2022: The Year of Trying Desperately to Keep It Together (Week 4)

Okay…okay…okay…

YOU GUYS.

Before I get into anything else today, I need to tell you guys about the TikTok I posted yesterday. No, no, seriously, even if you’re not into TikTok, please just…give me a minute.

Okay, so, I haven’t been on TikTok for very long, and I don’t, like…put a huge amount of effort into it or anything; I’m basically just playing around and having a laugh. So as of yesterday morning I had about 150 followers, and my best performing video had approximately 1700 views, which I thought was pretty decent, honestly.

Then, I made a discover in the shed in our backyard… And I thought it was amazingly adorable and hysterical, so I filmed myself showing what I’d found and posted it here. If you have no desire to watch the video or don’t want to download TikTok just to see it, highlight the rest of this paragraph (which I’ve made white to make it invisible) to know what the vid is about: There’s a squirrel living in our shed, and apparently he’s been collecting Tim Horton’s Timbits for AGES because he’s got a metric ass-ton of them gathered in there. XD

So anyway, I post this video, expecting that people will probably get a kick out of it, but not really holding my breath for anything major…

And you guys…as of the moment that I’m writing this, the video has 47.8k views, 6281 likes, and over 400 comments (after subtracting my responses). Not to mention I’m now up over 300 followers, which still isn’t a lot, but it’s double what it was yesterday, sooooo…damn.

DUDES…I am flabbergasted like you wouldn’t believe. That little squirrel and his donut hole hoard is now my best friend. XD

And now that I”m still riding that high, let’s go ahead and look at some goal stuff, shall we?

Goal Set #1: Artistic Fulfilment

Okay, first off, I’m not going to lie…’artistic fulfilment’ was a bit more like ‘agonized desperation to create’ this week. Basically, I wanted to create, and I might even say that I needed to create, but it was as if my brain and body weren’t in sync and things were just refusing to compute in a way that would result in the creation of things. In other words: BLARRRGGGGGG.

Let’s look at art first, because there’s not much to report, but I did attempt to color the drawing that I teased last week, so here’s roughly the same chunk of the drawing, but with the color added:

I’ll admit that when I’d first finished the base layers I wasn’t overly impressed and decided to walk away for a while to give myself some time to breathe away from it. Then, just opening it now so that I could crop this bit off, I’m surprised to say that I’m actually kinda liking it now. I think I should probably still try some shading, but I’m tempted to just say ‘screw it’ and make this the finished thing. I’ll keep away from it for a little while longer though, because I’ve got other stuff to focus on in the meantime.

On the writing side of things, I’m just gonna go ahead and admit that I spent the majority of the week obsessing over one chapter of ‘The Prince’s Consort’, and it wasn’t even what should have been a difficult chapter. It was literally just soft, lovely, romantic fluff, but my brain would not process it. It took me basically the entire week to write that one chapter, and my head was aching by the end of it. I don’t know if that’s a sign that I am well and truly done with the story, or if I’ve just got a raging case of pandemic brain, or what… But anyway, the result of that week of literary agony is that I only managed to write a total of 7698 words over the course of the week. That’s not great considering Pacemaker.press wanted me to write 12,803 words, but I’m giving myself a bit of a pass since the words refused to flow.

In other artistic-type news, I finished my first gem painting! It’s…not the best picture, because it’s a fairly small one made from a portrait with far too many details (a Star Wars poster), but it still looks pretty neat nonetheless, and I thoroughly enjoyed the process. I definitely want to do more of them, but next time I’ll probably find something bigger so that there are more gems, and thus clearer detail.

Goal Set #2: Physical Focus

On the health and fitness side of the world, I took a somewhat slow-and-steady approach to things last week. Rather than leap head-first into a dozen different things like I normally do, I did my best to relax and congratulate myself for small victories throughout the day. For instance: drinking lots of water, avoiding excess sugar, skipping dessert when I genuinely wasn’t hungry, and so forth. There were no measurable results, but I was working on just the concept of feeling good for those little accomplishments.

Having survived that, I made a plan for this current week, which basically boils down to “get your ass moving and do some exercise, one way or the other”. That could just mean walking in circles around the house until I hit my 10k steps for the day, or traditional exercise, whichever I’m feeling that day. I did start the 645 program on Beachbody today, and I did enjoy it, so I’m going to try to do that for a while, but I’m refusing to mentally commit to it, because that way lies giving up and feeling like a failure.

Goal Set #3: Self-Promotion/Branding

You guys, I don’t even know what to say about this one for last week…lol

I mean…by the time I’m getting to this part of the post (I got distracted for a bit when our fridge stopped working…yikes!) I’ve hit 440 followers on TikTok, which is a direct result of the MORE THAN 60k hits my vid from yesterday has gotten. That’s…that’s quite a thing right there. It’s also mostly pure luck, so I don’t know if I can necessarily count it under the umbrella of ‘self-promotion and branding’.

But you know what? I’ll take it. XD

All the other social stuff is basically the same as last week, and I haven’t sold any books or anything, so I can’t really claim that I successfully promoted myself or branded myself. The successes of the week really come down to pure, unadulterated luck, and that’s really all there is to it!

