Some time ago, I went through my online presence, disposed of a great deal of excess, and created NoPageLeftBlank.wordpress.com as a place to bring what was most important to me into one spot. At the time it worked wonders, but over the years that have passed since then quite a lot has changed. I am now a published author and a growing YouTuber, and as a result of those things my online presence has once again gotten convoluted. So, with that in mind, I’d like to introduce you to what I’m hoping will be my new-and-improved personal space.
This blog will not be specifically for me as an author, or me as a YouTuber, and it will not be a place specifically meant for blogging or marketing or any other individual issue. TraceyTobin.Wordpress.com will be for me, in whatever form that takes. I will talk about the writing process and what’s happening with my books, I’ll share my YouTube videos and other geeky nonsense as I see fit, and I’ll blog as I desire. This site will be me in my entirety, as I see fit.
So if you’ve come here from NoPageLeftBlank.wordpress.com, thank you very much for following me into this new venture, and if you’re new, welcome! You may see some strange things happening here in the following weeks as I create back-dated posts to share older YouTube videos, but moving forward expect to see lots more of, well…me!
Cheers!
Happy New Year, my patient pretties! I hope that the first day of 2023 has found you well, and I have nothing but hopeful wishes for you in the coming year.
It’s been quite some time since I last spoke on here, and for good reason – or, rather, a good list of reasons. It began as simple distraction when my present job ended and I finally headed home to be with my family for a while. It soon became more of a lack of desire, as I had much more enjoyable things going on. Then, as time went on, it moved into a lack of time, a lack of mental capacity, and eventually a lack of emotional ability.
What I’m trying to get to here is that the end of 2022 was a whole thing.
I spent a good portion of the last two months of the year struggling physically, mentally, and emotionally, whilst steadfastly slamming my masks into place to try to keep the rest of the world from actually seeing that struggle. I’ve been dealing with performance and production issues concerning my creative content, personal worth issues concerning my career and role in my family, guilt issues concerning the abandonment of aspects of my life that I do care about but haven’t had the emotional energy to deal with, and a nonstop need and desire to do more without actually having any of the physical or psychological tools necessary to accomplish what I was already doing.
Sprinkle in what may be perimenopause, the regular stressors of the holiday season, a growing sense that I may truly be an undiagnosed ADHD sufferer, and the fact that I’ve been relentlessly tired practically all the time for no goddamn reason, and you can understand why I practically vanished off the face of the internet in December. I wasn’t here, I was barely on social media, and I only pulled off about half of my own holiday season fanfic challenge. By mid-month I genuinely felt pathetic for accomplishing virtually nothing, while also being unable to find any ability to rectify the issues.
Then a couple of hard hits came in.
The first was the passing of our cat, Little B. She was the last of the three we once had, and she had a great run at nearly nineteen years old, but it was obviously still rough to see her go. Her passing leaves our house empty of pets, and since she was around before our daughter was even born, it was quite a hit to the kid.
The second hit was infinitely worse.
My husband’s uncle, who had previously been diagnosed with lung cancer, was informed that it had travelled to his brain, and in less than a twenty-four period he deteriorated, virtually all at once. At his request, he spent his last hours at home, being tended to by his daughter, who is a nurse. He passed in the evening, with many of us waiting near his bedside, only a couple of days before Christmas. We will all miss him deeply.
I don’t tell you this for sympathy, or to start my first post of 2023 on a depressing note. The reason that I tell you this is because the loss, and the suddenness of it, did a great deal to clear my head, in a way. I’ll never claim to be “fixed” or have “become a new person” or any of that platitudinous nonsense, but it did get me thinking about how I’m nearly forty, and that I don’t want to spend the rest of my days steeped in stress and feeling like a failure whenever I shoot high and miss.
So it is with this in mind that I make several announcements.
The first is that I will not be looking back and reporting on the weeks that I did not report throughout the last few months of 2022. The things that did or didn’t happen during those unreported weeks? They don’t matter. They’re in the past. They have no bearing on the new year.
The second is that I will not being setting resolutions or announcing goals for 2023. There are most certainly things that I intend to do – I will continue to write as much as I can spew from my brain, and I fully plan to start exercising again, as of tomorrow morning – but I will not be chiseling them in digital stone and holding myself accountable to self-imposed vows that may or may not change a dozen times for a hundred different reasons. I will simply be doing as I wish to do, one day at a time, doing my best to pass each of those days well, even if “well” on any particular day simply means giving in and allowing myself to be weak for a while. No more self-fulfilling failures.
