I was really quite happy with the color scheme this week. This is another sticker from the Atomic Pixies, a bee and a representation of the dance they do to convey information to each other.

This was a good week. It was the first time in quite a while that I'd had a chunk of time off of work (minus the memorial service earlier in June.) Over the course of the week, I managed to go out and do things every day that I had off, which was satisfying. Also doing okay on reading. Less so on creative stuff. I'm feeling really discouraged on writing, and I think I will take a break from it for a while. Quite happy with the hiking and such, though. Need to spend some time catching up on other things, though!

Goals for the week:

• I did read more of (and finished) Dead Silence (though then immediately started it over to read with Alex, because we needed something to do on the fourth while we waited for fireworks...)
• I started reading Hummingbird Salamander
• I did write up the books I read in June
• I got together with Taylor on Saturday
• I did post my writing goals, such as they are, for July
• Alex and I solidified the time off plans
• I did my getyourwordsout check-in (12334 words for June, year to date is 70817)
• We got plenty of outdoor time!
• I put my laundry away
• We cleaned the apartment (YET ANOTHER "annual inspection"; there have been three since the last time I complained about how many there were.)
• We celebrated the fourth of July... not for patriotic reasons, but as our 16th anniversary
• We bought our fruit and I made our fruit salad
• I did not finish the chapter of my WIP
• I did my July tracker grids
• I paid the car insurance
• We didn't really look at our subscription stuff
• I did not work on my pin boards

Tracked habits:

• Work - 2/7 - we were closed on Friday, and I took Thursday and Saturday off
• Household Maintenance - 6/7
• Physical Activity - 4/7
• Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 2/7 - one day of over 500 words, one day of over 1000
• Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
• Meta Work - 5/7
• Personal Writing - 5/7
• Other Creative Things - 3/7
• Reading - 7/7 - mostly reading Dead Silence, though Alex and I read some of Duma Key, then we also started reading Dead Silence again lol, I started Hummingbird Salamander, and Taylor and I finished Installment Immortality, then started reading Witch King
• Attention to Media - 7/7 - Sunday listened to an episode of Re: Dracula and news coverage Alex had in the background; Monday had paranormal videos in the background, and then another ep of Re: Dracula (shovel day!); Tuesday we watched a couple episodes of the new season of Alone, though I dozed off; Wednesday had some background stuff Alex was watching, an ep of Re: Dracula, and listening to music; Thursday had storm chasing and paranormal videos in the background; Friday I listened to music in the morning; Saturday listened to music after Taylor went to bed.
• Video Games - 1/7 - Taylor and I played some Final Fantasy XIV and finished the fourth part of Shadowbringers, and started on Endwalker (getting through the first questline that sends you to fantasy!India.)
• Social Interaction - 4/7

Total words written: 3793 on book reviews and writing plans

I recently attended a class on Ferns at a local botanical garden. The class was a mix of botanical info, caring for ferns in a garden context, understanding how they function ecologically in the wild, and recognizing any ferns you might come across locally--I was mostly interested in the last two points so that's what these notes reflect.

( Read more... )

Last year at the end of May, so just a little over a year ago, I made an AO3 stats post, and I thought it would be fun to look at it again and compare.

( Numbers )

My time off schedule was a weird one. I took last Saturday off for Pride, then had to work on Sunday. Monday and Tuesday are my usual days off, but I had to work on Wednesday. Then I took Thursday - Tuesday off for my vacation time. (I absolutely could have taken the Wednesday off and gotten nine days in a row instead of six, but I tried to be all responsible and come in to ensure I could help close a class. A class that wound up only having four students in it and definitely did not require my presence, lol.)

So this is from before my real "vacation" started, but last Tuesday, we went back to Belmar Park. The previous time it had been a bit too hot for Bella, so we had to turn around and do a fairly abbreviated walk. This time was a bit cooler, so we hoped we could get around the whole lake.

