Plans & Goals 2020: Week 26 Review

Hello, lovelies! I’ve got a few things to get out of the way before the bulk of the post, and I’ve got other things I want done today as well, so let’s jump to it!

Firstly, I wanted to take a moment to say “Happy Pride Month!” before the month is actually out, and to mention how proud I am that our town is going to be celebrating its first ever pride event this evening. Our civic center (which is kinda the hub of the town) has been flying a rainbow flag all month, and apparently some douchenozzle decided to complain about it. Instead of getting upset about the complaint, a local teen decided that this was the perfect opportunity to encourage people to gather and show their own pride, and she organized the event (which I believe is going to be a kind of mini-parade/rally) herself. When I asked my daughter if she wanted to go her eyes lit-TF-up, which totally warmed my heart. She made her own shirt for it today, and all three of us are going to go together this evening as a family. I hope it makes her smile to see the other participants showing their pride. ^_^

Secondly, Nova Scotia weather really needs to figure itself the hell out. I enjoy a good thunderstorm, but we had weeks of grey followed by a week of scalding heat, and now all of a sudden we’re being drowned by rain. My system can’t handle this nonsense!

Thirdly, I want to encourage anyone reading this to stay diligent regarding things like social distancing. We here in Nova Scotia have been doing quite well – we haven’t had a recorded Covid case in nearly three weeks – but we’re totally letting up on the restrictions, and that’s WHY we’re doing well. All the experts say that a second wave will be coming, so let’s try to get ahead of it, okay? Okay. Glad we’re on the same page.

Okay, I think that’s all I’ve got for now. To the goals!

Goal #1: Be Healthier

For the most part I think I’ve been doing okay with this one lately, although there have definitely been a few ups and downs depending on things like mood and distractions…

Eat better (and less) – I did pretty well with this one last week, at least through the bulk of the week. I’ve been watching my calorie count and doing my best to eat less processed stuff, if possible. The weekend got away on me a bit because we went for a drive, bought discount cookies, and had a sudden craving for pickle pizza, but all in all I think I can be commended for doing pretty decently with my intake.
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Drink more water – Water is definitely no problem. I’ve been guzzling the stuff. I do have a couple of cups of coffee each day, but other than that, lotttttts of water. No dehydration here.
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Get more exercise – I’m still on “Just Dance 2020” for now, but that’s perfectly fine; it’s been doing me some good, I think. It’s fun and silly, but can definitely work up a good sweat, and before I know it I’ve been doing it for over an hour. It might not burn as many calories as some of the other exercises I’ve done, nor is it a muscle-building kind of exercise, but it’s been fun and easy to convince myself to do it every morning.
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Lose 2 lbs per month – Going by what I reported last week, I’ve lost one pound. It would have been a bit more, but the weekend threw me off a bit. Whatevs…one pound down is certainly preferable to anything UP!
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Goal #2: Be an Author

~I…wanna write my stuff allll ni-i-ight…and edit ev-er-y-day!~
Not seriously though. Editing SUUUUUUUuuuuccccks.

Write 500,000 words throughout the year – Last week was a weak one for what Pacemaker was asking me for, so I easily demolished it. I worked on “The Other World: Book Three”, mostly, but also dabbled in my never-ending list of ideas for “Good Omens” fanfics, and ended up writing quite a bit. Pacemaker was only looking for 8904 words, but I easily managed 13,257 words, even while getting distracted on the weekend. I’m quite pleased with myself, I must say!
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Promote published books – I’m a bit twitchy with promotion stuff lately, after the epic failure that was BookBub. Therefore I don’t really have anything to report on this one.
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Promote Patreon & exclusive content – I haven’t written any exclusive content for the Patreon recently, but all my fanfics are now being released to Patrons as “early-access” content for at least a week prior to being posted publicly. On that note, last week I reported that I’d posted two fic updates there, and they continued to be in early-access during the first part of the week. I haven’t posted any new early-access stuff there recently, but I’ve been writing like a lunatic lately so there’s definitely going to be something to report for early July.
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Work on Author social media – My author social media has actually been exploding quite nicely in the past week, because people very suddenly started participating in my “Draw This In Your Style” challenge on Instagram. I got a ton of fun entries, which I’ve been sharing to my own account, of course, and those entries have been getting lots of love from the people who see them. It’s been pretty great, if I’m honest! The follower results aren’t exactly anything to write home about – I gained two on Twitter and eight on Instagram – but the important thing is that there’s been fun and engagement as a result of the challenge. It’s been awesome. I wasn’t expecting to end up with so many entries, so now I’m actually nervous about picking a winner! I wonder if I can just write a short fic (the prize) for everyone who entered…lol It’s not as though I haven’t been writing fics like a lunatic anyway. 😛
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Goal #3: Be a YouTuber