The third, in conjunction with the first two, is that my “report” posts moving forward will be based entirely in appreciation and celebration for my achievements, however small. No longer will I be saying things such as, “I missed my writing goal for this week”. Instead I’ll be saying things like, “I found the power to write xxxx words this week!” If I miss an entire week of exercise? Forget about it. I’ll let you know when I’ve pulled myself up and pushed forward with a sweaty grin on my face. If I waste an entire week doing nothing but reading fanfiction? Fuck that: I enjoyed a relaxing week of reading amazing fanfiction.
You guys can help me with this one. If you see me being negative in one of my reports, putting myself down for failing to accomplish my own self-imposed tasks, call me on it. Tell me to zip it and be happy with myself for what I did do. Remind me that a life lived well does not have to mean every day packed to the brim with victories. A life lived well can mean just that…lived well. Happily. Without shooting for unachievable goal-lines of perfection.
That, I suppose, is a goal in and of itself, but I think it’s a much nobler and more realistic one than any other goal I’ve ever made before, and I hope that perhaps I’ll inspire someone else to do something similar.
So, look forward, in every sense of the term, my friends. Forward to the future, forward to happier days, forward to whatever comes. See you in the next (hopefully much more cheerful) post. :3
I’m going to start off this week’s post by telling you that less than a minute ago, when I was attempting to load up the image above that is in every one of these posts, my computer had a digital aneurysm. I honestly have no idea what happened, but for just a couple of seconds the screen went dead, then turned into Matrix-esque green-lined nonsense, and then just…came back precisely where it had been. Believe me when I told you that I had a mild heart attack. Not because I currently had anything open that I would risk losing, but simply because I cannot be in Fort McMurray without a laptop. I’m not joking, you guys. I’d be hauling my ass into town at the first possible convenience because I need my laptop to survive out here. I need to be able to write digitally, I need my art program, and these things are genuinely necessary for the continued gluing together of my mental health.
Okay, I just needed to get that out of the way, because my brain was shrieking there for a few moments.
Okay, moving on.
SO, this is the first time I’ve done this in ages, but I am actually writing this post on Sunday night before going to bed! That’s right, I’m actually getting ahead on something! Gasp, right?! This was my weekend off, and I spent the better part of today making sure that tomorrow’s A Touch of Heaven chapter was ready to go up. As a result I’m currently in “omfg I’m getting things done, keep going while the motivation is there!” mode, thus, I’m seeing if I can get this post out of the way so that I’m already basically done with my writing stuff for tomorrow. Let’s see if I can get through it all before my brain decides that it’s very much time for bed. XD
Goal Set #1: Creative Fulfilment
Coming right out of the gates with ART!
I actually wasn’t expecting to get much in the way of art done this week, partly because of the 12-hour shifts I’ve been working, and partly because I had other stuff that needed doing this weekend so I wasn’t expecting to have a huge amount of sit-down-and-focus-visually time.
AND YET.
I started playing around a bit with the striptease series while I was on the phone with my family the other day, and I ended up completing not only piece #3, but also piece #4! That completes the series and means that I’m ready to start posting it! I’m hoping to do so tomorrow, so keep an eye on my Twitter account if you’re interested in that.
Obviously I won’t be sharing the two pieces I finished this weekend here and now, but as with the other two pieces, I’ll give you the face thumbnails. :3
Interested yet? ^_~
Moving on to writing, I do have to admit that my momentum slowed down a bit last week, mainly because of the 12-hour shifts, but also because I had a wee bit of writer’s block going on in, well…all of my stories. If that seems improbable, believe me when I tell you that I’ve honestly been at difficult spots in literally all of the individual stories that I’ve been working on. lol
Despite that, though, I still managed to work through my weekly goal. Pacemaker.press wanted me to write 8541 words, and I pulled off a very respectable 9854 words. Those words were spread across numerous different fanfics, with – unfortunately – none of those words making their way into The Other World: Book Three. The good news, however, is that my desperation to get ahead on my two currently-posting fanfics is finally starting to pay off. If I keep pressing on a daily basis I think I might actually manage to get some damn Book Three written this week.
On a sidenote that falls under the creativity umbrella, I had plans to record a podfic this weekend that, as you may have guessed before the end of this sentence, did not happen. I played around a bit with my microphone and Audacity, but things just weren’t working out. For one thing, it’s difficult to get enough quiet in a place like a work camp. Even when I’m on days off and almost everyone else is at work, there’s always cleaners and other workers wandering about making random noises. For another thing, my voice was not cooperating with me. The playbacks just weren’t sounding great. So in the end I decided to set it aside for the time being and hope for another chance in the hopefully-near future.