Goal Set #4: Mental Wellbeing

This one was a bit of a rollercoaster throughout the week, and more than anything that’s simply because the world is a weird fucking place right now, and sometimes my brain refuses to process that in a healthy way. This could easily be why I was having such a difficult time writing last week, but I digress.

I did my best to keep my mental wellbeing in mind throughout the week, and sometimes I succeeded, while other times I just plain didn’t. In both cases, I did survive, so I suppose that’s really all that matters in the end.

When it comes to reading, I mostly just picked at a bit of fan-fiction here and there. When it comes to games, I played and completed ‘Oxenfree’, including getting all of the trophies (it’s a cute, short game…I rather enjoyed it). When it comes to consumable visual media, hubby and I finished ‘Hellbound’ (which broke my brain a little bit), and started watching the final season of ‘Brooklyn 99’ (which never fails to crack me the hell up). We also watched the fourth ‘Matrix’ movie, which…I mean, it had a few entertaining scenes, but mostly it felt like a poorly-written shameless cash grab. But that’s just me.

So that was the week, and if it feels like my narrative kinda slipped and got lazy as the post went on, well…yeah, it definitely did. Not gonna lie, I had a bit of an exhausting day – both mentally and physically – and I’m only just finishing this post after having started it nearly ten hours ago. Don’t worry, nothing major happened or anything, I’m just genuinely beat in more ways than one. So, if you don’t mind I’m going to wander out into the kitchen now and put together a yummy snack that we can have during the hockey game that starts in about an hour and a half, and then I’m gonna crash like a bus driven by a dog. Cheers!

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! ❤

2022: The Year of Trying Desperately to Keep It Together (Week 3)

It’s totally Tuesday, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s 100% Tuesday. So…the first year of the month is going well and is totally being kept organized and efficient. >.>

Sue me, my brain hasn’t been working correctly lately. lol

So, normally I would talk about a few random things that happened throughout the week before I get into the goal stuff, but this week the few things that I was going to mention actually fall in well with the goal stuff, so I’m going to just go ahead and roll into it. I’m sure you’re alright with that? Okay, good.

Goal Set #1: Artistic Fulfilment

I can honestly say that I’m 95% pleased with the way artistic fulfilment went this past week. Starting off with something simple and a bit silly, I am now roughly 4/5ths of the way done with my gem painting project. I don’t know if I’d necessarily file that one under ‘artistic fulfilment’, since it doesn’t boil down to much more than ‘paint by numbers’ with one dot of color at a time, but I don’t care, I’m counting it. It’s art in the broad sense, it’s fun, it helps me turn my brain off for a while, and you end up getting something cool to hang on your wall out of it. I am definitely going to be getting more of them, without a doubt.

Moving on to something more, well…more, we have the writing, for which I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that I once again did not hit my weekly word count. The good news is that I’m getting closer and closer to it, so surely I’ll manage to hit it soon! Pacemaker.press wanted me to write 9348 words for last week, and I wound up finishing off the week with 8971 words. And, if I”m being quite honest, it likely would have been a lot more if it hadn’t been for the fact that I got my Covid booster shot on Thursday and my body didn’t like it. Whether it was because I was a bit dehydrated, or already hadn’t been getting quite enough sleep, or whether my system just doesn’t enjoy vaccines or whatever, the booster shot hit me like a ton of bricks. I got it Thursday afternoon, and by late that evening I was laying in bed, watching ‘Encanto’ and debating whether it was worth the gargantuan quantities of energy it would take to drag myself up vertical and go to the bathroom. Seriously, I was exhausted beyond the telling of it, and my whole body was sore as though I’d had the crap kicked out of me in an MMA fight. I spent damn near an entire 24 hours just laying down, watching things and reading until I passed out. It actually may have been a good time to get a bit of writing done, if my brain had been functioning in the slightest.

All that said, just under 9k words is nothing to sneeze at. And, even better, most of those words went toward ‘The Other World: Book Three’! No, really! I got three whole chapters written for it! I swear! XD

Lastly, on the artistic front, I not only finished the piece that I mentioned last week, but I also began and made wide strides toward the completion of another!

Firstly, the piece I mentioned last week. It is a gift for a fellow fanfic writer who goes by ‘Verdant Vulpus’. Their ‘The Trouble With Being a Demon’ series is one of my favorites, and not the least of the reasons is because having Book!Crowley and TV!Crowley together in the same story is just wonderfully fun and fantastic. So, bearing that in mind, I drew Vulpus the two demons hanging out, trying to look cool and suave for their angels:

I’m quite pleased with the way it turned out! I considered attempting to color it, but I’m just sooooo bad with color, and I didn’t want to ruin my satisfaction with it. 😛

Now, generally when I manage to pull off something half-decent like this, my desire to ART hibernates for a little while…but not in this case. Pulling the demon boys together inspired me to do something I’d been thinking about doing for ages. That is, taking some of my long fics and compiling them into downloadable ebook files, complete with cover art drawn by myself. :O

I decided to start with the one that really started it all, as far as the novel-length fics go: ‘In Silence Our Secrets Lie’. I’d had an image in my head for forever for how I wanted the cover to look, and so I finally put stylus to tablet and sketched something out. The next thing I knew I was also doing the line-art, and then I was sharing it to my Patreon! This one I will be coloring – or at least, attempting to – since it’s for a ‘book’ cover’, therefore I’m only going to share a small clip of it here for now.

