Drunken Owls and Other Delights

It's been a relaxing week here, spending the time focusing writing catch-up and driving A up to Corte Madera on Friday for her booster shot, and seeing her parents for a quick lunch and shopping. (We spent yesterday just kicking around as A was tired and sore from the shot and I had a few things I wanted to finish up. And Sunday has pretty much become household errand day around these parts.) 

I have been thinking of what my next writing project (or projects?) may be, but at the moment I'm still keeping that open for now, so I can continue to focus on Queen Ophelia and Theadia. Still, it's always a good thing to let my mind wander a bit for that sort of thing. I do have a few very vague ideas but I'd really need to spend an afternoon or two to work them out into a workable outline to see if they're worth expanding on. I'll most likely do that in the next few weeks or so.

And I restarted my daily stretches and exercises again! Those didn't quite fall by the wayside so much as I was just busy and considered our few-days-a-week neighborhood walk as part of that. I figure now is a perfect time to start them up again, considering a) I'm not currently ailing with some weird back twinge of dubious origin, and b) I have the time and the mindset to do so. (I should probably keep a better watch on my diet as well, to be honest. I've been snacking and drinking too much soda lately.)

Not much planned for the week other than writing, job searches, and doing a double donation drop-off at Goodwill and the SF Public Library. Yay for clearing up Spare Oom floor! We have a goodly amount of things to get rid of and I'll be happy when I'm not climbing over it anymore.

Oh, and I'm on jury duty the week of the 18th. Fun! This will of course depend on whether they'll actually have it or delay it due to Covid reasons, but I don't even know which court house I need to go to! I'm hoping it's the one near City Hall, because the one in SoMa is a HUGE pain in the butt to get to and all its nearby parking lots aren't in the safest of areas. Either way, I'll need to do one of those call-ups the night before to know for sure.


Hope everyone has a lovely week!

WHOOF. A and I are back at home, kicking back and watching an old 2nd Doctor serial ("Fury from the Deep", which they recreated via animation) after walking about five miles today. We hoofed it up to one of our favorite local coffee shops on 8th Ave and then visited the botanical garden in GGP. After a lunch at the Republic, we hoofed it back home and now we are TIRED. Not much else planned for this weekend other than more relaxation and a run to the farmer's market tomorrow.

Meanwhile, it's been a VERY productive week in Spare Oom. I did a little math and confirmed that I'd written a bit over 16,000 words over the three novel projects -- in addition to words for four blog posts, five poem fragments, and my daily morning journal. Quite happy about all of that, really! I also uploaded several pictures to Shutterstock -- more on that in a minute -- for another side project I'm working on. This was kind of an experiment to see how much I could put on my daily work docket and still be able to handle it all without feeling overwhelmed. It was also an exercise in learning better ways to fight off distraction. Either way, I'm very happy that it's working so far, and I'm looking forward to keeping this up.

Anyhoo, about the Shutterstock thing: I recently started up a contributor account so I can upload my shots for stock (y'know, maybe make some extra pocket change if need be). I'd done a trial run with nine pictures earlier and four were accepted, but when I did a much bigger run of 37 pictures, ALL of them were rejected. Which at first pissed me off, as some of the reasons for rejection seemed extremely subjective and arbitrary -- sometimes it said the shot was blurry when it wasn't, or that it had light bleed when it didn't, and in one case stating that it was a copy of a picture I'd already uploaded (which it wasn't). I let my stew with that for a while until I finally did a bit of internet research and found that I was definitely not the only contributor to have that issue recently. In fact, some of those people said when they reuploaded the pictures at a later time they were accepted. So yeah, it was a bit of a punch to the confidence at first but I got over it. Onward and upward, yeah?

One thing I've learned this week while following through with my Ramping Things Up plan is that I'm being a hell of a lot less nitpicky about my rough drafts. Which is actually a GOOD thing, because I have a habit of taking far too long trying to bash out the Perfect Manuscript on the first try. Sure, cutting terrible ideas or fixing a sentence here and there is fine, but I'm no longer spending three hours writing 500 words and expecting poetry. This does NOT mean I'm being super lazy and writing nonsensical crap, of course. It just means I'm not hyperfocusing on something that doesn't need hyperfocusing right that moment. The aim is just to get the story out and ready. In essence, I'm finally letting myself be rough with the rough draft.

