Health/Fitness

Tracking was still more theory than practice this month. Exercise remains spotty, but I managed 15 times. I ate much more junk food than usual because I baked at least three batches of cookies for the house during December. Normally I bake cookies to ship out and then have no interest in baking again.

I still have a bunch of unused cream cheese so I expect there will be more sugar cookies to come in January. :9

Lut had two separate endoscopies in December, in addition to his usual oncology appointment, so there was a lot of medical in this month. He’s doing all right, though.

Writing

I did a little work on A Dragonling’s Family, which is now up to 68,150 words from 57,150 at the end of November. It’s at 65% complete.

I made some more notes for The Twin-Souled Empress, although the outline still hasn’t gelled for it. I am not sure it will be my next WIP after A Dragonling’s Family, but I still have a lot of writing left on A Dragonling’s Family before I have to decide.

I signed up for https://bringback.blog/, which has a “blog at least three times in January” commitment. Since I do my December-in-review and year-in-review posts in January anyway, and I plan to do some kind of art retrospective, I figured this would be an easy goal to hit.

Also, I did more blogging in December than any other month. This was 100% due to 4thewords giving an endurance monster quest during the NaNoWriMo event. The connection requires some explanation.

In 4thewords, “endurance monsters” are monsters that need to be defeated via consistent effort over the course of the timer, rather than by hitting a certain word count. You have to keep typing or you lose. You get a bonus based on how quickly you write.

I kind of hate them.

I find it almost impossible to write fiction under these conditions. It should be possible, because I don’t have to write that fast or for that long. But the “you will be penalized if you stop typing for even a moment in order to consider how to compose the narrative” really works counter to the way I write fiction. The only thing it works well for is stream-of-consciousness. It doesn’t even work well for essays, or recaps like this one. But I can use it for “talk about my day” blog posts.

I wrote five posts this way. Of them, two are private because they’re boring and full of me whining about fighting endurance monsters. Two are friends-locked because they’re not things I want being scraped by bots. One is actually public!

Anyway, I don’t plan to fight more endurance monsters in 4thewords, but I might write more “rambling about my day” posts. I used to write those all the time for OpenDiary and I kind of miss having that sort of record of my life.

The Business of Writing

The bulk of my creative energies in December went to this. I finished final edits on Angel’s Grace and did the ebook/print layout in Atticus. The only details remaining are the cover layout (Alinsa expects to finish this today) and the final read-through on the e-book, which is 30% complete. I expect to publish it this week and have it out in stores next week.

Art

I had thought I would get back to art in December, but I didn’t. I finished the wrap cover for Angel’s Grace, which I am pleased with. I finished CuratorPrompts18 and started 19. I did a Solstice Hedgehog for one of the SillyCuratorPrompts. And that was it. More than the “totally ignored this section” of the early part of the year, but nothing like the regular practice of May through October.

Social

My friend Telnar came to visit for one weekend. We went to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, which was fascinating even though I am wholly indifferent to sports. We also went for a few walks, including getting lost on a nature trail. One of my shoes got pulled off in mud (I retrieved it successfully) and then we decided to try climbing a slope instead of retracing our steps back through the mud, when it was obvious we’d lost the trail. Climbing the slope reminded me of Callie and Justin trying to go straight up a cliff in the bowracing scene of A Rational Arrangement. It was obviously not nearly so challenging in absolute terms, but in terms of our actual skill level at climbing/hiking, it was not much more sensible. But we did make it! And we were even right about the actual trail being at the top of the slope. All’s well that ends well.

Reading

I’m still lagging behind on MCA Hogarth’s Haley and Nana series, a delightful set of LitRPG stories. I finished the second and third in December and am almost done with the fourth. These have all been wonderful, charming and thoughtful and a joy to read.

I struggle a lot with reading fiction and these are just perfect for me: they’re short, but long enough and satisfying, so I still feel as if I read a full book. They’re light-hearted and center around forging social connections and building things. Kind of the reading equivalent of a city-builder game. So good. I dislike preorders but I have preordered every one of these ebooks.

I’m hoping to finish the fifth before the sixth is published on Amazon, so that I can read it in the pre-publication Google Doc that Maggie puts up for patrons.