What do you think? ^_^ I chose this part to share because I’m especially pleased with Crowley’s face, which is supposed to look very tired and kinda destroyed, but also a bit relieved because he’s just been rescued (don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler…it happens in the first chapter). It came out precisely the way I wanted it, and I especially like Aziraphale’s wing wrapping around his back. I’m honestly grinning like an idiot just looking at it. I really hope that I don’t fuck it up trying to color it. :O

Goal Set #2: Physical Focus

In terms of physical health and the like, I must first bring your attention back to my booster shot and the fact that it caused me to basically lose a day and a half of the week. Do I regret getting the booster? Absolutely not. I am 100% pro-vaccination. I’m just stating facts: the shot hit me like a truck full of bricks straight to the face, so I spent the second half of Thursday and the entirety of Friday pretty much sedentary. So, that was one issue.

Well, that was the only issue, really…unless you count the fact that it’s been uncomfortably cold this past week, so I’ve been spending a lot of time snuggled up under a couch blanket, trying to keep warm. Which is a nice way of saying that I haven’t been doing what one might call exercise. Like, at all. I did do one of Sharona Hill’s dancing vids, but that was it because – let’s be blunt about it – I was just to bloody lazy. And sooky. And contrary.

Lord I hate Winter. Why do New Year’s resolutions and the like have to take place in the middle of Winter? I’d do so much better if these kinds of things happened in mid-Spring.

ANYWAY.

The consumption side of things has been a bit more to the positive side of things. It’s difficult not to shove every available morsel down my throat in Winter, but I’m beginning to relearn how to restrain myself when I’m not genuinely hungry, and to make better choices when I am. Hard habits to break, but it’s getting better…I chose yogurt over a chocolate-covered granola bar the other day. 😛

Goal Set #3: Self-Promotion/Branding

Well, I will say this: I did get a little taste last week of what can happen when you actually show off your books… I did a joke-y TikTok about my three published novels, shared it to Twitter as well, and immediately someone who had stumbled across the post went and bought all three. To say that I was pleasantly surprised would definitely be an understatement.

So I obviously turned around and repeated the results, right? Well…uh, no. No I didn’t. I, uh…I didn’t even try. No excuse for that, really. But obviously I should at least attempt to do so. *cough cough*

As far as other things go, most of the social media accounts have been pretty stagnant of late, which isn’t a huge surprise since I haven’t been posting much to them. And the YouTube channels have been even more stagnant, mostly because the basement is bloody freezing right now and neither my husband nor I want to be done there. It’s just not enjoyable. We’re going to have to at some point, but for now we’re being stubborn because COLD. Goddamn cold!

Goal Set #4: Mental Wellbeing

For the most part I’m calling this section a win for last week. There were a couple of rough days – one of them being the day that I spent feeling like I’d been beaten up – but overall it was pretty decent.

I spent a fair bit of time last week reading, although I have to admit that it was entirely fan-fiction. No regrets though; it was all excellent fan-fiction.

I also spent a fair bit of time watching movies and shows, particularly while I was doing a great impression of an invalid. I finally watched Encanto, which I absolutely adored, followed by the entire last season of Final Space, which is a strange animated show that can’t decide if it wants to be funny or heartbreaking. Hubby and I watched the third season of Cobra Kai, finished off F is for Family, and have gotten about halfway through Hellbound, which is a strange Korean horror-show that I can’t decide whether I’m enjoying or not. The overall theme seems to be a strong commentary on the dangers of blindly following ‘authority’, but it also has weird religious connotations that I can’t seem to get a grip on, because the moral seems to be ‘God sucks and is a ridiculously unfair douchebag’. Maybe that’s what they’re going for, I dunno. It just seems odd to me.

I continue to spent an inordinate amount of time on TikTok, although it has been lessening over the past few days. I’m tempted to say that the app is a terrible choice for my mental wellbeing, but I can’t honestly say that because it makes me smile and introduces me to people with similar issues to mine. So, screw it, I’m counting it as good for my mental health.

So what’s the final judgement on week 3? Well, writing and drawing were good, physical and health stuff was somewhat passable, self-promo was no better or worse than it ever is, and mental health was as good as can be expected under the circumstances. That all works out to a positive, right? Right. Go me!

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! ❤

2022: The Year of Trying Desperately to Keep It Together (Week 1)

There’s a distinct possibility that I may have mentioned this before in the past, but the holidays are a rough time for me. Not emotionally, because I love the holidays, and I have a wonderfully family. Physically and mentally though? Total dumpster fire. I love the holidays, but they’re an exceptionally busy time, not to mention a very social time, and for a high-functioning introvert such as myself that means that I end up feeling like a writhing ball of fatigue and unproductive slime by the end of it. My brain goes to mush and I have an extremely difficult time working myself back into some kind of moderately-capable mindset again.

For example, did you know that the new year actually happened a full ten days ago? I’m certain that you did, but my brain evidently didn’t get the memo. Hence, here we are on January 10th, and I am finally – finally – giving you guys an update on LIFE.