Eh... mixed success on that. We did get farther, but then Bella still got a bit overheated. Of course, at that point we really were about halfway around, so there wasn't a way to just make it shorter. We stopped for a long break in the shade with water and snacks until she'd cooled back down. She is just not suited to hot weather. We did ultimately make it around the whole thing.


Bella, the aforementioned hot-dog.


Small bumblebee with pollen saddlebags.

Thirteen more pictures, mostly birds, some other:

A duck with some brand new babies!


A wider view of the duck and ducklings, because there's also a turtle on the branch.


Another bumblebee! This one with such a nice orange belt.


A family of geese, the goslings just coming in to their adult markings. In the background is the side of the cormorant island, and you can see a cormorant sunning with its wings open.


Different goose! The consensus in one of the local birding groups is that she is in fact a hybrid between a Canada goose and a domestic goose, and she's lived in the park for many years at this point. I know I've seen her there several times over the years, sometimes with other geese and sometimes solo.


This was a funny sight coming up past the field, all the heads sticking up in the tall grass, haha.


When they came across the path behind us, it was more obvious that yes, this is a mother duck and five nearly full-grown ducklings. Quite a contrast from the family group of five brand new baby ducklings! Kudos to this one for succeeding at getting them all to this point!


A pair of mourning doves on the bench.


Judgemental swallow.


Turtles!


Baby bunny!


Bright red ladybug!


And a squirrel.

Bonus Berry Mad lurking in her plant pot.

1. Brain raccoons in full force in the few days leading up to this trip. In part because I got my period and being in your 40s evidently means you just lose your mind for a few days every month. (This has been going in for like 6? months. Maybe more. I swear every god that knows my name I'm going mad. The internet says this is just what peri-menopause is and suck it up buttercup.)

1b. Brain raccoons are insisting that the new music player is inadequate because it only has a handful of albums and every mashup I could find on my various drives (600-ish). The raccoons say I need to bring my ipod that only holds charge for the length of a shower as well because my comfort playlists are on there.

My music collection is disorganized enough that I don't have the brain bandwidth to organize it and rebuild the comfort playlists on the new device before leaving. My brain bandwidth is taken up with other things

2. New fountain pen owner milestone: have completely taken apart and put back together two of my four TWSBI Ecos. One had the end cap come off during cleaning today and the other had water get in on the wrong side of the plunger. For personal future reference this is the video I used -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUPaXQpXOEY

2b. The TWSBI Eco is my current favorite fountain pen. Easy to fill, chunky enough for my hands, and the stub nib works nicely with my awful handwriting.

3. I am running into packing problems mostly because a third of my suitcase is taken up by the collapsible bag I'm bringing for souvenirs.

We hit five (5) separate instances of this during one (1) workday and thus, in the spirit of Five Things Make a Post, it gets a post:

--circulation canceled a patron's scan request in a uniquely incorrect way that did not in fact cancel it, only sent it to another library under a different transaction ID number (this makes it harder to find and cancel properly)

--shipping service failed to notify substitute driver that our mail comes to the back door, several floors and a one-way street away from the front door, where he came instead

--someone transferred a parent calling about their student's tuition bill to me, an ILL staff

--patron requested not one not two but THREE wildly incorrect citations in a way that makes me suspect genAI

--German thing that is "Collected Works volume 26, part 2 [in 2 volumes]" of what was [presumably] originally "Section 4, volume 3, second part, first half." All of this is abbreviated, in blackletter, on the title pages. Probably the right volume. Who knows

(not included: standard Monday ambient levels of Lightly Cursed)

I wrote eleven fics for MCYTblr Aufest Battleship. Eleven! And I actually like all of them and am even proud of some. Go me!