Goal Scorecard for December

• Help Lut. Done!
• Update my website to reflect that Demon’s Alliance is published and Angel’s Grace is coming soon: I did this! Yesterday. Still technically in December, good enough.
• Finish the cover for Angel's Grace and get it to Alinsa for layout: Done!
• Finalize the blurb for Angel's Grace: Done!
• Get final edits to Angel's Grace at least 75% complete: Done!

Stretch goals:

• Complete edits on Angel's Grace: Done!
• Write more of A Dragonling's Family: Done!
• Maintain bullet journal: Ehh. I didn’t entirely not maintain it? But I have 5 days that I can’t reconstruct and most of the days that are there were reconstructed several days after the fact. This is like a C- for December.

January Goals:

• Help Lut
• Exercise 13 times (aerobic)
• At least 7 more times of “exercise” that can be just stretching for five minutes
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days
• Look at goal list & schedule occasionally
• Set up 2023 bullet journal spreadsheet
• Publish Angel’s Grace
• Visit Terrycloth (I have tickets for this already!)
• Write more of A Dragonling’s Family and reach 80% complete

Stretch goals:

• Consumption tracking
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice)
• Exercise 20+ times
• Complete a painting that isn’t just a copy of a single CC 0 reference
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review.
• Learn a new game
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before
• Refine editing list for A Game to You.
• Work on edits for A Game to You.
• Make editing list for Alien Peacelords
• Get some use out of Color and Light by James Gurney
• Finish A Dragonling’s Family
• Outline a new book

I started this post on October 31, didn’t quite finish it, shrugged, and went straight into NaNoWriMo. Between work yesterday and today, I didn’t have much time or energy for working on A Dragonling’s Family, so I figured I’d finally finish my October-in-review post instead.

Health/Fitness

This was the month of illness: I was mildly sick for over a week early in the month. Then, last Wednesday morning, Lut started having much more pain than usual and had to sit up fairly straight to lessen it. The pain improved over the course of the day, then got worse again on the next day. At this point, Lut googled his specific symptoms and said "hmm, I might be having a heart attack?"

(I had not realized this was chest pain -- I misunderstood and thought it was the new back pain, but suddenly much worse.)

So we went to the ER.

It was not a heart attack! They hospitalized him for two days and ran various tests. The most likely possibilities are pericarditis (an inflammation/fluid in the tissue around the heart) or liver damage (his liver and spleen are both enlarged). Pericarditis matched his symptoms best (in particular, the 'can't lie down, need to sit up straight to minimize pain'). But there wasn't a lot of fluid in the area so the cardiologist isn't sure. We have to follow up with both cardiology and GI doctors.

Anyway, I didn't do much exercise this month and I was pretty mediocre about tracking what I did do. I managed thirteen aerobics workouts but I don't think I did any extra stretching during the month. I do not consider this a failure. My exercise goals are set on the assumption of 'basically normal month without a lot of disruptions to my routine' and October was Not That. I let myself off the hook for the days I was sick and the days Lut was in the hospital, and that was like half the month.

I do need to get my baseline exercise up again, though. My cholesterol keeps creeping higher. My primary care physician wanted to put me on medication for it, and I went "meh, I guess I can try it and see if it has side effects I hate before I stop." So far, I have noticed zero side effects so I guess I'm staying on it. I'd still rather get my exercise back to pre-pandemic levels, though. Starting with "more than the bare minimum that I'm willing to consider exercise" would be good, though.

Writing

I did a little more writing of A Dragonling's Family: another 8300 words to get it to 9500 words total. Then I realized that my scheduling goals meant that if I (a) want to do NaNoWriMo and (b) want to publish Angel's Grace soon, I really needed to prioritize finalizing Angel's Grace. So I stopped worrying about making progress on this halfway through the month.

The Business of Writing

I published Demon's Alliance! Only two years after I finished drafting it!

Goodness, that took a while.

I also made a final editing list for Angel's Grace, started the cover for it, and started final edits.

Art

I did a bunch of quick-ish paintings for practice, almost all using Curator Prompts. I also did a few mock-ups for possible Angel’s Grace covers, settled on one layout, and started on it.

Social

Because Lut and/or I were sick for most of the month, I barely went out. I think I saw my local friends once in October.

October Goal Scorecard

Goals

• Purchase Atticus: done!
• Attempt to lay out Demon’s Alliance in Atticus: done!
• Publish Demon’s Alliance: done! Woohoo!
• Write more of A Dragonling’s Family: 8500 words, good enough
• Exercise 13 times (aerobic): barely managed this!
• At least 7 more times of “exercise” that can be just stretching for five minutes: nope
• Look at goal list & schedule occasionally: done!
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: done!

