Okay, first and foremost: someone remind me what day of the week it is? And what the date is? And possibly what month it is? No, because, seriously, this past week has been one of those weeks that really screws up my brain and leaves me wondering what has happened and whether or not I’ve time traveled, and I’m having a really difficult time shaking myself back to reality.
Okay, okay, okay, in all seriousness, I know that it’s Wednesday because my daughter’s school schedule reminds me that the days of the week exist. And I know that it’s April 20th because my husband pointed out that it’s 4-20 day today. But honestly, if not for those things, I’d probably be absolutely lost.
The main reason that my head is so scrambled is because we spent the weekend down home amongst family for the holiday. We left for the drive on early Saturday morning, attended my cousin’s kid’s birthday party, and spent the night drinking and watching hockey with my inlaws. Then, the next day, we had Easter dinner with my parents, the kid and I played several rounds of Yahtzee with my mom and aunt, and then we went back to the inlaws for more hockey (and fewer drinks because we were all too tired and not really feeling the booze). Then the NEXT day we went shopping with the mother-in-law because she wanted the kid to pick out a present for Easter, the kid did in fact pick out some cool stuff, we swung around to the local FedEx center to pick up my new laptop, we visited hubby’s grandmother so that she could drown us in baked goods, we ran back over to my parents’ for leftovers supper, and we drove home to watch The Batman.
*deep breath*
In other words, it was a family-filled weekend, complete with boring drives and two nights of sleeping on an air mattress, which always does an amazing job of making me feel like I could sleep for at least a week and a half.
By the time we got home Monday night it was pretty late, but we’d already promised the kid that we would watch The Batman, so we did, and then yesterday I was trying desperately to catch up on things, but my brain just refused to function. I’m not exactly in much better of a state today, but I’ve managed to pluck up enough wherewithal to force through a few things, so here we are getting this post out of the way before it becomes too late to even bother with it. :3
One more thing to talk about before I get into the goals: I am adoring my new laptop so far. It has a bigger screen than my Chromebook had, but isn’t all that much bigger overall, so it’ll still be easy to travel with. The keyboard will take a little bit of getting used to simply because the layout is a little different, but the keys are quite responsive and not loud (which is very nice for a writer). The mouse screen also becomes a calculator, which might seem like a silly thing but is something that I genuinely appreciate for when I’m calculating word counts and the like. So far it seems to run perfectly well for my purposes, and I will finally be able to use Scrivener again, which was one of the big selling points of switching back to a Windows-based computer instead of another Chromebook. I haven’t had a chance to actually start writing with Scrivener yet (there’s been a major update since the last time I used it, so there may be a few new things to learn), but that’s where I’m headed as soon as this post is out of the way. My only annoyance is that I thought this model had an SD card slot, but it apparently doesn’t. That’s frustrating, but the laptop has three times the storage as my Chromebook had, so I doubt I’ll have much issue. I’ll just have to keep any external shows or movies or what-have-you that I want to travel with on a USB drive instead.
Okay, so now that I’ve gushed a little about my new toy, let’s move on into the main part of the post, shall we?
Goal Set #1: Creative Fulfilment
Okay! So, when I started talking about how busy the weekend was you probably assumed that I had very little time or energy to write, yes? Well, you wouldn’t be horribly off the mark there, but luckily my Pacemaker.press goal for the week was rather lenient, so I still actually managed to hit it in the end. Pacemaker wanted me to come up with 7975 words, and I managed to squirm a few hundred words past that with a final weekly total of 8401 words. I do have to admit, however, that precisely none of those words went toward The Other World Book Three. Last week I was very focused on You Can Stay At My Place for the simple reason that I’d caught up to what was written in advance and needed to get a new chapter finished to post for my Patrons. :3
That said, I did also start a spicy short fic that was kinda meant for Easter, but didn’t end up getting posted on time because I didn’t manage to finish it. I’ll whip up the rest of it sometime this week and post it late anyway because honestly, it’s more about the spiciness than the holiday anyway. đ
On the artistic side of things, I worked on two pieces this past week and ended up quite happy with the one that I finished. I’m not sharing the full thing here yet because it is currently a treat for my Patrons, but it is going to be one of the illustrations for the eventual In Silence Our Secrets Lie ebook, and I’ll give you the two thumbnails that I shared on Instagram and Twitter:
Aren’t my bois pretty? Hells yeah, they are!
Anyway, those two thumbnails are from the same overall picture, which features Aziraphale giving Crowley some much-needed medical care, a la Chapter 2 of ISOSL.