Goal Set #2: Physical Focus
Firstly, let’s get the exercise side of things out of the way, because I just finished my second run of the fifth week of 10 Rounds, which is pretty fantastic. Tomorrow (or, uh…today, by the time you’re reading this) I’ll be starting week six, which is the final week of the program, and that’s pretty sweet because I don’t think I’ve ever done a program completely twice through before. I’m seriously considering moving into a third run as well, since I still have a few weeks of work left here before I go home. I suppose we’ll see how I feel when I get to the end of this week. :3
Considering diet, that has been going pretty well too, despite more than a few hiccups along the way. And this is where I get to tell you that I have, officially, lost 20 lbs! 😀
That number is a bit skewed because I technically gained before I started properly losing, but I’m going based on the highest number the scale hit before it started moving back in the right direction again.
I do also have to admit that I had a bit of A DAY today, and definitely overindulged in a bid to keep myself glued to my laptop and getting shit done. But it’s only one day, right? There’s no way one day could possibly throw me that far out of whack, right? RIGHT?
*cough cough*
I’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.
On a related note: you guys, I’ve never been so goddamn hydrated in all my life. Partially that’s me attempting to keep cool at work because it can get really stifling under those coveralls, but partially I’ve been guzzling water to keep my appetite under control and Christ… So you know how you’re supposed to take your weight in pounds, cut it in half, and that number in ounces is how much water you should be drinking in a day? Well that means that I should be drinking roughly between 80 and 90 oz of water per day. I’ve been drinking a minimum of 125 oz per day. MINIMUM.
Pure insanity.
Goal Set #3: Self-Promotion/Branding
For the most part I have just as little to report as usual. A few numbers wriggled up, a few others tripped a step down. Nothing really worth nothing.
There is one thing that I want to point out though, because it caught me off guard.
I logged in to YouTube studio to see the numbers for the two channels, neither of which are actually active at the moment and thus don’t have much in the way of anything for me to look at from week to week. However.
The other day I did a quick TikTok video using the She-Hulk filter that is currently trending on there. There was nothing special about the vid…it’s just, like, twelve seconds of me looking cute with green skin and pretending to punch my phone screen. It’s not what you’d call fine art. Certainly nothing I put even the smallest effort into.
I uploaded that video as a YouTube short, and in 4 days it amassed approximately 1348 views. I am bewildered by this. I’ll fuckin’ take it, but I’m bewildered.
Goal Set #4: Mental Well-Being
Inevitably-teetering mental stamina aside, I have to admit that I haven’t been giving much of my energy toward media consumption recently. I’ve been more focused on either writing or sleeping. I think you’ll forgive me for that.
That said…
Looking at games, not much has changed past previous weeks, but I actually did spend a good two hours this weekend playing a rhythm game with my daughter online. It’s called ‘Colorful Stage’, and is based around some of Japan’s anime ‘idol’ singers. It has the same feel as games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but you use your fingers to tap, flick, or hold the notes as they come. All the songs are Japanese in origin, and some of them are PSYCHOTICALLY difficult. I wanted to scream most of the time we were playing, but I was also enjoying it thoroughly. All in all, it was good fun for me and the kid while we’re still so far away from one another.
Looking at watching stuff, I just really haven’t been able to convince myself to sit down and watch things lately, because it means less time that I’m spending getting shit done. I know that’s a dumb, stressful concept, but I just can’t help it. :3
That said, I did manage to wrangle my brain enough to watch Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Saturday night, and I’m so glad that I did because it was ridiculously cute and I was giggling like a fool the entire time. I don’t know if it’s necessarily better than the first one was, but I adored Tails and Knuckles, and I’d totally watch it again sometime.
Lastly, we have reading, and you guys will be impressed to hear that I’ve continued delving through my Audible library! Firstly, I listened to a short story called The Neil Gaiman at the End of the Universe, which was written by Arvind Ethan David, and is about a man waking in a spaceship in deep space, all alone just with the ship’s computer, with no memory of how he got there. All he knows is that the ship calls him “Neil” and that his personal reader-computer is packed full of books, comics, and short stories written by a prolific writer – Neil Gaiman – who is 200 years gone. The story is cute and hilarious in places, and the best part about is that Neil Gaiman actually narrated it as “himself”. I barked with laughter several times throughout it, and it’s a super-quick “read” at only about 30 minutes.
After that I moved on to Wolf’s Bane by Kelley Armstrong. I can’t remember why I had this book downloaded – I suspect it may have been a free offer at some point? – but I was in the mood for something supernatural and decided to give it a try. It’s a very…teen book, if you know what I mean, but that’s not a bad thing. It took me a little bit of getting used to, but it’s an amusing story with interesting characters. The Audible version is dual-narrated since the chapters move between twin characters Kate and Logan, and I really grew to like both of them. What kinda pissed me off is that after roughly 8.5 hours of listening to this story…it ended in a cliffhanger and it was only at that point that I discovered that it’s a two-part story. -_- Luckily the second part, Wolf’s Curse was already available, so I grabbed that with one of my credits and am listening to it now. I need to know how the mystery turns out!