HOLY SHIT I ACTUALLY HAVE SOMETHING TO REPORT!

Film/edit/upload – Well, we didn’t film anything, but after what feels like a MILLION YEARS we (*cough*mostlyJason*cough*) finally finished editing the ‘Zanini Box’ video and POSTED IT! YES! We actually PUBLISHED A YOUTUBE VIDEO after more than SIX MONTHS OF NOTHING. It definitely feels nice, I can’t deny that.

The only problem is that now that we’ve managed to put up one video…obviously we have to keep going. lol *tugs nervously at shirt collar*
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Promote and Interact (Social Media) – Aside from promoting that one video that we FINALLY managed to get up, I’ve been more or less moderate on the social media since last week. I posted a few cute outdoor pics of some pretty figures that seemed to gain some attention and a few follows, so that was nice. All in all, I wound up gaining six new Instagram followers, but counter-intuitively lost five Twitter followers. Twitter has been really charged lately though, so who knows…I may have said something vaguely political without realizing it. 😛
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Expand website content – I haven’t done anything with the site yet, but I have been making a list of article ideas, and it’s getting quite long so when I actually get around to starting I’ll have lots to work with.
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Goal #4: Be Fun!

And then there was fun. To be honest, my week was a little lackluster in that department because I haven’t been feeling the greatest (seems like that’s my default these days, doesn’t it?) but regardless…

Read 50 books throughout the year – I REFUSE TO APOLOGIZE!

Oh, wait, I have to tell you what I’m refusing to apologize for, don’t I? Uh, yeah, so…*cough cough*…yeah, I spent all my reading time last week reading fanfics again. >.>

IT’S A GODDAMN SICKNESS.
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Play video games – Well obviously there’s “Just Dance”, which I’m getting decently good at by this point. As far as gaming in general though, I haven’t been indulging much lately. I did play a bit of “Borderlands 3” right at the end of the week, but that was pretty much it.
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Watch shows/movies – For the most part, we’ve actually been keeping the TV off lately, mainly because it heats up the living room like you wouldn’t believe and the weather has just been too hot on its own. That said, we watched a newer horror movie the other day called “Scare House”. It wasn’t exactly Shakespeare or anything, but it amused me. It’s a bit of a slow-burn you-don’t-know-why-the-killers-are-doing-what-they’re-doing-until-close-to-the-end deal. Absolutely ridiculous, but far from the worst horror I’ve seen in the past few years.

Other than that, we showed our daughter the two “Hot Shots” movies, which had her giggling like a fool multiple times, and hubby and I have been watching “F is for Family” on Netflix during supper. If you’re a fan of Bill Burr’s brand of humor, you’d probably enjoy it. It’s an animated show set in the 70’s and it holds nothing back. NOTHING.

And that, as they say, is that. All things considered, it was a pretty decent week, honestly. And that’s saying something considering I spent a significant chunk of it burying my head under pillows. Just sayin’. If I could actually have a week during which my brain treated me properly, just think what I could pull off! *epic eye roll*

How was your week? Any accomplishments you want to share? Goals you worked hard on? Feel free to share in the comments! ❤

Plans & Goals 2020: Week 25 Review

Wow, you guys…it’s genuinely hard to believe that we’re pretty much halfway through the year. In a way it’s a good thing, because honestly…2020 has been a big ol’ bag of ass. But it’s also a bit disconcerting. Time is running away from me again. I actually had a little bit of a mini-midlife-crisis the other day. I’m not yet quite at the age when that kind of thing is normal, but I realized that I was rapidly approaching 40, and I started thinking about things like all the books I still want to write, the amount of money I still owe on my house, how many things there are that I want to do but just don’t currently have the time/funds/ability to accomplish…it’s scary shit, man. I understand why people hit midlife and just have total mental and emotional breakdowns. Stress is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

On a more positive note though, I’m slowly starting to work through some of the (multitude of) issues I’ve been dealing with that have been making me more than a little cranky, useless, and antisocial. I’ve still got a ways to go, there’s no doubt about it, but little things started to shift over the course of the past week, and I feel like that’s a good sign.