Stretch Goals:

• Consumption tracking: done!
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month: technically done! (I recorded something for each day, but some of those days were badly reconstructed, especially the ones where Lut was in the hospital.)
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice): done! With bonus even!
• Complete a painting that isn’t just a copy of a single CC 0 reference: I did this! I even like one of them.
• Work on cover art for Angel’s Grace: It is begun!
• Create final editing list for Angel's Grace: I did this!

November Goals

NANOWRIMO BAYBEEEEE!

NaNoWriMo requires no stretch goals.

Health/Fitness

Exercise in September was pretty minimal. I made my goal but only by counting the times I did hand-stretches while sitting at my computer. c_c Although I could’ve made it normally if I’d remembered to do normal stretches on the last day of the month, which I absolutely did not remember to do. Whoops.

Lut and I got flu shots and the bivalent booster last Sunday. I started to feel vaccine-induced exhaustion midway through Monday. My boss encouraged me to take time off if I needed it, so I called in on Tuesday and spent the whole day sleeping. Even now, I still feel kind of tired, but at this point it’s probably my usual tired instead of vaccine-induced. “Everything Is Exhausting and I Am Exhausted: the L Rowyn Story” was already the title of my memoir.

In other health news, sometime around September 6-8th, I think, my tongue started to feel weird: a little sore and tingly. Anyway, at first I thought I’d bitten or burned my tongue and forgotten, but it still felt weird two weeks later. I saw my dentist on 9/28 to have her look at it. It has no signs of trauma or cancer or other damage. The dentist said “So ‘tongue feels weird’ is a COVID symptom*, did you have any other symptoms?”

Well, not really? I remembered that I complained to a friend about being more tired than usual, but “I am tired” has long been my default state so it’s hard to tell? I took a COVID test at the time, but felt silly doing so because Lut and I hadn’t even seen anyone in the last several days. I damaged the test while taking it, so it gave the “test error, take again” result. And then I didn’t do it again because it’s annoying and I didn’t think “tongue feels weird” was a real COVID symptom.

But! On the evening of 9/8, Lut had mysterious fever-like symptoms -- chills and sweating -- although with no actual fever (his temperature was 98). So he took a COVID test too. His came back negative, and the chills/sweating was over by the morning.

So there’s some possibility that we both got extremely mild COVID? This seems extremely fortunate for an immuno-compromised person 10 months out from his last booster, but it’s not out of the question. Or we might have acquired some less-famous virus. The only concrete long-term symptom is that my tongue still feels weird.

I stopped using the Sippy Cup For Grown-Ups that I’ve been using exclusively for years, on the off chance that it was somehow connected to Weird Tongue Syndrome. My tongue seemed to get a bit better but not back to normal. I started using the sippy cup again on Saturday (I really miss it, it’s vacuum-insulated and I drink continuously and I’m clumsy so not using it is annoying.) I woke up this morning and my tongue felt as bad as a week ago, so I have exiled my beloved sippy cup for the duration.

The dentist told me to see an ENT if it wasn’t better in a week, so I ought to do that. But I’m gonna give it another week or two of No Sippy Cup At All and see if it gets back to normal.

The last health-related tidbit on this is that Weird Tongue Syndrome makes some foods taste a little odd. Most of my usual meals are still good, as are Coke floats. But the texture of chocolates and cookies is less appealing. So I don’t eat as much junk food as before. This honestly feels like a bonus. Yay, I don’t crave junk food quite as much! It’s funny because I’m sitting here going “I should be sad that this food I used to love isn’t as enjoyable, right?” and all I can think is “But ... I’m not? It doesn’t bother me at all? There are still foods I enjoy, and it wasn’t like this was a nutritious food that gave me energy and strength.”

*Everything is a COVID symptom, I guess.

Writing

I didn’t want to write any of the stories or settings I’ve put any time into developing, so I spent some time digging through my notes and brainstorming. I came up with A Dragonling’s Family: a polyamorous fantasy romance about a crow shifter, a witch, a dragon, and a baby dragon that needs a family.

Really, they all need a family, but the baby dragon is the one who’s most obvious about it.