And would you look at that?! I am just coming up on my usual bedtime now, and I’ve managed to finish this post! All I have to do tomorrow morning is hit “Publish”! Fuck yeah, you guys, it’s gonna be a good week. I’ve got a feeling. ^_~
Feel free to let me know how your year is going so far! Do you have any big goals? Specific plans? Anything awesome on the horizon? Share what’s going on with you!
Firstly, I just want to take this moment to record the fact that I have begun this post at 5:51 pm on Monday. I do so simply because I am genuinely interested to see whether my fatigue allows me to power through and actually finish the post tonight, or whether it’s going to end up being another one of those posts that takes a good 24 hours to get from conception to completion. 😛
With that put aside, I want to take a second moment to joyously shriek that the end is in sight! I came out for this job on May 9th, and I now have confirmation that I will be going home sometime between the end of September and the middle of October. This marks my longest ever consecutive run on an ‘out West’ job. It was absolutely needed, and I am very grateful that the work was available to me, but I am most definitely ready to go home for a while. I’m exhausted – physically, mentally, and emotionally – and I’m hyperactively excited to get home for Halloween, since I missed it last year and that sucked.
So basically, while I’m destroyed in pretty much every conceivable way, I’m also extraordinarily happy. Soon I shall be able to breathe, and I fully intend to spend at least a full month doing fuck all beyond reading, writing, playing video games, and watching shows with hubby and the kid. Anyone who wants to judge me for that can bugger right off. 😛
Not that I think anyone actually would judge me for that, but you never know. People can be kinda assholes sometimes. XP
ANYWAY, I am clearly starting to lose the thread here, so let’s sweep on into the goals, hmm?
Goal Set #1: Creative Fulfilment
Starting out with the artistic side of things, I didn’t get much done last week, but I did get something done, and I’m pleased with that. If you saw last week’s post you’ll know that I shared a thumbnail preview of a piece I did for one of those “get this post to X likes for a striptease” posts that artists do on Twitter sometimes. Well, I worked on the second piece in that striptease series last week, which is a lingerie pose. I still might go back to it and add some more detail because the upper-body part of the lingerie seems a little plain to me, but the majority of it is done and I want to focus on the other two pieces in the series first.
Once again I won’t be sharing this piece because of its purpose, but I will share a face-shot again because I’m pleased with it and my Patrons enjoyed the wink. ^_~
And yes, in case you were wondering, I absolutely am obsessed with Crowley with long, wavy hair, what of it?
Moving on to the writing side of things, I am very pleased to tell you that I absolutely murdered last week’s Pacemaker.press goal. Just drug the bastard out into the street and beat the absolute crap out of it.
Okay, I’m not sure where that came from…*nervous chuckle*
And, alright, I have historically had better weeks, but that doesn’t change the fact that this one was pretty sweet. Pacemaker wanted me to write 9827 words, and I sailed on by that with a finishing total of 13,156 words. BOOYA, baby!
Now…I do have to admit that those words were pretty much exclusively fanfiction…but that’s only because I’m still trying desperately to get ahead on my two current posting fics so that I can stop rushing out chapters at the last possible minute. >.>
Hey, writing is writing, and ya gurl wrote 13k+ words, so shush.
Goal Set #2: Physical Focus
In last week’s post I mentioned that I’d gone a little overboard on the weekend for my days off, and I needed a bit of a detox from that overindulgence. Luckily things have gone much better since then. I managed to get back into the proper diet and stick to it with only the occasional pouty moment when I wanted something fat or sugary, and as a result I managed to reverse the damage that I did with my absolute loss of sanity from my days off.
My second run of 10 Rounds also continues to go well. I haven’t had a single hiccup there, and I can definitely tell that I’ve gotten stronger, faster, and significantly more flexible since I started the program for the first time roughly eleven weeks ago. I’m using heavier weights, kicking my heart into peak zone without absolutely gasping for breath, and the other day during our morning stretches at work I got accused of being a demon because instead of touching my toes I put my hands flat on the ground in front of my feet. XD
In addition to these lovely results, this morning I officially hit 20 lbs lost! That’s a bit marred by the fact that I actually gained weight when I first came out on this job, and thus I had a higher starting point to contend with, but just the fact that I managed to pull off 20 lbs in roughly eleven weeks makes me feel hella motivated to keep going. I don’t really have a specific ultimate goal in mind because the last time I was at a healthy weight my body was also very different, so that same weight might not make sense anymore. But as long as I keep toning muscle and burning fat – plus, you know…feeling better – I’ll be happy.