A Cast of His Face for Kaesa, Hermitcraft
1k, Bdubs/Etho, fantasy AU
Summary: Twelve days, five hours, and twenty-two minutes after Etho died, he walked into Bdubs' office.
Author's Note: The first fic I wrote for this event. I had the idea for a story combining Major Character Death + cloning + paperwork and this came out. I tried for a combination of funny and heartbreaking, and from the comments I succeeded :)

Undeath Certificate for salemoleander, Hermitcraft
0.3k, Cub&Cleo, afterlife
Summary: There's been an error with the paperwork regarding Cleo's afterlife.
Author's Note: Another case of "I looked at a tag combination and got an idea I really liked," in this case immortality + deity AU + paperwork. Perfectly suited for ZombieCleo, of course, and manager Cub.

In the Oldest Cell for januarymorning, Hermitcraft
1.6k, Grian/Cub/Scar, fantasy AU outsider PoV
Summary: I'd been alone in my cell for fourteen years when they finally threw someone else in with me again. An avian, with red and purple and blue feathers.
Author's Note: Same thing again. I loved coming up with stories for specific words even back in school. And writing low pressure first person outsider PoV was fun and surprisingly easy.

The Last Task in Grumbot for Kaesa, Hermitcraft
0.9k, Grian & Mumbo & Scar, among us mech AU
Summary: Mumbo had insisted on checking on Grian's mech one last time.
Author's Note: We were getting closer to the end of the board and needed more hits on Major Character Death, among us AU, mech AU, darkfic, and a few others, so this happened. Also featuring tasty betrayal.

Who will you eat tomorrow so we can rule together for zoewinter1, Hermitcraft
0.3k, Docm77, Among Us AU
Summary: The massive solar storm that made it necessary for all planetary bases to evacuate to the orbital station was the best thing that could have happened for Doc's cover. The dragon was a nice bonus.
Author's Note: We were close to clearing the board and needed more Among Us AU, iirc I wrote this on my way to work on public transport. Did not expect to write vore tbh ^^ and I had never written Docm before but I think it came out well.

I wrote these first five fics in four days btw. Something in the lava down in the Nether.

Soulmate Bond (Homebrew) for ggumdrop, Hermitcraft
0.6k, Cub & Scar, D&D AU
Summary: "Cub, I need you to listen to me."
"Who are you?“"
"I'm your soulmate. That's why you can hear me even in the antimagic field."
As soon as the voice mentions being your soulmate, you recognize where it's coming from: there's a tug inside of you, an invisible string connecting you to someone else. (Don't worry about it, it's homebrew.)
Author's Note: I rested during the first boss fight but came right back for the second board, and I think the idea of using 2nd person PoV for a D&D-style narration was cool. (I wrote parts of this during my lunch break at work. Seriously what was in that lava.)

Sounds So Splendid for zoewinter1, Life Series
0.3k, Gem & Scott & Impulse, space opera AU
Summary: “Impulse. We're a rock band on a space station. Why in the never-ending event horizon have you signed us up to be background musicians for an opera?"
“Because of the tax break, of course."
Author's Note: Iirc someone mentioned hitting space opera by having an actual opera in space somehow and I could not resist. I was also glad to get a hit on "taxes," I would have been disappointed otherwise. And I was particularly happy with the title for this one.

Teammates for Life for Sharo, Hermitcraft/MCC
0.8k, Cub&/Scar, canon divergence
Summary: Scar is anxious to meet his MCC teammate Cubfan135 for the first time.
Author's Note: I thought "canon divergence" and "different first meeting" would go very well together, thought of Convex, and then of MCC. I had fun with this one, especially making up a history for AU Cub (yes he won Minecraft Monday together with Techno, because I said so.) I had to do research!, look up MCC records and stuff, that was fun too.

A Dangerous Prize for Alice_not_Alice, Hermitcraft
4.2k, Etho & Cleo, fantasy AU
Summary: King Ren gives Cleo to General Etho as a war prize, not knowing that there are plans in motion.
Author's Note: Alice likes fae!Etho, fey bargains, power imbalances, situations where Character A is compelled by outside forces to hurt or bind Character B, and a bunch of other tasty things, and I was planning to write them something from the beginning. It took a while to finish because I had to figure out the ~scale, but I was happy with the roles I found for the characters. My one contribution to the grand battle against the Wither Storm.