So what does it look like so far? Per my full outline on Project A, I think I'm about 2/3rds of the way through, which is Not Bad At All. That one's gonna need some TLC in regards to details and continuity, but I'm happy with where I stand with it at the moment. Project B is finally out of the Rewriting Older Scenes haze and is now heading forward with All New Words. Woo! And Project C is already headlong into Chapter 2. It's definitely rough as they come, but I'm liking what I have so far.

Oh, and hey, I'm even getting my daily drawings and poetry done on a consistent basis! Daily Schedule for the win!

Next up: I now own an earlier version of Sound Forge as well as a free version of ProTools, and I have had sounds, beats and riffs in my head for years that I should probably record and see what I can do with them. I'll need to find a bit of time, maybe end of day, to fiddle around with those programs and figure out how to use them.

As for noncreative stuff...? Hmm. I've been terrible in terms of exercise and snacking lately. Time to adjust on those things as well. We've been going for walks when we can, and I've been reminding myself to get off my duff at least once every hour. I really need to get going on slimming down, though. I'm not terribly overweight, but I can definitely do with erasing some of that extra middle area one way or another.

Oh -- and we've had some banking nonsense to contend with...apparently our landlord had an office break-in and our rent check was stolen and cashed. For now we're not having the account changed as I saw no other shiftiness aside from that one thing (which, alongside the fraudster's absolutely terrible attempt at frauding, makes me think it didn't even occur to them to hack our account). Long story short, our bank is in the midst of fixing it, thankfully our landlord has been very kind and patient about it. Eesh!

Other than that...it's been a busy but extremely productive week and I am extremely happy about that. Whoo!

A is on vacation this coming week and of course we've already got our events planned out: museums, movies, walks and hikes! (Well, not so much a hike than a mosey around Muir Woods, which we haven't visited in a good few years.) And as always, we plan our events during the early part of the day, so we can spend the late afternoon into evening being lazy. (And so I can still squeeze in some daily writing work.) Then we'll be spending the following holiday weekend away from SF and its fireworky nonsense up north.

We've still been wearing our masks when we're out and about, mostly when we're near other people, but we've been okay with not having them on when the streets are sparse. Thankfully I don't think anyone in our neighborhood cares either way if we wear them, but we're more than happy to dish it out if someone starts anything with us, heh.

Meanwhile, last Monday I had a doctor's appointment, the first one in ages (at least 2-3 years, I think), just as a check up, and for the most part I'm still in good health, other than having typically high blood pressure, which they've given me meds for again. I may go in for blood tests later on because I haven't had that done in I don't know how long, plus a few other personal things to check up on. May as well before this ol' bag of bones decides to fall apart, yeah?

Not much else to report, other than that I've been busy writing and exercising and erranding a lot these last few days, which has kept me focused on the things I want and need to do. Which was my plan!

Oh! Speaking of writing, I was searching through some older files the other day and came across a piece of microfiction I have no memory at all of writing, but DAMN if it isn't submittable material. I think this was written during my final office days at the Former Day Job, when I was sneaking time writing my 750Words entries, and had forced myself to write something, anything, just to relieve the simmering irritation and anger. I'd have to look at the time stamp on it, but it seems to have been an idea out of nowhere that was most likely inspired by a weirdass dream I'd had that morning. Having read it again the other day, I feel like Paul McCartney when he wrote 'Yesterday' -- I'm absolutely convinced someone else wrote this and I just plagiarized them. Point being, though...it reads like nothing else I've written so I'm thinking I should ever so slightly revise it and submit it to a magazine somewhere, see what happens.


Hope everyone has a good week!

Let's see...what's new to report...

--Managed to get a vaccine appointment for A for the 30th by way of doing the same thing I did for myself: constantly refreshing multiple websites until something came up! Once again it's RiteAid and findashot.org for the win! Some of the sites were super picky, stating you could only be someone from this particular county or zip code, or that you had to log on to some other website first, or what have you, but FindAShot basically kept it easy and clean: it refreshed itself every five minutes for places that offered it like CVS, Walgreens, RiteAid, Safeway, and so on. As soon as I got a bite, I just went for it.

--Multiple important scenes in Diwa & Kaffi have been improved significantly and I'm quite happy about that. I think I may have maybe six or seven Big Moments to fix, but most of the rest of the scenes read just fine. It's the ones where you can tell I rushed it that needed work. I'm *hoping* to get it done by the end of the month, but I'll be happy if I get it done by mid-May. Where am I going to submit it? Good question. Still working on that.