Fair warning: this is likely going to be a long one.

First of all, let’s chat a bit about the end of 2021. I’m not going to get into a ton of detail regarding my goals from last year because:

a) There’s not much to say.
b) You probably aren’t that fussed to know.
c) I’ll just depress myself, which isn’t exactly productive.

So let’s just go ahead and accept the fact that, for the most part, I didn’t do bugger all in December. I was focused almost exclusively on the holidays, on enjoying time with my family (both intimate and extended), and on doing my best to breathe and block out the raging, rampant negativity of the world we currently live in. I’ll not mention health, other than to admit that I hit a heartbreaking new high on the scale by the end of the month. I’ll not mention writing and art, other than to say that I forewent both for a while in favor of baking, watching Christmas specials, and doing random fun things with my family to keep us busy leading up to the holidays. I will mention ‘free time’, because I carved out a lot of it in the form of the aforementioned Christmas specials and random fun things with my family. Also, hubby and I played ‘Lego DC Villains’ until we unlocked the Platinum trophy, which is as close to doing something productive as I got throughout the entire month.

With that stuff aside, let’s talk about a few of the highlights of the holiday season.

Primarily, the important thing is that the little one (who isn’t so little anymore) had a great time. She was very excited for the overwhelming majority of her presents (with, perhaps, the exception of the bras I wrapped up by themselves just to torment her), and was just as excited to see hubby and I open our presents. All three of us got video games, collectibles, books, and geeky clothing, which really goes to show just how terrifyingly similar we all are in a number of ways.

I also got Crowley and Aziraphale Funko Pops, which just goes to show how much hubby loves me, since he claims that my undying obsession with ‘God Omens’ has all but made him hate it. 😛

We had visits from both Jason’s family and mine, and spent New Years with friends and two very sweet puppers, and all in all we closed out 2021 in the most positive way possible, considering what a shit-show the year was in general.

So with that said, let me officially wave good-bye to 2021 and kindly inform it that I’m perhaps just a teeny bit happy to see the back of it.

Then we come to 2022, and all the good intentions that I had for the beginning of it.

Right from the get-go, I’d previously ordered a new planner from PersonalPlanner.com, because I absolutely adore their custom planner options, and though I’m not always 100% for keeping up with my tracking, my planner is the only thing that keeps my scatterbrained tendencies from completely devouring my life. I also discovered that you can fully customize your planner’s cover with your own image, sooo…

Yeah, don’t even try to tell me that you’re surprised.

Anyway, the point is that I got my planner, filled out a bunch of pages, decorated the ‘Books to Read’ and ‘Things to Watch’ pages, and was totally set to jump into the new year with both feet. And then…it, uh…it didn’t happen. No excuses or anything. I just didn’t do anything. I tried to write, and I kinda read a bit, and I fully intended to get 10k steps per day, and so on and so forth.

I just didn’t.

What I did do was force myself to relax and move past my mental obsession with starting things at the right time (first of the year, first of the month, first of the week, etc etc). Which brings us to now: a random Monday morning, ten days into 2022. As good a time as any.

Herein we shall discuss the goals for 2022, and my fervent hope that I actually, you know…accomplish some of them.

So here we go.

Goal Set #1: Artistic Fulfilment

This goal set encompasses two major aspects: Writing and Art.

When it comes to Writing the goals are pretty straightforward. Firstly, I intend to write half a million words throughout the year. This is actually down from last year, in which I intended to wrote 550,000 words. That extra 50k proved to be just a bit too ambitious, as the end of the year slowed me down and I barely managed to scrape past the 500k line. I decided, therefore, to stick with the half-a-mill this year. it’s not that I don’t want to shoot for higher stars; I just don’t want to overextend myself, especially considering some of the other things I hope to give some focus to.

I more specific terms, there are a number of particular things I intend to write in 2022, not the least of which is ‘The Other World: Book Three‘. It’s certainly time I hauled my ass up out of the gutter that it has fallen into and get that bloody thing done. But that’s not to say that I intend to abandon my forays into fan-fiction, oh no. I have a list, and I currently have that list being voted on by my readers and social media peeps. In fact, if you’d like to be a part of the voting process, you can check out the poll right here. The results thus far have been somewhat surprising. 😀

On the other hand, when it comes to Art, the goals are much more broad. I want to do my drawing, learn how to color my drawings better, and want to also feed my artistic side with things like adult coloring books and gem paintings (which is something my mother got me into by giving me one for Christmas…it’s highly addicting). There are no major specifics here, although I’m definitely hoping to spark some more NSFW art vibes in the near future. Maybe I’ll do some gift art for some of my favorite fan-fic writers.

As a final note on this set of goals – which kinda combines the two aspects – I’d like to continue playing around with podfics this year. It can be fun and rewarding, even if I haven’t exactly made waves in the community yet. I’ll probably put the rest of the holiday fics aside for the time being and move on to one of my longer fics instead, but I’m not going to dedicate myself to anything just yet because it is definitely a time-consuming hobby.

Goal Set #2: Physical Focus

This one is quite broad and basically boils down to: DO BETTER. Because goodness knows I’ve been letting things get out of hand more and more as time goes on.