It’s not all sunshine and roses though, so let’s take these things one at a time and see what’s up.

(Random note before I get into it: I want to extend an arm of friendship to anyone out there who is currently suffering from seasonal allergies. It is beyond exhausting, and with the current world climate sneezing even once around other people makes you public enemy number one. I feel your pain, my friends. I feel your pain. Be strong! We can survive the 2020 allergy season together! :P)

Goal #1: Be Healthier

Baby steps, my friends. Baby steps. The important thing is that I’m putting some effort in, right? *cough cough*

Eat better (and less) – I’ll first admit that the past two days have seen me being rather bad when it comes to food, but I have a (kind of) excuse. Seasonal allergies have been hitting me like a dump truck, and as stupid as it sounds, the act of chewing and swallowing helps keep me from sneezing nonstop. Soooo…yep. (Related note: my dumb ass didn’t think, until a friend suggested it, that I could just chew gum. Yeah. Clearly the allergies are affecting my brain as well.)

I also made cranberry sugar cookies yesterday because I have a strange obsession with sabotaging myself. Just saying.

That said, in the five days BEFORE the weekend, I was actually doing pretty well. I was counting calories carefully and eating lots of fruits and veggies. It was going pretty well. I was even beginning to see something that could be qualified as ‘results’. The weekend rather fucked that up, but today is another day, right? Right.
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Drink more water – Sometimes I get distracted and realize that I haven’t had anything to drink in ages, but for the most part I’ve been drinking truly outrageous quantities of water. No issues here. I’m fully hydrated. Stick a pin in me and I might explode.
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Get more exercise – The weekend, again, was a bit of an ass; it’s hard to concentrate on doing anything at all when you’re sneezing your brains out. But throughout the week my daughter and I spent at least an hour each morning playing ‘Just Dance 2020’. And you know what? If you actually follow all the moves (instead of just the one arm that you know the game is registering the movement of), this game can be a hell of a workout! It gets me sweating, no doubt about that. Plus it’s fun, so I’m definitely going to keep going with this plan for a while, at least until I lose enough weight to feel confident trying P90X2 again.
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Lose 2 lbs per month – I can’t really report anything here, other than the fact that I’m effectively starting this goal over from scratch at the mid-year mark. Soooo…yeah, let’s just pretend that this one is just beginning and I’ll see what I have to report next week, okay? At the moment I’m sitting at 179 lbs, which is actually down from where I ended up (*gag*) the week before, though still puts me higher than when I wrote this goal.
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Goal #2: Be an Author

Ups and downs on the docket this week, though I’d say the ups were a little more up than the downs were down. Does that make sense? Psh. It does if I say it does.

Write 500,000 words throughout the year – I was a bit concerned about my ability to hit last week’s goal since the previous weeks had been quite a bit lower, but in the end I easily pulled it off! Pacemaker.press wanted me to write 11,651 words, and I drove past that with 13,320 words. That also puts me at 51% of my goal for the year, and since we’re not quite at the end of June yet that means that I’m ahead of schedule. Woo! I’ve NEVER done so well in the first half of the year before! I’m really genuinely excited by the fact that I actually seem to be pulling this one off. Even if I stopped writing right now (which I have no intention of doing), it was a hell of a six months!
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Promote published books – I haaaaaaaate this so much. If I could hire someone to handle this shit for me and actually be guaranteed to get a return on my investment I would absolutely do it. I haven’t tried any more ads yet because I don’t want to piss away any more money, and I haven’t had time to research and try to work out what I did wrong the first time around. So…yeah, for the time being promotion has been limited back to social media plugs.

