Health and Fitness

Didn't do too terribly on exercise this month: 18 times. Albeit that counted things like "laundry" and "installing toilet" as exercise. Still, I've done worse. Tracking consumption did not go well; I think I tracked for maybe half the days in February and guessed for the rest.

Ooh, I just remembered my "exercise so you can spend money in Time Princess" incentive plan from December. And Time Princess actually has some things I want to spend on right now! That will be useful.

(stops writing post in the middle in order to exercise, since already spent a little money on TP today)

Writing

Only Apothecaria entries, and mostly just the minimum to keep my daily streak going.

The Business of Writing

A Dragonling's Family is now 71% complete on edits! \o/ I added a few things to the list but managed to reach my two-thirds goal anyway. The only things left to do are (a) decide if I want to either add any explicit sex scenes or remove some explicit foreplay (I might just leave this as it is, although my instinct is that I should either have less foreplay or more sex) and (b) the final readthrough before I find first readers for it. This is extremely doable in a month, so I plan on finishing that in March.

Art

I illustrated 30 Apothecaria entries, through 344. March will mark the 1-year anniversary of my Apothecaria journal!

Social

I did a social thing this month! I went to my friend's birthday party on the 18th. I had a good time, although it was a somewhat odd experience. About three hours of the party was at an event center that had an arcade, bowling lanes, pool tables, some kind of American-Gladiator-inspired rope thing, laser tag, and "mini escape rooms". And possibly something else I forgot. Oh, and a bar.

I didn't do any of these things. It's not that I specifically didn't want to; if the party had been for bowling or pool or laser tag or an arcade, I would've done any of those things. But since my goal in attending the party was "be social" I wanted to hang out with my friend and not wander off to do something by myself. I thought about asking some of the other attendees if they wanted to do $Thing-With-Me but did not muster up the social energy to do so. Also, I only had around two hours of time to potentially "muster up social energy and then play game", because we spent 15-20 minutes waiting for folks to arrive and then I had to leave early to get Lut for the "get dinner at nearby restaurant" part.

My friend played some pool with his brother, who is a regular pool player and therefore good at it, unlike the rest of the crowd. That was fun to watch.

Anyway, at least I left the house once in February to see people. Yay! That doesn't happen every month!

Gaming

Lut and I did not play much Kill Team in February. Instead, I've been painting miniatures and terrain. The store manager managed to salvage the miniature that had not assembled correctly, although even he found it a struggle to put together. I touched it up post-assembly and Lut varnished it, so it's finished now. I partially assembled six void dancers and started painting them. The theory is to assemble a few bits, paint them, and then add more bits and paint those until it's done. So that I don't end up trying to assemble fully-painted pieces only to have assembly fail like that last time. Although it really doesn't look like that was a risk with these models, which have a much more straightforward assembly than the Death Jester. Honestly, the Death Jester was probably a fluke. On the other hand, having the miniatures partially assembled makes my brain think of them as much closer to "done" than when I was trying to do almost all the painting while the pieces were still on the sprue.

Not close enough to done to serve as motivation for working on them more, though.

Goal Scorecard

Help Lut: Yup!
Keep in touch with parents: I did not do well at this one. I don't know why it's challenging for me to call my parents more often. o_o
Track exercise & consumption: ehhh not great but I didn't completely give up, at least?
Pay bills: done!
Check goal list occasionally: did that too, even if it wasn't enough to get me to call my parents more. It did remind me to pay bills on time, though.
Get 66% (combined) through editing one or more drafts: Done!

February Stretch Goals

(this section extremely does not want to format normally and I don't want to muck with Markdown to do it so NO BULLET POINTS FOR YOU.)

Illustrate 28+ Apothecaria entries: aw yeah

Other productive stuff: Did some miniatures painting

Post an Apothecaria page every day: Streak still going!

Keep up the blogging habit: Only five entries in February (including the review post) so much less of a habit. But I haven't quit, either, so I'll count it.

Goals for March

I am reasonably happy with how my goals in February went, despite failing at a couple of them. So basically just gonna do those again:

Help Lut
Keep in touch with parents
Track exercise & consumption
Pay bills
Check goal list occasionally. Remember to glance at stretch goals too.
Finish editing A Dragonling's Family and send to first readers.

That looks good enough.