One specific point I can make here is that I want to lose some weight, especially after packing more on over the holidays. For the sake of being completely transparent, I managed to hit 190 lbs before the end of 2021, which is absolutely outrageous for my 5’1″ frame. I can honestly say that I don’t look like I weigh that much, but I definitely feel like I do. My knees are shot (one more than the other), my belly is holding far too much fat, and I’m tired, like…ALL THE TIME. So, taking on whichever methods such a thing requires, I am setting a goal to be down to at least 150 lbs by this time next year. That will still actually be heavier than what my body is realistically designed for, but I want to set myself the kind of goal that I actually have a chance of achieving, so…there.

This goal set may change throughout the year, depending on what I have going on, but for the time being I’m focusing on water, steps, sleep, and short exercise programs – of which the current is #MBF, which stands for ‘Muscle Burns Fat’. I’ll reassess each month and see where I think I need to improve or change things up to have better results.

Goal Set #3: Self-Promotion/Branding

I almost hate to make this particular goal set, because this is something that I am ridiculously, monstrously bad at, but I do want to get better. In a myriad of ways.

First and foremost, vying for attention at the top of the list are Author Tracey and YouTuber Tracey. Of course, promoting those two versions of myself require actually having something to promote, so there will need to be books written and videos filmed. These things are priority.

Coming in underneath are Twitter Tracey and Instagram Tracey, which are closely linked to Author Tracey and YouTuber Tracey. They require time and attention, but are also paramount in the promotion of Author Tracey and YouTuber Tracey, so that will need to be taken into account.

Sliding in beneath those is a relative newcomer to the fray: TikTok Tracey. She’s a fledgling, stumbling thing, but she is highly amused and easy to lose time with, so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Then there’s always Artist Tracey, Musical Tracey, and the oft-ignored but all-important Employee Tracey. They all deserve their own kind of promotion as well, if I’m to continue to exist as a moderately mentally-maintained human being. All things to keep in mind.

The parameters for this one are going to be vague, at least for now. I’ll, uh…I’ll figure out how to go about reporting my successes or failures later.

Goal Set #4: Mental Wellbeing

This goal set was previously known as “Free-Time”, and is being re-branded to represent basically anything that allows me to relax and keep myself from having a complete and utter nervous breakdown, or otherwise experience massive burnout.

This goal breaks down as: do shit that makes you smile and recharge. These can be things such as reading the dozens of books on my TBR list (including ebooks and audio books), watching shows or movies that I’ve been meaning to, playing video games I’ve neglected, or whatever else I feel I need at any given time in order to turn off my brain and allow myself to get a bit of a reset.

I’m putting this on my goals list because I have a rather destructive all-or-nothing mentality that tends to result in my going for weeks at a time without STOPPING and allowing myself to TAKE A MOMENT and just ENJOY SOME SHIT. So yeah. Making a goal to make a point to not do that.

Okay. So, now that we’ve finally made our way to this point, you may have noticed that I sneaked a “Week 1” in the title of this post. That implies an update, right? Right! So, although I did, for the most part, absolutely bugger all for the first nine days of 2022, let’s take a quick look at what I may have managed to sneak in concerning my goals for the coming year.

Goal Set #1: Artistic Fulfilment

The main issue here was not a lack of ideas coming in to the new year…it was a lack of the ability to get my brain to work with those ideas. Multiple times in the first nine days of 2022 I sat down with the full intention to write. After all, I’m only a few chapters from the end of ‘The Prince’s Consort’, and I’ve got seven more holiday prompts to write before I can wave goodbye to December’s ‘Ineffable Holiday’ challenge. Yet every time I sat down with my laptop in those nine days, my brain seemed to become a complete and utter blank. In fact, I think if I could go back and make a chart showing the hours I spent actually physically typing words compared to the hours I spent sitting, staring at my Chromebook’s screen, it would look as though I was actually falling asleep with the device on my lap.

(Which, let’s be honest, I may have actually done a couple of times.)

Going by the random nature of my Pacemaker.press challenge tracker, I should have written roughly 10,131 words in those first nine days, but what I actually wrote was 5619 words, which you may notice is barely more than half. I’m really hoping that my writer’s brain wakes up soon, because I’d prefer not to repeat that kind of performance too many times this early in the year.

What I wrote was entirely fan-fiction, as I attempt to catch up on the several weeks of missed updates I incurred over the month of December. Don’t worry though; I have plans to start heavy work on ‘The Other World: Book Three’ this week. I swear.

As far as art goes, my brain was even less helpful in the first bit of the year. I tried sketching something one day, and doing a digital piece another day, and both attempts were massive failures in every sense of the word. My fingers and inner visualization are out of sync, it seems. Here’s hoping they find their way to working together again sometime soon.

Goal Set #2: Physical Focus

When I implied that I did basically nothing for the first nine days of the year, I wasn’t exaggerating. I hardly moved, if I’m being honest. There was a lot of lounging on the sofa, trying to convince my brain and body that they wanted to team up and get something done. Thus, my physical ‘focus’ was all but nonexistent.

