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

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.

Register car

• 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

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

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 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
   

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. 

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 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.)

Other productive stuff: Did some miniatures painting

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

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!