Totally random question: have you ever begun your day with the sound of someone, somewhere nearby, retching violently in a way that sounds very much as though they’re about to lose a vital organ or two by way of their throat? If you haven’t, I can not-so-proudly say that I’ve got one up on you.
HAPPY MONDAY EVERYONE.
Okay, but seriously, we are at the precise half-point of November, I have been at my present work site for 26 days now, and I am happy to announce that I have not gone stark-raving mad yet. Go me! I ended up doing 22 consecutive days of work (all 12-hour shifts, except for the two that were 13 hours and the one that was 15 hours) before they cottoned on and made me take a few days off. Yes, I did that shit on purpose, because the overtime is fantastic, but if you were go back in time nine years and tell my former self that I’d be doing such a stint, she would have laughed right in your face. My, how the times have changed.
Anyway, living in camp and working positively stupid hours doesn’t leave a lot of time for anything else cool or interesting to be happening in life, so I don’t really have any other excess information to share this week. Thus, let’s go ahead and jump to the goals!
Health
First off, I’m not going to repeat all the same excuses and explanations that I’ve done the past few weeks. You guys know by now that I’m living in a work camp and am therefore restricted to the food that is made available to me. Let’s leave it at that.
That said, I will honestly admit that my willpower has been, hmm….let’s say lacking. There is so much junk food here, you guys. Cookies and pastries and muffins and pop and chips and- Well, you get the point. My psychological ability to avoid such things varies day to day, based on such things as how much caffeine I’ve had, who much water I’ve managed to force down my gullet, what the work day was like, and what shitty thing they’re serving for dinner on any given day. Also, after an extended stint at camp, the cooked food begins to do weird things to my stomach (I suspect it’s the MSG that’s in EVERYTHING), and it becomes physically and emotionally easier to eat the baked goods and packaged junk than the actual prepared meals. That’s not an excuse; that’s genuine facts. My poor stomach, you guys…dear lord.
Anyway, point being that it’s not been the easiest few weeks when it comes to consumption. That said, I’ve been getting better with cramming water into me, which helps with the desire to cram loads of sugar and salt into me, so there is that.
On a more positive note of the physical activity variety, it’s been a long time since I got so many steps so easily. Just walking from my camp room to the dining hall and back is a thousand steps…and I’m not exaggerating there. And that’s to say nothing of the steps I get while actually at work. Plus, earlier last week the area where I was working had a busted elevator…so for three days my coworkers and I had to trek up ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-TWO STAIRS four times a day. To say that I had an overjoyed reaction of divine ecstasy when the elevator was repaired would be an understatement. If there was ever a way to prove to me, without a shadow of doubt, that I am overweight and out of shape, that was definitely it. Wait, this bit was supposed to be positive, wasn’t it? Oh well, you get my meaning. There’s been physical activity. Without me having to go out of my way to perform it.
Creativity
Hoo, wee, creativity ahoy, my good people! Beyond just the stubborn insistence on cramming as much writing in as I possibly can while I’m writing, I had three days off from work this week and spent a good bit of it on things I’ve been dying to do for a while now but could never find the time.
Let’s actually get writing out of the way first this time, because it’s the normal bit that we’re all used to. I’ve continued to write during every possible waking moment when I’m not eating or working, so things are still going pretty well on that front. Mostly I’ve been scribbling scenes for various works in a notebook that I keep with me at all times, but I also caught up on ‘The Prince’s Consort’ and started working on this year’s ‘Ineffable Holiday’ prompt fics (which I compiled myself with suggestions from friends and followers). Last week Pacemaker.press set me the tough but reasonable goal of 13,498 words, and I managed to squeak past it with 13,890 words. Phew!
Moving on to art, by the time I hit my days off at the end of the week I’d been dying to draw for a while. One of the first things that I did was to have one of our little drawing ‘competitions’ with my daughter, and the models of choice were the Cookie characters from ‘Cookie Run Kingdom’. No, I’m not kidding. lol We’re both a little obsessed with the game, and it has fun characters, so we played at picking characters for one another to draw. I’m not going to share all of the ones I drew because it was a three-day process of constant doodling, but here’s one of my favorites of the ones I did:
Then, of course, I’d been positively aching to draw some NSFW stuff for ages, so I indulged in a bit of that. I finished one piece and did most of another, and obviously I’m not going to share the full images here, but I’ll give you a couple of heavily-cropped bits to give you an idea of what’s going on here… *cough cough*
Both of these are firsts for me, regarding the acts that are happening in them, and knowing that, I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out. I’m thinking that I’ll sneak them in to one of my fics somewhere, because I’m quite certain they do a good job of representing some of the scenes I’ve written. ❤
Then we have a brand new project, because apparently I didn’t think that I had enough going on already. *cough*
I’ve decided to start playing my hand at recording narrations of my stories. I started with my 2019 holiday fics because they’re short, and after the first attempt I got some advice from a friend on noise reduction and avoiding those spitty saliva noises you can get from speaking for a long time. I then re-recorded that first fic, and what I wound up with is now uploaded to a new YouTube channel I’ve set up specifically for this one purpose. If you’re interested in checking it out, here’s my very first ever fic narration:
I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out, if I’m being totally honest with myself! There are going to be growing pains, for sure, but I think that I spoke pretty clearly, and I think I’m half-decent at expressing emotion when I narrate. The only thing that I definitely feel like I need work on is the voices/accents for the dialogue bit, but I’m expecting that that will become better and easier as I record more and more. I’ve already got one more recording already set to go, but I still have to edit it. I’m hoping to get it uploaded sooner rather than later, and then hopefully I’ll get a chance to record some more on my next day off (which should be sooner this time than it was last time).
Down-Time
Please see the ‘Creativity’ section above…lol That’s pretty much where all my down-time went last week. I suppose you can’t really call it down-time, except for perhaps the drawing with my daughter, because it was all work of a kind. But it was work that I wanted to do, so there is that…:P
In all seriousness though, I didn’t do a whole lot of reading, watching, or gaming last week. I read a few short fics, but nothing major because I was more focused on writing. The only thing even remotely close to gaming that I did was a few minutes a day of ‘Pokemon Go’ and ‘Cookie Run Kingdom’. And as for watching stuff? I mean…I had Netflix or Prime running most of the weekend because I like background noise, but mostly it was just silly baking shows playing back-to-back while I wrote or drew or what-have-you. Aside from that I watched a few hockey games and a handful of YouTube videos, and that was pretty much it!
That said, and on a related note, Tik Tok is a goddamn dangerous app that I’m going to have to set major restrictions on myself for. I started scrolling a few minutes before bed last night and ended up looking at the clock with utter dismay two hours later. o.o
And that’s pretty much it for another week. I can’t honestly say that I’m not pleased with how the past week went, and I’m hoping for a similar one this week. Though I don’t have any days off this week, so it might not be quite as productive. lol Wish me luck!
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 