The Upside of the Downside for Odaigahara, Hermitcraft
2.9k, Grian/Cub/Scar, Pyre fusion
Summary: As the Nightwings' Reader, Grian has a difficult choice to make before his first Liberation Rite. Who should have the chance to be freed from their exile? Cub and Scar would make the decision easier, if he could believe them.
Fusion with Pyre (Video Game)
Author's Note: Speaking of fics that I planned early, took me a while to figure out, and where I was happy with the roles I found for the cast: this one. I saw "video game fusion," looked at my Steam library, saw "Pyre," and could not get the idea out of my head. And it seems like I succeeded in making it understandable for people without knowledge of the game, which is good. I really like how the fusion turned out and might even be thinking of writing more in this AU one day (will probably not happen but who knows.)
I was very efficient with tags on this one considering how long it is (I got 27), that also felt good.

Potato Blossom Magic for im_always_stressed, Dream SMP
0.4k, Technoblade/Philza, sex pollen aftermath
Summary: Admittedly, out of everyone to get caught in a potato blossom cloud with, Philza wasn't the worst option.
Author's Note: We were very close to finishing the third board and sex pollen was one of the few tags still needed. I don't remember how I got the idea for this Techno/Phil snippet (which I wrote on my phone during my commute) but it was fun. It's been a while since I watched either of them so I rewatched parts of Techno's turtle stream and was reminded just how great they were together.

Aand that's it! 11 works and 13.469 words in total, over 17 days. I had such a great time. Hermitcraft is now my most-written fandom on AO3 with 20 works, followed by SGA with 17.

And I could not resist signing up for multifandom Battleship, which starts this weekend. I'm planning to take it a little slower, and I still need to add more prompts, but I also wasn't planning to do this much for MCYT Battleship so who knows.

Someone posted on our Buy Nothing group that they were getting rid of some candles.

(how is this a Stupid Injury, I hear you ask? I'm getting there, but not in the way you expect)

( minor, non-graphic injury )

So I’m hideously behind on my writing target for the year - even by the standard I was working to last year of having written more at the end of each month than I had the previous year I’m behind - so when I saw that nafs was hosting write every day this month I decided that was probably exactly what I needed. And apparently I was correct? Most days I’ve only written a couple of hundred words but it’s adding up and in some cases it turned out that actually that half written draft article/post I had lurking actually only needed 240 words in the right places to be finished. Very satisfying.

And uh, on Friday I opened my prompt file and stuck its associated playlists on and umm, wrote like 600 words of a fic. I’ve been picking away at it over the weekend and, while it’s not my best work I don’t think it’s terrible. (One of my re-watches the other month was Ocean’s Eight and apparently I had a bunch of Daphne Kluger feelings lurking. The original prompt for this fic was Casual by Chappel Roan but it kinda drifted.) So yeah, first finished fic in almost exactly two years, go me.

Someone You Couldn’t Lose (1341 words) by Glinda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Daphne Kluger/Lou Miller, Daphne Kluger/Debbie Ocean, Daphne Kluger/Lou Miller/Debbie Ocean
Characters: Daphne Kluger, Lou Miller (Ocean's), Debbie Ocean
Additional Tags: Friendship, Friends With Benefits, Planning Adventures, Less casual than anyone wants to admit, Thirty-something problems
Summary:

The thing no one tells you, is that it’s kinda hard to make new friends in your 30s. (Daphne Kluger would far rather plan a heist.)

I'm certainly not celebrating America's birthday right now.

But the 4th is also Alex's and my anniversary, so we celebrated that as usual. 16 years!

Our main "tradition" is making a fruit salad of Just The Good Fruits:


The Good Fruits in question!