Goal Set #3: Self-Promotion/Branding
Complete and utter standstill on all fronts. I honestly just…don’t know anymore. Is it even possible to grow your social following? I’m starting to think it’s a myth.
Goal Set #4: Mental Well-Being
I won’t lie and say that my mental health has been flawless or anything, but it has definitely been looking up since the news that I’ll be heading home soon. I already have lists of games I want to play, books I want to read, shows and movies I want to watch, and more, but in the meantime…
In gaming, I continue to have nothing to report because when the fuck would I find the time to play games?! I’m still just poking away at Cookie Run Kingdom while doing other things throughout the day. I’m getting excited though, because hubby has been trying out the new PS Plus tier that gives you access to their online streaming service, and I’m curious to see what’s going to be on the menu when I get home. Plus, I mean…there’s also dozens of physical games at home that I never got around to playing, so… *cough*
In watching, there is similarly nothing to report because, similarly, when the fuck would I find the time to watch anything?! That said, this weekend coming up is my days off again, and I have little to nothing planned for those three days, so I intend to catch up on a few things. In particular, the hubby and kid watched the newest JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure episodes without me, so I’m gonna have to fix that bullshit for sure.
In reading…wait, wait, get back here! I have something to report, for real! Okay, so yes, I definitely read fanfiction last week…quite a lot of it, to be honest. (*further coughing*) BUT, you guys, BUTTTT…I got my stubborn ass back onto Audible. 😀 I started out with a short one that I knew I could devour fairly quickly – a gothic vampire story called Carmilla – and I quite enjoyed it. It had the same kind of feel as Dracula, but without all the fluff that makes that story drag so much. Humorously, I believe Carmilla actually predates Dracula, so maybe Stoker should have taken a few notes. 😛
Anyway, I did enjoy Carmilla, partially because it featured a female vampire and a female victim, which was nice when it’s almost always a male vampire and a female victim. It also didn’t hurt that David Tennant played the doctor who helps fight the vampire, though he’s only in maybe a fifth of the story.
After Carmilla I moved on to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I’d been curious about for ages and happens to be one of the free options when you’re subscribed to Audible. I’ll be honest, I was expecting it to be slow and plodding, but it moved with a fair pace and I rarely got distracted or bored at all. Of course the best bits of the whole thing are the ones with HAL, but if you’ve seen the movie you’d probably expect that. And speaking of the movie…I watched it with the hubby a few years ago and I was absolutely fucking bewildered come the end of it. So much of the damn thing is just visual and left to interpretation, which isn’t necessarily bad but when you leave something up to interpretation it’s nice to have something to interpret. Anyway, long story short, the book makes the whole thing make so much more sense. I had so many lightbulb moments. lol
Hey! Would you look at that! I actually managed to finish the post before my body said “NO MORE”. Not too shabby! And now I only have to survive three more days before my three days off! See, things are looking up all around. Balance is returning to the Force. :3
Feel free to let me know how your year is going so far! Do you have any big goals? Specific plans? Anything awesome on the horizon? Share what’s going on with you!
Can you guys believe that it’s almost September? My brain is having a difficult time comprehending this, although that’s probably not surprising considering that I spent the entirety of the summer on the oilsands, bloody working, because fuck me.
I’m not going to lie: I suspect that there is a very good possibility, at this point, that I am having a full-scale mid-life crisis. I’m not sure what this generally looks like for the average woman, but given the kind of shit I get up to on Twitter, the fact that I tried (with very limited success) to dye my hair purple this weekend, and the way inappropriate comments about me starting an OnlyFans are starting to low-key make lots of sense, I’d say that it’s probably a pretty good description of my current mental state.
But can you really blame me? I mean, for one thing, when I first started coming out to the oilsands for work I told myself that I was only going to do it for a maximum of five years…and it’s now been ten. I’m also working as a laborer despite having a university degree and nearly a decade of experience in industrial instrumentation, and while I expected to have my mortgage paid off by now, I’m nowhere near that goal. Add in the fact that my kid is starting JUNIOR HIGH next week, and yeah, I’m feeling my age, feeling the looming specter of never being able to fucking retire, and I kinda just want to pack up and disappear somewhere with a garden large enough to keep me moderately fed.
But that’s neither here nor there. *cough cough*
Despite what appears, above, to be the starts of a complete nervous breakdown, things are actually going half-decently, and I have some fun things to report throughout the goals sections, so let’s go ahead and get into that before I tangent off into hysteria again.
