Well, that may have been the start of something.
After an August with extensive, writing, exercising, and not drinking, a much quieter September was desperately in order. September began with a proper adult vacation. Replete with eating, drinking, and sleeping in. It was the first time in 4+ years Laura and I went away without any kids or friends or work obligations, and it was bliss.
I took it easy on personal goals for the rest of the month. The day job leaked at the seams. My workload there left me little time to breathe, except for spending time with the kids, and some reading.
I’m proud of the work that got done though, and it caps off the first six months at this job. Owning a sizable chunk of the marketing work for the business is rewarding. In a few months, we’ve shipped more cool plays than I thought possible in that timeframe. More importantly, some of the bigger technical impediments to my work are finally beginning to crumble away. Leaving optimism that the next six months will be even stronger.
That said, the volume of work and some childcare coverage issues had a deleterious effect on my mood. I recorded 10 depressive days, 12 neutral, and 8 positives. Most of the positive days clustered around vacation.
Next month will be a more balanced effort, and I’ll be back on the daily exercise and writing regimens that are equal parts tiring and a serotonin drip. I’m building up for another run at Nanowrimo this year, after a multi-year absence. I’m less fixated on completing the full 50,000-word goal in a month but have the ambitious goal of getting the first draft of a novel done by Christmas, likely around 70-80k words. To prep, evenings in October will be for brainstorming, outlining, and blogging, as I build-up to the task.
After shelving Tools of Titans after about 40 pages, I finished four books in September. The audiobook version of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, and three fantasy novels on eink: Mockingbird, King Bullet, and The Blacktongue Thief by Chuck Wendig, Richard Kadrey, and Christopher Buelman respectively.
The Blacktongue Thief is particularly great, an epic fantasy novel that reverberates on the same frequency as the Lies of Locke Lakora by Stephen Lynch, and to a lesser extent, Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles. It’s the first novel I’ve read in some time that I hated putting down and stole pages in the spare moments of the day.
Nothing else of note. Some lost dogs in the area, a squatter trying to move into the rundown property next door, and the electrical issues in the basement were finally solved.
Let’s get into Fall properly.
Currently reading: Several short sentences about writing, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Project Hail Mary, and still, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.