Two peaches (one was very good, one was very meh), a nectarine (average), cherries (from our neighbor, which was nice of her), strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, two different mangoes (the small one was REALLY good, the larger one was fine but kind of bland), bananas, and mandarin oranges. The pear did not go in the fruit salad, because it didn't feel ripe.

I always like processing mangoes, because:


It's like a little hedgehog, lol.


The completed fruit salad.

We headed up to another city for their fireworks show, the one we've gone to a couple times in the last few years as well. This year we didn't get anything from the food trucks, and just ate our fruit salad and the other snacks we brought. It was warm, but not horribly hot. We got some wind for a bit, but no actual storm came through. We mostly ignored the cover bands that were performing, and picked an ebook to read for a couple hours, ha.


Bella! (This picture from Alex.)

Bella is fortunately extremely chill about fireworks. She didn't even jump at the first one. She sat and watched the first few, and then just seemed bored, haha. She just wanted snacks, and could not care less about the noise or anything. I am 1000% fine with her being bored instead of anxious about them. We were lucky with Cy when it came to fireworks too.

The fireworks themselves were pretty cool. As usual, I'm not a fan of the clips of "patriotic" songs that they're set to (though some of them aren't patriotic so much as just having "USA" in the lyrics.) But again, the finale was set to the 1812 Overture, which always remains cool. I may or may not have been imagining governmental buildings being blown up.

-

I need to devote some time to like... life admin, ha. I'm not sorry that I've managed to Do Things on my time off from work, since that was obviously the point! But I've also done nothing except those things, ha. I need to catch up on some regular life stuff, get caught up here, etc.

Decided to just make the next batch of mixes a new post.

( southern gothic )

( more fandom mixes )

My eyes are bothering me lately; anything close-focus is hard. Really challenging as most of my hobbies involve close focus. I have a lot of pain in my mouth and face so concentrating is also difficult.

TV seems to be the way to go but I feel like I've run out of shows.

Enjoying: Murderbot. Also loved The Pitt, and the Old Guard 2. Task Master and DropOut (Game changer, etc), continue to delight.

Other things I've watched:

Mr Robot. Gave up after one season. It's grim and humorless. I liked some of the actors a lot but the aesthetic was so gray on gray, and a high preference for very thin bodies and baggy eyes, like heroin-addict chic. For a thriller it's weirdly slow.

The storied life of AJ Fikry: A cromulent romance / drama on Netflix. Cute if not particularly memorable. It's about people who love reading and live on an island only accessible by ferry. Has multiple characters of color.

I watched 2 episodes of "Nobody Wants This", a rom-com with Kristen Bell. Her character falls in love with a rabbi. The characters felt really thinly drawn and so I did not care about them. There was just no there there, as they say.

The Last Breath: a drama about a survival story involving deep-sea construction workers (based on a true story). I liked this pretty well but think it would have worked better with some documentary-style explanations of what was happening.

Clean Slate: on Amazon Prime, a sitcom about a trans woman reconnecting with her father. I dropped this because I could not see what was happening! There seemed to be a gray film over everything! I might try it again later as it had some good humor and characters.

I tried season three of the Bear but it was unpleasant.

I played Dragon Age: Inquisition through twice, which was very restful for my brain actually. I think it would be a good idea to invest further in video games, which help me pass the time when I'm ill. I don't know much about gaming systems. I'd love to play Dragon Age Veilguard and some other newer games but how to decide on what kind of system to get? They are expensive. I got the Xbox 360 used and have absolutely loved having it.

What are you enjoying watching or playing?

I'm very much in winter mode here as although some days are sunny, it's cold, and a lot of days are very wet. So not going outside much and not doing gardening, which I don't feel great about. I seem a bit beset by inertia in terms of things physical, possibly a mid-winter slump, but I'm doing indoors things just fine - well, the things I like doing, anyway. Not cleaning or organising! I do tidy up once a week before Fionna comes to vacuum, and occasionally the dishes get washed, but that's about it.

