rowyn: (Default)

In June of 2024, Lut died. 

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

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

Goals 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~

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


Stretch Goals 2024

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

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

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

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

~

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

 

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



rowyn: (Default)
 Health & Fitness

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

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

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

Writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Business of Writing

November was for writing, not business.

Art

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

Reading

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

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

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

Goal Scorecard:

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

November Stretch Goals:

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

December Goals

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

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

December Stretch Goals 

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

 

rowyn: (studious)
 Health & Fitness

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writing

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

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

The Business of Writing

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

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

Art

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

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

Reading

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

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

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

So much violence.

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

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

Goal Scorecard

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

October Stretch Goals

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

November Goals

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

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

Stretch Goals

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

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
     
rowyn: (studious)
 

Health & Fitness

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

Writing

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

The Business of Writing

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

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


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

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

Social

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

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

Goal Scorecard

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

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


Stretch goals

  • Kept up with Apothecaria!


Goals for September

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


Stretch Goals

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

rowyn: (studious)

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

Health/Fitness

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

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

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

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

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

We'll see how it goes.

Writing

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

The Business of Writing

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

Gaming

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

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

Social

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

So that's been lovely.

Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goals Scorecard

I had no goals for June.

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

July Goals

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

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

July Stretch Goals

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

Health/Fitness

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

Writing

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

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

The Business of Writing

Didn't do anything on this front.

Art

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

Gaming

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

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

Social

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

Reading

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

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

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

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

Huh.

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

Goals Scorecard

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

Stretch Goals Scorecard

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

May Goals

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

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

May Stretch Goals

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

Health and Fitness

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

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

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

Writing 

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

The Business of Writing

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

Art

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

Social

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

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

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

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

Gaming

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

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

Goal Scorecard

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


 February Stretch Goals

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

Illustrate 28+ Apothecaria entries: aw yeah

Other productive stuff: Did some miniatures painting

Post an Apothecaria page every day: Streak still going!

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

 

 

Goals for March

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

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

That looks good enough.

March stretch goals:

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

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

Writing

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

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

The Business of Writing

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

Art

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

Social

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

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

Gaming

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

Goal Scorecard for January:

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

Stretch goals:

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

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

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

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

I need to write one more outline.

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

Stretch goals:

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

 

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