Author Journey (June 12, 2023)

If I had to sum up the past week in a single word, that word would be yawn! Seriously, I’ve never felt so tired in my life and I’ve stayed awake for several days in a row on multiple occasions. It’s finally caught up with me.

Author Journey (June 12, 2023)

I used to get fairly frequent weekends to myself back when the Mrs was studying part-time. She would go away for a weekend of lectures, leaving me to do my own devices… So, I would leave work on Friday, walk to the DVD rental shop (yes, it was a while back), rent as many horror movies as they would let me, pick up a bucket of KFC, and go home and watch them all. More often than not, I would stay up all weekend watching scary movies. When I’d watched all the ones I borrowed, I would go back and get more. Sleep has never been my master… until now it would seem!

The Weekly Recap!

So, I failed to account for the amount of time the day job would take up this week. It was the busy period again so I should have expected it. I’m sure that played into the general malaise that plagued me all through the week. As a result, I managed to watch six episodes and a movie. The movie was the equivalent of four episodes so it wasn’t all bad and I like that my new posting schedule will encourage me to watch more movies again. Anyhow, I didn’t quite reach the goal of eighteen episodes.

Manga did better, but that also was thanks to the day job taking over. I’ve mentioned before that I run a lot of code and procedures that take a lot of time. There’s literally nothing I can do while that’s going on, so while working at home, I’ve taken to grabbing a book and flicking through a few pages. This week, I got through four books. That’s a lot of time waiting for stuff to run. Still, I beat my target of three.

I started work on several posts that I never really got going on. They’re still there waiting for me to come back to them, but I haven’t scheduled them so I can’t really count them here. So, I only managed to schedule five posts which is short of the eight I had planned. Although the tiredness definitely impacted things here. The day job took over several nights this past week…

That also meant that I didn’t have as much time to work on the edit of RIP Tide. I’ve started reading and am already several chapters in, but there’s a lot more to go and I already feel like the second draft is going to result in a fairly significant word count increase. Hopefully, this week will be calmer and less draining.

Annoyingly, this impacted my drawing time too and I ended up with nothing to show for this week here either. I need to have a real look at the day job and find a way to spread the work out. Sure, it’s nice having a couple of quieter weeks, but the busy periods are too manic. The biggest problem is that I’m the final step in the chain so I end up with absolutely no wiggle room after everyone else has been delayed.

Tasks	Goal	Completed
Anime Watched	18 Episodes	6 Episodes and 1 Movie
Manga Read	3 Books	4 Books
Posts Scheduled	8 Post	5 Posts
Chapters Written	Editing RIP Tide	Started…
Artwork Completed	5 Sketches	0 Sketches

Aspirations for the Week!

I also had an insanely busy weekend with parties for the kids and yard work. All that and my recovering back problems haven’t helped things. This week, work should be quieter… Hopefully, it will be without event.

Watching Anime

This week is the perfect week to watch a longer series that I’ve been meaning to get into. The season is twenty-five episodes long which should take me all week to watch, maybe a little longer. That will give me more time to catch up on some posts that need finishing and give me more time to write and draw. I’m going to go for thirteen episodes which will take me to the halfway point.

Goal: 13 Episodes

Reading Manga

I have just one library book to get through, although there are more waiting for me to pick up. That’s also fine. I can afford to slow down a little with the manga too as I’m already scheduling posts for October such is my manga buffer. So, I shall plan on reading just one book this week.

Goal: 1 Book

Posts Scheduled

With the slowdown in the number of posts I’ll have to do for anime and manga, this is the perfect time to catch up on some other posts that I’ve started and have been meaning to get to. I’ll leave the plan at eight, although I’d like to do more.

Goal: 8 Posts

Writing

I guess technically, I did begin the second draft of RIP Tide in a sense, but not enough to really celebrate that. This week, I am going to really get into it. I hope to come away feeling like I am making progress with the second draft.

Goal: Get into the second draft of RIP Tide

Artwork Completed

I love my sketch time each day and want to make that a permanent thing, so I’ll be trying to do one drawing every day from Monday to Friday. I’m not expecting anything huge. I just need to keep the process going.

Goal: 5 Sketches

Final Thoughts

As I said earlier, I’ve never been so drained before and it’s not just feeling tired. Even like this, sleep hasn’t been what I craved. It was a moment of quiet where I could just sit down and not have to worry about anything. Sure, those moments are rare with kids, but they do happen. This week, I’m hoping to recharge my energy and attack all of my goals with renewed vigour. I don’t think I’ve pushed myself too hard with this week’s goals so that should help.

One thing that I am quite excited about is how I feel like I can watch movies again. When you’re reviewing episodes, you feel like all you can watch is episodes, especially when a movie is like watching four episodes at least. The revised schedule allows me to treat a movie the same way I would a season so in a sense, it’s actually more productive. There are a number of movies I’ve been putting off and several classics from when I first started watching anime that I’d love to revisit. There’s lots to do so I’d better get on with it. Anyhow, thanks for reading.

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