I've started another longer podfic - this one for the due South Big Bang. Am also continuing to add lots of new podfics to the Audiofic Archive (we got inundated by >600 short ones from a recent Voiceteam challenge). And I finished a personal project with the Audiofic Archive of adding streaming links to all the SGA podfics there so they can be enjoyed easily with no need to download zip files. That's 138 pages of SGA podfics! - and increasing each week, as we make more. Next fandom to complete is due South.

In the process I stumbled on Lim's old Fanvid page on Wayback, and the vid downloads still worked. Lim made avant garde vids with lots of altered graphics. Some are on AO3 but a lot of the SGA ones aren't. The Wayback page is here (with additional info and credits), and I downloaded the SGA ones and converted them to mp4 format here. CW for flashing, fast cuts, loud music in some of them. One, Mission Report, (lyrics) is a multimedia podvid where Lim created the lyrics, music, and vid, and sang it for the SGA flashfic comm.

In "first world problem" news, a grocery mix-up. My online delivery packer needs help with alliums! Ordered a bunch of spring (green) onions:

And got a giant leek. Size matters! (in terms of making salads, anyway)



Finally, I saw this amazing poem on tumblr, apparently written by nine-for-a-kiss as a teenager. It's very Dark-is-Rising-ish.

My health has made some minor improvements, so I've seen a bit more productivity than I have been seeing. The problem is that this then encourages me to spread myself thinner. Which is not great. 

 

Goal Updates

I haven't made more progress on my fic because I've been working on a oneshot to take a break.

I've caught up with the temperature blanket so I'm not as far behind.

I've written one poem that I wanted to write (of four for the goal) and been chipping away at the outline I wanted to do.

I've been working on some art canvases that may make up the 'projects I'm proud of' goal.

 

June Stats

• 5 books read
• I finished 2 TV shows (loved Dept Q!) and 6 movies 
• For writing, I'm nearing the end of my take-a-break oneshot. 
  • I spent a total of 12 hours 38 minutes drafting 14,659 words (~20 wpm)! That's almost double the time and triple the words from last month!
• I completed no crafts but put a lot into my temp blanket
  • I spent 3h 40m on my 2025 crochet temperature blanket
• I made 3 baked goods (all of which were. okay at best)

I need to write down my ipod playlists somewhere and this journal is likely to outlive whatever notebook I write them in. The ipod was last attached to a computer and new music put on in 2014, so it's a little bit of a time capsule.

( bucky and steve )

( misc )

( unpublished fanmixes )

saving here while I go eat.

Last Tuesday, we headed back up to the plains again. There was a pretty good thunderstorm chance, so we wanted to see if we could get a good view of any of them.

Eh... mixed results. We did get to see a little bit of nice lightning, but the storms lost most of their oomph by the time they reached us up there. Except for the rain. There was a LOT of water in those clouds! Somehow we managed not to get any hail, which was surprising. The storm eventually reintensified a bit farther north, and while we followed it for a while (through the absolutely wild quantities of rain), we eventually gave up on it. Partially because we didn't want to go much farther, and partially because the rain was so heavy you couldn't see much else, so even if it had done something cool, it would have been hard to see.


Before following it north, we sat in the rain in a parking lot for a bit. This is a screenshot from a video I took of the rain. I'm not sure this even really shows just how intense it was!

Down one of the county roads we were on, we did see a neat old structure. We were able to pull over to grab a couple pictures on the way back, once the rain had stopped.

A couple pictures of clouds, some of swallow nests:

Stormclouds!


More clouds!

We've taken this exit off the highway before, but there's a really extensive colony of cliff swallows:


I love their nests; they look like little clay pots.

Not the most amazingly successful day, but still nice to get out and do things. The old house? church? other? was neat.

* There is going to be a transmasc event this year in Portland for Pride. It's at a bar, it's called Boyhole and the event logo is

about what you'd expect from the name.

a spread vagina.

