‘Tis the season
- Winter arrived properly. Cue snow, Christmas markets, glühwein, last-minute present shopping, endless nights, and tentative thoughts about skiing. I visited family for Christmas and had a wonderful time. Plus food. SO MUCH FOOD.
- Writing: kept plowing through my fun little fantasy project. I say “little” . . . . it’s at 103k words and plotwise it’s 2/3 of the way through. I think I must have been in a haze during Nanowrimo, because most of that 50k needs epic trimming down in some places, and expansion in others. There are various notes along the lines of “[scene where they go to a shop and something important happens]” or “[insert prescient fairy tale here]”, which I need to fill in or remove entirely. We’ll see how much of it is salvageable once the whole story is done and I have a better overview of the final plot and subplots. I’m plantsing this one, meaning I have rough plot points in mind, and am pantsing the route between each plot point. Usually I’m a plotter, so this is new for me.
- Reading: caught up on some romances which I bought ages ago and enjoyed them. I also bought and read Are You Kitten Me which is seriously adorable. I finished The Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet, and while I didn’t exactly find enlightenment, I liked the approach the books took, and I’m interested in reading more about Taoism as a result.
- Watching: still working through Crash Landing on You. This month was all about Christmas/holiday movies. I rewatched all the usual faves, plus managed to stay sober through a number of terrible made-for-TV/Netflix movies.
- Music: not much beyond some old faves. Rooms on Fire made another appearance this month, plus Christmas stuff.
2022 resolutions wrap-up
When I reviewed them, they were a little vague as written on this blog. I did have more discrete goals listed in my personal journals, so I’ll try and address the vague ones with specific examples.
- Writing stuff: I published a new book, which was a major resolution! I’m quite proud of Entanglement. I had fun writing it. And I finished a short story I’d been tinkering with since 2018. It’s not good, but it’s finished, which is more than it was before. I also started writing two major projects: the fantasy thing which dominated Nanowrimo, and a fanfic thing which remains uncompleted. This means that I didn’t finish a new big project, but hey, it’s all progress.
- Start new habits: I did this! I had a dedicated habits journal which helped me track new habits. I wrote every day for a month (two, in the end, with nanowrimo), which kickstarted a new habit. I also read almost every day now, which I didn’t before. Some habits didn’t stick, but ones which clearly benefited me in some way did.
- Doing things: this year wasn’t a huge change in that department. While I did travel and see people, including family, and I did complete things, sitting here now, I don’t have a sense of having done all that much. I also don’t see a change in my daily routine or outlook beyond simple things (like, “the recycling needs to go out”. In 2021, I would have thought about it for days before doing it. 2022 me just does it). This clearly needs some work. I would like to see some real daily routine change.
- TLDR: Some improvements! Some progress! Not as much as I wanted, but it is what it is. Onwards and upwards.
Cass Lennox 