(Related note: if anyone out there has any idea how to run a successful Book Bub ad, please feel free to contact me. Clearly I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing.)
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Promote Patreon & exclusive content – I haven’t written any exclusive content recently, but I have uploaded two early-access reads since last week. One is Chapter 5 of Revenge Omens, and the other is the follow up to ‘I Want You To Be Mine’, titled ‘You Want Me To Be Yours?‘ The later was requested by quite a few people, so I was excited to write it. Both will be posted on AO3 once the early-access window has closed.

All of my AO3 content from now on will be released as early-access to my Patrons first, for your information, but I will also, of course, be writing exclusive stuff. I’ve just been a little distracted lately, but it’s coming, I promise.
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Work on Author social media – As far as social media goes, I don’t really know what to say. I’ve been posting…perhaps not as much as I should be, but with a fair regularity, I would think. Growth, however, is rather slow. I gained two followers on the Twitter account and four on the Instagram account last week. *shrugs* At least they’re positive numbers, right?
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Goal #3: Be a YouTuber

I still don’t want to talk about it.

Film/edit/upload – No, really. I really don’t want to talk about it.
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Promote and Interact (Social Media) – Okay, I’ll chin up enough to say that the socials have remained pretty steady despite posting or lack thereof. Last week the Twitter account lost two subscribers and the Instagram account stayed the same.
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Expand website content – Annnnd, I don’t want to talk about it. Seriously, just go away.
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Goal #4: Be Fun!

In a note unrelated to the sub-goals of this section, the family and I have been playing badminton lately. We suck, but it’s tons of fun. I mostly play with my daughter, but today I played for nearly half an hour with my husband and we were both exhausted by the end of it. The bugger kept sending me shots that I had to run to get to. Yay for extra exercise!

Read 50 books throughout the year – I could have sworn that I read something last week worth reporting, but now that I’m trying to think about it, nothing is coming. Maybe I dreamed it. >.>

I know for sure that I read several short fanfics, but that’s no surprise at this point, I’m sure.

On a related note, I went looking for the ‘Berserk’ manga after my husband and I watched the movies, and I found out that it’s on Kindle Unlimited, so I am definitely going to take advantage of that. I’m going to try to go back and get through ‘The Walking Dead’ first though. I don’t really want to be trying to work through multiple comics at once. I don’t think my brain could handle it.
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Play video games – Aside from doing ‘Just Dance’ with the kid in the mornings, I haven’t been playing games at all lately. I just haven’t been much in the mood, to be honest. I’ve been too focused on writing, and when I’m not doing that I’m trying to stay on my feet. That said, I’d really like to find some time soon to get back into ‘Borderlands 3’ before I completely forget what I was doing. Plus I just recently picked up a horror game for the Vita (yeah, I’m still clinging to that thing, shaddup) and I’d like to check that out. It looked fun and had good reviews, and it was only, like, $10 since the Vita isn’t supported anymore. When I get around to trying it out I’ll let you guys know how it is!
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Watch shows/movies – Now, movies and shows? Oh, there’s been a lot of those. When I am sitting down I’m watching random nonsense with my husband. We’ve been enjoying ‘F is for Family’ on Netflix recently, and we’ve pretty much been watching a movie of some kind every night. Mostly we’ve been watching old favorites and things we haven’t seen in ages. Yesterday, for example, we watched ‘Jackass: The Movie’ and ‘Kung Pow’, because we’re dreadfully immature. 😛 I don’t believe we watched anything NEW in the past week, but we’ve been getting a lot of smiles out of old goodies, so that’s all that matters. Hell, as I write this we’re watching ‘Hot Shots’, with every intention of watching ‘Hot Shots: Part Deux’ later tonight. Mindless giggle time!

And that’s that for another week. I feel like it was a pretty quiet one, during which not a lot happened, and yet it was pretty decent overall. The key, I suppose, is to keep moving forward and keep up the momentum. Fingers crossed, my lovelies!

How was your week? Any accomplishments you want to share? Goals you worked hard on? Feel free to share in the comments! ❤

Patreon Early-Access: “You Want Me To Be Yours? (I Already Am)”

Announcing early-access to a new short for my Patrons!

“You Want Me to Be Yours? (I Already Am)” is a 5.5k-word Good Omens fan-fic, and a follow-up to “I Want You To Be Mine“, as requested by several readers. Reading the first story is not absolutely necessary to enjoying the second, but it’s definitely suggested to fully understand what is happening.