March stretch goals:

Illustrate 28+ Apothecaria entries
Post an Apothecaria page every day.
Keep up the blogging habit
It's not too late to do that 2023 Illustration Retrospective you want to do but keep forgetting about
Work on the cover for A Dragonling's Family
Add more detail to the Be That Way outline
Work on a new outline (or start drafting Be That Way, or start editing one of my other pending drafts)
Any other productive stuff

Health/Fitness

I more-or-less tracked consumption and exercise this month. Tracked exercise with more diligence than eating, but I only had to guess on four days. Good enough. I exercised 21 days in January: not as good as the 28 days in December, but I'm all right with this level. I'd like to increase the amount I exercise per session, but it's more important to get myself moving than anything else, and telling myself 'you only have to do a little bit' makes it easier to get started.

Writing

Writing was a struggle this month. I didn't even want to write Apothecaria. The only things I wrote easily were blog posts. I wrote a bunch of blog posts, though! Sixteen total, including the month- and year-in-review posts. It's at once surprising to have started using my blog often again, and natural. Maybe I'll get bored of writing about my day or thoughts after a few months and stop again? We'll see.

In any case, I pushed through my lack of motivation to work on Be That Way, the outline for what will probably be my next WIP. I don't like the working title for it -- it's a fantasy and the working title doesn't reflect that at all -- so hopefully I'll come up with a better one eventually. I started out with an incredibly detailed outline where I was scripting conversations, and then decided to make it much more outline-ish so that I could get to the end on January 31. So it now has a really detailed beginning, and a middle that gets gradually less detailed, until the last half is very sketchy. I am willing to call it an outline: it's got a beginning, middle, and end. But I'll be working some more on it before I start writing the actual book. In theory, a more detailed outline means fewer edits. Although my super-detailed outline for A Jewel-Strewn Night did not bear this out.

The Business of Writing

I started edits on A Dragonling's Family! I finished the editing list and got the draft to 25%. Pretty much of all the actual editing was on a single day. I feel like I should've devoted more time to editing but in fairness I was spending a lot of time procrastinating on Be That Way instead. Editing was easier than expected and outlining was harder, is the thing.

Art

I illustrated 29 Apothecaria entries, through entry 314. That was just enough to last me until Feb 1. I've been writing and illustrating the next entry the day before I post it, lately. I managed to write tommorrow's entry yesterday but didn't finish illustrating it until tonight. And now I'm too tired to write so writing the next day's entry will probably wait until tomorrow. At some point I am either gonna get ahead of the curve again, or I'm gonna break my streak. Which has been one entry per day (plus a bonus entry on one day) for 316 consecutive days, so far. Fairly ridiculous for a nominal "fun" project. At least I don't have to edit it!

Social

I once again forgot to social at all this month. I need to talk to my local friends again. They're getting divorced so they stopped hosting a weekly gathering, which is fine, but that should not have somehow translated into "I never talk to either of them again" and my track record for this has been Very Bad so far. o_o;;;

I also have to call my parents, because it's been a few weeks. Why are phones so phone-like. Ugh.

Gaming

Lut and I have continued to play a game or two of Kill Team each week. I got back into painting miniatures, briefly, and then lost motivation when one of my painted miniatures failed to assemble correctly. Pretty sure I posted about that part already. The store manager managed to separate off the slightly-misaligned pieces without damaging them, and then tried to show me how they're all supposed to go together. I could not get them to work even so. He took pity on me and said he'd glue it together for me if I wanted to leave the bits with him. It's probably done now but we didn't stop in on Saturday to see. I should do that on Tuesday or Wednesday, probably. We'll see when Wal-mart next has prescriptions ready for me to pick up and I'll try to time it to coincide.

Goal Scorecard for January:

Help Lut: done!
Keep in touch with parents: I am getting worse at this instead of better. o_o;;;
Track exercise & consumption: done, albeit imperfectly. Good enough, tho.
Pay bills: done!
Check goal list occasionally: done! I checked a bunch of times because I wanted to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything. I am pretty sure checking the goal list is what reminded me to pay bills this month.
Complete the 2023-in-review post and set goals for 2024: I did this on January 2 and then panicked when I saw it on last month's post, because it was so long ago that I'd forgotten if I did it. Of course I'd marked it "done" on the list so I hadn't paid any attention to it since.
Complete an outline for a new book: Technically? I'm giving myself credit for this because it's got a beginning-middle-end, even if it's not as detailed as I'd like.
Flesh out editing list for A Dragonling's Family: Done! I think I want to add some more items based on Be That Way, but I'm not gonna do surgery on Dragonling for that.
Get 25% (combined) through editing one or more drafts: Done! With A Dragonling's Family. The percentage complete may go down when I add more stuff to it but whatever. It's fine.