I made several thousand words of notes and wrote an incredibly detailed outline of 13,000+ words. On the last day of the month I started writing it, and got about 1200 words in. I am very excited about it. It has no violence and no nation-wide threats, just three people trying to raise a baby dragon. The central conflict is a custody battle. My last few books have all been large-scale and I’m really looking forward to writing a small-scale fantasy again.

The Business of Writing

I completed the latest draft of Demon’s Alliance (number three, I think) and sent it to first readers. No one had any issues with it or suggested major changes. So I can finish that up and hopefully publish it this month? I plan to buy Atticus and see if that’s as user-friendly as advertised. It’s supposed to be “feed in formatted Word document, get out epub and paperback, no fussing with it required” software, like Vellum. Except that it’s for Windows so I don’t need to get a Mac or rent a mac-in-the-cloud to use it. Wish me luck!

Art

I spent about 18 hours working on illustrations in September. Most of that was on this painting, of the crow shifter from A Dragonling’s Family.

Social

I didn’t see as much of my local friends this month -- I think I canceled on them twice and they canceled on me once? But we did get together at least twice.

Gaming

Lut has continued to join Terry and I to play Space Base on some weeknights. Terry and I have played more JumpDrive, which has enough similarities with Race for the Galaxy to feel familiar and also enough differences to feel new, so that’s nice.

Learning

The witch protagonist in A Dragonling's Family is hard-of-hearing. She uses sign language while her animal companion acts as an interpreter for her. I've long thought it would be neat to learn sign language. My father is mostly deaf and my partner is losing his hearing and if/when this happens to me, it'd be good to know sign language. Although granted, it seems likely I won't know anyone else who knows it. STILL.

So when a link to a series of Youtube lessons on ASL popped up on my feed in September, I decided to follow it.

I have watched about an hour and a half of videos and have retained more signs than I expected, to be honest. I am not sure I will stick with this long enough to learn the language -- my past efforts to learn languages strongly indicate HAHAHA no. OTOH, ASL does appear to be easier to learn than most foreign languages. (It's based on English, with simplified grammar to make signing faster, and many of the signs have obvious associations that make them easier to remember.) Also, it's fun. n_n

In the unlikely event that I do learn ASL, it will mark a new achievement for me: acquired new skill because a character I was writing had it. :D

September Goal Scorecard

• Finish Demon’s Alliance third draft, send new material to first readers for review: Pretty sure I had already finished this by the time I made my August-review post, but yes, this is done.
• Exercise 13 times (aerobic), and at least 7 more times that can be just stretching for five minutes Technically?
• Look at goal list & schedule occasionally: Done!
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: Done!
• Work on notes/outline for a new book: Done!

Stretch Goals:

• Consumption tracking: Done!
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month: Done!
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice): Done WITH bonus AGAIN!
• Complete a painting that isn’t just a copy of a single CC 0 reference: Done aw yeah rockin’ the stretch goals
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before: Done! I finished Jubilant by Galadriel Coffeen and Anneliese Knop. I have the review half-written but haven’t posted it. Short version: good naval fantasy adventure, shows strong influence from the Aubrey/Maturin books but doesn’t mimic them, do recommend.

October Goals

Goals

• Purchase Atticus and attempt to lay out Demon’s Alliance in it. Assuming this goes well, publish Demon’s Alliance. If this doesn’t go well, return Atticus and give book to Alinsa to lay out. c_c
• Write more of A Dragonling’s Family
• Exercise 13 times (aerobic), and at least 7 more times that can be just stretching for five minutes.
• Look at goal list & schedule occasionally
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days.

Stretch Goals:

• Consumption tracking
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice)
• Exercise 20+ times
• Complete a painting that isn’t just a copy of a single CC 0 reference
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review.
• Learn a new game
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before
• Refine editing list for A Game to You.
• Work on edits for A Game to You.
• Work on cover art for Angel’s Grace
• Create final editing list for Angel's Grace
• Get some use out of Color and Light by James Gurney

I actually finished this post on August 1st, I just didn't post it. August has not been a great month so far.

Health/Fitness

I hit 20 days of “some form of exercise”, which includes five days where all I did was stretching, and two where I counted “cleaning” as exercise. Not exactly my glory days of spending an hour on my bike most days, but still better than going full couch potato.

I changed how I track food. Instead of guessing at how much food I’m eating when it’s annoying to measure, I record the number of calories in the entire container when I open it. (As long as it’s one of the foods that Lut and I don’t both eat.) So my day-to-day count looks silly, but hopefully my count-over-time will be more accurate.