Goal Set #1: Creative Fulfilment
I did art, you guys! Even better, I completed art! Two pieces! The second one isn’t exactly super-involved, and I’ve restricted myself back to only adding color for the eyes, but I’m quite pleased with how both pieces turned out!
Firstly, Con O’Neill (who plays Izzy Hands in Our Flag Means Death) posted this adorable photo of himself laying with his dog on social media the other day, and I was wholly inspired. I thought up this whole concept involving a dog being allowed onto the Revenge, and long story short, I ended up with this:
I am very, very pleased with how it turned out, and I’ve gotten some lovely comments about it, but that’s not the best part… The best part is that when I shared it to Twitter, Con O’Neill liked and retweeted it. Now, the thing is, Con has been liking and retweeting piles of Our Flag Means Death stuff over the past months because he’s absolutely feral and has been having a blast being one of the icons of the show, so it’s not super surprising that he did the same with my piece…but that doesn’t make it any less a HUGE FUCKING THING. Not gonna lie: I may have swooned a little.
I also did a second piece, but I can’t share it yet because it’s going to be a multi-part release through Twitter. In case you’ve never seen one of these, there will occasionally be an artist in the GO or OFMD fandoms who will do a ‘striptease’ of sorts. They’ll pick a character (occasionally more than one) and draw them in varying levels of undress, sometimes with the final piece being NSFW, and they’ll be released based on interaction with the original post. So, for example, a fully-dressed pic will be posted, with an explanation that 50 likes are required for the partially-disrobed pic, 100 likes for the next one, and so on for however many pics there are. I’ve been wanting to do one of those for ages, but I know that I don’t draw fast enough to do it on the fly as the numbers are it, so I’m going to prepare all of the drawings in advance. This past weekend I got the first one done and the other three drafted. ❤
So yeah, I’m not going to share the whole thing, but I will share a close-up of the face because I’m pleased with it. :3
And if you somehow can’t tell who that is by the BRIGHT YELLOW EYES, obviously I’m using Crowley for this particular challenge. Because he’s mah boi. And he looks good in lingerie. *cough cough*
Moving on to the writing side of the equation!
I mentioned last week that I’ve been a bit all over the place with writing lately because the new schedule with the 12-hour shifts has my brain all melty and, as a result, I can’t seem to keep track of which stories need new chapters when and what bloody day of the week it is at any given time. That is starting to get better now that I’ve had a weekend off to reset and catch up a bit. Just thought I’d mention that.
I’m still writing eighteen goddamn things at once though. I think that’s just…how it works for me for the rest of my days now. *clears throat*
Anyway, Pacemaker.press wanted me to write 10,068 words last week, and I skipped on past that number with a healthy final total of 12,092 words. Those words were spread out between my two currently-posting fanfics and the two fanfics that will be following up on those once they’re complete. I did not, unfortunately write anything toward Book Three last week, but the good news is that I worked out a few plot issues and empty scenes in my head, so those should be significantly easier to write when I get into them. Also, I should actually get to some of those scenes this week, since I seem to have managed to pull myself into some kind of vague schedule regarding what gets written when.
Honestly, I probably shouldn’t have admitted to that, because I’ve probably jinxed myself now. Whoops.
Goal Set #2: Physical Focus
Okay, firstly, I will readily admit that I went a little bit apeshit on the weekend. Since I’ve been working and 11-and-3 schedule, I’ve pretty much been sticking to a strict regime for the 11 work days and then taking it easy on myself and having some treats on the 3 days off. I think that’s a pretty decent system, because you can only restrict yourself for so long before you end up going on a massive binge and just end up feeling like utter shit afterwards.
That said…
Maybe it was the fact that I was guzzling coffee and snacking on donuts while trying to get some writing done, or maybe it’s that I stepped into the camp dining hall for the first time since I’ve been here and there were WAFFLES, or maybe I pushed things a little when I decided to treat myself with a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, or-
Okay, just…I went a little apeshit on the weekend, okay?
That said…
My second run-through of 10 Rounds is going well; I continue to burn calories and build muscle, which is obviously great. And the diet side of things – not including this past weekend, obviously – has been going well too. I’m starting to get a little bored of the same few things that I tend to eat over and over again, but that’s honestly more about camp life than it is about diet choices.
Long story short, things are going decently, but I definitely need a detox from the weekend. :3
Goal Set #3: Self-Promotion/Branding
Blowing through this one again because I just don’t even know what the heck to say about it. Basically, the author Twitter account gained a few followers, and everything else pretty much stayed stagnant.
And that’s all I have to say about that!