$2-and-up Patrons get early access to pieces like this that will be later uploaded to AO3, as well as exclusive access to original shorts that may never be publicly published! Check it out if you’re interested in supporting your favorite starving content creator! ❤

WARNING FOR THIS PARTICULAR PIECE: Contains mild smut that may be considered mature or explicit, depending on your sensibilities. Definitely adult content!

Plans & Goals 2020: Week 23 & 24 Review

Okay. So. In case you hadn’t noticed, I skipped doing last week’s post. And to be perfectly honest, I seriously considered skipping this week’s as well. The thing is, I’ve been in rather a depressive mood of late, and talking about all the things that I’m failing to accomplish really didn’t seem like the greatest of ideas. But then again, I thought, perhaps just spewing it all out will help me feel a bit better. Who knows. I suppose that it’s worth a try.

One big contributor to my mood has been the weather we’ve been getting of late. It’s been relatively warm, which is nice, but surrounding the brief moments of sun we’ve been mostly getting day after day of cloudy, grey misery, and that’s been draining me to no end. If you’ve never experienced seasonal affective disorder, that might sound totally idiotic, but believe me when I tell you that it can seriously affect your mental and emotional well-being if you suffer from it. Imagine it a bit like the sun is a drug, and you’re going through major withdrawal symptoms after having that drug ripped away from you. That might be a bit of an exaggeration (I would’t know, having never been addicted to any drugs), but it gives you an idea. The sun goes away for a few days in a row and I feel exhausted (regardless of how much sleep I get), depressed (regardless of what good may be going on in life), lethargic as all get out, and as moody as a starving animal who’s locked in a cage with a juicy steak sitting just out of reach and a human laughing at it from a safe distance.

Does that about cover it? Yeah, I think it does.

Plus, just to prove that nature hates me personally, I have seasonal allergies and they’ve been acting up something FIERCE. Which, if you know what having near constantly allergy attacks is like, you’ll know that it’s both depressing and exhausting. Also, one of the reactions I have is for my right eye (specifically, for some reason) go all fuzzy and red and swollen, which means I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time just trying to exist with one eye closed.

Beyond that, there have definitely been many other things tweaking my mental well-being. Some of them will come up throughout this post, in the goals sections, and others I won’t mention at all because they’re personal. But just go ahead and assume that I feel very much as though life has been holding me down and repeatedly kicking me in the ass lately. As with all things, this too shall pass, but for the immediate time being…forgive me if I’m overly mopey and whiny and totally full of shit.

Goal #1: Be Healthier

In this, there is little doubt, that I am a complete and utter failure. Part of the issue definitely has to do with my mental and emotional state getting the better of me these days, but I also can’t deny that good ol’ fashioned laziness and lack of willpower has a lot to do with it as well. Every day lately is a constant cycle of convincing myself that I’m going to do better, doing better for a little while, failing miserably in a huge way, and then hating myself until I fall asleep. Sleep, repeat. Sleep, repeat. I just can’t seem to keep myself in the right head-space for a reasonable length of time all at once.

Eat better (and less) – The days have been basically going like this: get up, drink lots of water, maybe have something small like an apple or a granola bar, feel perfectly fine for a while, maybe have something small for lunch, feel fine for a while, have supper…and completely lose it. There’s something about the evening meal – regardless of what we eat – that makes all my willpower disintegrate at once, and all of a sudden I’m having dessert that I don’t need, snacking on random little things that I don’t need, having late-night treats that I don’t need, and overall just being an insatiable bitch who can’t keep her hands out of the cupboards. It’s like I start the day with reams of willpower…and it all just vanishes once the evening hits.