Writing

The first draft for Alien Peacelords is complete at 136,600 words! Up 18,600 from last month. It ran about 6,000 words longer than the estimate, mostly because I decide I wanted to add another sex scene.

The Business of Writing

I completed my “spend 5 hours on Demon’s Alliance” goal yesterday, after putting it off until the last weekend of the month. I finished writing the shorter of the two new sections and started writing the longer one.

I also read through A Game to You, which I have mixed feelings about. I loved reading it, to the degree that I read it in 24 hours, including staying up until 2AM. Reading my own book. Me to me: “Go to sleep. You know how it ends. YOU WROTE IT.”

OTOH, the structural problems that I knew the draft had remained glaring to me. The second half, in particular, feels off: too much stuff that’s vague and/or not shown to the reader. I made an editing list for it. It has fifty-six items on it. I am pretty sure there’s some stuff I forgot.

This is definitely one of those “it would be easier to write a different book than to fix this one.”

Art

I didn’t have a fresh CuratorPrompt to work on each day in July, but I continued to do some painting almost every day. So making art a habit is sticking! I didn’t post new art every day like I was with the CuratorPrompts. Absent the “just finish this one, there’ll be a new one tomorrow” mindset, I often spent more time on individual pieces. I worked on the same painting of a horse for four hours, and spent around three hours painting a pair of hands.

I also added creative elements to six pictures, instead of just practicing painting the reference photo. Things like “put dragon silhouettes in this dawn sky” or “had a centaur walking on this road instead of a person.” I don’t particularly love any of the results. But it’s nice to be working towards the sort of painting I want to do -- unrealistic subject matter in a realistic-ish style.

Spent 25-ish hours on illustration in July, pretty good by my standards.

Social

My friends canceled one Thursday night gathering this week because they were sick, and I skipped the one after it because I was feeling extra tired that day. But I did see them on the other two Thursdays.

Gaming

Terrycloth, Lut and I played a bunch of games of Space Base together in July. Lut and I played a game of Deus, which Terry and I learned last year and then I promptly forgot existed. I remember how to play it again! Hopefully Terry and I can get in another game of it in August. I’m not sure Lut liked it enough to play it.

July Goals

• Spend 5 hours on final revisions (and/or further refining editing list) for Demon's Alliance: I did this! Five hours was not enough time to finish it. It was also, like, five more hours than I felt like spending on this task, so I’m still taking it as a win.
• Finish Alien Peacelords draft: Completed!
• Exercise 13 times (aerobic), and at least 7 more times that can be just stretching for five minutes: Done!
• Look at goal list & schedule occasionally: Done!
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: Done!

Stretch Goals:

• Read through A Game to You: Actually did this!
• Make an editing list for A Game to You: Kind of done? It’s not an exhaustive list but it’s a starting point
• Consumption tracking: did this!
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice): Did both of these!
• Complete a painting that isn’t just a copy of a CC 0 reference. (Making a painting that combines multiple references will totally count for this.): I did this one too! Several times.
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month: Done
• Learn a new game: I will give myself partial credit for Deus because I really didn’t remember anything about it.
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before: I read the ARC for “Haley’s Cozy System Armageddon” by MCA Hogarth. It’s a novelette, not a book, but I’m gonna mention it here anyway because I loved it. Charming and full of heart. It made me very happy. <3

August Goals

• Assist Lut: I've forgotten to include this lately but it really needs to be #1. Not because I stopped doing it or stopped thinking it was important, but because I forget that it impacts how much else I can do.
• Spend 5 hours on final revisions (and/or further refining editing list) for Demon's Alliance: I do not think this will be enough to finish it, and I also think that setting a goal of Just Do It Already Sheesh will be counterproductive. I can make myself do five hours. “Until it’s done” is too likely to result in “let’s not even bother trying.” -_- But I’m also not gonna put down any other writing-related goals. So I won’t have “well, I need to do this other thing too, let’s just work on that” to distract me.
• Exercise 13 times (aerobic), and at least 7 more times that can be just stretching for five minutes.
• Look at goal list & schedule occasionally
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days.