So, it's time for another round of 'do I go because I at least have access to an (allegedly) trans masc event or do I let the vibes put me off?' I have a feeling that everything else aside, someone by age going might not be chill. Since it is a bar, this might be like last year when the one event didn't really happen, most people were just in the bar that night like they'd be any other night and the vendor side of things got scrapped.

* I am about 1/2 way through converting my D&D characters to the new ruleset. Eh, probably closer to a third of the way done as Tristan wont take as long to redo. Actually, wait, no, I have to make myself new rules references sheets because familiar terms like 'favored enemy' and 'stonecunning' now mean totally different things. I will be done someday.

I could probably make this a faster post by just copying and pasting last month's, ha.

It's now been half of a year of "not really writing much." It definitely feels really discouraging at this point, and frustrating, because just a few years ago I managed to write quite a lot... and just haven't been able to recapture either the interest/inspiration or the success at just pushing through and getting words on page.

June was a rough month, emotionally, and that didn't lend itself to a lot of desire to write.

My goals for June were:
- finish one more chapter of the iddy WIP (in order to decide whether I wanted to continue with it, or stick it on the back burner)
- outline the second iddy story, which had been the one I was most often thinking about and feeling inspired by
- continue the snowflake outline for the "Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity" fic
- think about the silly holiday AU fic, in the hopes of being able to actually have it completed by the holidays if I were to get going on it now

How did that go?
- I did not finish another chapter of the WIP, but I did get a couple thousand words written on it.
- I didn't outline the other story... and it's stopped being the thing my thoughts keep drifting to, so I'm afraid I lost my shot and harnessing the wave of inspiration. (Nothing has replaced it in my thoughts. Even when I'm trying, I can't really seem to focus on anything.)
- I did not work on the outline for the WFM fic.
- I didn't think about the silly holiday fic even once.

For the most part, I think I'll just shuffle most of the same goals forward into July.

Goals for July:
- Finish up the rest of this chapter of the iddy WIP. I want to reach the end of the chapter just to have a reasonable break point, but I think I will shelve the idea for a while after that. I haven't completely lost interest, but feel like I'm slogging through mud every time I try to work on it.
- I might still try to outline the other story, if only because I don't want to forget the ideas that I did have for it. (More than I possibly already have!) Unfortunately, it's no longer the "yay" feeling of excitement for the project, so it might also be immediately shelved.
- I do want to at least try to get a bit more of the WFM outline done. I have one more character to do "part 3" for, and it's stupid that I have spent months being stalled out on it.
- Holiday fic is getting punted forward... I don't think I could capture the lighthearted tone I want to for it right now.

Goals for August and beyond:
- Seriously, just find SOMETHING that I care about writing.
- Make some progress on the WFM outline.
- ???

Rereading this, it feels a lot more pessimistic than I was intending for it to be! I tend to try to keep stuff pretty positive, even when I'm not succeeding at getting the things I hoped for done. Unfortunately, part of the issue is just that I don't even especially want to be doing any of these things right now.
I'm used to feeling like I have things I want to be doing, but am failing to find the time and/or energy to pursue them. This time, I feel like I'm lacking the time, energy, and inspiration. (I'm coming up on a string of days off, and while we have plans for a lot of that time, to be honest, I don't even have the hypothetical desire to like, set a day of the time aside to write.)

So... is there a reason for me to push forward on any of this at all right now? Would it be better to just kind of let it all lay fallow for a bit? Maybe just focusing on media intake for a while would be a good idea. More reading, maybe even like... playing a video game for a while, which is something I haven't done at all this year, I don't think (minus the FFXIV playthrough with Taylor.) To be fair, I haven't been doing much writing at all, so it's not like this will free up vast quantities of time to put toward other things, but maybe if I'm not feeling bad about failing to write, I'll feel better about doing other things?