And FYI, yes, I’ve tried eating multiple smaller meals throughout the day to try to keep myself more satiated…and it doesn’t help. My evening breakdowns seem to happen completely irregardless of what I do or don’t eat throughout the first part of the day. It’s infuriating, and is the main reason that I end up loathing myself by nighttime, and yet that loathing doesn’t seem to stop me from my mindless eating. I feel like I need to have all access to food under padlock, with a keeper who doles out exactly what I’m allowed to eat when I’m allowed to eat it. -_-
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Drink more water – Water consumption continues to not be an issue. I may have let it drift off a bit throughout week 23, but it was all good again by week 24. I drink tons of water. Enough that it should, theoretically, suppress my appetite a bit. And yet…*grumble grumble*
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Get more exercise – Exercise is a wonky topic at the moment. I did my P90X2 videos all through week 23, but they fell apart during week 24 when when having visitors to the house threw me all out of whack. In addition to that, I’ve been just having a hard time with P90X2 in general lately. I’ve been re-doing the first phase, since the second phase basically told me to go fuck myself, and I’ll admit that a few of the exercises have gotten easier, which is nice. But as an overall thing, I’ve been finding the videos harder to do. That might just be because my mental state has my physical one refusing to buck the hell up, but whatever the reason, I’ve often found myself halfway through a video just wanting to quit. The fact that I’ve been seeing zero physical effects of my effort doesn’t help.

So I decided to try something different, and just started yesterday. I’m putting P90X on hold for the time being, and have started playing Just Dance 2020 with my daughter for my exercise instead. We play for at least an hour, and I let her pick all kinds of ridiculously hard songs. Plus, whereas I normally would just move my hands in the proper motions, since that’s all the game can actually detect, now I’m doing my damnedest to do ALL of the body motions, including jumping around like a lunatic when the song demands. The result is a pretty damn decent workout that’s a lot more fun than proper exercise videos. Not to mention I’m spending time with my daughter and getting HER active as well. Win-win. My HOPE is that if I keep doing this, and manage to get my eating habits under some kind of control, maybe I’ll actually start to lose a little weight and eventually I’ll be able to reintroduce P90X2 and have an easier time with it. I dunno. It’s a thought. Fingers crossed!
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Lose 2 lbs per month – FUCK my life, I really don’t want to talk about it, but I suppose it’s better if I do. Long story short, when I weighed myself yesterday morning I’d hit my heaviest weight ever, I number that I swore to myself I wasn’t going to cross: 181 lbs. (Keep in mind that I’m only 5’1″ tall, so that number is not fucking good.) The add-on to this is that while some parts of my body don’t seem terribly out of shape (my arms, for example, are fairly muscular), other parts are just plain unhealthy. I can feel my stomach jiggle when I walk. AND I FUCKING HATE IT.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that, because if I go any further I’ll end up screaming and chucking my Chromebook out the window.
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Goal #2: Be an Author

I’ve mentioned this in a few posts now, but writing has been, for the most part, the thing holding my brain together lately. I enjoy it, I’ve been doing a lot of it, and for the first time in years I am actually on par toward pulling off a word count goal.

That said…there have been a couple of hiccups that have been making me twitch.

Write 500,000 words throughout the year – Word count is not one of the hiccups. My word count has been perfectly fantastic. I believe I am currently somewhere in the avenue of 48% complete of my half-a-mill goal, which is fan-fucking-tastic.

On week 23 my Pacemaker.press wanted me to write 8763 words, and I surpassed that with 10,574 words. On week 24 it wanted me to write 6706 words, and I wrote 10,013. Not too bloody shabby, am I right? Now the real test will be this current week, because all of a sudden Pacemaker has slammed me with an approximately 12k goal. So let’s see what I can pull off, okay?