Stretch goals:

Illustrate 30+ Apothecaria entries: Technically I only did 29, but I'm giving myself this one anyway. GOOD JOB ME.
Post an Apothecaria page every day: Done!
Keep up the blogging habit. "Every week" qualifies for this but "almost daily" is fine: Oooh I did this one too!
Compare actual spending to budget for December and see how that's working out: And this one! Budgeted spending was pretty close to actual, except for wargaming spending which was somehow about 2.5 times budget. XD It's fine, it'll average out in the long run.
Any other productive stuff: I kept up with exercising! Even though I wasn't spending much on Time Princess and so technically didn't have to! Oh, and I painted terrain, finished the Void Dancer mini, and mostly-finished the Death Jester.

Goals for next month:

I felt kinda stressed during January over my inability to get to all the things I wanted to do, so I'll scale back a bit on my creative ambitions in February.

Help Lut
Keep in touch with parents
Track exercise & consumption
Pay bills
Check goal list occasionally
Get 66% (combined) through editing one or more drafts

I want to keep in mind my 2024 goals when putting together the monthly goals. I need to publish a book this year, which means I need to finish both initial and final edits on A Dragonling's Family (I have other drafts, but realistically A Dragonling's Family will take the least work of any of them.)

I need to write one more outline.

I need to get two other books either through drafting or initial edits. If it takes around 4 months to edit a book and around 4 months to draft a book, and I can overlap in writing one outline with edits/drafting, I will just barely manage this. I would prefer that this not be just barely manageable, so I'll aim for finishing initial edits on Dragonling in March.

Stretch goals:

Illustrate 28+ Apothecaria entries
Post an Apothecaria page every day.
Keep up the blogging habit
Get 75% (combined) through edits.
Make an Illustration Retrospective for 2023 <- I wanted to do this in January but I didn't notice it when I was checking the goal list. I wasn't really looking at the stretch goals because I was so stressed about the regular goals. But it's not too late to do it!
Work on the cover for A Dragonling's Family
Any other productive stuff (things from the Bored? list, for instance)

Health/Fitness

My exercise habit is BACK. I exercised 28 out of 31 days in December. \o/

Granted that my standards of what counts as "exercise" have become very low, this is not as impressive as it sounds. But it does mean that on every one of those 28 days, I made a concerted effort to move around in some fashion more than I would have otherwise, even if it was just for a 10-minute aerobics video or to clean the kitchen or whatever. It's much better than I was doing in August through October. It's probably better than I've done since I quit Pokemon GO! in 2020, tbh.

I still wasn't paying attention to my eating habits, and I need to get back to that, if only to make them more in line with my appetite and less in line with my stress levels.

Writing

I worked on notes for a few different books: a sequel to A Game to You (this was ridiculous because I'm not even ready to edit that book, never mind writing a sequel. But I did it anyway), a new Etherium romance, and another romance in the same setting as A Dragonling's Family. I'm leaning towards the last as my actual next WIP, but we'll see what wins out. I like the last option because it's not only a romance, but a romance between people who aren't rich or powerful, and whose problems are on a personal rather than national or global level. I often write stories about Important and Influential People who need to tackle some major crisis affecting millions. This is a great trope but I have a deep and abiding love for small stories and I don't write enough of them.

The Business of Writing

I published Alien Peacelords! Good job, me. This involved finishing the last editing pass and then final read-through, as well as all the miscellaneous tasks of publication. It took me until Christmas Day to finally wrap it up. But I did it! \o/

Art

I finished the art for the Alien Peacelords cover again. The original blond figure on the cover looked off to me and I figured it would always bother me if I didn't get him at least better. So I removed the original figure and redrew him from scratch and probably no one else who saw both versions even noticed the difference. But I'm happier, and frankly that's what counts.

Besides that, I illustrated 34 Apothecaria entries, through entry 285.

Social

Hm.

I may have forgotten to social at all in December.

I called my parents a few times -- four, I think. Not quite the "weekly" I was aiming for, but not terrible.

Gaming

Lut and I played Kill Team once or twice each week (usually once). The last two weekends, we've played at home instead of playing at the gaming store. With the incidence of various contagious diseases rising over the holidays, we figured we'd stay home for a few weeks until the surges pass.