Stretch Goals:

• Consumption tracking
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice)
• Complete a painting that isn’t just a copy of a single CC 0 reference
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review.
• Learn a new game
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before
• Refine editing list for A Game to You.
• Work on edits for A Game to You.
• Work on notes/outline for a new book
• Complete final edits on Demon’s Alliance
• Work on cover art for Angel’s Grace
• Create final editing list for Angel's Grace
• Get some use out of Color and Light by James Gurney
• Exercise 20+ times

Health/Fitness

Tracking remains difficult and I phoned it in several times this month. I did exceed the minimum on exercise, yay, and hit 13 times. I even went outside for a walk once! Still pretty lightweight on total time commitment. Back in 2006, when I walked 0.9 miles to and from work five times a week, plus exercising 4-5 times, I got so much more exercise.

On the other hand, not crashing down to “no exercise” is important.

In fact, gonna take a break from writing this entry to exercise right now.

Writing

I added 34,900 words to Alien Peacelords: it’s at 96,645. Percentage complete is at 75%, up by 27%. Estimated word count to this stage of the outline is no longer “almost exact”, but still quite close: I’m about 1700 words under the estimate.

The Business of Writing

So I did work on the final editing list for Demon’s Alliance in May, which is a step up from April when I didn’t even look at it.

That is to say: I worked on it for a total of one hour, on the last day of the month.

But I did work on it!

...

sigh

Anyway, it’s not done. I made meaningful progress in that hour, at least.

I should explain what I mean by “final editing list” here. Ideally, I want my editing list to be specific about the changes I intend to make. It should function like an outline, so that I can look at the list and then go make the change and it does not require a lot of “figure out what happens now.” It’s akin to having a blueprint before you go to build a house.

At the moment, I technically have a “list”, but half of the list is “do these things” and the other half is “create a blueprint for these other things” and that second half is not cutting it.

Art

My big unexpected success in May was “art practice.”

The admin account for the mastodon.art server, Curator, posts a group of four CC 0/public domain images daily as #CuratorPrompts. Curator has also been encouraging artists to do two-minute or five-minute sketches as practice. Inspired by this, on May 12th I decided to do four 2-minute sketches. And not my usual “pencil-style sketch of a person”: full color sketches of entire photographs.

The resulting sketches were, of course, terrible.

But I enjoyed doing them, so I kept at it. I started doing the actual CuratorPrompts on May 13. After I noticed it took me longer to post the sketches than to do them, on May 20th I switched from “all 2-min sketches” to “two 2-minute, two 5-minute.” Then two days later, it became “two 2-minute, one 5-minute, and one long study.” The time on the long study in May varied, from as little as 16 minutes to as much as an hour.

The long studies I’ve done so far in June have been 90, 75 and 56 minutes, and I might have to rein it in. I like doing art, but I love having written. I do not want to spend more time painting than writing. Or, um, editing. o_o;;;

I might make a blog post later with some of my favorites from the sketches. But if you're curious, you can browse them here: https://wandering.shop/@Rowyn/media . I don’t post much other media.

Social

Still been getting out to visit my local friends on Thursdays. COVID-19 numbers have gotten kind of bleh in my area again. Still lower than it was from July 2021 through March 2022, but meh. If it keeps rising, I will return to full hermit-mode. A three-person gathering is not a high risk event, though.

Gaming

Started playing the Strange-Horticulture-inspired RPG! Having fun with it.

May Scorecard

• Pay April bills (today) and also May bills (at the end of the month): I paid April’s bills on 5/1 and May’s bills on 6/1 so technically: whoops. But it’s done now, good enough.
• Make final editing list for Demon's Alliance: it’s like, half-done? Fail.
• Write a few paragraphs on 20+ days, and/or log into Soul Scribes to fish and/or do the dailies: I did this, though! Mostly writing regularly, not so much using Soul Scribes.
• Exercise 13 times: 15 times! \o/
• Look at goal list occasionally: Yep, did this
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: Done!

Stretch Goals:

• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice): For the first time, I not only made the “practice art” goal, but I made the BONUS stretch goal! I spent 16.7 hours on practice in May.
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month: Yes!
• Get Alien Peacelords to 75% complete: I really wanted to make this stretch goal if I was going to blow the editing goal again, so I’m happy to have reached this.

June Goals

So, after two consecutive months of failing at one of my main goals, I am a little disheartened and also unproductively stressed. In an effort to (a) make sure I do not fail at a main goal again, and (b) become less stressed, I will return to Very Easy Goals.