FYI, my writing attention has been split between Book Three and several different GO fics, atm, but I’m feeling like I’m starting to get some focus, and I’ve been coming up with ideas for Book Three that I think are really going to work out. Fingers crossed!
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Promote published books – Here’s where I, quite honestly, want to punch a wall. I am so frustrated with promotion, you guys have no idea. The general stuff like social media posts is as depressingly ineffective as always, but now I get to add “complete fucking waste of money” to my list as well. I finally got a Book Bub ad set up, and it garnered me precisely NO response. Mind you it was just a short, cheaper promotion, but NO response? Literally NO response, I’m not exaggerating here. Book Bub is supposed to be the GOOD promotion site. It has tons of excellent reviews, and yet my ad got NO response. So now I’m left here to wonder whether the site really isn’t as good as people claim it is, or if there’s something about my book specifically that turns people off. I have a hard time believing that, since I’ve heard tons of excellent things and no bad things about the cover art, and yet… I don’t know, people, what do you think? Because honestly, I’m just enraged right now that I finally took a chance at spending a little bit of money and saw NOTHING for it. That’s all kind of bullshit right there.
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Promote Patreon & exclusive content – I haven’t gotten any Patreon-exclusive content up for June yet, but it’s coming. After completing “In Silence Our Secrets Lie”, I announced that all future AO3 content will be released for early-access to my Patrons first, so there’s going to be plenty of content before you know it. Plus I have more ideas for world-centric shorts from my novels in the works. It’s all about getting them down on the page/screen.
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Work on Author social media – Once I established that I wasn’t going to bother writing a post last week I also didn’t bother to check any numbers, so the ones I report today are going to count for the combined two weeks. In general there’s really not much to report anyway. I’ve been trying to be active on the accounts, but with the climate the way it is right now I just don’t think people are really paying attention to the average person. Whatever the reason, all I can really tell you is that the Twitter account lost one follower and the Instagram account gained eight (hello Good Omens fandom).
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Goal #3: Be a YouTuber

I don’t want to talk about it.

Film/edit/upload – I don’t want to talk about it!
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Promote and Interact (Social Media) – I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!
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Expand website content – I DON’T WANT TO FUCKING TALK ABOUT IT!
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Goal #4: Be Fun!

As you can imagine, being a grouchy, seasonally-affective, allergy-ridden ball of fuss with a list of other issues that she doesn’t even want to share does not make a person all that much fun to be around. That said, I’ve managed to force myself to relax a wee bit over the past few weeks.

Read 50 books throughout the year – I mentioned last time that I’d been reading “As Old as Time”, the second ‘Disney’s Twisted Tales’ book. I finished since then, and I can officially say that it’s my favorite so far. I mean, I’ve only read the two so far, but still, I enjoyed it even more than the first. I liked the author’s take on Belle and the Beast, and the overarching commentary on morality. It was good stuff, is what I’m saying.

Other than that I haven’t really been reading proper books. I got caught up in a few more novel-length fanfictions that were just fantastic, so I once again refuse to feel bad about focusing on them. Some of these stories seriously need to be re-written as original concepts and published, they’re that good.
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Play video games – Games haven’t much been on my radar of late. I find them difficult to focus on, for whatever reason. That said, I did play several games with the family when the cousin-in-law came to visit, including a truly hysterical round of ‘Winter Games’ on the C64 Mini. I’ve also picked here and there at things like ‘Tetris 99’ and, as mentioned previously, I’ve taken to ‘Just Dance 2020’ for my exercise needs recently, but that’s about all that I can report.
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Watch shows/movies – Now, WATCHING stuff? That’s been happening a lot lately, if for no other reason than the weather has been so crap that curling up on the couch is rather comforting. I couldn’t begin to remember half of what we watched over the past two weeks, but off the top of my head we finished the most recent season of ‘Attack on Titan’, watched all three ‘Berserk’ movies, tried a few other random anime on a Funimation trial, showed the little one a few more of our favorite movies, and had a few ridiculous days during which we just binged stupid amounts of YouTube. There’s been a lot of visual consumption, let’s just go ahead and leave it at that.

So yeah, that wasn’t the greatest post, but maybe getting some of my frustrations out will make me feel better? I mean, it hasn’t yet, but maybe later. Either way, it’s done now, so whatever happens happens. I hope you guys are having a better June than I am!

How was your week? Any accomplishments you want to share? Goals you worked hard on? Feel free to share in the comments! ❤

“In Silence Our Secrets Lie” – A Good Omens FanFic – Epilogue

This is it, my friends, this is the official end. Being finished with this story was so bittersweet that I wrote a totally self-indulgent epilogue of nothing but soft, sweet, tender fluff-n-smut romance, and now “In Silence Our Secrets Lie” is officially truly done.

…….

Unless I come up with a decent idea for a sequel, that is.

Hey, you can’t just blame me! I had multiple readers ask me if I was planning one, so there’s definitely a call for it! 😛

Anyway, if you’re the loving, romantic type (and don’t mind a bit of smuttiness as well), please enjoy the last entry to the “Silence” story. And feel free to leave a comment letting me know whether or not you’d like a sequel. ^_~