Things began to pick up, however, yesterday. I finally managed to drag myself out of bed at a reasonable time, had a glass of Pre-Workout, and kicked into a lower-body strength-training exercise on Beachbody. And let me tell you, it whooped my ass. By that evening my legs were killing me, and by the time I woke up this morning I was fairly confident that I had crippled myself. Even as we speak, my legs are stretched out on the couch and feel like stiff pieces of abused rubber. Yet, I still managed to get through today’s core exercise! So go me!

I’ve been drinking lots of water and working hard to avoid late night snacks, but I expect it’s going to take a while to reverse the mess I got my body into over the holidays.

Goal Set #3: Self-Promotion/Branding

On this one I don’t really have anything worth reporting yet, because I haven’t really made any visible attempt to actually work on it yet. The best I can tell you at the moment is that I’ve taken ‘before’ notes of my social media numbers and have played around a bit with the options available on TikTok.

More next week, perhaps, when I’ve actually worked on it a tad.

Goal Set #4: Mental Wellbeing

Now this one I can actually say that I accomplished in those first nine days, because relaxing is pretty much all that I did successfully. As previously mentioned, hubby and I destroyed a Lego game, which was the first time we’d really played a co-op game together in quite some time.

We also watched several shows and movies, including the second season of ‘The Witcher’, the entire season of ‘Squid Game’, the silly and fun ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’, and the big-dumb-fun ‘Red Notice’. I thoroughly enjoyed them all, although watching ‘The Witcher’ has just made me believe all the more that I require Henry Cavill in my lie.

I didn’t read any books, but I did read a book’s worth of fan-fiction, and it was all lovely and delightful and delicious.

And finally, I worked several times on the gem painting that my mother got me for Christmas. I haven’t got a huge amount done on it so far, but it’s strangely soothing, so I’m enjoying it a lot more than I expected to. I may even work on it some more tonight, when I’ve completed this post.

Speaking of completing this post…I believe I may have! It was a long one for sure, but I had a bit of catching up to do. And now that I’ve done just that, I believe it’s time for me to stretch, get a glass of water, and see if I can accomplish something a bit more. Wish me luck, my dears! I hope everything looks pleasant on your horizon as well!

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! ❤

Plans & Goals 2021: Week 36

Firstly, I just want to address the fact that I was looking at my day planner today and almost gagged at how little of it is left to use…i.e. how close we’re actually getting to the end of 2021. HOW DO THESE THINGS HAPPEN, YOU GUYS?! My life is disappearing behind me in the blink of an eye! *faints like a Victorian damsel*

Secondly, yes, I know this post is a day late. It is so because of the continuation of what I shall now move on to below…

Which is, thirdly, that some of my reports might be a bit sparse this week, but it is not because I haven’t been productive. On the contrary, I’ve been extremely productive…just not specifically on the topic of these goals. You recall when I previously talked about the documentaries that hubby and I were taking part in? Well the director asked us to also record some footage of our collection for use as b-roll stuff, which we were of course more than happy to provide. The only problem was that our collection (and, that is to say, the entire basement in general) was a disaster which could very nearly be described as biblical in nature. Therefore, hubby and I pulled up our metaphorical sock garters, hoarded a fridge worth of energy drinks, and put a massive push on to finally reconstruct our Nerd-vana.

Nearly a bloody week later, and the basement looks better than it has since we first started working on it years ago. I am not only pleased (and exhausted), but also immensely proud of the amount of work we’ve gotten done. I can’t even tell you guys. I’m actually really annoyed with myself for not thinking to take ‘Before’ pictures, because trust me, the difference is like night and day. Not to mention the fact that doing the hardcore clean-up resulted in the clearing of several shelves, so we’ve been happily opening stuff that has been sitting in boxes for ages in order to fill those shelves.

Which brings us to last night, when we decided to go live (on YouTube, for the first time, instead of Instagram) to chat, update people, and open things! It was fun, and was the first time we’d actually done anything on the channel in ages, so if you’re interested in checking it out now, after the fact, you can do so right here.

And now that I’ve explained what has been going on for the past 4-5-ish days, let’s take a look at these poor, neglected goals.

Health

Okay, let’s talk about health…let’s see…where to start…?

Well, for one thing, my eating habits have been less than stellar but also not as bad as they’ve been in the past. Most of the issue is due to the work hubby and I have been putting in, which tends to lend itself to random snacking and poorer meal choices in the name of ease and speed. That’s been less of a deal than one might think, since the amount of work we’ve been doing also equates to extra calories burned than what we would normally, but also there’s been lots of crackers and cookies and bread and the aforementioned energy drinks, soooo…..

I did do three days worth of ’10 Rounds’ last week, and it was quite good, but I’m thinking that I may have to restart it once we have all of this basement stuff behind us, because my efforts thus far haven’t exactly been well-organized. Two days one week, three days the next…yeah, when we get the basement filming out of the way and things get more back to normal I’ll definitely have to restart the program so that I don’t end up inadvertently murdering myself with exhaustion. 😛

On another health-related note… Without going into too much detail (because it’s no one’s business, and also you guys probably don’t really want to know…lol), back in May I went cold turkey on a particular type of medication that I’d been taking for years. Don’t worry, this is with my doc’s knowledge and encouragement, but of course going off any medication that you’ve been taking for years can have it’s side effects. That said, I am happy to announce that I just recently began to see my body turning around from those side effects, and things are starting to properly even back out for me, physically and mentally. I’m quite pleased with the results thus far, and look forward to never taking that particular type of medication ever again. 😛

Creativity

Well, first of all, I’ll go ahead and let you know that I, frustratingly, got absolutely no art worked on last week. Not a sketch, nor any lineart, nor any coloring. No art at all. This is mostly the result of spending four straight days basically living in the basement and taking little to no time to just sit down and relax. Not that I’m complaining, because DAMN have we done some good work, but yeah, that’s the long and short of it. I’m hoping to be able to find the time to work on some art this week, once all the recording is done for what is needed for the documentaries.