• Spend 2 hours on editing list/final edits for Demon's Alliance. This is more than I’ve done in the last two months combined, granted. But it doesn’t sound intimidating, at least.
• Exercise 13 times (aerobics) and at least 7 more times that can be just stretching for five minutes. Exercising reduces stress. Pls do not stop exercising because you feel stressed.
• Look at goal list occasionally
• Look at schedule occasionally so you stop forgetting to do things like pay bills until the next month
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days.
• Get Alien Peacelords to 82% (I’m picking this number because it gets me through to the next part I really want to be able to read. n_n)

Stretch Goals:

• Read through A Game to You.
• Make an editing list for A Game to You.
• Work on notes/outline for a different book
• Finish first draft of Alien Peacelords
• Create complete editing list for Demon’s Alliance
• Complete final edits on Demon’s Alliance
• Get some use out of Color and Light by James Gurney
• Consumption tracking
• Work on cover art for Angel’s Grace
• Create final editing list for Angel's Grace
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice)
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review.
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month
• Learn a new game
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before
• Exercise 20+ times

Health/Fitness

I exercised 17 times in March: not quite up to my stretch goal of 20, but better than my goal of 13 times.

Consumption tracking fell down at the end of the month when I left to visit my family, because I wasn't eating any of my normal foods and I couldn't be bothered with it.

I did "only eat when I'm hungry" for several days in March and it's weirdly hard. I keep wanting to have little snacks even though I'm not hungry. Might get back to that this month, since it seems like a sensible approach to food.

Writing

I am poking along with Alien Peacelords still. I don't feel like I'm writing slowly, until the point where I check my stats for my month-in-review and go "Huh. Is that all?"

Alien Peacelords is at 36,397, so I wrote about 17,500 words in March. Percentage complete is at 28%, up from 15%. Estimated length is exactly on track. (Seriously, my estimated word count through to this point is 36,402. FREAKISH.)

The Business of Writing

I finished initial edits on Angel's Grace and sent it to first readers. The first readers have all finished it now, so I could start final revisions now, too.

I started final revisions on Demon's Alliance and decided I should do a hard thing as part of revisions. And then went "hard thing is too hard, let's not work on this anymore."

In fairness, I didn't start final revisions until I left to visit my family, so it's not surprising I didn't get very far. I did add a few new scenes to Demon's Alliance at the same time that I finished initial edits on Angel's Grace, though, so that was productive.

Reading

I read Legends & Lattes, like everyone else I know, it seems. It takes place in a D&D-esque setting, about an orc woman who retires from adventuring to open a coffeeshop. It's more slice-of-life than action-adventure, although it does have an action-centered climax. I enjoyed it.

Art

I worked some more on the cover for Demon's Alliance. I guess this is actually going to be the cover! Who knew. Front cover and spine is done but I still need to finish the back. Like the Surface 3 before it, my Surface GO 3 also does not have the computing oomph to do a print-resolution wrap cover in a single pass. So I split it the back cover off pretty early on in the process.

Social

I traveled! I saw my parents, both brothers, one sister-in-law, plus Sophrani, Kagetsume, and Boingdragon. Much social!

I did a lot of adulting on this trip, too, My parents are in their 80s. They're still living independently and managing day-to-day things pretty well, but they need more help with various other stuff. My siblings and I have been pitching in and we did a chunk of administrivia during the course of the trip.

Gaming

Using Soul Scribes more, and more consciously, was a success. I didn't write tons last month, but I didn't have to set a specific writing quota, either. And I liked being able to think "I did the Soul Scribes dailies, that's enough" instead of needing to check my word count or percentage complete. Gonna keep this goal around

March Score Card

• Finish Angel’s Grace initial edits & send to first readers: Done!
• Log into Soul Scribes to fish and/or do the dailies on 20+ days: Done!
• Exercise 13 times: Done!
• Look at goal list occasionally: Done!
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: Done!

Thank goodness for easy goals. >_>

Stretch Goals:

• Start final edits on Demon’s Alliance: Technically!
• Work on cover art for Demon’s Alliance: Front cover done!
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month: Done!
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before: Done!

April Goals

• Do taxes by 4/15/2022
• Make final editing list for Demon's Alliance
• Log into Soul Scribes to fish and/or do the dailies on 16+ days (lowering target for April because I didn't use the site while I was on vacation)
• Exercise 13 times
• Look at goal list occasionally
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days.