The other piece that I worked on – but which isn’t finished yet – is the one that I shared a little sketchy thumbnail of last week. It’s a collared-Crowley piece, which I’ve begun the line-art of, and I’m pretty pleased with it so far. Here’s an updated thumbnail for you:
I know that he has something of a worried look on his face, but don’t worry…he’s thoroughly enjoying himself. :3
Goal Set #2: Physical Focus
UGH. Do I have to talk about this section? *sigh*
Okay, so, I mean…I’m trying, I really am. There were days last week when I did exercise vids, other days when I went for long walks, and several days during which the hubby, kid, and I went out after school to shoot some hoops over at the local playground. That said, I’m not going to lie about the results, of which there haven’t been any worth discussing. I’d like to be able to say that the exercise revitalizes me, makes me feel strong and accomplished and eager for more. I’d love to be able to say that, in fact. But it would be a pale-faced lie, because when it really comes down to it I’ve just felt even more tired than usual.
Maybe I need to drink more water (although, honestly, I’m not sure I can realistically consume anymore than I already have been). Maybe I need some more bloody sun (which has been in short supply recently, because Spring in Nova Scotia equates to twice as many clouds as Winter, and a truly disgusting amount of rain). Maybe (definitely) I need to stay away from the sweets and empty carbs.
But long story short, I’ve been feeling so goddamn tired. Even sitting here, writing this, after having two large glasses of water and a coffee, I feel like I could easily curl up on my site and pass out. In fact, I did precisely that last night after supper. And then easily fell asleep again at a normal time that night. It’s like my body wants to spent at least half of its time asleep lately, and I hate it.
Goal Set #3: Self-Promotion/Branding
I’ll be honest and blunt: I don’t even really remember what (if anything) I did toward this goal last week. I have a vague recollection of posting some TikToks, maybe engaging with some people on Twitter, but that’s about it.
All I can really tell you is that I didn’t have any losses last week. I had a few minor gains (the TikTok followers are increasing again!), and anything that didn’t gain stayed steady where it had been. And you know what? I can handle that. Gains are nice, but in my mind a lack of losses is just as good.
Other than that, I can mention that I haven’t had any book sales or pages read in a while, which is definitely a bummer. I did, however, sign up for something called a ‘Book Review Flash Mob’ that is happening over on TikTok, so fingers crossed that one of my books gets chosen for that somewhere along the line. :O
Goal Set #4: Mental Well-Being
And then there was this nonsense! Okay, okay, it’s not nonsense, but do you realize how easy it is for someone with mental health problems to make fun of their own problems? It’s, like…almost a requirement, if I’m being honest.
My mental well-being was tested this past weekend, for a number of reasons, none of which are important to you. So anyway–
First up on the docket is reading, which I can get through pretty easily because I haven’t been doing a great deal of it. Mostly I’ve been reading short, one-shot fanfiction recently, just went I have a few spare moments between chores and the like. The only other thing that I ‘read’ last week was a little bit of The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage, which I’m still listening to on Audible. It’s getting better and i desperately want to know what happens next, but I haven’t been able to keep my mind on such things recently. Once I head back out West for another run I’m sure I’ll have much better luck.
Secondly let’s go with games, for which the report is very similar to the reading one. I’ve picked up Borderlands 2 a few more times, and I’ve run through a stage or two of Cup Head with the kid, but I definitely haven’t done much major in the gaming category. There just hasn’t been much time, nor desire, if I’m being truly honest.
Watching stuff, on the other hand…our third category has a lot more going for it. Honestly, I’m probably going to forget a dozen things, so bear with me.
The big thing is that we watched The Batman, which was quite excellent, in my opinion. It is very, very different from any other Batman movie that you may have seen, but that’s part of why it’s great. It’s nice to see Batman do some detective work rather than just the fist-throwing side of things, and The Joker was a surprisingly well-done and fairly creepy villain for the whole thing. I also thought Pattinson did a pretty great job as the caped crusader, although I will say that his version of Bruce Wayne was a little bit too reclusive and emo for my tastes.
Sticking with movies, we finished watching all of the Scream movies with the kid, who enjoyed them quite well (with the possible exception of the third one, which she slept through at least half of). I’ll admit that it was a little bit amusing when she noticed Courtney Cox on the screen at my parents’ house (they were watching Friends) and said, “Hey, is that Gail?” XD
Hubby and I have also been re-watching a few shows, such as JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and One Punch Man, just because. Sometimes stuff you’ve already enjoyed is what’s necessary.
I feel like there was definitely more that we watched since my last post, but fak if I can remember, so for now I guess we’ll just stop here.
So it was a busy week of various nonsense, during which I managed to get a little bit of stuff worked on, while simultaneously managing not to fuck anything up too badly. I think I can take that as a win!
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 whatâs going on with you!Â
Tracey Tobin 