As far as writing, I definitely got more done with words than with drawings, though I also definitely fell short of my Pacemaker.press goal for the week. Pacemaker wanted me to write 9799 words, which should have been easily done, but because of all the time spent working on the basement I only ended up with 8720 words for the week. That said, many of those words went toward preparing for October, which hosts one of fandom’s most ridiculous celebrations: Kinktober. Yeah. Don’t judge me. I’ve already written stories for ‘Hair Kink’ and ‘Bondage’ and there are 29 more prompts to go. I full intend to post a short for every day of October, though if you’re on my Patreon you’ll get access to each story as it’s written, so that’s something to think about if you’re a thirsty bitch like me. *cough cough*

Down-time

I’m sure you’ll have established by now that down-time is a thing that didn’t really exist for most of last week. There was a bit though, before the work really got going.

Reading, as you may have guessed, was confined to fanfiction as usual. I read an adorable story called ‘Written in the Stars’, in which Crowley invents horoscopes specifically to communicate with Aziraphale, plus a ridiculous and fun smutty piece called ‘Lost and Found’, in which Crowley is an emerg doctor who helps Aziraphale with a…specific kind of embarrassing issue.

Watching was a bit more horror-centric. Early in the week we watched ‘The Initiation’, which is an older slasher following a sorority girl with broken memories about an incident in her past. It was cheesy at points, and the sorority stuff was foolish, but it was dumb fun starring the same girl who plays Princess Vespa in ‘Spaceballs’.

We also watched ‘Demon of Paradise’, which had me cackling at how bad the monster’s costume was. It was something of a ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ rip-off about an aquatic reptile-man-creature being awoken by illegal dynamite fishers in Hawaii. It may have been standard fare for the year in which it was made, but the costume really made it. I almost died laughing when we first saw the creature’s face, and then when he came out of the water so we could see his whole body…dear lord. They hardly even tried. lol

Finally, we watched a newer horror flick: ‘Malignant’. There have been a lot of feelings on both sides of the fence for this one, but I personally enjoyed it. A woman starts seeing murders as they happen after her asshole boyfriend beats her up. Personally I thought the explanation for everything was a bit obvious, but the way it was portrayed was pretty unique and interesting. I can see why people would be divisive about the whole thing, but I personally enjoyed it.

Then we have Playing, which I actually do have a report for for this week! As hubby has been getting closer to finishing up ‘Hades’, I’ve been getting into playing it. I haven’t gotten super-far yet, because I rather suck and it is one of those games that requires playing, dying, repeating, over and over again, but it is ridiculously fun so it’s all good! I hope to play some more of it this week, if I can drag Jason away from it again. 🙂

And with that we are basically halfway through September, which is soooo hard to believe. Does anyone else want to work with me to discover a way to stop time? You can even take all the credit; I just want to enjoy the spoils. 😛

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! ❤

Plans & Goals 2021: Week 35

WOW, you guys… I know I mentioned it last week, but now that it’s actually happened I really can’t believe that Summer is over. I’m a little morose over it, if I’m being truly honest! I love Fall as well, and I tolerate Winter because I adore cozy couch blankets and hot chocolate, but it’s still quite sad to see Summer go.

I know the kid feels the same, anyway, because she nearly had a breakdown this morning when she realized that tomorrow is the first day of school. lol

On the upside, Summer ending means significantly less social outings. And, okay, I can see where that statement might make me sound like a bit of an antisocial bitch, but let me explain! For one thing, less social outings will mean significantly less alcohol and super-junky-food consumption. For another, it will mean less money (that we don’t really have) spent on frivolous stuff (like the aforementioned alcohol and junk food). For a third thing, well…the fact of the matter is simply that I’m a fairly-high-functioning introvert. I enjoy being social, but afterwards I truly require a significant bit of time to myself to recharge, and it’s been hard to get that with the amount of stuff we’ve had going on lately. So I’m honestly a bit relieved to know that I’m going to be able to just relax by myself more often in the coming days.

(Plus, the weather cooling down means I get to get back into hot baths…<3 ❤ ❤ ❤ <3)

With that said, I don’t really have much to report this week that is outside the topics of the three goal sections, so let’s just go ahead and move on, shall we?

Health

OKAY. SO. So. Hopefully this is the last the (for a while, anyway) that you’ll hear me start this section by stating that I’m not going to lie about it. *cough cough*

Basically, it comes down to the fact that it was the last week of the Summer, and was capped off by visiting some of hubby’s family for one of the little ones’ birthday party. What this resulted in, as you may have already put together, was a disgusting amount of food, followed by a night of inebriation. And, well, long story short: I’m pretty sure over the course of less than 48 hours I consumed a week’s worth of calories in cupcakes alone.