Stretch Goals:

• Read through A Game to You.
• Make an editing list for A Game to You. (Someday I will have a thing that's difficult enough to do that working on A Game to You will seem easy in comparison, and that is when this will happen.)
• Work on notes/outline for a different book
• Get Alien Peacelords to 50% complete
• Complete final edits on Demon’s Alliance
• Get some use out of Color and Light by James Gurney
• Consumption tracking
• Finish back cover art for Demon’s Alliance
• Work on cover art for Angel’s Grace
• Create final editing list for Angel's Grace
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice)
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review.
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month
• Learn a new game
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before

Let’s see what my goals were for 2021!

2021 Goal Scorecard

Continue caregiving for Lut: Sure did!

Grade: A+, with extra credit for dealing with ordering specialty medications again and again.

Publish two books: I did! I released The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady in June, and You Thought You Wanted to Be Level 99, But Really You Wanted to Be a Better Person in November.

I had to go back through my blog to find out what my first release of the year was. It feels so long ago. O_o

Grade: A

Finish drafting two books: Technically, I finished three drafts: Angel’s Grace, You Thought You Wanted to Be Level 99, But Really You Wanted to Be a Better Person, and A Game to You. Angel’s Grace was like three-quarters drafted when I started the year, but still, it counts.

Grade: A+

Continue to track food & exercise: This fell apart a few times, especially at the end of November and in December. But I tracked for a good 80-90% of the days in the year.

Grade: B+, you tried.

Post monthly updates: Every month!

Grade: A

Put month & year goal list in your bullet journal so you'll actually remember to look at it. Also, look at it: I did put the goals into my bullet journal spreadsheet, and I did look at them now and again. I didn’t quite make ‘every month’, much less ‘on a regular basis’, but it happened.

Grade: B+

Stretch Goals

Make an art every month. Part of an art counts if it's a complicated art:

...

So I was erratic about this one. I did more than the usual number of finished paintings in 2021, mostly from “Joy of Painting” videos. And I practiced more than usual; I started using Adorkastock’s sketch app for figure drawing practice during the Craft & Chat. On the other hand, I did nothing at all art-related in April, and I didn’t do anything but sketches in December, and I did some color work in November but hated it all.

I was gonna just say “no, I didn’t do this one” but I feel like I actually nailed the spirit of the goal. I worked on illustrations! I even did some intentional practice instead of just drawing or painting things and hoping I’d learn something from it!

So, no, I can’t do a nice “here’s one art piece from each month” collage, but whatever. I worked on this. It counts.

Grade: A for effort, you did good

Finish outlines for two books: Technically, I did four outlines: Level 99, A Game to You, and Alien Peacelords, plus I revamped The Twin Etheriums outline. I do not plan to write The Twin Etheriums based on the existing outline, but hey, it counts.

Grade: A+, you overachieved on a stretch goal, congrats.

Read 12 books:

*Non-Player Character by Victoria Corva *Spells, Snow, and Sky by CoffeeQuills *Micro Science Fiction by O Westin *The Fall of Lord Drayson *India After Gandhi *Shadeslinger *Looking for Group *Boyfriend Material *Definitely Maybe Yours *Coracle by MCA Hogarth *Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher

So eleven titles, one of which is a novella and another is a collection of microfics. This gets an honorable mention because I did read more than I did in 2019 & 2020, though.

Grade: C, whatever, it was a stretch goal anyway.

Write 50 blog posts: I posted forty-nine blog entries, but I wrote a few that I never posted, so I score this one on a technicality.

Grade: A

For next year, mostly reusing last year’s goals.

Goals for 2022

• Continue caregiving for Lut
• Publish two books
• Finish drafting two books
• Finish outlining two books
• Track food & exercise, on most days
• Post monthly updates.
• Put month & year goal list in my bullet journal so I'll remember to look at it. Also, look at it.

Stretch Goals

• Practice illustration on some kind of regular basis.
• Paint
• Read at least a few pages of a book I didn’t write, on most days
• Keep track of how many books I finish or DNF
• Exercise 15+ times per month
• Use bullet journal to track what I’ve done, on most days
• Promote my books a little
• Write 50 blog posts

I’m using “most days” because I found that if I’m supposed to do something “daily” then the first day I break the streak makes me way more likely to stop doing it entirely. Aiming for something like “300 out of 365 days”. More is better, less is acceptable.