--I'm getting lazy with my stretches and exercises again. I need to spend more than just five minutes doing a few twists and saying "meh, I'll do my crunches tomorrow". I'm doing okay with them, but I could be doing a lot better.

--Building management stopped by the other day to check the layout of the apartment, as apparently they need to get into a few of our closets to set up some kind of fire safety thing. Which means that on a certain day, I'll need to empty it all out so they can get in. Which means that I'll have to figure out where I'm going to put certain boxes and whatnot, even if it's just for half a day. It'll be a pain in the butt, but at the same time I'm trying to look at the plusses, such as dusting and vacuuming the corners (and maybe getting rid of a few shirts I haven't worn in like five years). Thankfully this shouldn't take more than a day so it won't be too big of an issue.

--For the very first time, the bookshelf containing my music books now wholly contains *books I have actually read*. I've managed to get the TBR pile down to a few dozen, which have been moved to the bookshelf next to my side of the bed. And THAT particular TBR pile is only a single shelf, so I should be able to get through them soon enough!

--Next week we'll be going to a restaurant (with A's parents) for the first time in who knows how long. To be honest, it's not really blowing my mind as it would most other people. I think it's partly because I've been the one heading out each week to do the grocery shopping or other outside errands, so it's not as if I've been squirrelled away and not seen another human being aside from A this past year. I do miss heading to places like some of the local diners and a few of our favorite watering holes, though!

....and that's all I can think of for now. Gotta finish doing the laundry and prep my writing blog entry for Monday. Hope everybody has a fine week ahead!

Whoops! Forgot to post here yesterday -- and forgot to write and schedule a WtBt post as well --  so now I'm doing doubletime this morning to get caught up. New month, new attempt at Staying On Schedule. And of course I started with my PC acting up a little bit so I had to close everything and reboot. May as well do it now before I get too bogged down with everything else, yeah? [Looks like I still have to reboot one more time to install an update, but it's not critical so I'm not worried. I'll do that later this afternoon while I bake some beer bread!]

Meanwhile, things are going well with the two writing projects. The only downside being that I now have two further project ideas that have popped into my head, begging for attention! I'm not going to drive myself crazy by working on four different projects, however. I've got enough that I want to focus on at the moment, and I know my limits. I could probably do three at most, but that third one will most likely be a renewed effort to see what I can do with Diwa & Kaffi. I'm on the fence with that one at the moment: I love the story, but I've also taken some writerly (and professional) advice to heart that maybe it really does need more work on the prose. On the other hand, it currently has a certain personal perfection to it that makes me wonder if I should follow up with the "this would really work amazingly well as a webcomic" idea that I'd had for it since I started writing it (and semi-proven to be a legit idea after drafting up a rough storyboard of the first couple of chapters a few months ago). All of this to say that I'm distracting myself from that by focusing on two other unrelated projects! Eesh.

Anyway! In more personal news, I am happy to say that I've been REALLY good with the stretches and exercises over the last month or so, and I can definitely feel the difference. I'm no longer slouching in the chair, my back and my knees aren't as achy, and I'm definitely not feeling as tired and cranky either. Our going for neighborhood walks is also helping, as I'm making it a point not to hunch or slouch like I used to. Now if I can only get rid of these extra pounds in the middle section...


Hope everyone has a good week!

Another relaxing weekend of not doing too much other than our daily walk around the neighborhood. We've been averaging about 1.5 - 2 miles most days if we're just doing up Lake Street and back, and maybe more like 3 or 4 if our plans are to walk in the botanical garden in GGP (the camelias and cherry blossoms are out!) or doing some errands down the other end of Clement. 

Speaking of exercise, I'm trying to do them twice a day here in Spare Oom, once midmorning and once midafternoon. Nothing too high-intensity as my joints aren't up for that right now...it's mainly been a lot of the stretching exercises I still remember doing from my days at Yankee Candle plus a few I've grabbed from the internets. The problem with these is not the occasional pain, but the occasional forgetting to do it!!