Don’t worry. I felt suitably disgusted with myself afterwards.

I did start a new exercise program last week, in the form of Beachbody’s ’10 Rounds’. It’s a boxing-based program that features two ‘air boxing’ and three ‘weight-training’ videos per week for six weeks. So far I really like it, and I’m surprised by how many calories I’m burning on the boxing days, considering that it’s pretty low impact (any lower-body movement is mostly shuffling, stepping, and the occasional squats and lunges). It gets a big thumbs up from me because too much high impact stuff murders my legs right now, especially my pathetic old knees. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back into higher-impact stuff eventually, but right now having a high-calorie-burn option that doesn’t involve a lot of jumping around is a lifesaver.

That said, I only actually did two of the videos last week, partially because of the stuff going on, but also because I could hardly walk after the ‘leg day’ vid. Sweet jeebas, my thighs were sore! That’s a good thing though, I suppose. 😛

So, long story short, I was sickened by myself enough this past weekend to bully myself into eating more realistically going forward, and now that I can walk without crying again I’ve moved on to video number 3 in ’10 Rounds’. Wish me luck. Like, all of the luck. I feel like I’m probably going to need it. XD

Creativity

First of all, I just want to say that I’m actually genuinely confused to be sitting here, typing this, about to tell you that I only finished one piece of art this past week. I honestly could have sworn that I did more than that. I even picked up a new sketchbook early last week, with every intention of working on a few more DTIYS sketches. And yet…here I am, telling you that I only finished one piece of art this past week. And it was one that was already mostly done. $:\$

Anyway, I guess there really isn’t much for it. I worked on my Season 2 Celebration pic by finishing up the coloring. I had every intention of shading it as well, and in fact I did try to shade it as well…but it wound up looking horrible because I am so absolutely awful at working out where shadows should be. Sooooo. Yeah. I deleted the shading layer and just went with the flat coloring. I’m still more-or-less happy with it, but I’m definitely going to work out a better plan of attack for the next piece I do.

ANYWAY (again), here’s the finished piece:

On the writing side of things, I must confess to not hitting my Pacemaker.press goal for the week. I definitely tried, but I hit a bit of a block midway through the week, and then we spent the weekend with family so I wasn’t really getting anything done there. All in all, though, it was still a pretty decent week for word count. Pacemaker wanted 13,553 words, and I finished off the week with 10,518. Nothing to sneeze at, for sure.

Because of the block – which hit me a bit like a brick upside the head – I didn’t get much done in the way of the WIPs that I should be working on, but I have seemed to manage to break the block by asking for prompt ideas on Twitter. I got several fun-sounding ones (which I’ll definitely be saving for later), but one in particular really grabbed and shook me, and I now have about three quarters of a short-story done, which I’m quite pleased with. Once I finish the other quarter-ish bit, I’ll go back over to the more important files and see if I can get my brain working on them again.

Down-Time

Reading:

You know what I’m gonna say. So just shut it. 😛

For your information, though… One of the fics I read last week was ‘A Time You May Embrace‘, and it gets an enthusiastic recommendation from me. It’s a longer-short (about 25k words) in which Heaven and Hell decide that Crowley and Aziraphale will wed in order to form a ‘merger’ of sorts between the two sides. C & A are flabbergasted by this, though they do end up working out that, yes, they do both want to get married…they’re just not willing to do it the way their former sides want them to. (Warning for eventual smut…:D)

I also finished re-reading ‘The Trouble With Being a Demon‘…which is honestly a 143k excuse to have the show versions of the bois and the book versions of the bois all fucking one another in a variety of ways. That said, it’s a lot sweeter and more emotional than I’m making it sound. *cough* If you enjoy smutty stuff, a bit of humor, and some EMOTION, I definitely recommend it. Plus I also adore the artwork the author (as well as others) has done for it.

Playing:

I’m thinking really, really hard, but I don’t think I played a single game last week. I’m finding that really difficult to believe, but no matter how hard I bend my brain, I can’t come up with anything. Remind me to sit my ass down and relax with something fun some time this week.

Watching:

There wasn’t much in the way of viewing last week either, but we did watch the final ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’ movie, and my brain is only slightly less gooey than it was when I watched the original series back in the day. The movies definitely have a more upbeat ending, and there are a few concepts that are absolutely represented in a more logical manner, but there’s still quite a bit of “What the literal fuck”-ery. Basically, don’t watch this one unless you’re happy to establish your own thoughts, explanations, and conclusions as to what has happened and what things mean. If you’re looking for definitive answers, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

Other than that, the only thing I can really recall watching last week was a couple of episodes of a show called ‘A.P. Bio’. It’s a comedy about a philosophy professor who gets knocked down to teaching high school biology and dedicates his life to destroying his academic rival. It’s pretty funny, though it hasn’t really hooked me in that ‘I must binge this!‘ kind of way.

So there we have it. Another week, another report, and another Summer behind us. I don’t mean for that to sound as depressing as it does, I swear. lol Here’s to another week!

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! ❤