Goal Set #4: Mental Well-Being
I mean, clearly we can say that my mental well-being is…iffy at this point, right? Right. Glad we’ve got that covered. Actually, I just had a conversation with my boss today about how I’m slowly and inevitably going mad. I’m pretty sure he thought that I was being goofy. Spoiler alert: I was not.
So, on the gaming side of things we have nothing more or less than the same dumb mobile games I’ve been mentioning every week for ages now.
On the reading side of things we continue to have fanfic, though I think I might finally be hitting a point at which I’m having trouble finding fics with premises that I want to read, so maaaaaaybe that might change soon? (I’m thinking not likely, though.)
And on the watching side of things, I’m actually a bit surprised to be telling you that I haven’t watched bugger all since last week. I totally intended to finish watching The Sandman, and the kid wanted me to watch season 2 of Cuphead, which should have been an easy binge, but all I technically turned on all weekend was a re-watch of Good Omens, because I needed it. Don’t judge me. I NEEDED it.
Now we come to the end of another weekly post, and I can tell you that I once again managed to take an entire day to write one of these. That is ridiculous. Why do I keep doing that? Rawr. Ah well, at least I managed to actually post it before Monday was over. 😛
Feel free to let me know how your year is going so far! Do you have any big goals? Specific plans? Anything awesome on the horizon? Share what’s going on with you!
My sweet, summer children…let me tell you a tale. A tale about a time, not so long ago, when I worked multiple, consecutive 12-hour shifts without issue or complaint. When I took my lot in stride and I scraped and clawed for every free second of time between breaks and delays and bus rides and meal times in order to squeeze the maximum amount of art creation out of the day. And still, somehow, I managed to chat with my family across the country, eek out a daily exercise schedule, and get at least seven hours of sleep each night… It was a glorious time, my sweets. It was the peak times…
Okay, so I might be exaggerating a bit about all that, but seriously… I do recall a time in recent-ish history when I managed 12-hour shifts for weeks at a time without having a nervous breakdown, but after the past three months of 10-hour shifts, it’s as though my mind and body have forgotten the ability to survive those extra two hours per day. I am a wreck my friends, and at this point I’m not entirely confident that I am capable of clawing my way back up into something that kinda-sorta resembles a successful routine.
You may have noticed that I just completely missed last week’s post. That, my dears, is because it was Wednesday before I even thought about the post and went, “Ah shit, that’s a thing I usually do.” This was already after I’d missed a GO-fic post, and was gearing up to try desperately not to miss an OFMD-fic post, and so, yeah…I was a wee bit of a dumpster fire, scheduling-wise.
At the time of beginning this post, it is Tuesday morning at 4:47 am. (Don’t be shocked; my shift starts at 6 am…I’m not, like, getting up several hours early just for this.) By the time I finish writing this post it may very well be bedtime. If not tomorrow. We’ll just have to wait and see, because that’s how things have been going lately!
So I’m on day nine of the 12-hour shifts, with two more to go after this before I have a weekend off, and let me tell you that I am really looking forward to that weekend. I used to try to weasel my way into getting as many consecutive shifts in a row as possible because that’s where you really earn the overtime cash here, but honestly, I’m well on my way to a full-scale breakdown if we don’t hit Thursday evening soon. Not that the work is hard or anything, and my crew is small and pleasant, for the most part, but fuck. My sleep has been shit, the weather has been ball-meltingly hot, my brain can NOT seem to catch up enough to get used to the new schedule and stop forgetting to do things, and yesterday I had my first really bad bout of Rejection Sensitive Dysmorphia in a while, so that definitely did not help the situation.
Basically what I’m saying is: BRING ON THE FUCKING DAYS OFF, I’M GONNA SLEEP FOR 24-HOURS STRAIGHT.
*Ahem* Alrighty. Moving on.
Goal Set #1: Creative Fulfilment
Okay, firstly, I have to sadly admit that I haven’t drawn a goddamn thing since my last post two weeks ago. Remember when I shared the snippets of the spicy GO piece I did? Yeah, that’s the last thing I worked on. My poor, beautiful tablet has been sitting in the closet in my camp room since then. ;-;
There just hasn’t been time. These fucking 12-hour shifts, man… Two more days of work and then I have three days off. Pray that I can find the strength to beat my executive disfunction and pick up the damn tablet when I am actually faced with the available time to do so.
For the record, I do have, like…a hundred bloody things I want to draw. Including, but not limited to, a piece of Izzy Hands, because it turns out that Con O’Neil is one of the nicest guys in TV, and he fucking loves that people are making fanart of him, so I want to support that.
The fact that he’s also pretty hot does have some bearing, I won’t lie.
ANYWAY.