Which brings me to my next thing: as an experiment, I've given myself a semi-rigid daily schedule that I'm going to try to maintain as closely as I can, starting tomorrow. I built it up around the loose schedule I already have (midmorning journaling, exercise, lunch, writing sessions, etc), this just gives it more stability and less chance for distraction. And yes, I did factor in points in the day for leisure time -- checking emails and social media, working on something fun, and so on. I'm not looking for rigidity, I'm just looking for structure here, because I think I need more of that.

[On a side note, I once tried to do this during my college years as a way to ensure that I'm actually doing homework, studying and not goofing around with whatever instead. Unfortunately this died a horrible and embarrassing death when a few "friends" saw it and mercilessly made fun of me for it. Sadly I gave up on it and never tried it again. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't given into mortification and lack of self-esteem and followed through, but well...what's past is past, I have no peanut gallery to shoot me down this time.]


Not much else to report! Hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Now that Turkey Day is over (and there was a LOT of it here over the weekend), it's time for me to work off all that eating. We did take a few neighborhood walks over the last couple of days, but I need to make sure I keep it going. I need to start up the stretches and the exercising during the day again. I did recently check my weight for the first time in ages and I'm down more than I thought, but I can do more. Unfortunately we also have a lot of holiday snacks kicking about so that could pose an issue...Well! Either way, I think I can at least work off what I snarf down, yeah? Then come January I can get it going in the right direction again. It's more than just weight, of course...my joints are starting to ache because I Am An Old, but I'm pretty sure it's also because I'm a lot more sedentary than I should be -- the life of a writer, alas. I'd like to be more active again, and this should be a good way to get started on that.

I'm also thinking of writing exercises as well. This of course means making sure I hit my daily 750 Words again...I have a project that would work on that platform and I need to make good on my refocusing plan. Since I've circled back to scheduling my days, I'm feeling a lot more creative and productive, which is right where I need to be right now. I'm very glad that I decided to kickstart all this creativity again, because it was long past due. Not that I'm annoyed by all the time I wasted, because I really didn't waste it -- I had a lot of personal stuff I wanted to process that I'd put aside for WAY too long, and I'm glad I took the time to do that. I returned to the writing because I missed it and was ready for it again.

So! On that note, here's to hoping everything starts running on a normal schedule again...

Okay. Getting myself hyped up to do a LOT more moving. Just had a good fifteen minute workout of stretches and walking in place and I'm thinking of doing another round this afternoon. Sure, fifteen minutes is pretty short considering, but it's just fine for someone just starting out a regimen. (I used to have a bad habit of "hey let's do this for a full half hour" and injure my back somehow. I'm too old to have that happen again.) 

The trick -- that is, the trick I play on myself -- is to say "let's do it before 9am", because my earlier attempts were more passive. I'd say "I'll get to it after I'm done with X" (where X = Something Sedentary) and next thing I know it's noon and I've wasted the entire morning. This is similar to my morning habit of journalling during my 9:30 break; instead of "I'll get to it when I get to it" it's "I'm doing this at THIS time".  Scheduling is a good thing, especially if you're as easily distracted as I often am.

What exercises am I doing? I don't have a strict workout just yet, but I just googled "stretch exercises to do at home" and made a list of ones that I could easily do without using props like jump rope or medicine balls, or make tons of crashing or grunting noises, and within the confines of Spare Oom. A lot of stretches and moving in place. My aim is to strengthen my hips and knees, which of course are the first to go when one ages. And now that the weather is finally getting better, we've been taking short walks around the neighborhood (practicing good social distiancing while we're at it, of course).

This is where my being a person who clings to habits for good or ill becomes a good thing: after a few days, I'll have this down again and it'll be something I can continue doing, even look forward to.

I probably should be concerned that I'm working on Diwa & Kaffi Revision Version 2.1 at a snail's pace, but that's because I've been semi-distracting myself by watching BBC's Gardeners' World with A in the evenings. It's a distraction, yes, but it's a rather enjoyable and relaxing one, even if my thumbs are nowhere near the color green. Besides, the level of productivity has shifted back and forth since I started it. I'll get through a huge segment quickly one day, only to slog through five paragraphs the next. It happens.

Anyhoo...new month, new attempt to return to schedules. I'm trying to be good and get back into the habit of exercising in the morning. Just a few stretches and crunches, but I've noticed that doing it every single day has in fact shown results, so I may as well get back into it! I'm also trying to get back into the Daily Words again. Inspiration has semi-struck, so I'm curious as to where this will all go.

Other than that, not too much to report. Hope everyone has a good Fourth of July!