In light of that... Maybe I will still try to get the current WIP chapter done, just so I can put it away at a decent stopping point, and maybe finish out the third part of the snowflake outline, because that's really such a tiny commitment. After that I think I'll pause things until I feel a little more interested in something. (Or can at least see if a full, on-purpose break brings back that interest in any way!)

June’s album is Last Summer Effect by Last Summer Effect. This album feels a bit like a cheat, but it is an album that came out last month, and I did have it on heavy rotation for the rest of the month because I liked it. The reason it feels like a cheat is that one of our freelancer’s at work is a sound engineer and worked on it, and the reason I even heard this album is that he dropped the Spotify link in our team group chat the day it came out with a plea to share it about/give it a listen. (By his own admittance they were the band he was in at eighteen, so he might even be playing on it too.) So I stuck it on in the background while making brunch after a night in the pub, to do a colleague a solid on the stats front and ended up really liking the vibe.

It’s kinda…It’s kind of an emo album I think. A bit Hundred Reasons I think, all crunchy guitars and soulful emoting singing. It’s not really my taste in music any more, but twenty years ago it would have been absolutely my jam and I’d have loved this album. (This album came out last month, but the only reason it couldn’t have come out twenty years ago is that the band would have barely been in double digits at that point, but my point stands, it should have come out on Chemical Underground some time between 2005 and 2009 - which is not far off given that the band were officially together between 2010 and 2013!) It feels like stumbling across an album released by a tiny band I saw at a gig when I was twenty, that I saw twice, followed on MySpace and bought a hand-burned EP off the band at the back of the gig. If one of those bands had miraculously got hold of some decent production values, the harmonies and production are pretty lush - Steve does know what he’s about. It sounds like sunny hungover mornings in friends flats after gigs, or big nights out. (The smell of stale sweat, flat beer and other people’s dead cigarettes hanging in the air.) I’m really not sure if there’s actually a market for this that isn’t millennial nostalgia, I probably wouldn’t have listened to it if they weren’t friends of friends, but that could go for a great number of bands I listened to from that actual period of time too. I keep putting it on to listen to while I do other things so nostalgia or not, so clearly present day me rather likes it too.

The economic boycotts led by The People's Union USA for the month of July: Amazon, Home Depot, Starbucks.

For more details, see this Newsweek article.

Denver Pride was this weekend, so went with a sticker from the museum that I got at a previous pride, since it has the skyline and all.

This was a good week. I'm happy with what I got done, including both reading and writing, as well as some other organizational stuff. We did things on my days off, and ending with an extra day off (even if it was the equivalent of taking a Thursday off for me, ha) to go to Pride was nice. I still have things that I need to catch up on, so will hopefully manage that next week, along with keeping on with the reading and writing. Looking forward to an upcoming string of days off.

Goals for the week:

• I sort of caught up on DW, but not completely
• I did finish reading Camp Damascus
• I read Lost in the Moment and Found
• We went to Pride on Saturday
• We got some outside time
• I did not update my reading page
• I did not work on the snowflake outline
• While I did not finish a chapter of the old WIP, I did get quite a bit done on it
• I did set up my LibraryThing account (beyond just creating it)
• I started reading Dead Silence

Tracked habits:

• Work - 4/7, having taken Saturday off
• Household Maintenance - 3/7
• Physical Activity - 4/7
• Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 2/7 - both over 1000 words
• Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
• Meta Work - 6/7
• Personal Writing - 4/7
• Other Creative Things - 2/7
• Reading - 7/7 - I finished Camp Damascus, read Lost in the Moment and Found, started Dead Silence, read some Duma Key with Alex.
• Attention to Media - 7/7 - Sunday I had some youtube in the background at work, storm chasing later; Monday had something in the background; Tuesday and Wednesday listened to Re: Dracula and music; Thursday had some exploration and paranormal videos in the background and listened to music; Friday had storm chasing in the background; Saturday more storm chasing, including a very dramatic tornado.
• Video Games - 0/7
• Social Interaction - 7/7

Total words written: 2073 on WIP