On the writing side of things I can at least report that I’ve continued to manage to hit my word counts. Two weeks ago Pacemaker.press wanted me to write 10,681 words, and I blew past that with a final total of 13,134 words. Then, last week, Pacemaker wanted me to write 9584 words, and I blew past that again with 11,318 words. Not too bloody shabby at all.
Some of those words even went toward Book Three! Several thousand of them, in fact! And while we’re on the subject, Book Three is now officially longer than either Book One or Book Two, and there’s still a ton of story left to go. :O
Now, because I have to add at least a little bit of a downer to the writing section, I do have to mention that since the 12-hour shifts began I have been completely and utterly in capable of having my fanfic chapters posted at their normal times. Yesterday’s A Touch of Heaven update at least occurred before the day had ended, anyway, but damn…I really, really need to manage to get my shit together enough to get ahead by a week or two so this stops happening. :<
Goal Set #2: Physical Focus
It’s a bit difficult to talk about this stuff right now because, a) I’m sore and tired, and b) I want SO BADLY to go eat twelve pieces of cake from the camp dining hall. But I’m not gonna do that, because I’ve been SO GOOD YOU GUYS.
Okay, so I’m now on week 3 of my second run through 10 Rounds, and doing great. I’m definitely better at some of the moves this time around, and I’m noticing a distinct difference in my ability to hold up longer during cardio stuff. I’m actually having trouble getting myself into my peak heartrate zone because my heart and lungs just seem to be getting better at the exercises, which is obviously amazing.
But what I’m obviously most excited about is the fact that I’m GETTING SMALLER. Perhaps not super-noticeably-so…I’d need to ask someone who hasn’t seen me in person in a while…but I am losing weight and the last time I took my measurements I’d lost roughly an inch in several places. That is immensely exciting for me, you guys, and is outrageously motivating. I seem to be have gotten past the first plateau, and I’m seeing fractional weight losses on the daily, and while I know it’s not necessarily the healthiest way to do these things from a mental and emotional standpoint, I can’t tell you how much it helps my willpower to actually see that number trickle down a tiny bit each morning.
Goal Set #3: Self-Promotion/Branding
Why do I do this to myself, year after year? Tell me that, would you? Because I honestly don’t know. I never get any better at this stuff, nor do I ever figure out how to go about reporting it. It is a ridiculously stupid waste of a spot on these posts, and someone PLEASE remind me of that come the beginning of next year? -_-
For the record though…the author accounts all went up slightly, and that’s about it.
Goal Set #4: Mental Well-Being
If you guys know me at all by this point, you’ll probably realize that my brain has been MELTING recently, and thus I don’t have much good to say about my mental health at the moment. Let’s just go ahead and say that I’m surviving, and that I haven’t put my head through a wall yet, and we’ll move on to the other stuff, okay?
Gaming continues to boil down mostly to Cookie Run Kingdom and Pokemon GO, which I recently started playing again in the mornings while I’m leaving camp on the way to work. I couldn’t imagine even attempting to play something more involved right now. Frankly I’m quite amazed that I’m still awake and working on this post (yes, it did in fact become night…)
Reading, you can probably go ahead and guess, although I can tell you that I haven’t been reading a huge amount of anything recently because the only way I’d be able to pull it off is if I clawed back writing time, and I’m not willing to do that. That said, I’ve read several Our Flag Means Death fics now that are at least as beautifully-written as some of the devastatingly excellent Good Omens fics I’ve read.
Now, watching, I definitely have to mention two major things. Firstly, at hubby’s insistence, I watched the new Predator movie, which is called Prey, and I fucking LOVED it. It was very well done, a major love letter to the original movie, with some great cinematography and an amazing main character who I adored. Seriously, go watch it. Fan-fucking-tastic.
Secondly, I watched most of The Sandman (will finish it on my days off), and I can wholeheartedly inform you that it is masterful. Anyone who is gatekeeping, or whining about casting choices, or bitching about certain changes that were made from the comics…they can all just fuck right off, because the show is practically perfect. The actors are all excellent in their roles, most of the changes make sense in the context of the cinematic version of these stories, and the worldbuilding is gorgeous. I’m loving absolutely everything about it, and I am officially in love with Sturridge, who plays Dream/Morpheus. He is now one of my boyfriends. It has been decided.
And that, as they say, is that. I shall certainly attempt to not miss next week’s post, but with the way my brain has been working of late I won’t preemptively put it past myself. Just pray for my sanity, will you my dears? Thanks. ❤
Feel free to let me know how your year is going so far! Do you have any big goals? Specific plans? Anything awesome on the horizon? Share what’s going on with you!
Tracey Tobin 