On a related note, the oncology center called to reschedule an appointment for Lut last week because his oncologist had covid. Again. :/ (This oncology center stuck with their mask mandate longer than any other provider we've seen, too -- they didn't drop it until this summer.)

Goal Scorecard for Prior Month

Help Lut: Done!
Keep in touch with parents: We'll call it done, if not as well as I'd like.
Track exercise: Done! For bonus points, I actually did exercise this month so there was a lot to track!
Pay bills: Done! Though I gotta remember to get some money out of my non-retirement investment account so that I can pay January's bills.
Check goal list occasionally: Done!
Complete an outline for a new book: Nope! Worked on a few different options, didn't finish any of them.
Finish penultimate read-through on Alien Peacelords: Done!
Layout the cover art for Alien Peacelords: Done!
Layout Alien Peacelords for publication: Done!
Finish final read-through on Alien Peacelords: Done!
Publish Alien Peacelords: Done!

Stretch goals:

Illustrate 30+ Apothecaria entries: Sure did!
Post an Apothecaria entry every day: Ayup!
Generally other productive things from the Bored? list:
- "exercised 28 out of 31 days" falls under this heading. I did other stuff that's on the list, but mostly gaming/reading/entertainment type things. I think all the other productive stuff was covered elsewhere. OH WAIT. Blogging! How could I forget blogging?
- For the nth time I decided I'd post more random blog entries and then, for whatever reason, this time actually did post more random blog entries. I made seven posts in December, six of them in the last five days of the year. One was the usual month-in-review and one was a release post for Alien Peacelords. But the other five were pretty random; the kind of things I used to post back in my early, early days of online journaling, and that I haven't posted regularly in many, many years. Anyway, that was cool. I don't know if I'll keep that up, but I might. I like having a record of my life.
- This was my last month before semi-retirement: I am now only working seven hours a week. I've only been working thirteen hours a week for the last four months, so this is only a drop by six hours. But it feels huge and I want to note it in the review.
- Man I just remembered something else that went in here and I instantly forgot it, brain why. Oh yeah! I collected most of my Apothecaria pages into an epub: Cassie, Witch of High Rannoc: Spring . Doesn't cover the most recent entries, which will go into the "Summer" version. The ebook is ginormous because it's all images, but it means I can read it on my phone at night. I am happy.
- Ooh and BUDGET! For the first time in ages (possibly ever?), I made a projected budget of how much I plan to spend and on what. I've never done this because my spending has always been "spend whatever you have to and save the rest". And I am a compulsive saver so I've never overspent. But moving into semi-retirement meant that I wanted to make sure that the way I've been spending matched the amount of income I'd have available to spend. It does, although it meant guesstimating the present value of the social security payments I won't be getting for 10+ years. It also means assuming Social Security and Medicare will still be there when I'm old enough to collect them. This is probable although not certain. My wage earnings have always been pretty solidly "lower middle class", which is one of the least likely segments to be targeted by American politics for cuts. If anyone's still getting social security, it'll be the people who had low-but-consistent incomes during their working years and who do not have high taxable incomes as retirees. But it wouldn't shock me if Congress decided to raise the retirement age for Medicare & Social Security. Oh, and my budget is also dependent on Obamacare, which is also not certain to stick around. The Obamacare healthcare subsidy actually covers all of my monthly premiums for 2024, to my surprise. Anyway, there's plenty of place I could cut spending if I had to, so my confidence is in the 95%+ range.

Goals for Next Month

Hmm.

Help Lut
Keep in touch with parents
Track exercise & consumption
Pay bills
Check goal list occasionally
Complete the 2023-in-review post and set goals for 2024.
Complete an outline for a new book
Flesh out editing list for A Dragonling's Family
Get 25% (combined) through editing one or more drafts.

I expect I will be editing A Dragonling's Family next because it's the path of least resistance (I have three other completed drafts but they all have Major Issues to address in edits and I'm extremely meh about doing so). But I'm leaving myself open to the idea that I'd rather edit something else. If I get 10% done on one book and 15% on another, that's fine too.

Stretch goals:

Illustrate 30+ Apothecaria entries
Post an Apothecaria page every day.
Keep up the blogging habit. "Every week" qualifies for this but "almost daily" is fine.
Compare actual spending to budget for December and see how that's working out.
Get 50% (combined) through edits.
Make an Illustration Retrospective for 2023.
Work on the cover for A Dragonling's Family
Any other productive stuff.

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